@kevindhaggerty writes: "Carleton U, the police, and the new academic isolationism: The decision by Carleton University criminologists to eliminate student placements with police and correctional services is ill-advised"

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/carleton-u-the-police-and-the-new-academic-isolationism/

A few thoughts.

1 - "It is well past time 2 reconfigure policing & criminal justice. Unfortunately, Carleton’s placement decision is not a means 2 achieve that goal".

Is "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic", as Senator @KPateontheHill often says, the end the ICCJ are striving 2 support?

2a - "Carleton’s decision amounts 2 a type of extreme institutional isolationism based on their stated claim that policing & corrections are impervious 2 reform".

Institutions change (rhetoric, policies, practices, etc). Do these reforms produce meaningfully different results?

2b - If reforms meant to reduce the harms of punitive injustice are to be meaningful they must also be embedded in longer term efforts to abolish colonialism, capitalism, racism & white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, etc. otherwise they prop-up existing arrangements

3a - "Efforts to transform the criminal justice system will have a higher chance of success and will be more attuned to assorted forms of marginalization and oppression if they include the engaged pragmatic research and assessment efforts of criminologists"

3b - If you're perceived to be working with punitive injustice system entities, many oppressed people pushed to the margins will be reluctant to work with you. Not sure how this helps researchers become "more attuned to assorted forms of marginalization and oppression"

4a - "Carleton’s extreme isolationist orientation, however, leaves it to other people to do the heavy lifting of engaging with these organizations to develop, initiate and assess concrete, pragmatic measures designed to reorient their practices".

4b - Is engaging in research in concert with (the authorization of) carceral state actors and institutions the only way to do 'heavy lifting' and 'pragmatic' work in academia in the service of social change?

5 - Is the only way to render visible "the real-world operation of police or corrections" to "acquire research access to those organizations" in ways they determine and ultimately control? What ('politically preordained') limitations come from such arrangements?

6a - "We are not in the regressive business of excluding students or limiting their opportunities to learn because a faction of the professorate might not support those students’ (continually shifting) career aspirations and political positions".

6b - But we should be in the regressive business of elevating students "opportunities to learn" irrespective of their consequences for policed and imprisoned communities?

6c - Since the "criminal justice system... shows no signs of disappearing", should CRM programs w/ placements just hold the line in the face of demands from BIPOC communities just in case "the political situation changes" & swings 2 the right? Sounds like a recipe 4 social change

7a - "Carleton’s placement decision arises from understandable frustrations, but it does not advance the social justice cause. To confront the racism and marginalization endemic to the criminal justice system will require sustained and often challenging forms of engagement...

7b - ...between scholars and practitioners. My hope is that we can all respectfully work together towards this shared goal".

Where are oppressed communities in this model for social change? Are they merely reduced to objects of research and punitive interventions?

7c - The kumbaya rejoinder in the conclusion coming after labelling colleagues as ill-advised, regressive, isolationist, pessemistic, extremists calling 4 all 2 respectfully work together will (like calls 4 dialogue by carceral state actors who oppress people) likely ring hallow

With everything that's going on in the world today in there realm of punitive injustice it's critics of policing and prisons that are backing up their words with actions that are isolationist and extreme, not the institutions they're critiquing. #PunchUp