Anything But Petty
Misdemeanors are major sources of overcriminalization and punishment. Requiring jurors to screen them could shake up the system.
Misdemeanors are major sources of overcriminalization and punishment. Requiring jurors to screen them could shake up the system.
The carceral system criminalizes and retraumatizes survivors at every step. Dismantling these structures is the only way to end this violence.
For all its aesthetically pleasing attributes, Norway’s Halden Prison is still a prison for the men who must endure it.
Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.
The rise of pretrial e-carceration in San Francisco has created a new class of people for whom freedom remains elusive.
Based on 'Goodnight Moon', the 1947 bedtime classic by Margaret Wise Brown.
The growth of electronic monitoring has spawned a quagmire of hidden fines and fees from which people need a way out.
The tangle of policy responses following the 2020 uprisings over police violence shows that both Republicans and Democrats failed to meet the moment.
As a lifelong public defender, I ran to become Santa Clara County’s next district attorney. I didn’t win, but our movement did.
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
Urgent action in our nation’s jails and prisons can prevent the kind of mass suffering seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here's how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.
The Reagan administration’s entrenchment of a retaliatory immigration detention regime sowed seeds of resistance that persist to this day.
Why understanding restorative and transformative justice on their own terms, and at their best and worst, will help us build more of both.
Jurors’ conscientious refusal to convict people charged for violating abortion bans is perfectly legal — and what justice demands.
Prosecution, incarceration, and surveillance don’t stop child sexual abuse. But prevention can.
In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.
Congress' rush to respond to recent mass shootings will criminalize Black and Brown communities the hardest, repeating historic mistakes that contributed to mass incarceration.
Immigrants fighting their deportations need lawyers. That doesn’t mean federally funding their defense should be a movement goal.
Here’s how federal cash assistance for low-income youth impacts whether they come in contact with the criminal legal system.
The legal institutions, processes, procedures, and actors implicated in the progression of criminal cases are simply beyond reform.
Looking back on 25 years of abolitionist feminism and organizing in California.
A reflection from the founding editors of Inquest on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the publication.
Data-driven approaches to reform can reinforce aspects of a system that’s rotten to the core.
Everyone is redeemable. For that reason, I won’t stop fighting for those people our governor and the legislature have left to die in our prisons.
Our government's history of oppression compels us to free those Black revolutionaries aging in our prisons.
For decades, policing so-called ‘quality of life’ issues has had devastating effects. This approach must cease to exist.
Beyond electing progressive prosecutors, decarceration requires an ambitious, multifaceted struggle at all levels of governance.
The surprising link between Medicaid expansion and arrests levels suggests that keeping people healthy also keeps them from the reach of the criminal legal system.
For incarcerated fathers, child-support and related debt create their own feedback loops of disadvantage and punishment.