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abolition

Finding the Opportunity in Crisis

The public’s appetite for meaningful change ebbs and flows. When it peaks, how do organizers capture that energy and channel it into the fight to end mass incarceration?

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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abolition

Put Children First

Abolishing the child welfare system would create more avenues for protecting children, instead of devoting all of society’s energy to propping up a coercive system of surveillance and punishment.

Alan Dettlaff & Maya Pendleton

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abolition

Following the Money

Attempts by carceral authorities to shield their funding sources from public interference are proof that working to interrupt money flows is an effective way to oppose prisons.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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Life Inside

Reclaiming Health Worthiness

Faced with often deadly medical neglect, incarcerated women form networks of care that provide the life-sustaining support the state fails to give.

Aminah Elster, Jennifer James, Giselle Pérez-Aguilar & Leslie Riddle

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abolition

Organizing the Already Mobilized

People involved with labor justice, grassroots community-building, and independent watchdogs make obvious allies for abolitionists—but how do we win them to our cause?

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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first person

108 Degrees

Eight Virginia prisons currently have no air-conditioning. We go to sleep in sweat and wake up in sweat, with no respite from dangerous heat.

Tutankhamon Waterman

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abolition

Custody and Power

Those wishing to abolish prisons must understand the legal and financial mechanisms through which the carceral state organizes itself to hold people against their will.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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abolition

Abolition and Environmental Justice

Solidarity between abolitionist and environmental justice organizers doesn’t just happen. It results from careful, long-term work to unearth a shared set of goals.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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abolition

Uneven Expansions

In the fight to abolish prisons, it’s vital to attend simultaneously to the scale of U.S. mass incarceration and how it manifests differently in specific regions.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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abolition

Abolitionist Lessons from the Prison Belts

In a six-part series, we look at how organizers can adapt lessons learned in twenty-five years of abolitionist organizing to their own political terrains, with examples from Appalachia, California, and…

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Judah Schept, Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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abolition

Building Toward Abolition

Abolition wouldn’t guarantee a society free from harm—but it could create a society in which the ways we address harm actually help people rebuild their lives.

Gina Dent & Sonali Kolhatkar

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A closer look

United in Hate

White civilians often spontaneously cooperate in acts of racial hatred. It’s a web of racist solidarity that Black people know all too well.

Brittany Friedman

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Opportunity: Assistant Editor

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interventions

Never Too Old to Start Over

When released, older incarcerated people have incredibly low recidivism rates—yet are still routinely denied parole and clemency. Organizers in New York are trying to change that.

Meera Navlakha

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A closer look

Not Fit for Human Consumption

Prisons serve bad, inadequate food as a way to cut costs. Providing this inhumane service is now a profitable sector of Wall Street.

Bianca Tylek & Worth Rises

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Institutions

No Exit

When parole boards are allowed to give the original crime more weight than proof of change, they become an absurdist theater of foregone conclusions.

Bobbi Cobaugh

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Policing

Injured, Not Dead

After Jason Salters was violently attacked by NYPD officers simply for doing his job, he discovered how little accountability exists for non-fatal incidents of police violence.

Anastasia Tomkin

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public history

The Profit Motive

A recent book unveils the shockingly long history of for-profit prisons—and the equally long history of incarcerated people demanding compensation for their exploited labor.

Robin Bernstein & Nicole R. Fleetwood

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poetry

An Essay in Acrostic: P.O.L.I.C.E.

“They tell us we have the right to take up / space. But they come in armor and shields / that say otherwise.”

Tony Koji Wallin-Sato

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interventions

Changing Courts from the Ballot Box

In Los Angeles, judges are elected, and most are lifelong prosecutors. Community members are now fighting this carceral status quo by working to elect career public defenders.

Gabriela Vázquez, Leah Perez, Adam McGee & Daven McQueen

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interventions

Free Books

Programs that send literature to incarcerated people provide a vital lifeline, facilitating personal growth and imaginative escape.

Hugh Williams, Jr.

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advocacy

The Police Don’t Protect Us

A decade of increasingly sexphobic lawmaking has left sex workers worse off, unable to keep themselves safe and more likely to be victims of police violence.

Kaytlin Bailey

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A closer look

Against Abandonment

When the social safety net gets shredded, incarceration increases. We can’t just count on mutual aid; the most vulnerable among us need government benefits.

Katie Tastrom

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interventions

More Violence at the Door

Domestic violence survivors shouldn’t have to survive police violence, too. It is time to follow the evidence to interventions that actually work.

Sandhya Kajeepeta

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public health

Punished for Getting Sick

Prisons are sites of pervasive medical neglect, both creating and worsening disability. Never was this more the case than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tommaso Bardelli, Aiyuba Thomas & Dylan Brown

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In Depth

Just Learning

Incarcerated people are eligible for Pell Grants again—but will prisons actually allow us to flourish as college students?

Ashleigh Smith

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interventions

Expert Guides

Reentry guides supplied by prisons are light on details and heavy on judgement. That’s why formerly incarcerated people are writing a guide for New York filled with their own lived…

Matthew Azzano

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In Depth

Turning Death into a Commodity

ShotSpotter has leveraged gun violence into a multimillion-dollar business that promises safety but delivers only increased policing and drain on the public’s resources.

Ed Vogel

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In Depth

Everything Old Is New Again

Policymakers claim to have turned away from the “old” war on drugs—but everything about their “new” approach is still focused on punishment and surveillance.

Jennifer Oliva

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advocacy

The Right to Be Called Workers

Language of ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ disempowers migrant sex workers while directing attention away from state violence.

Chanelle Gallant & Elene Lam

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