About Us
In 2020 we began working with the Close The Jail ATL Campaign, whose goal at the time was to shutter the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC) and build a community center in its place. The demand to close the jail 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.
As we joined the call to Close The Jail, we recognized a lack of an organized base from healthcare or public health, despite many explicit and implicit demands for investment in health affirming infrastructure and services. We felt then, and feel now, that a more organized, involved, and politically educated healthcare and public health contingent can bolster local decarceral efforts. With abstract conversations of social determinants and health equity across health professional schools, we view this absence to engage meaningfully with community based movements as a collective failure. As we have written previously on healthcare 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.” With the criminal legal system sitting at the intersection of many drivers of health inequities, we see an urgent and necessary need for the mass political education. Once equipped with a foundational analysis of how the criminal legal system impacts health, we hope to see healthcare professionals 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 healthcare and public 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 care 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?
We center our work on the criminal legal system because that 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 are a myriad of harms to push back against, healthcare workers must also be a part of envisioning and building life affirming infrastructure that can enable safety and wellbeing.
