"Childhood has never been available to all." In her opening chapter of For the Children?, Erica R. Meiners stakes the claim that childhood is a racial category often unavailable to communities of color. According to Meiners, this is glaringly evident in the U.S. criminal justice system, where the differentiation between child and adult often equates to access to stark disparities. And what is constructed as child protection often does not benefit many young people or their communities. Placing the child at the heart of the targeted criminalization debate, For the Children? considers how perceptions of innocence, the safe child, and the future operate in service of the prison industrial complex.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, with incarceration and policing being key economic tools to maintain white supremacist ideologies. Meiners examines the school-to-prison pipeline and the broader prison industrial complex in the United States, arguing that unpacking child protection is vital to reducing the nation's reliance on its criminal justice system as well as building authentic modes of public safety. Rethinking the meanings and beliefs attached to the child represent a significant and intimate thread of the work to dismantle facets of the U.S. carceral state.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach and building from a scholarly and activist platform, For the Children? engages fresh questions in the struggle to build sustainable and flourishing worlds without prisons.

About the Author

Erica R. Meiners is professor of education and women's and gender studies at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of several books including Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies and the co-author of Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice.

Reviews

"In her brilliant and jarring analysis, Erica Meiners shatters the commonsensical narrative that we need to increasingly incarcerate in order to protect innocent children, or more insidiously, that the protection of (some) children should guide social movements. For the Children? reveals the limits and contradictions of prevailing organizational frameworks and should be required reading for anyone working toward justice."-Kevin Kumashiro, author of Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture

"One of our most important scholar/activists, Erica Meiners always challenges us to engage critically with the complex and sometimes surprising ideological strategies that bolster the expanding carceral state. For the Children? reveals how both prison advocates and prison abolitionists tend to rely on conventional notions of childhood and innocence. It should be read not only by movement builders but by all who believe that a world without prisons is possible."-Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Delves into topics, including sex offender registries, not typically covered in discussions of America's booming prison-industrial complex."-Sexual Assault Report

Book Information
ISBN 9780816692767
Author Erica R. Meiners
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 38mm