Erica R. Meiners is professor of education and women’s and gender studies at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of several books including Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies and the co-author of Flaunt It! Queers Organizing for Public Education and Justice.

• ContentsIntroductionPart I. Childhoods1. Magical Age2. The Trouble with the Child in the Carceral StatePart II. Schools and Prisons3. Beyond Reform: The Architecture of Prison and School Closure4. Restorative Justice Is Not EnoughPart III. Adulthoods5. Life and Death: Reentry after Incarceration6. Registering Sex, Rethinking SafetyIV. After and Now7. Not This: Building Present FuturesAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

"In her brilliant and jarring analysis, Erica Meiners shatters the commonsensical narrative that we need to increasingly incarcerate in order to protect innocent children, or more insidiously, that the protection of (some) children should guide social movements. For the Children? reveals the limits and contradictions of prevailing organizational frameworks and should be required reading for anyone working toward justice."-Kevin Kumashiro, author of Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture"One of our most important scholar/activists, Erica Meiners always challenges us to engage critically with the complex and sometimes surprising ideological strategies that bolster the expanding carceral state. For the Children? reveals how both prison advocates and prison abolitionists tend to rely on conventional notions of childhood and innocence. It should be read not only by movement builders but by all who believe that a world without prisons is possible."-Angela Y. Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz"Delves into topics, including sex offender registries, not typically covered in discussions of America’s booming prison-industrial complex."-Sexual Assault Report