How might we design for communal safety beyond the prison industrial complex?

Through recognizing the prison industrial complex as a design problem, we will explore both how established institutions (like prisons and policing) are impermanent and the possibility of designing beyond them for our communal betterment. In conversation with partners struggling with their communities for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, you will generate new design concepts of freedom, care, and safety. You will evaluate the prison industrial complex and its inability to invest in communal safety, and prototype design ideas that bolster our ability to collectively embody care and safety practices in our everyday lives in order to break our reliance on institutions that are rooted in carceral violence.

* Note: This is not a 101 course on the ethics of policing and prisons. While those spaces are important, this course is for students who are already actively working toward racial justice— those who are community workers, organizers, activists, abolitionists, educators, etc— and are looking to build their tools and networks. No prior experience with design is required.

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Teaching Team