Charlene Allen and Cameron Rasmussen / INQUEST: A Decarceral Brainstorm
From left, actors Jose Hamsa Saldana, TeAna Taylor, Nawanna Tucker, and Colin “Tai
Chi” Absolam performing Beyond Punishment: Stories of Justice and Healing on Dec. 1, 2023.
To achieve justice beyond punishment, we must challenge the narrative that carceral violence is the only response to other forms of violence.
To live in the United States is to be aware of the high levels of interpersonal violence in everyday life. Far less often do we acknowledge the prevalence of state violence. On the rare occasions when the nation turns its attention to atrocities such as George Floyd’s murder by police, the public discourse around state violence tends to occur separately from conversations about street violence in our neighborhoods or family violence in our homes. Seldom do we examine the causal relationship between them all, recognizing and discussing the ways that state violence, inflicted as punishment, is deeply tied to the violence that happens in communities….