A closer look
Playing with Originalism
Should advocates looking to unwind our nation’s punitive excesses engage a Supreme Court that set them in motion?
In the States
The People v. the Prison
California is discovering the hard way that you can’t leave decarceral reforms in the hands of prison officials.
democracy & power
Death Qualified
The presidential candidates are worlds apart on the death penalty. The winner could either jolt or sap the energy of the movement to end it.
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Local jails
Reforming Sheriffs
Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.
Policing
A Nation of Cop Cities
The push by Atlanta and other cities to build large police training facilities follows on a long history of armories as both symbols and manifestations of the state’s power.
A closer look
Whitewashing Police Violence
‘Excited delirium syndrome’ is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.
excerpt
No Good Prison
An incarcerated writer and advocate in California implores: “Don’t waste my time trying to make it more comfortable for me in here.”
Preview
Breaking the Chains
Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.
abolition
A Thousand Possibilities
Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.
Series
Ferguson at Ten
How the police killing of Michael Brown propelled a decarceral movement.
From 'The Ferguson Decade'
First locally and then nationally, protests calling for justice for Michael Brown fundamentally changed the public conversation about state violence, racist policing, and the limits of what a democratic society could stomach while still considering itself such.
The editors of Inquest
Splash image: Jamelle Bouie/Wikimedia Commons/Inquest
Life Inside
The Last Breakfast
I kept my promise to break bread with my friend Dobie one last time, right before the state of Louisiana put him to death.
abolition
The Transformation of Justice
What does genuine safety look like? And what will it take to prioritize it rather than simply managing inequality and other injustices?
organizing
People-Powered Defense
Participatory defense gives families and communities an opportunity to protect their own in courtroom spaces that have long robbed them of power.
Book Roundtable
The Prosecutor Paradox
What role, if any, can prosecutors play in ending mass incarceration?
in conversation
Returning to Freedom
A PBS series on reentry is exposing audiences to how people leaving prison grow, heal, and thrive despite their past.
advocacy
Remedying Wrongs
The administrative remedy process is a roadblock to challenging inhumane prison conditions. With the help of advocates, people in prison are fighting back.
Surveillance
For the Public Good
While on parole in Oregon, homelessness, unemployment, and lack of services kept me in survival mode. This is not public safety.
Ongoing Series
Carceral Geographies
Essays exploring how mass incarceration shapes, and is shaped by, our shared world and built spaces.
abolition
Community Is a Verb
Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.
Futures
Abolition as Human Liberation
A hopeful, practical new book shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.
culture
A Narrative of Control
Mass incarceration rests on false narratives that carceral institutions themselves control. But some of us are fighting back.
activism
Gay Liberation and the Carceral State
Recovering a vision of queer solidarity with incarcerated people may just be what people disaffected by the gay rights movement need today.
organizing
A Safer, Healthier Boston
In seeking funding for non-carceral mental health crisis response, we’re hoping to bring a small piece of our abolitionist horizon to our city.
activism
Asymmetrical Partners
Activism must involve incarcerated people—but few outside advocates really understand the dangers and limitations that imprisoned organizers face.
Series & Collections
Since our launch, we have published a number of essay series and collections examining drivers of and solutions to our crisis of mass incarceration. Find them all here.
abolition
For the People’s Health
Abolition and public health go hand in hand. Organizers are embracing both as they pursue decarceral projects that center everyone’s well-being.
Policing
‘I’m Just Different, That’s All’
We embrace nonconformity in principle—but not for Black men, whose quirks can provoke fear, policing, and punishment.
In Depth
Sticking with the Sex
From sex work to sex offender registries, a queer politics requires that we end state practices of sex exceptionalism.
book review
Outsmarting a Monster
Jails are everywhere, trapping people and resources belonging to communities. And everywhere, there are organizers contesting that reality.
excerpt
Dare to Report
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
activism
No Killing Revolutionary Hope
The oral histories of political prisoners shed light on their true character—and expose the darkness of the state.
interventions
Papers, Please
Reparations for historic wrongs require concrete action, and that’s no different for the untold harm caused by cannabis criminalization.
public history
Imprisoned by War
Racialized and violent, modern U.S. warmaking is inextricably linked with our history of mass incarceration.
In Their Words
Ambassadors to Freedom
People condemned to die in prison are telling the world about it—and fighting to free one another in the process.
What we are reading
The Inquest bookshelf
A selection of recent books that invite us to imagine a world without mass incarceration.
Abolition, Vol. 1: Politics, Practices, Promises
by Angela Y. Davis
Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South
by Laura McTighe & Women With a Vision
The Jail Is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration
by Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs & Judah Schept
Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien”
by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Past, Present & Future of Mass Incarceration
Futures
Abolition Can Mend Our Democracy
How might we reimagine our rights and liberties in the absence of incarceration?
advocacy
Philly’s Safe Consumption Fight
Public skepticism about scientific research, coupled with echoes of the war on drugs, have hindered our city’s ability to respond to our overdose crisis.
first person
The Banality of Mandatory Surcharges
In New York and elsewhere, exploitative court-ordered fees shouldn’t saddle a person who is already poor and criminalized.
organizing
Building Community
For many years, Kentuckians have been fighting the construction of a federal prison. They’ve been winning, but their fight isn’t over.
Policing
Safety Without Police
Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis, communities have been radically reimagining a world that doesn’t depend on policing.
Sentences
“The idea is to challenge this prison on every possible front—its purported economic impacts, its environmental impacts, its racial impacts, its social impacts, its public-health impacts. We’re doing this for all those inside and outside its walls. We all stand to be impacted by this. And so we hope everyone will join us in building this record of dissent.”
* * *
—Sylvia Ryerson, a filmmaker and organizer, in “Building Community”
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