The praxis of care: carceral disruptions and community resistance [mass incarceration is a broken, harmful, and criminogenic system

This $187,373 Project Grant award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (CFDA 45.161 - Promotion of the Humanities Research) to Colby College supports the development of an edited volume titled "The Praxis of Care: Carceral Disruptions and Community Resistance." The project aims to capture and shape knowledge from individuals with direct experience and scholarly expertise on how carceral systems criminalize care, and how communities resist these harms. Through narrative analysis, oral histories, storytelling, feminist ethics, and philosophical theories, the project will build a transformative theory of care relevant to research on prisons and oppressive contexts. The award period runs from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2026. Colby College is the prime awardee, and the project involves collaboration with other partners.

Its stated goal of creating safe communities is undermined by how IT disrupts the very caring relationships that undo harm. Knowledge of how carceral systems criminalize care and how people nonetheless resist already exists within communities of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and their loved ones. This project captures that knowledge and shapes IT into an edited volume titled, the praxis of care: carceral disruptions and community resistance. The project team includes people with expertise formed through direct experience and scholarly research. Through narrative analysis, oral histories, story-telling, feminist ethics, philosophical theories of the self, restorative practice, and deep personal experience of our team and collaborators, we show how a humanities-based critique of carcerality can build a transformative theory of care relevant to research on prisons and world-making in oppressive contexts.]