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abolition

Put Children First

Abolishing the child welfare system would create more avenues for protecting children, instead of devoting all of society’s energy to propping up a coercive system of surveillance and punishment.

Alan Dettlaff & Maya Pendleton

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Life Inside

Reclaiming Health Worthiness

Faced with often deadly medical neglect, incarcerated women form networks of care that provide the life-sustaining support the state fails to give.

Aminah Elster, Jennifer James, Giselle Pérez-Aguilar & Leslie Riddle

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first person

108 Degrees

Eight Virginia prisons currently have no air-conditioning. We go to sleep in sweat and wake up in sweat, with no respite from dangerous heat.

Tutankhamon Waterman

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Inquest, finalist for the 2025 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, brings you insights from the people working to create a world without mass incarceration.

 

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futures

Abolitionist Lessons from the Prison Belts

A new six-part series looks at how organizers can adapt lessons learned from decades of abolitionist work in Appalachia, California, and Louisiana.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Craig Gilmore, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, & Judah Schept

Read the series introduction

Uneven Expansions

In Part 1, we explore how prison abolitionists must attend simultaneously to the scale of U.S. mass incarceration and how it manifests differently in specific regions.

Read Part 1

Abolition & Environmental Justice

In Part 2, we explore how solidarity between abolitionist and environmental justice organizers doesn’t just happen—but can result from careful work to unearth a shared set of goals.

Read Part 2

Custody & Power

In Part 3, we pursue the argument that those wishing to abolish prisons must understand the legal and financial mechanisms through which the carceral state organizes itself to hold people against their will.

Read Part 3

Organizing the Already Mobilized

In Part 4, we discuss how to get people already involved with other progressive causes to support abolition, too.

Read Part 4

Following the Money

In Part 5, we argue that attempts by carceral authorities to shield their funding sources from public interference are proof that working to interrupt money flows is an effective way to oppose prisons.

Read Part 5

Finding the Opportunity in Crisis

In Part 6, we ask how, when the public shows a desire for change, organizers can capture that energy and channel it into the fight to end mass incarceration.

Read Part 6

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collection

Freedom Writers

Inquest’s landing page for writing by our incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors. Finalist for the 2025 National Magazine Awards.

Read the collection

A closer look

United in Hate

White civilians often spontaneously cooperate in acts of racial hatred. It’s a web of racist solidarity that Black people know all too well.

Brittany Friedman

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A closer look

Not Fit for Human Consumption

Prisons serve bad, inadequate food as a way to cut costs. Providing this inhumane service is now a profitable sector of Wall Street.

Bianca Tylek & Worth Rises

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interventions

Never Too Old to Start Over

When released, older incarcerated people have incredibly low recidivism rates—yet are still routinely denied parole and clemency. Organizers in New York are trying to change that.

Meera Navlakha

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Policing

Injured, Not Dead

After Jason Salters was violently attacked by NYPD officers simply for doing his job, he discovered how little accountability exists for non-fatal incidents of police violence.

Anastasia Tomkin

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public history

The Profit Motive

A recent book unveils the shockingly long history of for-profit prisons—and the equally long history of incarcerated people demanding compensation for their exploited labor.

Robin Bernstein & Nicole R. Fleetwood

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In Depth

Just Learning

Incarcerated people are eligible for Pell Grants again—but will prisons actually allow us to flourish as college students?

Ashleigh Smith

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In Depth

Turning Death into a Commodity

ShotSpotter has leveraged gun violence into a multimillion-dollar business that promises safety but delivers only increased policing and drain on the public’s resources.

Ed Vogel

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interventions

Expert Guides

Reentry guides supplied by prisons are light on details and heavy on judgement. That’s why formerly incarcerated people are writing a guide for New York filled with their own lived experience.

Matthew Azzano

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Criminalizing Dissent

The Tools of Repression

The sweeping conspiracy and terrorism indictment of Stop Cop City activists reveals the new playbook for state suppression of protest. But we can still win.

Hannah Riley & Micah Herskind

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Decarceral Pathways

Just Surviving

Crimes committed because of financial hardship are a form of labor and should not be subject to criminal legal punishment.

Yvette T. Butler

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advocacy

The Right to Be Called Workers

Language of ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ disempowers migrant sex workers while directing attention away from state violence.

Chanelle Gallant & Elene Lam

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interventions

Free Books

Programs that send literature to incarcerated people provide a vital lifeline, facilitating personal growth and imaginative escape.

Hugh Williams, Jr.

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Criminalizing Dissent

Criminalized for Obeying a Higher Law

Nuclear abolitionists in the Plowshares movement have been imprisoned for bringing attention to the fact that nuclear weapons are immoral and illegal under international law.

Art Laffin

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interventions

More Violence at the Door

Domestic violence survivors shouldn’t have to survive police violence, too. It is time to follow the evidence to interventions that actually work.

Sandhya Kajeepeta

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Essay

A Lethal Upbringing

A decade of victimization landed a Harlem kid in prison. More than three decades later, he has not allowed prison to define his life story.

Robert Lee Williams

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public health

The Prescription Police

Placing criminal system tools in health-care providers’ hands causes irreparable damage to patient care and public trust.

Elizabeth Chiarello

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books

Raising Abolitionists

A new anthology invites parents into the work of building a world without prisons.

Kim Wilson, Maya Schenwar & Bill Ayers

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first person

39 Years

I rejected a plea deal and chose instead to go to trial. I would not understand until too late that I had placed a target on my back.

Shebri Dillon

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culture

Survival Art

“Art is not a leisure activity. Art is a redemptive, powerful, meditative, actionable force within a person—within a human being.”

Duane "DJ" Montney, James “Yaya” Hough & etta cetera

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Beyond Reform

No More Pretrial Punishment

In my many years as a public defender, I accepted the legal rationales for pretrial detention. But I can’t anymore.

Justine Olderman

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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?

Cristian Farias

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Local jails

Reforming Sheriffs

Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.

Jessica Pishko

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Criminalizing Dissent

The Tools of Repression

The sweeping conspiracy and terrorism indictment of Stop Cop City activists reveals the new playbook for state suppression of protest. But we can still win.

Hannah Riley & Micah Herskind

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abolition

Transformative Justice Is Global

A transnational approach to abolition brings a new appreciation for community—both broader and narrower than the nation-state—as the site for care, justice, and democratic self-governance.

Melanie Brazzell

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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.”

Paula Lehman-Ewing

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law & policy

Breaking the Chains

Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.

Tommaso Bardelli, Andrew Ross & Aiyuba Thomas

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abolition

A Thousand Possibilities

Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.

Bill Ayers

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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.

William Kissinger

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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?

Philip V. McHarris

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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.

Raj Jayadev

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racial capitalism

Bad Credit

Credit scoring is control by another name. It keeps marginalized people from the means of survival and exposes them to punishment.

Terri Friedline & Anna K. Wood

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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.

Kenneth Alyass

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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.

Wesley Vaughan

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Series

Carceral Geographies

Essays exploring how mass incarceration shapes, and is shaped by, our shared world and built spaces.

Read the essays

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.

CalvinJohn Smiley

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Futures

Abolition as Human Liberation

A hopeful, practical new book shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.

Rachel Herzing, Justin Piché & Maya Schenwar

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culture

A Narrative of Control

Mass incarceration rests on false narratives that carceral institutions themselves control. But some of us are fighting back.

Lyle C. May

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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.

Explore

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.

Michael Bronski

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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.

Emy Takinami & Husain Rizvi

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activism

Asymmetrical Partners

Activism must involve incarcerated people—but few outside advocates really understand the dangers and limitations that imprisoned organizers face.

Ivan Kilgore, Paula Lehman-Ewing & Glenn E. Martin

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