This week, Christina Dawkins, Director of Civic Engagement and Social Justice, will present at The Global Prison Conference presented by the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference takes place November 16-18 in South Africa and consists of 12 panels over three days, bringing together roughly 25 senior academics, researchers, activists and practitioners working on issues of incarceration around the world. The aim of the conference is to provide an opportunity to theorize the “Global Prison,” addressing incarceration and policing methods in various parts of the world and how these work with the global prison industrial complex, prison cultures, South-South comparisons of penitentiary systems—and linked struggles for social justice.
Christina is presenting on the Racial History of Criminalization and Incarceration. Her talk applies a human rights approach to responding to the carceral state given the United Nations declaration of 2015-2024 as the “International Decade for People of African Decent”. The UN is recognizing the legacy of colonialism and enslavement of African decedents as linked to the current global crisis of mass incarceration. While many prison abolitionists have struggled to get their national governments to recognize this link, an international body is not only recognizing it but calling for it to be addressed this decade. This can be seen as a major opportunity to end a punitive system of criminal justice built on racism. Alternatively, it could also be a distraction given the UN’s checkered past at responding to human rights atrocities committed against people of color. Her talk will address the opportunity and dilemma the present moment poses.
