Description

Trouble with the Child in the Carceral State

This article examines how the child frames transactions within the US carceral state. Part one defines the frameworks of prison abolition that shape this analysis. Part two identifies the flexibility of the contemporary category of the child using three examples of current tropes of the child within the carceral state. Part three tracks the complexities these representations shield in order to push abolitionists to examine more rigorously central artifacts in our organizing and scholarship. Finally, the discussion returns to the opening frameworks of this article to revisit how an abolition epistemology can assist organizers and scholars.

prison abolition–United States, social movements, race, sexuality, childhood, gender

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 41, No. 3 (2014): 120-144