Over the period of mass criminalization, social scientists have developed rigorous theories concerning the perspectives and struggles of people and communities subject to criminal legal control. While this scholarship has long noted differences across racial groups, it has yet to fully examine how racism and criminalization interrelate in the making of criminalized people’s perspectives and their visions for transforming the legal system. This article engages with Du Boisian sociology to advance a theory of subjectivity that is attuned to the way criminalization reproduces the subjective racial order and that aims to uncover subaltern strategies and visions for transforming the structure of the law and broader society. Through a critical review of interpretive scholarship across the social sciences and an original analysis of interviews with a diverse sample of criminal defendants conducted in the early years of the Black Lives Matter movement, I illustrate how a Du Boisian approach coheres existing theories of criminalized subjectivities, clarifies the place of White supremacy and racism, and provides a theory of legal change rooted in ordinary people’s experiences and needs. I introduce the concept of legal envisioning, defined as a social process whereby criminalized people and communities imagine and build alternative futures within and beyond the current legal system. Du Boisian sociology, I conclude, provides the methodological and theoretical tools necessary to systematically assess legal envisioning’s content and to explain its contradictions, solidarities, and possibilities in overlooked yet potentially emancipatory ways.

在大规模犯罪化时期，社会科学家已经发展出关于受刑事法律控制的人和社区的观点和斗争的严格理论。虽然这项奖学金长期以来一直注意到种族群体之间的差异，但它尚未充分研究种族主义和犯罪化如何在被定罪的人的观点和他们改变法律制度的愿景中相互关联。本文与杜波依斯的社会学合作，提出一种主体性理论，该理论与刑事化再现主观种族秩序的方式相协调，旨在揭示改变法律结构和更广泛社会的底层策略和愿景。通过对跨社会科学的解释性学术的批判性回顾和对黑人生命问题运动早期对不同犯罪被告样本的采访的原始分析，我说明了杜波依斯的方法如何将现有的犯罪主体理论联系起来，阐明了白人至上主义和种族主义的地位，并提供了一种植根于普通人的经验和需求的法律变革理论。我介绍一下概念法律构想，定义为一种社会过程，犯罪分子和社区借此在当前法律体系内外想象和建立替代未来。我总结说，杜波依斯的社会学提供了必要的方法论和理论工具，可以系统地评估法律构想的内容，并以被忽视但可能解放的方式解释其矛盾、团结和可能性。