A closer look
Almost Anti–Death Penalty
Biden’s incomplete slate of commutations saved lives but ultimately lost the moral argument.
A closer look
22 posts in ‘A closer look’
A closer look
No More Shame
Sex offender–specific treatment can leave you feeling humiliated. Or it can ground you, help you grow, and remind you of your worth.
A closer look
Playing with Originalism
Should advocates looking to unwind our nation’s punitive excesses engage a Supreme Court that set them in motion?
A closer look
Whitewashing Police Violence
'Excited delirium syndrome' is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.
A closer look
A Pattern of Injustice
The Ferguson report was a landmark. But the Department of Justice needs to do much more to empower communities in the fight to end police abuse.
A closer look
Squinting in the Sunlight
Most reentry programs assume a person who is able to work and live on their own. Those of us who are older don’t have that kind of freedom.
A closer look
Graying in Prison
There's no aging with dignity for people serving extreme sentences. Freeing them is only a start to a deeper paradigm shift.
A closer look
Our Evidence-Based Obsession
Better research won’t get us out of our crisis of mass incarceration.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A closer look
Growing Justice
Why understanding restorative and transformative justice on their own terms, and at their best and worst, will help us build more of both.
A closer look
The Evidence-Based Trap
Data-driven approaches to reform can reinforce aspects of a system that’s rotten to the core.
A closer look
The Real Monsters
Sex offender registries don’t make us any safer. Abolishing them would.
A closer look
Cops and Counselors
Mental health professionals call the police, work with the police, and act like the police. But even in our ranks, an abolitionist future is possible.
Big Data
Transgressing Borders
Racist gang profiling on the street becomes hard data, which then feeds a sprawling detention and deportation machine with the imprimatur of law.
A closer look
And a Public Defender for All
We can celebrate the ascent of Ketanji Brown Jackson, while acknowledging that indigent defense remains woefully inadequate in this time of crisis.
A closer look
No Compassion
Judge Michelle Childs’ many denials of compassionate release signal a carceralism that should have no place on the Supreme Court.
A closer look
Community Spread
People in counties with higher jail populations are getting sicker and dying younger. The data shows that mass incarceration is playing a role.
A closer look
Cracking the Black Box
One way to keep prosecutors accountable and check their carceral impulses is by shedding some light on their vast discretion to charge crimes.