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June 28 6-8p PT | Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia
June 28, 2022 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
About the Writing to Abolition Series
Following the Floyd rebellions of 2020, we saw ideas about the abolition of policing and imprisonment reach new levels of attention. Leading up to and following Summer 2020, writing about prison industrial complex abolition helped shape the ongoing conversations about how we think about safety and addressing harm. Join CPE for a series of events featuring new books on prison industrial complex abolition that help us consider the case for abolition and how we can put these politics in action. All events will be held online.
June 28 (6-8pm PT) | Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia with Judah Schept and Amelia Kirby
Coal, Cages, Crisis examines schemes to use prison construction as an economic driver in a region marred by extraction, environmental injustice, and structural deprivation. Schept will be in conversation with prison abolition activist, Amelia Kirby about the current state of imprisonment in Appalachia and the movement to eliminate imprisonment in the region.
Judah Schept is the author of Coal, Cages, Crisis and is is an Associate Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He is also the author of Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Politics of Carceral Expansion (New York University Press, 2015).
Amelia Kirby is a Kentucky-based activist and media maker. Kirby’s film, Up the Ridge traces the emergence of supermax prisons in the region and how it related to the region’s coal economy. Kirby is also the founder of “Calls from Home,” a weekly radio show through which people send messages to loved ones imprisoned in Kentucky and Virginia.