Imprisoned but United
How the peaceful takeover of Walpole prison in 1973 holds lessons for abolitionists today.
How the peaceful takeover of Walpole prison in 1973 holds lessons for abolitionists today.
No one should be made to give up their rights in exchange for being spared from prison.
Better research won’t get us out of our crisis of mass incarceration.
Radical acts of justice can happen within the confines of the system. Or well outside it, as demonstrated by the organized resistance to Atlanta’s Cop City.
As organizers in Illinois know well, it is necessary to engage with criminalizing institutions to better learn how to defeat them.
Acting within the criminal legal system cannot be the solution, on its own, to the existence of the carceral state.
When slain by police, Black women and girls rarely garner the same communal outcry or political response as their fallen Black brothers.
In Atlanta politicians are pushing for a bigger jail they claim will be more humane. But health-care workers are pushing back.
There are many forms of resistance undertaken by relatives and friends of incarcerated people, but the system renders them invisible.
Erasing court costs and fines is a relatively small change that would have an outsize impact on those harmed by mass incarceration.
The fight against police and prisons cannot be separated from the struggle to extend care beyond the limits of the family form.
More people impacted by the criminal legal system can and should share their stories through fiction—and through those stories change minds and public policy.
Despite the stumbling blocks imposed by Republican state governments, abolition is happening in the South and in small towns, with organizing specially tailored to local needs.
Putting our ideas into practice—allowing ourselves to try, fail, and try again—will be how we move closer to a world without the harms of policing, prisons, and punishment.
Only an end to family court can lead to a radical reimagining of how we support children and caregivers.
The lives of undocumented immigrants are very much documented—subject to the surveillance that’s endemic to contemporary life in the United States.
Atlanta’s Cop City is another chapter in the long history of U.S.-based colonialism. The second installment in a two-part series.
From our archives
Essays exploring the past and present of the criminalization of queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming existence.
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
Disentangling medical care from policing, prisons, and other punitive institutions remains an imperative—now more than ever.
In immigration court and beyond, fair process matters. But fair laws, fair legal systems, and fair societies matter far more.
How Martin Sostre’s ‘single act of resistance’ stood for a broader struggle for bodily autonomy and collective liberation.
Series
A collection of essays at the intersection of labor and the carceral state, in partnership with LPE Blog.
Reentry is an extension of the carceral continuum, a limbo between confinement and freedom.
Fiscal arguments have only led to a reconfigured carceral state—one that replaces one type of punishment for another while still harming millions.
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.
Imagining the decarceral possibilities of plea strikes and defendant unions.
A new Minneapolis-area county attorney won’t end mass incarceration. But she has the potential to cause less harm and promote healing.
Series
A collection of essays examining how—or whether—public defenders can meaningfully contribute to the end of mass incarceration.
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.
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.
A close analysis of prison data can help us think concretely, and strategically, about the tradeoffs of different approaches to decarceration and prison closures.
ICE entanglement in local law enforcement is just one iteration of a bigger system meant to police our communities. And we can fight it.
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
Incarceration ahead of trial is fundamentally unjust—a form of punishment that makes it virtually impossible to fight for your freedom.
The prison town of Susanville, in California, is about to lose its livelihood. Its economic survival presents a test for abolition.
Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.
Human sacrifice, and nothing else, is the central problem that organizes the carceral geographies of the prison-industrial complex.
What we are reading
A selection of recent books that invite us to imagine a world without mass incarceration.
by Leigh Goodmark
by Dan Berger
by Maya Pagni Barak
by Jarrod Shanahan & Zhandarka Kurti
Sentences
—Bill Quigley, a veteran human rights lawyer, in “Quashing Dissent”
From our archives
A reading list of past Inquest essays that examine the role of public defense in the machinery of mass incarceration.
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.
ELSEWHERE on INQUEST
Inquest publishes new, thought-provoking ideas and essays weekly.
Join our mailing list to stay on top of the latest.