Non-ideal theory and critical prison studies

This chapter explores approaches to critical prison studies through non-ideal methodologies, with an emphasis on the liberatory political potential for such research. It uses three approaches from a non-ideal perspective. The first section discusses the methodological importance of prioritizing the first-person experiences of incarcerated peoples and their communities within critical prison scholarship. The second section surveys potential pedagogical practices that traverse barriers to the exploration and understanding of carceral experiences, including inside/outside curricula, letter-writing projects, art programming, and more general educational reforms that are proposed as potential sites for doing critical prison studies through a non-ideal lens. The third section turns to what the authors describe as insurrectionist and abolitionist approaches to critical prison scholarship.