Renee M Byrd

Cal Poly Humboldt, English, Faculty Member

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Dr. Renée M. Byrd's work is situated at the intersections of abolition feminisms, Black ecologies, and healing justice. She asks questions about how we meet the challenges of our times, how we heal and how we build a world without cages, war and sexual violence. She is the Founder and Director of Earthseed Laboratories, a healing justice-centered demonstration site where folks with histories of incarceration and movement co-conspirators gather to slow down, break bread and practice new ways of being in the world.

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Punishment's Twin": Theorizing Prisoner Reentry for a Politics of Abolition

Social Justice, 2016

Each year, approximately 700,000 people are released from prison. Prisoner reentry has emerged as... more Each year, approximately 700,000 people are released from prison. Prisoner reentry has emerged as an object of knowledge and intervention in profound new ways over the last decade. The immediate survival needs of people released from prison are vital issues for building the prison abolitionist movement. However, an uncritical acceptance of the seemingly benign notions of prisoner reentry circulating in mainstream criminology and corrections warrants caution. Prisoner reentry initiatives can be read as the latest installment in a long history of reformist reforms, which have expanded the punishment system and strengthened the legitimacy of the contemporary prison. The author argues that prisoner reentry must be grounded in a politics of abolition if it is to undermine the conditions of mass imprisonment's emergence. Keywords: prisoner reentry, prison abolition ********** IN "NOT LIGHT BUT FIRE: GENDER, VIOLENCE AND STRATEGIES FOR PRISON Abolition," Cassandra Shaylor wri...

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“Prison Treated Me Way Better Than You”: Reentry, Perplexity, and the Naturalization of Mass Imprisonment

In the absence of a critique of the logics at the heart of the prison industrial complex, seeming... more In the absence of a critique of the logics at the heart of the prison industrial complex, seemingly progressive trends such as prisoner reentry initiatives will simply bolster racialized state violence. This essay grapples with questions of representation and power, and details how the disposability of imprisoned people is reproduced and renaturalized through carceral practices. Academic accounts continue to be complicit in this process, without a complex theorizing of subjectivity, representation, and state violence. This essay uses interviews with formerly imprisoned people in the Twin Cities to disrupt the way that formerly imprisoned people’s narratives are “mined as rich sources” in pathologizing and voyeuristic ways. Prisoner reentry programs appear progressive on the surface; however, they expand the prison industrial complex through perplexing logics that make it harder for women to navigate toward freedom. I use the notion of perplexity as a rubric for understanding penal l...

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Punishment's Twin: Carceral Logics, Abolitionist Critique and the Limits of Reform

Lecture delivered at Humboldt State University on May 3, 2016 by Renee Byrd. Part of the Sustaina... more

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Renee M Byrd

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