Lawyerless No More
Once a person is imprisoned, indigent defense stops. But the gravity of mass incarceration demands legal representation to the very end.
Once a person is imprisoned, indigent defense stops. But the gravity of mass incarceration demands legal representation to the very end.
'Excited delirium syndrome' is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.
Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.
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.
Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.
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.
Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.
An incarcerated writer and advocate in California implores: “Don’t waste my time trying to make it more comfortable for me in here.”
I kept my promise to break bread with my friend Dobie one last time, right before the state of Louisiana put him to death.
A PBS series on reentry is exposing audiences to how people leaving prison grow, heal, and thrive despite their past.
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.
Inquest joins over a dozen progressive media organizations to build power and create accountability based on social justice.
What does genuine safety look like? And what will it take to prioritize it rather than simply managing inequality and other injustices?
Credit scoring is control by another name. It keeps marginalized people from the means of survival and exposes them to punishment.
Poetry has the power to help us grow past the stale and rote ways of thinking about safety that tend to characterize policy discussions.
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.
I was the same age as Michael Brown when he was killed. The uprising set me on the path to abolition.
Ten years ago, the killing of Michael Brown exposed a system that extracts what little wealth marginalized people have. That system is still here.
Three activists from 'the Michael Brown generation' reflect on what changed in St. Louis after the uprisings—and what didn’t.
A decade on, Ferguson remains central for those working toward a world free from the harms of policing and prisons.
Participatory defense gives families and communities an opportunity to protect their own in courtroom spaces that have long robbed them of power.
The Democratic National Convention will be a testing ground for whether progressive politics can meet political dissent without carceral violence.
In their fight to get ShotSpotter out of Chicago, organizers have emphasized the ways that for-profit technology can never deliver on its promises to make communities safer.
Most crime novels make detectives into heroes and offer resolution through punishment. Could a different kind of crime novel help us imagine a decarceral future?
The administrative remedy process is a roadblock to challenging inhumane prison conditions. With the help of advocates, people in prison are fighting back.
Most reentry programs assume a person who is able to work and live on their own. Those of us who are older don’t have that kind of freedom.
Prison transfers are routinely used to punish, disorient, and isolate incarcerated people, disconnecting them from family, friends, community, and all sense of place.
Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.
Prosecutors alone won’t end mass incarceration. But their interventions can mean the world to people staring down the many harms of criminalization.
Electing progressive prosecutors is but one tool in a multifaceted, collaborative approach to ending mass incarceration.