This article aims to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on carceral and anti-carceral feminist approaches to addressing gender-based and sexual violence (GBSV). Specifically, this article attempts to draw out the contributions and tensions of carceral and anti-carceral approaches towards the elimination of GBSV within the context of feminist social work practices and policies. Engaging in a reflexive process that draws on our collective experience of social work education, practice, activism, and research, we argue that, rather than reinforcing the carceral/anti-carceral binary, a critical consideration of current tensions and debates in this area may provide a more productive way forward in addressing gender-based and sexual violence more broadly.

This collection features essays, case studies, and pedagogical approaches that explore how educators managed the privacy, security, and safety concerns that rushed into our lives as we shifted into emergency remote learning in 2020. While the COVID-19 pandemic brought this concern into focus, privacy issues with online learning continue to exist alongside us and our students. This book provides readers insight into the current state of privacy issues, describes the challenges and rewards of developing more privacy-focused learning environments, and presents several resources and tools that readers can bring to their own teaching practices. Representing a variety of perspectives from K-12, higher education, and libraries, contributors describe the challenges they encountered and offer solutions to help ensure the safekeeping of students’ online lives. How do we navigate these online environments, who collects our data, and how can we protect our most vulnerable populations?

This discussion seeks to critically explore the white, colonial narrative of gender-based and sexual violence that has justified and facilitated increased carceral power in responding to the social issue. In particular, I aim to emphasise the ways in which carcerality obscures the complex histories and dynamics of gender-based and sexual violence in order to individualise and privatise the problem. To demonstrate these dynamics, I will analyse: (1) the characterisation of perpetrators of gender-based and sexual violence as violent ‘Others’; (2) the centring of white women’s narratives in justifying increases to carceral power and implementing criminalising policies; (3) the extension of the carceral gaze through social work service provision; and (4) the fallacies of postfeminism facilitated by carceral logics. This discussion will conclude with exploring the possibilities of abolitionist social work and anti-carceral feminism in challenging the white narrative and creating space for partial histories to emerge.