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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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social control

Putting Reentry Out of Business

Reentry is an extension of the carceral continuum, a limbo between confinement and freedom.

CalvinJohn Smiley

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Essay

The Recall: Reframed

A short film asks how we can offer justice for survivors of sexual violence without perpetuating the harms of mass incarceration.

Rebecca Richman Cohen

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excerpt

The Embodied Observers

Carceral settings imprison an untold number of experts—outsiders on the inside who have much to teach us about mass incarceration.

Michelle Daniel Jones

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In Depth

The Carceral Labor Continuum

So many people, on both sides of the prison wall, labor under threat of state violence. This opens a path to more robust, far-reaching worker solidarity.

Noah Zatz

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Crimmigration

Exploited No More

How organizing workers in immigrant detention can serve as a foundation for abolition and liberation for all.

Lisa Knox, Hamid Yazdan Panah & Serafin Andrade

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activism

Alabama Rising

For the past decade, people incarcerated in Alabama have led successful national worker strikes. Could a new prisoners’ rights movement be underway?

Andrew Ross & Aiyuba Thomas

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collective action

Building Worker Power

How one labor union in New York is organizing and creating solidarity among formerly incarcerated workers—and winning.

Bernard Callegari & Han Lu

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Beyond Reform

Why Incarcerated People Work

A new research project seeks to understand present prison labor conditions—and build a path toward lasting freedom.

Stephen Wilson, Minali Aggarwal, Jacqueline Groccia & Lydia Villaronga

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public history

The Buried Roots of Carceral Labor

The U.S. history of coerced prison work is older—and more northern—than its popular origin story tends to acknowledge.

Rebecca McLennan

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social control

Against ‘Work’

Calling incarcerated people 'workers' displaces the gravity of their situation and obscures the nature of carceral violence.

Ivan Kilgore

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In Depth

Forced Laborers

The carceral state molds and enforces worker compliance, vulnerability, and insecurity—both within and beyond prison walls.

Erin Hatton

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public history

The House of D

In the history of a shuttered lockup for queer women in New York City, a reminder that incarceration has always been a form of social control.

Hugh Ryan

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abolition

Slave Rebel or Citizen?

Abolitionist Ruchell Cinqué Magee is the country’s longest-held political prisoner.

Joy James & Kalonji Jama Changa

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advocacy

The Art of Freedom

How two formerly incarcerated artists are creating a community for people like them—and exposing mass incarceration through it.

Jesse Krimes, Russell Craig, Makeda Best & Premal Dharia

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organizing

An Organized Community

ICE entanglement in local law enforcement is just one iteration of a bigger system meant to police our communities. And we can fight it.

Felicia Arriaga

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interventions

No Justice, No Pleas

Imagining the decarceral possibilities of plea strikes and defendant unions.

Andrew Crespo

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public health

Care and Carceralism

Disentangling medical care from policing, prisons, and other punitive institutions remains an imperative—now more than ever.

Ji Seon Song

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first person

No Leaving Rikers

For the scores of people who have suffered on Rikers Island, their experiences, and scars, of living through it remain long after release.

Graham Rayman & Reuven Blau

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In Their Words

A Community Judge

As a newly elected judge assigned to misdemeanor court in Los Angeles, a former public defender sees her new role as serving those impacted by the system.

Holly Hancock

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Beyond Reform

Procedural Justice Isn’t Enough

In immigration court and beyond, fair process matters. But fair laws, fair legal systems, and fair societies matter far more.

Maya Pagni Barak

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Primary sources

A Platform for Prison Witness

“Including incarcerated people in national debates is not just about changing policies. It’s about creating a transformative learning experience.”

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Politics

Mass Incarceration on the Cheap

Fiscal arguments have only led to a reconfigured carceral state—one that replaces one type of punishment for another while still harming millions.

Jarrod Shanahan & Zhandarka Kurti

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Ideas & Essays

The Alchemy of Abolitionisms

When academics are read more than incarcerated thinkers, it becomes possible to forget the movement’s radical roots.

Joy James

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