This participatory workshop invites attendees to critically examine where our ideas about punishment come from and how systems like racism, capitalism, patriarchy, and other forms of domination shape our understanding of harm and justice. Participants will reflect on their own relationship to punishment and criminalization, exploring how they have learned or internalized punishment as a default response to harm.

This course will also confront both the importance of and challenges in resisting carceral logic, particularly through storytelling, messaging, and narrative work, in the face of a deeply entrenched and powerful carceral state. Using messaging tools developed by the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative, we will collectively imagine and discuss “alternatives” to carceral punishment that truly center healing, accountability, and safety, and explore narrative strategies to promote these structures without reinforcing harmful hierarchies.