activism
Alabama Rising
For the past decade, people incarcerated in Alabama have led successful national worker strikes. Could a new prisoners’ rights movement be underway?
collective action
Building Worker Power
How one labor union in New York is organizing and creating solidarity among formerly incarcerated workers—and winning.
Beyond Reform
Why Incarcerated People Work
A new research project seeks to understand present prison labor conditions—and build a path toward lasting freedom.
Earlier essays from
Captive Labor
Essays exploring the intersection of labor and mass incarceration, presented in partnership with LPE Blog.
In Their Words
A Community Judge
As a newly elected judge assigned to misdemeanor court in Los Angeles, a former public defender sees her new role as serving those impacted by the system.
interventions
No Justice, No Pleas
Imagining the decarceral possibilities of plea strikes and defendant unions.
public health
Care and Carceralism
Disentangling medical care from policing, prisons, and other punitive institutions remains an imperative—now more than ever.
New series
Beyond Gideon
A collection of essays examining how—or whether—public defenders can meaningfully contribute to the end of mass incarceration.
organizing
An Organized Community
ICE entanglement in local law enforcement is just one iteration of a bigger system meant to police our communities. And we can fight it.
advocacy
The Art of Freedom
How two formerly incarcerated artists are creating a community for people like them—and exposing mass incarceration through it.
Beyond Reform
Procedural Justice Isn’t Enough
In immigration court and beyond, fair process matters. But fair laws, fair legal systems, and fair societies matter far more.
Past, Present & Future of Mass Incarceration
Politics
Mass Incarceration on the Cheap
Fiscal arguments have only led to a reconfigured carceral state—one that replaces one type of punishment for another while still harming millions.
Politics
Lessons from Ohio’s Bail Backlash
Fearmongering about public safety played a major role in the state’s midterm setback. But we can learn from it how to take control of the political narrative.
Local jails
Pretrial Injustice
Incarceration ahead of trial is fundamentally unjust—a form of punishment that makes it virtually impossible to fight for your freedom.
A closer look
A Prosecutor’s Decarceral Potential
A new Minneapolis-area county attorney won’t end mass incarceration. But she has the potential to cause less harm and promote healing.
Beyond Reform
Data and Liberation
We need more and better data about deaths in custody. But we don’t need this data to know that only decarceration will save lives.
abolition
Slave Rebel or Citizen?
Abolitionist Ruchell Cinqué Magee is the country’s longest-held political prisoner.
activism
Black Power Meets Police Power
The experiences of Michael and Zoharah Simmons show that the fight against the carceral state is embedded in a larger project of building a just world.
In Depth
Data-Driven Decarceration
A close analysis of prison data can help us think concretely, and strategically, about the tradeoffs of different approaches to decarceration and prison closures.
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
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Safety
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
A closer look
The Evidence-Based Trap
Data-driven approaches to reform can reinforce aspects of a system that’s rotten to the core.
In Depth
A Future for Susanville
The prison town of Susanville, in California, is about to lose its livelihood. Its economic survival presents a test for abolition.
interventions
A Secret Stash of Power
Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.
excerpt
The Problem With Innocence
Human sacrifice, and nothing else, is the central problem that organizes the carceral geographies of the prison-industrial complex.
What we are reading
The Inquest bookshelf
A selection of recent books that invite us to imagine a world without mass incarceration.
Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism
by Leigh Goodmark
Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey
by Dan Berger
The Slow Violence of Immigration Court: Procedural Justice on Trial
by Maya Pagni Barak
States of Incarceration: Rebellion, Reform, and America’s Punishment System
by Jarrod Shanahan & Zhandarka Kurti
Sentences
“Fighting for and with those battling within the bowels of prisons and jails—the ‘disposables’ from the waste generated by prison regimes, profiteers, and politicians—continues the traditions of ancient experimentations in transmutation, as we imperfectly measure but determinedly perform how radical traditions enlighten and transpose trauma into freedom.”
* * *
—Joy James, an abolitionist scholar, in “The Alchemy of Abolitionisms”
From our archives
Beyond Gideon
A reading list of past Inquest essays that examine the role of public defense in the machinery of mass incarceration.
interventions
The End of Public Defenders
One path to ending mass incarceration is ending our modern conception of public defense. And being transparent about our work is one way to start.
system actors
Resistance Is Futile
Crimmigration
Court-Assisted Expulsions
A closer look
And a Public Defender for All
Local jails
Pretrial Injustice
interventions
Making Headlines
excerpt
Defending Attica
interventions
Saying Their Names
ELSEWHERE on INQUEST
book review
Bars and Barriers
advocacy
A Passport to the Future
interventions
Brady ’s Failure
legal history
Blood in the Borderlands
Photo Essay
Archives of Resistance
public health
Policing Health
campaigns
Meeting the Moment
interventions
A Weapon of Last Resort
In Depth
Anything But Petty
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