Essay
A Lethal Upbringing
A decade of victimization landed a Harlem kid in prison. More than three decades later, he has not allowed prison to define his life story.
Essay
18 posts in ‘Essay’
Essay
A Forgiving Society
Only by approaching each person as a member of society—rather than an outcast—will we begin to unwind the punitive turn of the past sixty years.
Essay
The Ferguson Decade
A decade on, Ferguson remains central for those working toward a world free from the harms of policing and prisons.
Essay
Soft Boiled
Most crime novels make detectives into heroes and offer resolution through punishment. Could a different kind of crime novel help us imagine a decarceral future?
Essay
Hip Hop Is My Life
I spit bars on Death Row to preserve the legacy of our people, what’s been done to us, and how we’ve fought back.
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.
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.
Essay
The Power of Fiction
More people impacted by the criminal legal system can and should share their stories through fiction—and through those stories change minds and public policy.
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.
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.
Essay
Gideon Turns Sixty
The Court’s decision must not preempt questions about the role public defenders can play in ending mass incarceration.
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.
Essay
The Poverty of Access
Librarians have a responsibility to everyone in their communities — including those who are incarcerated.
Essay
Beyond Private Prisons
Simply targeting the corporations caging migrants and other people for profit won’t create a future without mass incarceration.
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Copaganda
How pop culture helped turn police officers into rock stars — and Black folks into criminals.
Local jails
Radicalized at the Workhouse
The criminal legal system almost took my life from me. The anger that came after now fuels my life’s work.
Essay
Where Choice Ends
Unless and until mass incarceration is ended, Roe v. Wade, and reproductive freedom writ large, will never be safe.
Essay
The Keeper and the Kept
The carceral system dehumanizes not just the people we condemn, but also its massive workforce.