Epistemic Reparations and Carceral Injustice

We live in a world riddled with carceral injustice, from coerced false confessions and wrongful convictions to decades in solitary confinement and unsafe living conditions in prisons. This workshop examines our obligations to make epistemic reparations for the distinctively epistemic wrongs involved in such injustices, where epistemic reparations can be understood as “intentionally reparative actions in the form of epistemic goods given to those epistemically wronged by parties who acknowledge these wrongs and whose reparative actions are intended to redress them” (Lackey 2022, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association).  

One example of a distinctively epistemic wrong from carceral injustice that may demand epistemic reparations is the vilification or demonization of people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. In addition to other forms of reparations, such as monetary ones, such survivors may also be owed epistemic ones, including the creation and sharing of knowledge about who they in fact are that counters the narrative developed and promoted by the State. 

We will be foregrounding the voices of those who are system-impacted in this project, so abstracts from those who are or have been incarcerated, or who have survived the incarceration of loved ones, are encouraged.

This event is a part of the Epistemic Reparations Global Working Group supported by the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University.

Abstracts length: max 500 words

Submission deadline: 28 February 2024

Email to: [email protected]