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interventions

Uprooting Violence

Restorative justice seeks to address the root causes of violence—while also doing the work of healing the grief caused by it.

Phillip Vance Smith II

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A closer look

No More Shame

Sex offender–specific treatment can leave you feeling humiliated. Or it can ground you, help you grow, and remind you of your worth.

Wesley Vaughan

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culture

The Prison They Let You See

The San Quentin Film Festival offered a feel-good image of prison life—one far removed from the reality faced by most incarcerated Californians.

Paula Lehman-Ewing

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abolition

Transformative Justice Is Global

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.

Melanie Brazzell

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in conversation

Decarceral Judges

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.

George Andrew Turner, Jr., Ericka J. Wiley, Adam McGee & Daven McQueen

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law & policy

Don’t Talk to the Cops

Your right against self-incrimination is not safe in a criminal system that cares more about coercing convictions than about finding the truth.

Justin Brooks

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culture

Survival Art

“Art is not a leisure activity. Art is a redemptive, powerful, meditative, actionable force within a person—within a human being.”

Duane "DJ" Montney, James “Yaya” Hough & etta cetera

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Photo Essay

Resisting Creatively

In Pittsburgh, a collective of incarcerated and non-incarcerated artists is dreaming of a world without mass incarceration.

etta cetera

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racial capitalism

Mass Criminalization as Religion

The deification of whiteness and property has long legitimized the containment of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples.

Andrew Krinks

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public health

The Prescription Police

Placing criminal system tools in health-care providers’ hands causes irreparable damage to patient care and public trust.

Elizabeth Chiarello

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advocacy

Preparing for the Worst

Ahead of the election, immigrants' rights advocates are working hard to be ready, no matter who wins.

Silky Shah

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A closer look

Playing with Originalism

Should advocates looking to unwind our nation’s punitive excesses engage a Supreme Court that set them in motion?

Cristian Farias

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In the States

The People v. the Prison

California is discovering the hard way that you can’t leave decarceral reforms in the hands of prison officials.

Ivan Kilgore

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democracy & power

Death Qualified

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.

Lee Kovarsky

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interventions

Lawyerless No More

Once a person is imprisoned, indigent defense stops. But the gravity of mass incarceration demands legal representation to the very end.

Jennifer Soble

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A closer look

Whitewashing Police Violence

'Excited delirium syndrome' is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús

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Local jails

Reforming Sheriffs

Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.

Jessica Pishko

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Policing

A Nation of Cop Cities

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.

Matthew Guariglia

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abolition

A Thousand Possibilities

Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.

Bill Ayers

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collective action

Making Labor Work

Today’s labor movements must see the carceral state not just as a related progressive battle, but as central to the struggle for workers’ rights.

Sandeep Dhaliwal

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law & policy

Breaking the Chains

Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.

Tommaso Bardelli, Andrew Ross & Aiyuba Thomas

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excerpt

No Good Prison

An incarcerated writer and advocate in California implores: “Don’t waste my time trying to make it more comfortable for me in here.”

Paula Lehman-Ewing

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Life Inside

The Last Breakfast

I kept my promise to break bread with my friend Dobie one last time, right before the state of Louisiana put him to death.

William Kissinger

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in conversation

Returning to Freedom

A PBS series on reentry is exposing audiences to how people leaving prison grow, heal, and thrive despite their past.

Paul Butler & Cristian Farias

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Essay

A Forgiving Society

Only by approaching each person as a member of society—rather than an outcast—will we begin to unwind the punitive turn of the past sixty years.

Joseph Margulies

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interventions

Announcing the creation of the Movement Media Alliance

Inquest joins over a dozen progressive media organizations to build power and create accountability based on social justice.

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abolition

The Transformation of Justice

What does genuine safety look like? And what will it take to prioritize it rather than simply managing inequality and other injustices?

Philip V. McHarris

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racial capitalism

Bad Credit

Credit scoring is control by another name. It keeps marginalized people from the means of survival and exposes them to punishment.

Terri Friedline & Anna K. Wood

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In Their Words

Poems on Policing

Poetry has the power to help us grow past the stale and rote ways of thinking about safety that tend to characterize policy discussions.

Monica Bell

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A closer look

A Pattern of Injustice

The Ferguson report was a landmark. But the Department of Justice needs to do much more to empower communities in the fight to end police abuse.

Christy Lopez

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