The Terrain of Struggle
Leaving no one behind, abolitionists plan for a transformed future—even as we attempt to address pain points in the here and now.
Leaving no one behind, abolitionists plan for a transformed future—even as we attempt to address pain points in the here and now.
A second Trump presidency may render police accountability elusive. But, as before, people and communities can and will fight back.
A new anthology invites parents into the work of building a world without prisons.
Every Saturday, we’ll send you a digest with the latest essays from people thinking through and working for a world without mass incarceration.
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Restorative justice seeks to address the root causes of violence—while also doing the work of healing the grief caused by it.
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.
The San Quentin Film Festival offered a feel-good image of prison life—one far removed from the reality faced by most incarcerated Californians.
Excerpt
The deification of whiteness and property has long legitimized the containment of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples.
By Andrew Krinks
Placing criminal system tools in health-care providers’ hands causes irreparable damage to patient care and public trust.
Ahead of the election, immigrants’ rights advocates are working hard to be ready, no matter who wins.
Most judges in Los Angeles are former prosecutors. But a leadership academy there is helping a pair of public defenders to challenge that status quo.
“Art is not a leisure activity. Art is a redemptive, powerful, meditative, actionable force within a person—within a human being.”
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.
Should advocates looking to unwind our nation’s punitive excesses engage a Supreme Court that set them in motion?
Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.
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.
‘Excited delirium syndrome’ is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.
An incarcerated writer and advocate in California implores: “Don’t waste my time trying to make it more comfortable for me in here.”
Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.
Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.
Series
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
I kept my promise to break bread with my friend Dobie one last time, right before the state of Louisiana put him to death.
What does genuine safety look like? And what will it take to prioritize it rather than simply managing inequality and other injustices?
Participatory defense gives families and communities an opportunity to protect their own in courtroom spaces that have long robbed them of power.
A PBS series on reentry is exposing audiences to how people leaving prison grow, heal, and thrive despite their past.
The administrative remedy process is a roadblock to challenging inhumane prison conditions. With the help of advocates, people in prison are fighting back.
While on parole in Oregon, homelessness, unemployment, and lack of services kept me in survival mode. This is not public safety.
Ongoing Series
Essays exploring how mass incarceration shapes, and is shaped by, our shared world and built spaces.
Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.
A hopeful, practical new book shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.
Mass incarceration rests on false narratives that carceral institutions themselves control. But some of us are fighting back.
Recovering a vision of queer solidarity with incarcerated people may just be what people disaffected by the gay rights movement need today.
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 must involve incarcerated people—but few outside advocates really understand the dangers and limitations that imprisoned organizers face.
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 and public health go hand in hand. Organizers are embracing both as they pursue decarceral projects that center everyone’s well-being.
We embrace nonconformity in principle—but not for Black men, whose quirks can provoke fear, policing, and punishment.
From sex work to sex offender registries, a queer politics requires that we end state practices of sex exceptionalism.
What we are reading
A selection of recent books that invite us to imagine a world without mass incarceration.
by Angela Y. Davis
by Laura McTighe & Women With a Vision
by Jack Norton, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs & Judah Schept
by César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
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.
Prison is no place for grief and closure. Yet even as I mourned, glimmers of love and life surrounded me.
Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis, communities have been radically reimagining a world that doesn’t depend on policing.
A look at how decarceral, abolitionist filmmaking can help us envision new worlds.
Sentences
—Artie Ann Bates, a community organizer in Kentucky, in “Letcher Is Us”
Inquest publishes new, thought-provoking ideas and essays weekly.
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