From Inquiry to Intervention: Qualitative Methods and the Making of Imaginable Reforms in a Carceral Context

Abolitionist debates about carceral reform have focused primarily on the consequences of reform, with less attention to how research methods may shape possibilities for organizational change. Drawing on a feminist participatory action research project in community corrections, we argue that method can function as one form of organizational intervention. We show how participatory practices—relationality, shared interpretation, strategic language, and sustained presence—contributed to shaping how knowledge circulated and authority operated, and to the conditions under which “imaginable reforms”—harm-reducing, non-expansive changes aligned with an abolitionist ethic—became possible. By foregrounding method as epistemic and organizational infrastructure, this study contributes to methodological debates by suggesting how qualitative inquiry can become one consequential part of institutional change within constrained settings.