Skip to main content
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.

Matthew D. Lassiter

Read More

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.

Richard X

Read More

Futures

No More Family Policing

Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, and poor children and their families bear the brunt of a system that many now agree should be dismantled.

Eleanor Bader

Read More

In Depth

When ‘Community’ Isn’t Actually the Community

The crisis of youth incarceration won’t be solved by cynical attempts to co-opt the language of grassroots organizing.

Sarah Cate

Read More

book review

Cages Without Borders

A new book centers prisons in the history of U.S. empire, reminding us of the need for international solidarity in the fight for freedom.

Stuart Schrader

Read More

campaigns

Renewing New Orleans

Anti-jail organizers scored important wins in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But their fight isn’t over.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Read More

public history

The Promise of Marronage

Stories of Black flight from enslavement continue to offer lessons for radically rethinking public safety beyond policing.

Celeste Winston

Read More

Politics

A Defense of Public Defender Funding

Unless Congress acts, funding for federal public defenders will take a serious hit, with disastrous consequences for the people they represent.

Judith Miller

Read More

Reflections

Yearning to Go Home

Life-without-parole sentences hit families especially hard. Yet they fight on, committed to their loved ones’ freedom.

Kunlyna Tauch & Abigail Higgins

Read More

In Depth

How We Ended Wealth-Based Jailing

In Illinois, ending money bond was our target. Pretrial freedom is our goal.

Matthew McLoughlin

Read More

interventions

Books as Decarceral

By helping non-incarcerated people to experience a human connection with people inside, volunteering can open a curtain in the mind.

Kelly Brotzman

Read More

public history

The Long Revolt

Attica represents far more than a historic rebellion about prison reform. Its revolutionary abolitionist vision endures today.

Orisanmi Burton

Read More

Essay

On Resilience

In the criminal system, having your life constrained and restricted, even after your sentence is over, has become a fact of life.

Jeff Noland

Read More

Futures

Fractal Abolition

The work of tearing down structures of harm while building the world we want can and must start small.

Andrea J. Ritchie

Read More

first person

Censoring Women’s Health

In prison, even learning about your own reproductive health is met with repression.

Kwaneta Harris

Read More

first person

Misadventures in Mail Censorship

An incarcerated writer’s grievances against a sad new normal of censorship and mail obstruction in a Pennsylvania prison.

K. Robert Schaeffer

Read More

Institutions

The Surreal Prison Censorship Regime

Society isn’t being done any favors keeping literature out of the hands of incarcerated people.

Dylan Jeffrey

Read More

campaigns

Ending Carceral Censorship

Censorship should not be the mechanism by which prisons ensure security or any other goal they purport to have.

Moira Marquis

Read More

interventions

A Place to Be Free

Life in prison is hard. Transitioning back home through reentry shouldn’t be harder.

Richard Cruz, Anthony Ammons & David Carranza

Read More

Crimmigration

Deconstructing Immigrant Binaries

To truly provide justice for those with criminal records, we must question harmful binaries that separate “good” from “bad” immigrants.

Sarah Tosh

Read More

activism

Surveil and Conquer

The state spies upon and infiltrates social movements to keep people on guard, afraid, and second-guessing their every move.

Chris Robé

Read More

abolition

In Defense of Hopelessness

Even among abolitionists, there's room for those who lack hope.

Charles Snyder

Read More

collective action

Imprisoned but United

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

Thomas Dichter

Read More

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

Read More

law & policy

Exceptional Punishments

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

Kate Weisburd

Read More

A closer look

Our Evidence-Based Obsession

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

Jonathan Ben Menachem

Read More

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

Read More

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

Read More

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

Read More

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

Read More