Carceral consequences and perverse perks: care and the disciplinary alternative school

Drawing on in-depth interviews with current and former students, parents, teachers, and staff members connected with three alternative schools in one Kentucky, USA school district, this work contributes to the theorization of carceral care. Instead of reducing the alternative school, its processes, and its functions down into a dichotomized question of good or bad, productive or violent, we come to see the dialectical nature of carcerality and the logics of care. Specifically, the negative consequences that students are subjected to are justified and internalized by the (perverse) benefits of attendance, thus dissipating from the realm of critique. As such, I conclude by arguing that without disciplinary alternative schools, we might be forced to reckon with the slow violence of crowded classrooms, whitewashed curriculum, undervalued teachers, underfunded supportive services, and bloated security/surveillance apparatuses – and with that, the system of racial capitalism that it props up.