voices
National Poetry Month: Amos Don
“Don Haitian Monument” & “The Hunters”
first person
Closed Doors
Prison is no place for grief and closure. Yet even as I mourned, glimmers of love and life surrounded me.
In Depth
Sticking with the Sex
From sex work to sex offender registries, a queer politics requires that we end state practices of sex exceptionalism.
organizing
Building Community
For many years, Kentuckians have been fighting the construction of a federal prison. They’ve been winning, but their fight isn’t over.
excerpt
Dare to Report
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
first person
Learning to Live
For incarcerated people, prison education programs can offer not only knowledge but also hope that a different future is possible.
abolition
How We Rode the Storm
After Hurricane Katrina, law enforcement criminalized sex work and Black women like never before. We fought back—and won.
Policing
The ‘Bad Guys’
Police academies socialize officers into an us-versus-them mentality—particularly when it comes to activists—and harden them to any attempts at reform.
campaigns
Disrupting Carceral Narratives
There can be justice beyond punishment. To realize it, we must challenge the narrative that carceral violence is the only response to other forms of violence.
public history
Imprisoned by War
Racialized and violent, modern U.S. warmaking is inextricably linked with our history of mass incarceration.
law & policy
When the Law Is a Trap
The Prison Rape Elimination Act often revictimizes incarcerated survivors by expanding the power of the prison over them.
A closer look
Graying in Prison
There's no aging with dignity for people serving extreme sentences. Freeing them is only a start to a deeper paradigm shift.
activism
Gay Liberation and the Carceral State
Recovering a vision of queer solidarity with incarcerated people may just be what people disaffected by the gay rights movement need today.
advocacy
Philly’s Safe Consumption Fight
Public skepticism about scientific research, coupled with echoes of the war on drugs, have hindered our city’s ability to respond to our overdose crisis.
excerpt
Unmaking Prison Walls
Reacquainting ourselves with practices that made prisons more permeable can be a step toward ending mass incarceration.
Policing
Unsafe on Campus
Policing on college campuses falls hardest on formerly incarcerated students, leaving them and the broader community unprotected.
Big Data
Borders and Bytes
So-called “smart” borders are just more sophisticated sites of racialized surveillance and violence. We need abolitionist tools to counter them.
first person
Hope Against Hope
A candid portrait of the experience of fighting for clemency in Louisiana—a route to freedom now severely threatened by the state’s new carceral governor.
In Their Words
Ambassadors to Freedom
People condemned to die in prison are telling the world about it—and fighting to free one another in the process.
campaigns
A Breakthrough on Solitary
Connecting it to the fight for disability rights has helped activists in California to make exciting progress in their effort to end solitary confinement.
Futures
Abolition Can Mend Our Democracy
How might we reimagine our rights and liberties in the absence of incarceration?
Crimmigration
Decriminalizing Migration
Taking criminal law out of immigration enforcement is a step toward safer, healthier communities. But is it enough?
book review
Outsmarting a Monster
Jails are everywhere, trapping people and resources belonging to communities. And everywhere, there are organizers contesting that reality.
activism
No Killing Revolutionary Hope
The oral histories of political prisoners shed light on their true character—and expose the darkness of the state.
interventions
Papers, Please
Reparations for historic wrongs require concrete action, and that's no different for the untold harm caused by cannabis criminalization.
activism
Asymmetrical Partners
Activism must involve incarcerated people—but few outside advocates really understand the dangers and limitations that imprisoned organizers face.
campaigns
Beauty on the Inside
A look at how decarceral, abolitionist filmmaking can help us envision new worlds.
recommendations
The Year in Books
As 2023 draws to a close, a look back at the books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to work for a world without mass incarceration.
public history
The Suburban Drug War
How white, middle-class youth in the suburbs experienced the war on drugs is a largely untold chapter in the arc of mass incarceration.
Essay
‘And They Stripped Him’
The Gospel narrative places on Christians a moral burden to not turn away from the sexual vulnerability of incarcerated people today.