books
The Year in Books
Join Inquest’s staff in reading not-to-be-missed titles from 2025.
bookshelf
119 posts in ‘bookshelf’
A closer look
Indentured Citizens
Making incarceration profitable—for both the state and corporations—generates untold hardship not only for incarcerated people but also for their families and communities.
racial capitalism
From Chain Gangs to the “Modern” Southern Prison
Over the course of the twentieth century, southern moderates claimed to pursue growth and modernization, even as they more permanently enshrined a racialized carceral state.
In Depth
The Myth of Forever Sleep
A new book examines why states continue to sell the American people on the utility of lethal injection—despite its well-documented, monstrous failings.
A closer look
Leaning In to State Violence
In ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ philosopher Sophie Lewis engages with the feminism of racists, colonizers, fascists, cops, and jailers to better understand what a truly liberatory politics needs to look like.
Beyond Reform
Punishment in All but Name
Drug diversion programs are hyped by reformists as alternatives to prison—but they function just like punishment and people often end up incarcerated anyway.
activism
Fighting for Relief
A new memoir details how Calvin Duncan became one of the nation’s foremost experts in post-conviction relief, helping hundreds incarcerated in Louisiana to fight for their rights, even as he…
A closer look
The Work Continues
Revolutionary Black anarchist Martin Sostre spent much of his life as a political prisoner. A vivid new biography reintroduces him to a new generation of decarceral activists.
A closer look
The Dystopia of the World’s Tallest Jails
New York City’s plan to replace Rikers with skyscraper jails is a cautionary tale of how decarceral talking points can be misappropriated.
abolition
Put Children First
Abolishing the child welfare system would create more avenues for protecting children, instead of devoting all of society’s energy to propping up a coercive system of surveillance and punishment.
Life Inside
Reclaiming Health Worthiness
Faced with often deadly medical neglect, incarcerated women form networks of care that provide the life-sustaining support the state fails to give.
abolition
Building Toward Abolition
Abolition wouldn’t guarantee a society free from harm—but it could create a society in which the ways we address harm actually help people rebuild their lives.
A closer look
United in Hate
White civilians often spontaneously cooperate in acts of racial hatred. It’s a web of racist solidarity that Black people know all too well.
A closer look
Not Fit for Human Consumption
Prisons serve bad, inadequate food as a way to cut costs. Providing this inhumane service is now a profitable sector of Wall Street.
public history
The Profit Motive
A recent book unveils the shockingly long history of for-profit prisons—and the equally long history of incarcerated people demanding compensation for their exploited labor.
interventions
Free Books
Programs that send literature to incarcerated people provide a vital lifeline, facilitating personal growth and imaginative escape.
advocacy
The Police Don’t Protect Us
A decade of increasingly sexphobic lawmaking has left sex workers worse off, unable to keep themselves safe and more likely to be victims of police violence.
public health
Punished for Getting Sick
Prisons are sites of pervasive medical neglect, both creating and worsening disability. Never was this more the case than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
advocacy
The Right to Be Called Workers
Language of ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ disempowers migrant sex workers while directing attention away from state violence.
Beginnings
When Treatment First Met the Prison
During the mid-twentieth century, the Bureau of Prisons ran two “narcotic farms” that muddled medical care with incarceration, part of a growing trend that criminalized addiction.
Beginnings
Feminisms Against the Carceral State
Seventies-era anti-carceral feminism opposed “tough on crime” policymaking and played an important role in the making of today’s prison abolition movement.
book review
Serving City Time
A new book doubles as a detailed chronicle of, and guidebook to, surviving incarceration on New York’s Rikers Island.
books
Freeing the Mind
An incarcerated researcher explores how childhood trauma often shapes the lives of those in prison.
Crimmigration
No Papers, No Fear
A new generation of anti-deportation activists leaves no one behind, fighting to end the harms of the entire punishment industry.
excerpt
A Nation of Imprisoned Immigrants
Jails have been foundational to immigration enforcement for over a century—and have always operated with a staggering absence of oversight and public awareness.
In Depth
Beyond Carceral Eugenics
The United States has long treated street and corporate wrongdoing differently. Looking beyond this dichotomy can help us end mass incarceration.
recommendations
The Year in Books 2024
A curated list of 2024 publications that moved us to continue working toward a world without mass incarceration.
excerpt
No Refuge
Many women escaping violence in their home countries find themselves trapped in the formal violence of the asylum system.
books
Raising Abolitionists
A new anthology invites parents into the work of building a world without prisons.
law & policy
Don’t Talk to the Cops
Your right against self-incrimination is not safe in a criminal system that cares more about coercing convictions than about finding the truth.