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.
Ideas & Essays
The Alchemy of Abolitionisms
When academics are read more than incarcerated thinkers, it becomes possible to forget the movement’s radical roots.
legal history
A Spirit, Unbroken
How Martin Sostre’s ‘single act of resistance’ stood for a broader struggle for bodily autonomy and collective liberation.
Beyond Reform
Poor People Lose
Gideon v. Wainwright is the wrong cure for the reality that the carceral system is designed to target poor people.
organizing
Harnessing Union Power for Public Defense
As public defenders, we are not “fighting the system”—we are the system. Because of this, we have power, and the numbers, to change it.
collective action
An End to Bread and Water
When the state of Virginia starved them, the author and his incarcerated comrades banded together to gain recognition of their right as citizens to access the courts.
A closer look
Choice of Counsel
People assigned a public defender are the only ones deprived of the right to choose their lawyer. This often intersects disastrously with racial bias.
Essay
Gideon Turns Sixty
The Court’s decision must not preempt questions about the role public defenders can play in ending mass incarceration.
books
Show Me Your License
For many immigrant families, even driving to school or the doctor risks a dangerous encounter with the punitive state.
Beyond Reform
Data and Liberation
We need more and better data about deaths in custody. But we don't need this data to know that only decarceration will save lives.
Politics
Lessons from Ohio’s Bail Backlash
Fearmongering about public safety played a major role in the state’s midterm setback. But we can learn from it how to take control of the political narrative.
In Their Words
Remembering Tewkunzi
“All of us who’ve been inside have healing to do. There are so many survivors in prison. And then surviving prison requires its own kind of healing.”
A closer look
A Prosecutor’s Decarceral Potential
A new Minneapolis-area county attorney won’t end mass incarceration. But she has the potential to cause less harm and promote healing.
Policing
Making Cops Pay
Ending qualified immunity won’t solve police violence. But making officers feel the sting of their actions in court can get us a step closer to ending it.
Ideas & Essays
Whose Abolition?
Du Bois’s ‘Black Reconstruction’ is widely embraced by decarceral activists, but it celebrates state violence in a way few would now accept.
punishment theory
Unraveling Carceral Feminism
The push to increase the state’s power to punish led to more incarceration but failed to create a more just society for victims of sexual violence.
In Depth
Criminalizing Survival
The criminal legal system heaps more violence on victims of gender-based violence. Abolishing these structures is the only way to protect them.
Local jails
Pretrial Injustice
Incarceration ahead of trial is fundamentally unjust—a form of punishment that makes it virtually impossible to fight for your freedom.
excerpt
Defending Attica
How radical lawyers played a key role standing up for survivors of the Attica uprising.
voices
Poetry from Attica
From Celes Tisdale's creative writing workshop with Attica Uprising survivors.
activism
Black Power Meets Police Power
The experiences of Michael and Zoharah Simmons show that the fight against the carceral state is embedded in a larger project of building a just world.
A closer look
Don’t Believe the Hype
Mass incarceration hasn’t ended in San Francisco, or anywhere else. To achieve that goal, governments would first have to devolve power to the communities it has harmed the most.
interventions
Brady ’s Failure
The rule was supposed to prevent prosecutors from hiding evidence. It hasn’t worked—but there’s a better way.
In Depth
Data-Driven Decarceration
A close analysis of prison data can help us think concretely, and strategically, about the tradeoffs of different approaches to decarceration and prison closures.
legal history
Blood in the Borderlands
Mexicans and Mexican Americans have long been targets of legal and extralegal violence by the police. Learning this history is a step toward ending abuses that persist to this day.
Essay
A New Clarity
We need new words and understandings — not only for crime, freedom, and responsibility, but also for history and spacetime — because it gets us closer to an abolitionist world.
advocacy
Face to Face
The Visiting Room Project offers an intimate glimpse into the stories of Louisianians serving life without parole.
book review
Bars and Barriers
Far from a plan for decarceration, 'Barred' is nonetheless a trenchant look at how the criminal system fails the innocent and guilty alike.
interventions
A Weapon of Last Resort
It's high time we reconsider the power and promise of hunger strikes — without denying the tactic’s radical, disruptive, and self-violent character.
recommendations
The Year in Books
As 2022 draws to a close, we reflect on books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to envision a world without mass incarceration.