ABSTRACT
Decarceration is a living and dynamic concept. As Scull pointed out in one of the first scholarly treatments of the subject, the term 'decarceration' does not appear in general dictionaries. Foundational work on decarceration emerged during an historical period marked by broad distrust of state institutions and a growing embrace of control in the community. The orientation of this early work locates the study of decarceration in the broader tradition of revisionist historical treatments of punishment. Decarceration has been an important plank in the larger platform of prison-abolitionist activism for decades. Associated in the United States with critical resistance and in North America and globally with the International Conference on Penal Abolition, the abolitionist movement organizes to dismantle societal reliance on penal institutions and logics. Ironically, decarceration may serve as one of the central concepts through which the reconfiguration of the carceral state occurs, a process the historian of punishment Heather Ann Thompson has called 'the Decarceration Dodge'.
