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.
system actors
The Best Prospect
Not all so-called progressive prosecutors are doing enough to dismantle mass incarceration. But they’re better than the alternative.
Politics
Power to the Voters
Progressive prosecutors have delivered tangible and rapid wins to a grassroots movement seeking to end mass incarceration.
Beyond Reform
Maybe, If . . .
Believing that prosecutors can play a role in ending mass incarceration requires imagining a prosecutor whose goal is non-reformist reforms.
interventions
The Problem Solvers
Prosecution can be redefined to focus on effective problem-solving through policies and initiatives that make us a safer, healthier community.
lead essay
The Prosecutor Paradox
Can a prosecutor, even a progressive or reform-minded one, really help dismantle mass incarceration?
Crimmigration
Immobilized Immigrants
Hardened, remote detention centers shape the experience of immigration imprisonment. Yet even there, a radically different future is possible.
Film review
Big-Screen Abolition
Films that imagine decarceral futures are a cultural antidote for the carceral messages and aesthetics so prevalent in popular media.
Futures
Abolitionist Social Work
Social work must be anti-carceral, against oppression, and committed to ending the systems, structures, and ideologies that cause people harm.
Policing
Safety Without Police
Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis, communities have been radically reimagining a world that doesn’t depend on policing.
In the States
The Phantom Prison
Incarcerated people who work as firefighters have not escaped the prison; the prison has merely followed them outdoors.
Q&A
Picturing the Crisis
A new book uses art to make the horrors of mass incarceration as visual, and visceral, as possible.