campaigns
Meeting the Moment
As a lifelong public defender, I ran to become Santa Clara County’s next district attorney. I didn’t win, but our movement did.
democracy & power
Culture Wars and Criminalization
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
Policy
Decarcerating from Within
Here’s how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.
public health
Monkeypox and Decarceration
Urgent action in our nation’s jails and prisons can prevent the kind of mass suffering seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Depth
Hidden Transcripts
The Reagan administration’s entrenchment of a retaliatory immigration detention regime
sowed seeds of resistance that persist to this day.
interventions
Nullifying Dobbs
Jurors’ conscientious refusal to convict people charged for violating abortion bans is perfectly legal — and what justice demands.
Past, Present & Future of Mass Incarceration
A closer look
The Evidence-Based Trap
Data-driven approaches to reform can reinforce aspects of a system that’s rotten to the core.
public health
Letting Kids Be Kids
Prosecution, incarceration, and surveillance don’t stop child sexual abuse. But prevention can.
Policing
Shattering Broken Windows
For decades, policing so-called ‘quality of life’ issues has had devastating effects. This approach must cease to exist.
Decarceral Pathways
Welfare Check
Here’s how federal cash assistance for low-income youth impacts whether they come in contact with the criminal legal system.
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Safety
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
prison closures
A Punishment Profiteer
A rare instance of state prisoners, state prison administrators, and the governor of California all publicly agreeing that a particular prison ought to be closed.
excerpt
The Problem With Innocence
Human sacrifice, and nothing else, is the central problem that organizes the carceral geographies of the prison-industrial complex.
voices
Caring Collectively
Looking back on 25 years of abolitionist feminism and organizing in California.
advocacy
Virginians on My Mind
Everyone is redeemable. For that reason, I won’t stop fighting for those people our governor and the legislature have left to die in our prisons.
Beyond Reform
No More Courts
The legal institutions, processes, procedures, and actors implicated in the progression of criminal cases are simply beyond reform.
In Depth
Federal Time
Congress’ rush to respond to recent mass shootings will criminalize Black and Brown communities the hardest, repeating historic mistakes that contributed to mass incarceration.
Sentences
“At the very least, the systematic targeting of Black militants should prompt us all to have reasonable doubts about why the state prosecuted them in the first place.”
* * *
—Nebil Husayn, an academic focusing on religious studies at the University of Miami, in “Juneteenth and Black Liberation”
Series
INCARCERATION AND THE COURT
A collection of essays on the Supreme Court’s relationship to our crisis of mass incarceration.
A closer look
And a Public Defender for All
We can celebrate the ascent of Ketanji Brown Jackson, while acknowledging that indigent defense remains woefully inadequate in this time of crisis.
public health
A World Without Roe
The loss of the fundamental right to reproductive freedom will only lead to more state surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people.
excerpt
Canaries in the Coalmine
We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are isolated.
A closer look
No Compassion
Judge Michelle Childs’ many denials of compassionate release signal a carceralism that should have no place on the Supreme Court.
Institutions
No More Compromisers
The Supreme Court doesn’t need another Stephen Breyer. It needs someone who can openly confront the immorality of our criminal legal system.
ELSEWHERE on INQUEST
In Their Words
Finishing Sentences
interventions
The End of Public Defenders
In Depth
Home Rule
Crimmigration
No End in Sight
public health
Treating Unfreedom
public health
Drug-Induced Panic
system actors
Busting the Myth
campaigns
A New Sheriff in Town
In Depth
Follow the Science
What we are reading
The Inquest bookshelf
Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation
by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
No More Police: A Case for Abolition
by Mariame Kaba & Andrea J. Ritchie
This Is Our Freedom: Motherhood in the Shadow of the American Prison System
by Geniece Crawford Mondé
Uniform Feelings: Scenes from the Psychic Life of Policing
by Jessi Lee Jackson
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