A closer look
Making an Example of Luigi Mangione
The criminal legal system aims to send a message by massively overcharging him: it will defend racial capitalism above all else.
first person
I Walked Past Him
In prison, a cancer diagnosis might as well be a death sentence.
Defending Prison Journalism
Prison Journalism Is a Disinfecting Light. That’s Why Prisons Suppress It.
A new initiative on prison journalism from the Institute to End Mass Incarceration aims to restore prison transparency and First Amendment rights for incarcerated journalists.
A closer look
Leaning In to State Violence
In ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ philosopher Sophie Lewis engages with the feminism of racists, colonizers, fascists, cops, and jailers to better understand what a truly liberatory politics needs to look like.
interventions
Patients Need Care, Not Policing
Providing hospital inpatients who use drugs with safe ways to do so is a critical part of what it means to “do no harm.”
Beyond Reform
Punishment in All but Name
Drug diversion programs are hyped by reformists as alternatives to prison—but they function just like punishment and people often end up incarcerated anyway.
activism
Fighting for Relief
A new memoir details how Calvin Duncan became one of the nation’s foremost experts in post-conviction relief, helping hundreds incarcerated in Louisiana to fight for their rights, even as he…
A closer look
Tech Won’t Fix Eyewitness Identification
Eyewitness identification is a deeply flawed practice. Adding facial recognition technology, with its veneer of objectivity, only worsens the crisis of mass incarceration.
democracy & power
The Canary in the Coal Mine
A number of factors—including a willingness of law enforcement to collude with federal authorities—make Los Angeles a distressing bellwether of a country succumbing to authoritarianism.
first person
Never Forget Attica Day
Decades of policy failures, including a culture of impunity for correctional officers, have eroded many of the gains that the Attica uprising’s incarcerated leaders fought and died to secure.
A closer look
Medical Debt Behind Bars
Incarcerated people accrue debt for nearly all of their medical care. This makes a mockery of their right to health care—and saddles them with devastating debt upon release.
A closer look
The Work Continues
Revolutionary Black anarchist Martin Sostre spent much of his life as a political prisoner. A vivid new biography reintroduces him to a new generation of decarceral activists.
collective action
Strike!
A collective, nationwide, complete refusal to work in prison would make the carceral status quo impossible to maintain.
A closer look
The Dystopia of the World’s Tallest Jails
New York City’s plan to replace Rikers with skyscraper jails is a cautionary tale of how decarceral talking points can be misappropriated.
abolition
Finding the Opportunity in Crisis
The public’s appetite for meaningful change ebbs and flows. When it peaks, how do organizers capture that energy and channel it into the fight to end mass incarceration?
abolition
Put Children First
Abolishing the child welfare system would create more avenues for protecting children, instead of devoting all of society’s energy to propping up a coercive system of surveillance and punishment.
abolition
Following the Money
Attempts by carceral authorities to shield their funding sources from public interference are proof that working to interrupt money flows is an effective way to oppose prisons.
Life Inside
Reclaiming Health Worthiness
Faced with often deadly medical neglect, incarcerated women form networks of care that provide the life-sustaining support the state fails to give.
abolition
Organizing the Already Mobilized
People involved with labor justice, grassroots community-building, and independent watchdogs make obvious allies for abolitionists—but how do we win them to our cause?
first person
108 Degrees
Eight Virginia prisons currently have no air-conditioning. We go to sleep in sweat and wake up in sweat, with no respite from dangerous heat.
abolition
Custody and Power
Those wishing to abolish prisons must understand the legal and financial mechanisms through which the carceral state organizes itself to hold people against their will.
abolition
Abolition and Environmental Justice
Solidarity between abolitionist and environmental justice organizers doesn’t just happen. It results from careful, long-term work to unearth a shared set of goals.
abolition
Uneven Expansions
In the fight to abolish prisons, it’s vital to attend simultaneously to the scale of U.S. mass incarceration and how it manifests differently in specific regions.
abolition
Abolitionist Lessons from the Prison Belts
In a six-part series, we look at how organizers can adapt lessons learned in twenty-five years of abolitionist organizing to their own political terrains, with examples from Appalachia, California, and…
abolition
Building Toward Abolition
Abolition wouldn’t guarantee a society free from harm—but it could create a society in which the ways we address harm actually help people rebuild their lives.
A closer look
United in Hate
White civilians often spontaneously cooperate in acts of racial hatred. It’s a web of racist solidarity that Black people know all too well.
interventions
Never Too Old to Start Over
When released, older incarcerated people have incredibly low recidivism rates—yet are still routinely denied parole and clemency. Organizers in New York are trying to change that.
A closer look
Not Fit for Human Consumption
Prisons serve bad, inadequate food as a way to cut costs. Providing this inhumane service is now a profitable sector of Wall Street.
Institutions
No Exit
When parole boards are allowed to give the original crime more weight than proof of change, they become an absurdist theater of foregone conclusions.
Policing
Injured, Not Dead
After Jason Salters was violently attacked by NYPD officers simply for doing his job, he discovered how little accountability exists for non-fatal incidents of police violence.