organizing
Abolition Everywhere
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.
interventions
On Both Sides of the Gun
Community-based gun violence prevention is at a crossroads. A group in Chicago shows how abolition may hold the key to its future.
Essay
Abolition Is Practical
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.
book review
Cages Without Borders
A new book centers prisons in the history of U.S. empire, reminding us of the need for international solidarity in the fight for freedom.
campaigns
Renewing New Orleans
Anti-jail organizers scored important wins in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But their fight isn’t over.
public history
The Promise of Marronage
Stories of Black flight from enslavement continue to offer lessons for radically rethinking public safety beyond policing.
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Futures
Fractal Abolition
The work of tearing down structures of harm while building the world we want can and must start small.
public history
The Long Revolt
Attica represents far more than a historic rebellion about prison reform. Its revolutionary abolitionist vision endures today.
Reflections
Yearning to Go Home
Life-without-parole sentences hit families especially hard. Yet they fight on, committed to their loved ones’ freedom.
interventions
Books as Decarceral
By helping non-incarcerated people to experience a human connection with people inside, volunteering can open a curtain in the mind.
book review
The Gun of Incarceration
Probation and parole in the United States don’t work. A longtime reformer and advocate has drawn a blueprint to end them.
Crimmigration
Deconstructing Immigrant Binaries
To truly provide justice for those with criminal records, we must question harmful binaries that separate “good” from “bad” immigrants.
Series
#Freethebooks
A collaboration with PEN America, aimed at the plight of carceral censorship and how people in prison are harmed by it.
law & policy
Exceptional Punishments
No one should be made to give up their rights in exchange for being spared from prison.
abolition
In Defense of Hopelessness
Even among abolitionists, there’s room for those who lack hope.
public health
Beware the Healthier Cage
In Atlanta politicians are pushing for a bigger jail they claim will be more humane. But health-care workers are pushing back.
roundtable
A Constellation of Tactics
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.
roundtable
From Reformism to Revolution
As organizers in Illinois know well, it is necessary to engage with criminalizing institutions to better learn how to defeat them.
roundtable
Keeping Each Other Safe
Acting within the criminal legal system cannot be the solution, on its own, to the existence of the carceral state.
abolition
Abolishing the Family
The fight against police and prisons cannot be separated from the struggle to extend care beyond the limits of the family form.
A closer look
Our Evidence-Based Obsession
Better research won’t get us out of our crisis of mass incarceration.
Surveillance
In the Shadows, on the Radar
The lives of undocumented immigrants are very much documented—subject to the surveillance that’s endemic to contemporary life in the United States.
Film review
Reframing Our Outrage
A new film reminds us that caring about survivors means working to prevent and respond to all violence—including carceral violence.
What we are reading
The Inquest bookshelf
A selection of recent books that invite us to imagine a world without mass incarceration.
#SayHerName: Black Women’s Stories of Police Violence and Public Silence
by Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum
Radical Acts of Justice: How Ordinary People Are Dismantling Mass Incarceration
by Jocelyn Simonson
The End of Family Court: How Abolishing the Court Brings Justice to Children and Families
by Jane M. Spinak
Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition
by CalvinJohn Smiley
collective action
Imprisoned but United
How the peaceful takeover of Walpole prison in 1973 holds lessons for abolitionists today.
first person
Envisioning Futures
The art of knowing what we’re confronting and revealing who is being made invisible by the carceral state.
Futures
Rejecting Our Fear of Each Other
In order to invest in a vision for a new way of living, we have to believe in our capacity to create something better—together.
Series
CAPTIVE LABOR
A collection of essays at the intersection of labor and the carceral state, in partnership with LPE Blog.
Past, Present & Future of Mass Incarceration
activism
Quashing Dissent
Critical infrastructure laws are cynical attempts by corporations to manipulate public fears of terrorism to protect their own profits.
social control
Putting Reentry Out of Business
Reentry is an extension of the carceral continuum, a limbo between confinement and freedom.
campaigns
Do You Know Their Names?
When slain by police, Black women and girls rarely garner the same communal outcry or political response as their fallen Black brothers.
advocacy
Chained by Debt
Erasing court costs and fines is a relatively small change that would have an outsize impact on those harmed by mass incarceration.
interventions
A Place to Be Free
Life in prison is hard. Transitioning back home through reentry shouldn’t be harder.
Series
Beyond Gideon
A collection of essays examining how—or whether—public defenders can meaningfully contribute to the end of mass incarceration.
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.
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.
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.
Beyond Reform
Reclaiming Safety
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
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.
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