Macias, TeresaHines, Cristal2024-12-062024-12-062024https://hdl.handle.net/10315/42555Abolition and reform discourses have long informed how criminal justice has been conceptualized and practiced for decades. Both schools of thought carefully seek to address issues related to the penal system. The focus of my research closely interrogates abolition and reform by looking directly at how activists, community, and organizers are re-imagining the future of rehabilitation and reintegration from the penal system. My research is informed by a Focouldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) as the central methodology to consider how words, ideas, and practices shape activism work. Additionally, Said’s Contrapuntal Reading (SCR) is employed to look at some of the underlying contradictions that appear in activist discourses to demonstrate how they are profoundly shaped by a colonial apparatus. More broadly, these tools will enable an analysis of how ideas of rehabilitation & reintegration are produced through discourses and how to determine who can be “free” from prison cells and the prison industrial complex.enAbolitionReformActivistsPrisonRehabilitationReintegrationResearch Paper