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collective action

Imprisoned but United

How the peaceful takeover of Walpole prison in 1973 holds lessons for abolitionists today.

Thomas Dichter

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book review

The Gun of Incarceration

Probation and parole in the United States don’t work. A longtime reformer and advocate has drawn a blueprint to end them.

Cristian Farias

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law & policy

Exceptional Punishments

No one should be made to give up their rights in exchange for being spared from prison.

Kate Weisburd

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A closer look

Our Evidence-Based Obsession

Better research won’t get us out of our crisis of mass incarceration.

Jonathan Ben Menachem

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first person

Envisioning Futures

The art of knowing what we’re confronting and revealing who is being made invisible by the carceral state.

Maria Gaspar & Gina Dent

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advocacy

Chained by Debt

Erasing court costs and fines is a relatively small change that would have an outsize impact on those harmed by mass incarceration.

Shivani Nishar & Sarah Martino

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campaigns

Do You Know Their Names?

When slain by police, Black women and girls rarely garner the same communal outcry or political response as their fallen Black brothers.

Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

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organizing

Abolition Everywhere

Despite the stumbling blocks imposed by Republican state governments, abolition is happening in the South and in small towns, with organizing specially tailored to local needs.

Meghan Krausch

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public health

Beware the Healthier Cage

In Atlanta politicians are pushing for a bigger jail they claim will be more humane. But health-care workers are pushing back.

Mark Spencer

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excerpt

The Women at the Prison Gates

There are many forms of resistance undertaken by relatives and friends of incarcerated people, but the system renders them invisible.

Gwenola Ricordeau

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recommendations

Our End-of-Summer Reading List

Decarceral ideas and essays that have moved our readers in the past year.

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roundtable

Keeping Each Other Safe

Acting within the criminal legal system cannot be the solution, on its own, to the existence of the carceral state.

Jocelyn Simonson

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roundtable

From Reformism to Revolution

As organizers in Illinois know well, it is necessary to engage with criminalizing institutions to better learn how to defeat them.

Sharlyn Grace

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roundtable

A Constellation of Tactics

Radical acts of justice can happen within the confines of the system. Or well outside it, as demonstrated by the organized resistance to Atlanta's Cop City.

Micah Herskind

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roundtable

Radicalized in Service of Others

Organizing and collective acts of resistance allow us to not only imagine new understandings of justice and safety, but to live them out.

Jocelyn Simonson

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Film review

Reframing Our Outrage

A new film reminds us that caring about survivors means working to prevent and respond to all violence—including carceral violence.

Ieshaah Murphy

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abolition

Abolishing the Family

The fight against police and prisons cannot be separated from the struggle to extend care beyond the limits of the family form.

Quinn Lester

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Essay

The Power of Fiction

More people impacted by the criminal legal system can and should share their stories through fiction—and through those stories change minds and public policy.

B.L. Blanchard

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Beyond Reform

No Place for Families

Only an end to family court can lead to a radical reimagining of how we support children and caregivers.

Jane Spinak

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Surveillance

In the Shadows, on the Radar

The lives of undocumented immigrants are very much documented—subject to the surveillance that’s endemic to contemporary life in the United States.

Asad L. Asad

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public history

Urban Warfare and Corporate-Funded Armies

Atlanta’s Cop City is another chapter in the long history of U.S.-based colonialism. The second installment in a two-part series.

Joy James & Kalonji Jama Changa

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activism

Quashing Dissent

Critical infrastructure laws are cynical attempts by corporations to manipulate public fears of terrorism to protect their own profits.

Bill Quigley

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advocacy

The Rubik’s Cube of Cop City

The crisis of colonized cities and state criminality. The first installment in a two-part series.

Joy James & Kalonji Jama Changa

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interventions

On Both Sides of the Gun

Community-based gun violence prevention is at a crossroads. A group in Chicago shows how abolition may hold the key to its future.

Cristian Farias

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Essay

Abolition Is Practical

Putting our ideas into practice—allowing ourselves to try, fail, and try again—will be how we move closer to a world without the harms of policing, prisons, and punishment.

Rachel Herzing

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book review

What the Rebellion Taught Us

For a moment, the George Floyd uprising made the white supremacist power structure tremble. Let's hold on to that and carry it forward.

David Campbell

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public health

The Essentialism of Addiction

We must challenge the dominant carceral narrative that one is born an addict and a criminal—rather than constructed as one by those in power.

Michelle Smirnova

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abolition

Stories That Wound

The gendered norms of U.S. settler colonialism subject Indigenous and LGBTQ+ people to the violence of our cisheteropatriarchal carceral state.

E Ornelas

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public health

The Pain of Punishment

Criminalizing pain medicine has led patients to despair while the carceral state forces their medical decisions. But it has also opened avenues for solidarity between pain sufferers and incarcerated people.

Sonya Huber

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Futures

Rejecting Our Fear of Each Other

In order to invest in a vision for a new way of living, we have to believe in our capacity to create something better—together.

Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

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