Social justice goals and objectives necessitate rethinking the systems of criminal injustices both toward the LGBTQAI+ population and the LGBTQAI+ population that includes people of color. For example, while two of the founders of Black Lives Matter are also LGBTQ folks, this has been omitted from most of the queering criminology literature. By extension, social control through criminalization mirrors social control as exhibited by the social welfare system in both its inherent racism and classism when it removes children from poor Black single mothers and when it ceases to offer assistance to the wide swath of homeless LGBTQ persons. Queer criminology must open the interdisciplinary door to social work practice and theory both to illuminate these methods of social control and to create a theory of social justice that may lead to the replacement of both systems of social control. This chapter will compare and contrast the author's experience in the institutions of prison work and social work to build a new theory of social justice and new systems of human sustenance and development that does not rely on punitive policies and practices.

Personal reflections

This author's work as a mental health counselor in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, community agencies, and substance abuse treatment facilities facilitated a path to academia and back again after 25 years of being immersed in pedagogy and research. In the early 1990s when this author's academic career began, both orthodox and critical criminology were dominated by the voices of white heterosexual males who ignored the patriarchal, white, gendered binary and class-based existence of individual lives as well as the constraints of those social structures (Agnew, 1992). While some initial criminological work took early childhood experiences into account, most ignored and continue to ignore the plethora of data on mental health, substance abuse, and early trauma in the field of psychology and social work. (Most of the clients whom I have served endured severe trauma in early childhood resulting from abusive and/or neglectful parents, and a racist, xenophobic, heterosexist, and classist child welfare system.)

I recall writing a paper taking into account early childhood traumatic experiences and their influence on the development of later violence, substance use, and other types of crimes, and the professor being surprised and excited and explaining that this would take a lifetime of research.