The Good Cops, Bad Cops, Bullets, and Wounds: Toward Culturally Sustaining Prison Abolition Literacies in Early Childhood Education

Dominant discourses on the prison industrial complex/ mass incarceration tend to prioritize the experiences of Black adults. However, Black children are dual victims of the prison industrial complex. By that, we mean that they are subjected to incarceration in and beyond early childhood education, and the negative impact of the incarceration of parents/caregivers and other family members. With such considerations in mind, early childhood teachers should teach young Black children to become aware of the injustices of the prison industrial complex. To that end, we ask the following question: How can teachers raise Black children’s consciousness of the prison industrial complex and encourage them to build a longstanding commitment to dismantle it through early literacy practices? In this conceptual article, we draw on culturally sustaining pedagogy, the imprisoned Black radical tradition, and abolitionist teaching to introduce and explain the utility of culturally sustaining prison abolition literacies—a literacy practice that acknowledges the pervasive injustices of the carceral state and action- oriented ways to combat them to protect Black children and other minoritized children—in early childhood teaching and curriculum.