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Incarcerated people are eligible for Pell Grants again—but will prisons actually allow us to flourish as college students?
35 posts in ‘In Depth’
Incarcerated people are eligible for Pell Grants again—but will prisons actually allow us to flourish as college students?
ShotSpotter has leveraged gun violence into a multimillion-dollar business that promises safety but delivers only increased policing and drain on the public’s resources.
Policymakers claim to have turned away from the “old” war on drugs—but everything about their “new” approach is still focused on punishment and surveillance.
The deadly labor action can best be understood in the context of white supremacy and class struggle.
At a far-flung prison in Virginia, conditions are so inhumane that those imprisoned there are setting themselves ablaze in protest—and to assert their humanity.
The United States has long treated street and corporate wrongdoing differently. Looking beyond this dichotomy can help us end mass incarceration.
Ten years ago, the killing of Michael Brown exposed a system that extracts what little wealth marginalized people have. That system is still here.
From sex work to sex offender registries, a queer politics requires that we end state practices of sex exceptionalism.
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
The crisis of youth incarceration won’t be solved by cynical attempts to co-opt the language of grassroots organizing.
In Illinois, ending money bond was our target. Pretrial freedom is our goal.
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.
The carceral state molds and enforces worker compliance, vulnerability, and insecurity—both within and beyond prison walls.
The criminal legal system heaps more violence on victims of gender-based violence. Abolishing these structures is the only way to protect them.
A close analysis of prison data can help us think concretely, and strategically, about the tradeoffs of different approaches to decarceration and prison closures.
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.
The rise of pretrial e-carceration in San Francisco has created a new class of people for whom freedom remains elusive.
The Reagan administration’s entrenchment of a retaliatory immigration detention regime sowed seeds of resistance that persist to this day.
Congress' rush to respond to recent mass shootings will criminalize Black and Brown communities the hardest, repeating historic mistakes that contributed to mass incarceration.
For incarcerated fathers, child-support and related debt create their own feedback loops of disadvantage and punishment.
Fines and fees have a devastating effect on Black women and their communities. Abolishing them is the only option.
Maternal incarceration is but a phase for the people who experience it. It doesn’t define them.
The prison town of Susanville, in California, is about to lose its livelihood. Its economic survival presents a test for abolition.
Many kids learn violent behaviors through intergenerational harm — and are then met with more harm by the state. Things don’t have to be this way.
How government agencies and private companies trap and profit off incarcerated people and their loved ones.
The American penal system renders invisible the many people in its grip who are working hard to make amends.
In weighing the future of thousands placed on home confinement during the pandemic, the government should prioritize where they are now: in their communities.
A growing carceral state has slowly replaced the coal industry in large swaths of Central Appalachia. But even here, a different future is possible.
There's no such thing as a 'humane' eating environment in a penal system that inherently produces illness and death.