Abolition and pedagogy: reflections on teaching a course on alternatives to punishment,state repression and social control

Abolitionism is an important, but often overlooked, theoretical and political alternative to the failings and injustices of the penal system and other forms of social control. While many have documented different approaches to abolitionist strategy, few have explored the work that is done sensitizing individuals to abolitionism, including in university settings. Through an analysis of student journal entries, this study discusses how students enrolled in a mandatory abolition course engaged with the viability of, and barriers to, a world without prisons, punishment and other forms of control. By looking at abolition as a threshold concept, we consider how students negotiate the concept of abolition as a radical justice alternative. As the journal entries showed, while students were able to understand the basic tenets of abolition, many remained in a liminal state between the existing system and the unknown landscape of abolition, and could not see its viability or possibility as a radical alternative. We conclude that other learning strategies may have been helpful in moving student through such a ‘dangerous’ concept. Further research on sensitising individuals to abolition is needed given the current proliferation and intensification of penal and carceral institutions today.