A closer look
Who Gets to Be a “Good Guy” with a Gun?
Laws governing who can legally own a gun take at face value the racist, incoherent category of “felon”—and thus worsen the crisis of mass incarceration.
Decarceral Pathways
Building Resistance
A key author of the Community Justice Exchange toolkit for organizing against carceral infrastructure discusses the need, now more than ever, to center abolitionist goals.
activism
“Time Is So Precious”
Organizer Pedro Figueroa recounts working while being held in immigration detention, where he earned as little as $1 a day and helped to organize historic labor actions against for-profit prison…
law & policy
What makes someone a gang member? For police, nearly anything.
In most of the country, police can catalog you as a gang member for virtually any reason—and you might never even know until you’re being punished for it.
A closer look
The Epstein Sleight of Hand
Calling Jeffrey Epstein a child abuser comfortably demonizes him while overlooking how our culture normalizes straight men’s everyday coercion and abuse of women and girls.
Futures
Precrime Is No Longer Science Fiction
Biometric technologies are increasingly using facial expressions, eye movements, voice patterns, and more to predict whether someone has or will commit a crime.
poetry
Poetry from Louisiana State Penitentiary
For National Poetry Month 2026, new work from incarcerated authors Trevor Reese, Lawson Strickland, and John Corley
poetry
Two poems
“Five/Fourths” & “When Bars as These Won’t Read”
poetry
Two poems
“Whisperings from Old Pompeii” & “God(s) Particle(s)”
poetry
Angola haiku
“in the summer rain fences disappear . . .”
Politics
The Democrats Will Not Save Us
As long TSA lines have snarled airports, Democrats have touted their resistance to some aspects of immigration policing. But in reality our brutal immigration regime is a bipartisan creation.
first person
Bare It All
This isn’t my first strip search during my incarceration. This, however, is the first time it’s being filmed.
A closer look
Inside America’s Most Secretive Supermax Prison
Colorado’s ADX is designed to hold people under conditions of the most extreme deprivation. Despite this, the men imprisoned there continue to fight for their rights and freedom.
advocacy
Building Narrative Power
By giving formerly incarcerated people the resources to tell their stories through film, Represent Justice is showing how storytelling has a central role to play in decarceral work.
Decarceral Pathways
Public Defense Goes to the Capitol
Resource-strapped public defenders can usually only provide direct client services. Meanwhile, police and prosecutors get to lobby for legislative changes. In Illinois, we are upending that status quo.
A closer look
Inside Georgia’s Youth Detention Crisis
Even as crime falls in Georgia, the state pours vast resources into abusive youth facilities that disproportionately harm Black children, according to our investigation.
advocacy
The Oscars in Solitary Confinement
‘The Alabama Solution’ was nominated for an Academy Award. Meanwhile, its incarcerated filmmakers are in lockdown because there’s no legal protections for imprisoned whistleblowers.
Defending Prison Journalism
“We have journalists every place in the world except in prisons.”
Incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell discusses his recent book on solitary confinement, and what it would take to level the playing field for incarcerated writers.
Decarceral Pathways
The Endless Punishment
A recent book contributes firsthand testimony on the violence of solitary confinement and helps frame the question of why it has proven so central to mass incarceration.
A closer look
Punishing Through Bureaucracy
An obscure policy claimed to reward me for doing the work of rehabilitation—by sending me back to a high-security prison.
interventions
A Path Forward
After losing my son to gun violence, I started interviewing people who had taken a life in order to understand how we were trapped in the same cycles of suffering—and…
organizing
What Solidarity Looks Like
A collaboration between the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago and Northwestern University is helping to save lives by honoring multiple forms of expertise.
activism
Iron Bars to Iron Will
People ask me now, three years since my release, what freedom feels like. It feels like the protests in Minneapolis.
first person
The Reality of Love Behind Bars
Neither of us imagined that love and prison were compatible until we met. Now the state is weaponizing our marriage.
A closer look
Carceral AI is here. It’s time to fight back.
Facial recognition is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, AI is being used to monitor social media, track ICE targets, and classify swaths of the population as “future” criminals.
Carceral AI
A series focused on how AI is worsening mass incarceration.
activism
“I Was Just a Body”
Temp agencies rely on a constant stream of formerly incarcerated workers to keep jobs unstable and wages low.
interventions
The ICE Reformation Trap
Professionalization will not make immigration policing less violent. It will only increase its capacity, authority, and scope.
first person
“One Minute Remaining”
As an incarcerated mother, I have fought to remain in my children’s lives. I’ve done everything I could—and it still wasn’t enough.
A closer look
The Myth of Pro-Family America
Trump’s allies incite moral panic about shrinking white families, even as the state dismantles families of color—a paradox rooted in slavery and eugenics.