Contesting Carceral Logic

“Contesting Carceral Logic is a truly inspiring volume that draws energy from one of the most momentous social movements of our time. It is visionary as an anthology of collective voices from activists to scholars, profoundly anchored in the voices of the incarcerated themselves, besides, a critique that travels deep into the prison’s modern history and far into its unexpected impact for those who of us who believe we dwell peacefully and securely outside the system. Offering the fundamentals for abolition theory along with glimpses into what may well summon us beyond an epoch of social life rooted in punishment, it would be key reference for understanding calls for defunding the police as well as for imagining in ways both practical and philosophical a new way of living.” - Cynthia Willett, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University

“Our so-called logics of crime and punishment deform our thinking to comport with scar tissues of consciousness founded upon the lawlessness of colonial exploitation. In Contesting Carceral Logic, voices from inside and outside prison walls document and bravely resist the relentless harms of our carceral world order. As this book demonstrates, another logic is necessary, and the struggle to secure it is well underway.” – Greg Moses, Editor of The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence and former college instructor at Greenhaven Prison

Michael J. Coyle, PhD is Professor, Department of Political Science and “Criminal” Justice, California State University, Chico. He is the author of Talking Criminal Justice: Language and the Just Society (Routledge 2013) and the forthcoming Seeing Crime: Penal Abolition as the End of Utopian Criminal Justice (University of California Press).

Mechthild Nagel teaches philosophy and Africana studies and is the Director of the Center for Ethics, Peace, and Social Justice at SUNY Cortland. She co-edited Prisons and Punishment: Reconsidering Global Penality (Africa World Press, 2007) and The End of Prisons: Voices from the Decarceration Movement (Rodopi, 2013).