About Us
In 2020 we joined the Close The Jail ATL Campaign. The goal was to shutter the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC) and build a community center in its place. The campaign was the culmination of nearly a decade of decarceral advocacy in Atlanta, much of it led by individuals directly impacted by Atlanta’s carceral policy making, including the organization Women on the Rise.
Through our work with Close The Jail ATL we recognized a lack of awareness and engagement from healthcare and public health, despite the many known harms of criminalization and incarceration on health. We felt then, and feel now, that a more organized, involved, and politically educated health contingent can bolster local decarceral efforts. As abstract conversations of social determinants and health equity take place across health professional schools, we view the lack of engagement with community based movements as a collective failure. As we have written previously on health workers, “Despite their proximity to structurally driven preventable suffering and premature death, these experiences have not yet been molded into a sound political analysis, let alone a movement. While not a panacea, they remain a sorely missing piece in many coalitions looking to change narratives of safety and tip the scales of public policy.” We see an urgent and necessary need for the mass political education of health students and workers. Once equipped with a foundational analysis of how the criminal legal system impacts health, many more will be willing and able to support local movements working to build a more just world.
What We Do
SCOOP is a political education organization that exists to make clear how the criminal legal system negatively impacts health. For this reason our most important “product” is our curriculum. While tailored to future and current health workers, it is available to any group who is looking to learn, discuss, and grow together. We know that the structural analysis required will not come from within the risk averse academy, whose experts are largely content to describe inequities while simultaneously partnering with power structures that perpetuate them.
We offer our support and solidarity to health organizers across the country who are looking to educate others, build a larger base, and support local movements against criminalization and incarceration.
Why Focus on the Criminal Legal System?
The criminal legal system is where we see the consequences of organized abandonment, austerity, various forms of oppression, and structural violence intersect. It is also where outsized local funding and power are.
While there remain a myriad of harms to organize and push back against, health workers must be a part of envisioning and building more life affirming infrastructure that can enable safety and wellbeing.
