Taking Down the Prison Industrial Complex

Catalog description

The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country, and more than any nation has ever done in history. The racial disparities that mark this carceral regime have led scholars to describe the prison industrial complex as a new form of Jim Crow. Philadelphia has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, and one of the largest populations on parole and probation. This class explores structural and individual-level pathways to re-engage the vast population of recently incarcerated people who cycle through prisons, jails, juvenile homes, and other detention centers. Drawing on practice informed by critical race, postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories, the class prepares the conceptual and practice foundations for a prison abolitionist orientation in social work engagement with this community. Utilizing a daily workshop format that incorporates members of the Philadelphia decarcerate landscape, students will be trained in direct and macro practice, to engage with people and the carceral systems they are embedded in. The class will engage students with the innovative psychotherapeutic and macro practices being implemented in the Center for Carceral Communities at SP2, alternative programs in Philadelphia’s municipal and federal courts, educational degree programs at community colleges in Philadelphia, co-operative business initiatives for people emerging from incarceration, and social movements such as Black Lives Matter that are shaping the prison abolition landscape. The class blends morning sessions dedicated to discussions of texts with afternoon sessions dedicated to hands-on implementation workshops. At the end of the class, students will be prepared to immediately start engaging with members of the community emerging from incarceration.