Restorative justice inside prison: enacting the promise of emancipatory pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Incarcerated people who study critical theory and emancipatory pedagogy inside prison classrooms can be frustrated by an inability to practice its goals of removing the barriers between faculty and students and creating a more just and democratic society. Inside prison, the theory of emancipatory learning is immensely empowering, but its practice is fraught by the intersecting, oppressive technologies of the prison world. In this article, three incarcerated students and two faculty who teach in prison trace how integrating restorative justice practices bridged emancipatory theory into actual practice. We demonstrate that incarcerated scholars who are equipped with restorative justice training can mitigate prison’s disempowering structures.

KEYWORDS:

• Restorative justice
• critical theory
• emancipatory pedagogy
• prison education
• carceral logics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Beck

Elizabeth Beck Professor at School of Social Work

Shane Erich

Shane Erich Student at Georgia State University and Common Good Atlanta

Andrew Foster

Andrew Foster Student at Georgia State University and Common Good Atlanta

Sacad Nour

Sacad Nour Student at Common Good Atlanta

Sarah Higinbotham

Sarah Higinbotham Assistant Professor at Emory University Oxford College