Margaret Goldman received her PhD in Criminology, Law & Society, with an emphasis in Race & Justice, from the University of California, Irvine. Her research explores the “entanglements” between schooling and carceral regimes, and the ways criminalized young people develop abolitionist alternatives to each. Her current project, Freeing Los Angeles: Un/forgotten Spaces and Abolitionist Education in the Carceral-Education Landscape, examines the gendered-racial links between schooling and carceral systems in South Los Angeles, through an ethnographic study of FREE LA High School: an abolitionist alternative school created for and by young people who were excluded from, or chose to leave, traditional schools. Margaret also taught and tutored at FREE LA for three years. Grounded in FREE LA’s model of transformative justice and FREE LA students’ education histories, this project considers the possibilities for abolitionist education and educational liberation beyond formal schooling. Margaret has been published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender and the Black International; Radical Teacher; Berkeley Review of Education; Race & Justice; Journal of Crime & Justice; and Criminal Justice & Behavior. She is a recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s 2023 Claudia Jones Award, and received support for her dissertation research as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
Margaret grew up and attended public school in central New Jersey (yes, it exists!), and graduated with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Miami, before moving to Southern California for graduate studies.
Publications
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Unconditional Care Beyond the Carceral Education State: A Call for Abolitionist Departure , Goldman, M. , 2024
Radical Teacher -
There’s Always a Way Out: Spatial Domination, Disappearance, and Free Movement in the Carceral-Education Landscape , Goldman, M., 2024
Berkeley Review of Education -
Care and the Quiet Self: Youth Sovereignty, Self-determination and Other Things That Glow , Goldman, M., 2023
Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender and the Black International -
Bolstering High School Completion and College Enrollment: Ten Strategies to Support Youth through Three Critical Transitions , Goldman, M., Mevs, P., Dontamsetti, S., Foley, K., & Campbell, V. , 2025
Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, Rutgers University - Newark -
Educating Against Erasure: Freedom Schools as an Educational Model , Campbell, V., Goldman, M., & Payne, C.M. , Beacon Press (In Press)
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Juvenile Court in the School-Prison Nexus: Youth Punishment, Schooling, and Structures of Inequality , Goldman, M. and Rodriguez, N., 2022
Journal of Crime and Justice -
Family Systems, Inequality, and Juvenile Justice , Rodriguez, N., & Goldman, M., 2024
Criminal Justice & Behavior -
“The State as the Ultimate Parent:” The Implications of Family for Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Juvenile Justice System , Goldman, M. and Rodriguez, N., 2022
Race & Justice