carceral logics—beliefs rooted in policing, punishing, and incarcerating the socially undesirable and in locking up those who don’t fit neatly into this society’s binary definitions of selfhood—were at the root of everything that had been unfair to our entire family. Because the only solution they offer is punishment, adhering to carceral logics prevents us from recognizing our role in each other’s pain, sometimes even as a coping mechanism developed in an understandable attempt to avoid the cruel and constant hand of punishment ourselves.
