public history
Imprisoned by War
Racialized and violent, modern U.S. warmaking is inextricably linked with our history of mass incarceration.
public history
9 posts in ‘public history’
public history
The Suburban Drug War
How white, middle-class youth in the suburbs experienced the war on drugs is a largely untold chapter in the arc of mass incarceration.
public history
The Promise of Marronage
Stories of Black flight from enslavement continue to offer lessons for radically rethinking public safety beyond policing.
public history
The Long Revolt
Attica represents far more than a historic rebellion about prison reform. Its revolutionary abolitionist vision endures today.
public history
Urban Warfare and Corporate-Funded Armies
Atlanta’s Cop City is another chapter in the long history of U.S.-based colonialism. The second installment in a two-part series.
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.
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.
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.
excerpt
A Point of No Return
Understanding the past of the Cook County Jail is understanding its present.