Policy
Serial Injustices
Millions rallied behind Adnan Syed, whom the system gave a second look. Many others serving extreme sentences deserve a second look, too.
advocacy
A Passport to the Future
Pell grant restoration for incarcerated students is long overdue. But without infrastructure and safeguards, higher education, and true freedom, will remain elusive.
Institutions
Pretty and Punitive
For all its aesthetically pleasing attributes, Norway’s Halden Prison is still a prison for the men who must endure it.
Decarceral Pathways
Revoking Probation
After years of working in the system, a reformer and believer in government gives up on probation and parole.
Policy
Decarcerating from Within
Here’s how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.
In Depth
To Free Them All
The carceral system criminalizes and retraumatizes survivors at every step. Dismantling these structures is the only way to end this violence.
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
Past, Present & Future of Mass Incarceration
In Depth
Jail by Another Name
The rise of pretrial e-carceration in San Francisco has created a new class of people for whom freedom remains elusive.
Surveillance
Debt Trapped
The growth of electronic monitoring has spawned a quagmire of hidden fines and fees from which people need a way out.
In Depth
Anything But Petty
Misdemeanors are major sources of overcriminalization and punishment. Requiring jurors to screen them could shake up the system.
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Safety
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
A closer look
Growing Justice
Why understanding restorative and transformative justice on their own terms, and at their best and worst, will help us build more of both.
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.
voices
Caring Collectively
Looking back on 25 years of abolitionist feminism and organizing in California.
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.
Beyond Reform
No More Courts
The legal institutions, processes, procedures, and actors implicated in the progression of criminal cases are simply beyond reform.
A closer look
The Evidence-Based Trap
Data-driven approaches to reform can reinforce aspects of a system that’s rotten to the core.
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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