Save the Kids from Incarceration

February 13, 2026

12th Annual Transformative Justice and Abolition Criminology Conference

9:00am to 5:10pm (Western Time USA)
10:00am to 6:10pm (Mountain Time USA)
11:00am to 7:10pm (Central Time USA)
12:00pm to 8:10pm (Eastern Time USA)
Via Zoom, Public, Free, and Recorded

Register Here:

Schedule:
Co-Conferences Chair:
Lucas Alan Dietsche
lucasdietsche81@gmail.com
Dr. Lea Lani Kinikini
Lkinikini@gmail.com

INTERESTED THEMES: Transformative Justice
Critical disability studies
Healing Justice
Prison Abolition
Cultural and Religious intersectionalities
Language Terminology
Policy and/or/versus Culture Social Change
Social and Cultural Construction of Disabilities
Fighting Political and Corporate Repression
Being a Scholar-Activist
Decolonizing Movements and Education
Hip Hop Pedagogy, Activism, and Studies
Rhetoric of Health and Wellness
Social Attitudes of Neuroatypicality
Total Liberation
Anti-Capitalism
Racial Justice
Economic Justice
Social Justice
Youth Justice
Critical Eco-Feminism
LGBTTQQIA+ Justice
Mediation
Community Justice and Circles
Direct Democracy
Critical Criminology
Community Organizing
Anarchist Criminology
Radical Criminology
Peace Studies and Making
Conflict Transformation and Resolution

All Speakers have 20 minutes to present with 10 minutes of questions and comments.SUBMIT
All submissions for the conference need to be in a Word Doc. as an attachment in an E-mail with the following information:
1. Title of Presentation
2. Biography third person 80 to 100 words one paragraph
3. Description/Abstract of the presentation around 200 words third person and one paragraph

SEND SUBMISSION TO: Lucas Dietsche lucasdietsche81@gmail.com
Deadline is passed for submissions.

SCHEDULE
(Based on USA Mountain Time)
10:00am – 6:10pm

1). 10:00am – 10:10am – Welcoming and Introduction
Lucas Alan Dietsche
Biography: Lucas Alan  Dietsche is a National Director of Transformative Justice and  member of the Division of Convict Criminology.  He is a PhD student in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Theory with a Masters in Criminology  researching Poetic Inquiry, zines, taphology,  carceral feminism, and Marxist feminist abolition. Dietsche is adjunct professor of Prisoner Education of Adams State University. He was Superior, Wisconsin first Co-Poet Laureate. Dietsche is the co-campagin manager for Gladis the Orca for Governor of Minnesota-2026. Dietsche has recently published a book on radical Comoros and won the Lived Experience Storyteller Award.

2). 10:10am – 10:30am – Inventing the Enemy Within: ‘Trantifa’ and the Long History of Policing Gender Nonconformity in U.S. Security Regimes
Presenter: Zane McNeill

Biography:
Zane McNeill is the co-author of The Coercive Power of the Law: Vulnerable Bodies and Boundaries of Perception (Palgrave, 2025). He has a MA from Central European University and a JD from University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

Abstract:
Law and technology are often treated as distinct domains, yet surveillance reveals their deep entanglement as tools of coercive state power. In the United States, surveillance has long targeted populations constructed as threats to the nation, including Black liberation movements, queer communities, and other racialized and gendered Others. Transgender people are not newly drawn into this framework; rather, trans bodies have long been governed through criminalization, medicalization, and surveillance that render them hyper-legible to the law.Using discourse analysis, this presentation examines how contemporary anti-trans rhetoric—particularly the term “trantifa”—reactivates familiar legal and political logics that align gender nonconformity with anti-Americanism, extremism, and terrorism. Situating recent developments such as the Trump Administration’s NSPM-7 designation of “extremism on gender” within a longer history of federal surveillance from COINTELPRO to the post-9/11 security state, the paper argues that these rhetorics function as technologies of anticipatory criminalization. Drawing on theories of coercive legal power, it contends that governing gender through terror frameworks reproduces long standing forms of ontological and racialized violence.

10:30am – 10:40am Q and A

3). 10:40am – 11:00am-“The Architecture of Temporal Violence in Carceral Systems”
Presenter: Justin Gallant

Biography:
Justin Gallant is a PhD student at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) and an adjunct professor of philosophy with Adams State University. His research focuses on post-reality temporalities, political alternatives, and metastable systems, with particular emphasis on recursion, collapse, and recombination as structural conditions rather than exceptions. Drawing on continental philosophy, media theory, and contemporary art, his work examines control assemblages through temporal ecology governed by preemption, indeterminacy, and recombinatory memory. Gallant’s research is developed through theoretical writing, artistic analysis, and field-based archival methods that foreground structural honesty over resolution.

Abstract:
Carceral systems are often analyzed as regimes of spatial confinement, yet one of their most pervasive forms of violence operates through time. This presentation argues that prisons function as temporal machines that discipline subjects by manipulating perception, rhythm, and agency. Through regimented schedules, enforced waiting, deprivation of natural cues, and arbitrary interruption, carceral systems enact chronometric domination—compressing, elongating, and removing time as a means of control. This paper gives particular attention to solitary confinement as an extreme form of temporal weaponization, where isolation collapses social and sensory time, forcing the mind to generate temporal structure under punitive conditions. This helps explain why solitary confinement constitutes torture beyond physical harm. By reframing incarceration as temporal violence, the presentation argues that abolition must address not only spatial enclosure but the restoration of temporal agency. Liberation, in this frame, requires dismantling the architectures of time that render captivity governable, normalized, and invisible.

11:00am-11:10am Q and A

4). 11:10am-11:20am- Writing Across Confinement: Transformative Justice, Zine-Making, and Collective Authorship

Presenter: Mx. Je’Jae C. Mizrahi

Biography: Mx. Je’Jae C. Mizrahi is a Temani-Queer Millenial writer in nyc & has written for several publications & literary magazines: The Village Voice, Sold Magazine, Bluffton University, HuffPost, Pen America, Hey Alma, Lilith Magazine, S.I Advance , The Feminist Daily, Washington Square News, Fluide Beauty, Next Magazine, Jerusalem Post & Centro Voices of Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. They have held residencies at Pen America “Dream Out Loud” of emerging migrant voices, National Queer Theatre’s “Write It Out”, Still Here fellowship in San Francisco partnership with L.A Times. The Tab at City University of New York

Abstract:This convening draws on my experience as a teaching artist and writer-in-residence with the Brooklyn Public Library’s Criminal Justice Initiative, Bridges Zine. Through this program, I collaborate with formerly incarcerated writers to support the creation and publication of original work grounded in truth-telling, accountability, and imagination. The collective zine circulates throughout New York’s carceral system, carrying stories, art, and critical reflection across prison walls and into shared public space. This practice situates writing as both aesthetic and relational labor—one that resists isolation by redistributing voice and cultivating dialogue between those inside and outside systems of confinement. Grounded in the principles of transformative justice, the work emphasizes narrative repair, mutual recognition, and the reconfiguration of authorship as a collective, ethical act rather than an individual achievement

11:20am-11:30am Q and A

5). 11:30am-11:50am-
Presenter: Dr. Katherine Brown
11:50am-12:00pm Q and A

6). 12:00pm-12:20pm-
Presenter: Christopher Malik Powers

Biography: Christopher Malik Powers is a long time advocate for non violent conflict resolution in New York North Carolina And Vermont. A writer and organizer Malik has been volunteering alongside social justice leaders from all demographics. From Beverly Little Thunder Lakota Preistess and Trama Healer and Mark Hughes of the Vermont Center for Racial Justice to Imam Khallid Griggs of the Community Mosque of Winston Salem and Ingram Bell of the Margerrtet Clinard Outreach Foundation in north Carolina to the Institute for Transforamtive Mentoring known as Conduit. Chris Malik is along time Alternatives to Violence project Facilitator and trainer for trainer and is currently coordinating the AVP Landing Strip East NewYork and Brownsville Brooklyn.

12:20pm-12:30pm Q and A

7). 12:30pm-12:50pm-Arting and Tojisha Kenkyu

Presenter: Iris Arcus

Biography: Iris Arcus is an artist-historian, currently unhoused and residing safely among anti-capitalist, anarchist, community-focused humans of compassion. Iris teaches university courses online and she is an active practicing artist. Iris has a BFA in photography, and two MAs in photography and art history. Iris’s current practice integrates autoethnography and scholarly research with photographic processes, mixed media and assemblage of found or recycled objects to explore autistic phenomenology, the body, and women’s issues. 

Abstract:Tojisha Kenkyu (“TK”) began in Japan in 2001 as a non-coercive, peer-led therapy for individuals with serious psychiatric conditions to explore and articulate their lived experiences in their own words, rather than in diagnostic labels. It has since expanded into more generalized use in Japan, including as a method of scientific inquiry into autism (Kumagaya, 2009). Remarkably, TK has yet to be explored in creative realms, leading me to ask: can TK be a form of Arting? By Arting, I mean not only the immediate action of creating a work of art, but art as praxis integrated into daily life. This presents how I have successfully used TK for creative practice and, more importantly, argues for TK’s potential as a form of art therapy, especially for so-called “neurodivergence”. TK is inherently aligned with the values and goals of social and transformative justice, and thus, TK art therapy can and should be studied as an option to incarceration for people with mental health challenges. To demonstrate, I will give a brief background on traditional TK, its resonance to social justice, and outline my experience Arting with TK, providing a case study of my work as further evidence. 



12:50pm-1:00pm Q and A

8). 1:00pm-1:20pm-
Presenter: Rosheka Faulkner

1:20pm-1:30pm Q and A

9). 1:30pm-1:50pm-

Presenter: Kinikini Lani Lea 
1:50pm- 2:00pm Q and A

10). 2:00pm-2:20pm- 
Presenter:

2:20pm-2:30pm Q and A

11). 2:30pm-2:50pm- 
Presenter: Jess Bobb
2:50pm-3:00pm Q and A

12). 3:00pm-3:20pm- Art Inside, hope, and Minnesota

Presenters: Roberto Lopez-Rios and Antonio Espinosa
Biography: Roberto Lopez-Rios is an artist whose work is rooted in resilience, survival, and hope. Born in Morelos, Mexico, he was raised in South Minneapolis, Minnesota fronced to life in prison. In May 2024, after 23 years, Roberto was released from prison, only to face deportation due to his immigration status. With the support of devoted friends and community, he has returned to Mexico and is now rebuilding his life through art. Roberto’s journey continues to inspire his daughter, family, and all those who believe in the power of creativity to transform lives.

Antonio Espinosa is the founder and Executive Director of Art from the Inside. Art From the Inside creates the opportunity for incarcerated artists to have a visual voice through engaging, community-centered exhibitions of their art.  After serving for almost 20 years as a senior corrections officer at Stillwater state prison in Minnesota, Antonio launched this project to bring hope and healing inside the walls. While still in uniform, he co-facilitated men’s support groups, coordinated cultural events and served on advisory boards and committees for the Minnesota Department of Corrections. In 2021, he received a Bush Fellowship for his transformative work elevating the voices of the incarcerated through community-centered exhibitions of their art. In 2022, he became a policy fellow in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and created a bill for supportive arts programming in Minnesota’s state prisons which was signed into law during the 2023 legislative session. He is driven to build toward a larger transformation in the justice system and in the community.m the age of three. Growing up surrounded by violence and instability, Roberto was pulled into street life at a young age, a path that disrupted his childhood and sense of direction. By fifteen, he was a father striving to create a better life for his daughter and had returned to school, rediscovering art as a source of purpose. That momentum was cut short when, at sixteen, he was arrested, tried as an adult, and sente

Abstract:  This brings together Antonio Espinosa, a former correctional officer and co-founder of Art from the Inside, and Roberto Lopez-Rios, an artist who was incarcerated where Antonio worked and later deported due to his immigration status. Guided by facilitator Avra Anagnostis, the session explores their uncommon and evolving relationship as a living example of transformative justice in practice.Through dialogue, Antonio and Roberto reflect on their shared history within the carceral system, Roberto’s experience of incarceration and deportation, and the ways art became a tool for survival, expression, and healing amid displacement and isolation. The conversation examines how creative practice can interrupt carceral dehumanization, restore humanity, and create space for repair and love across power and positionality. Grounded in healing-centered frameworks, this session invites participants to consider how relationships formed within systems of harm can be transformed into sites of solidarity, storytelling, and collective meaning-making. By centering lived experience and art as knowledge, the conversation challenges dominant narratives of punishment and exclusion and offers insight into how creativity can support justice, dignity, and belonging beyond prison walls and borders.

3:20pm-3:30pm Q and A

3:20pm-3:30pm Q and A-
Presenter:
3:50pm-4:00pm Q and A

14). 4:00pm-4:20pm
Presenter:
4:20pm-4:30pm Q and A

15). 4:30pm-4:50pm
Presenter:

4:50pm-5:00pm Q and A

16). 5:00pm-5:20pm- 
Presenter:

5:20-5:30pm Q and A

17). 5:30pm-5:50pm- 
Presenter:

5:50pm- 6:00pm Q and A