Decarceral Pathways
From Crisis to Care
For alternative responses to policing to work and reduce the footprint of the criminal legal system, they must work in concert and holistically to address both immediate and longer-term social…
excerpt
Fear of the Black Child
American society and its criminal legal system simply won’t let Black kids be kids
Life Inside
Learning and Liberation
One year after a governor's clemency, Renaldo Hudson, who spent 37 years incarcerated, reflects on violence, prisons, and the vital importance of education and support for those incarcerated.
Institutions
Maxed Out
Long a reflection of the American carceral system’s worst excesses, the supermax prison serves no just purpose and must cease to exist.
Institutions
Making Penal Bureaucrats
Now more than ever, legal education must come to grips with its role in shaping the minds of those who might help to dismantle — or strengthen — carceral institutions…
Decarceral Pathways
Choosing Freedom
Would you rather have your wallet stolen on the street or spend two weeks in jail? How people answer this question can shed light on whether our detention policies make…
DOJ
Keeping Them Home
During the Trump administration, lawyers at DOJ said thousands of people who were sent home from prison during the pandemic need to be sent back when the COVID emergency ends.…
Reflections
When You Hear Me, You Hear Us
Work from four poets who were incarcerated as children.
Reflections
A Failure of the Imagination
Like torture and the death penalty, mass incarceration is life-destroying. And indefensible.
Institutions
A Most Carceral Friend
The Justice Department’s top Supreme Court lawyer is far more committed to helping prosecutors win convictions and keep people locked up than to ‘doing justice.
Big Data
The Feature Is the Bug
For all the criticism they get, algorithms can be unlikely allies in exposing deep, structural injustices that entrench mass incarceration.
Policing
The Other Gun Violence
Shifting the narrative and policies on gun violence to include killings by police may spare many families from the pain of losing loved ones.
Sentencing
Unfinished Business
Reckoning with the lives of all the men I sent to prison is a necessary, though not sufficient, step to reckon with the untold harm of mass incarceration.
Beyond Reform
Unraveling Carceral Reach
The work of addressing harm without more prisons, police, and punitiveness is daunting. But it can be done. And it’s happening now.
Surveillance
The Case Against E-carceration
Electronic monitoring is not an alternative to incarceration. It's an alternative form of incarceration.
Politics
Carceral Democrats
There is empirical evidence that Democratic governors will outspend and out-incarcerate Republicans if their reelection depends on it. That’s entirely avoidable.
Crimmigration
Immigration Imprisonment Is a Choice
Quickly, legally, and unilaterally, the Biden administration could easily free tens of thousands trapped in ICE detention. Whether it wants to is another story.
Essay
The Keeper and the Kept
The carceral system dehumanizes not just the people we condemn, but also its massive workforce.
Politics
A Seat at the Table
Joel Castón, the first person in Washington, D.C., to run for public office and win while incarcerated, explains how giving people like him a voice is the beginning of the…
Beginnings
Welcome to Inquest
A note from our founding editors
In the States
A ‘Warm’ Closure
The state of Washington plans to close 18 prison units. It sounds like progress. But don't be fooled: It's a problem.
Institutions
Where Reform Goes to Die
In its first six months, the Biden Administration has delivered major criminal justice disappointments. The problem: DOJ is calling the shots.
Decarceral Pathways
The Entrenched Carceralism of Forensics
Forensic science is not an instrument of accuracy or truth. It is a tool of the carceral state that cannot continue to exist in its current form.