Disrupting the carceral state

Disrupting the Carceral State through Education Journey Mapping (2016)

Subini Annamma

​Melissa van Wijk / Reading Facilitation / June 13, 2023 / A&H5199

Dr. Subini Annamma

• was a special education teacher in both public schools and youth prisons for 7 years.

• trained as a behaviorist in special education.

• is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University.

• her research examines ways students are criminalized and resist that criminalization through the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism.

Summary of Article

​The school-to-prison pipeline is part of a larger Carceral State. The Carceral state is society's larger structure and commitment to punitive, surveillance, and punishment-oriented systems, which remove unwanted bodies from schools and from society. The study worked with 10 girls, ages 13-20, all identified as BIPOC, who all met the study's definition of having an emotional disability. Took place at two juvenile prisons. Through Education Journey Mapping each girl captured her journey through the Pipeline in the Carceral State. This process and study identified their responses to their environment, which centered on:

1. Removal of their unwanted bodies.

2. Embodiment of their removal.

3. Their resistance to removal.

Draw

The Prison Pipeline within the Carceral State

A Pipeline Hot Spot:

The "special education process of identification" leads to Students With Disabilities (SWD) being "vastly overrepresented in discipline and incarceration, particularly when intersecting with race." (p.1213)

• Young people with a disability: 12-14% of Public School students nationally.

• In juvenile detention young people with a disability: 33-37%.

• Students of Color labeled with Emotional Disability (ED) are:

  • 19% of national student population.

  • but they are 50% of SWD incarcerated.

Draw

How do you think, know, or wonder that the Carceral State contributes to this Hot Spot?

Please listen to some of the dialogue with the girls and then draw their journey and/or your response

Draw

Listen to some of the responses from girls in the study and draw their journey and/or your response.