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.
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.
Local jails
Reforming Sheriffs
Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.
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.
abolition
A Thousand Possibilities
Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.
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.
Preview
Breaking the Chains
Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Reflections
Growing Up Post-Ferguson
I was the same age as Michael Brown when he was killed. The uprising set me on the path to abolition.
In Depth
Ferguson’s Pound of Flesh
Ten years ago, the killing of Michael Brown exposed a system that extracts what little wealth marginalized people have. That system is still here.
activism
The World Ferguson Made
Three activists from 'the Michael Brown generation' reflect on what changed in St. Louis after the uprisings—and what didn’t.
Essay
The Ferguson Decade
A decade on, Ferguson remains central for those working toward a world free from the harms of policing and prisons.
organizing
People-Powered Defense
Participatory defense gives families and communities an opportunity to protect their own in courtroom spaces that have long robbed them of power.
activism
Anticipating Repression
The Democratic National Convention will be a testing ground for whether progressive politics can meet political dissent without carceral violence.
social control
Safety from Surveillance
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.
Essay
Soft Boiled
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?
advocacy
Remedying Wrongs
The administrative remedy process is a roadblock to challenging inhumane prison conditions. With the help of advocates, people in prison are fighting back.
A closer look
Squinting in the Sunlight
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.
Life Inside
Unsettled People
Prison transfers are routinely used to punish, disorient, and isolate incarcerated people, disconnecting them from family, friends, community, and all sense of place.
abolition
Community Is a Verb
Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.
conclusion
All of the Above
Prosecutors alone won’t end mass incarceration. But their interventions can mean the world to people staring down the many harms of criminalization.
advocacy
Not a Fix-All
Electing progressive prosecutors is but one tool in a multifaceted, collaborative approach to ending mass incarceration.