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bookshelf

71 posts in ‘bookshelf’

Futures

Rejecting Our Fear of Each Other

In order to invest in a vision for a new way of living, we have to believe in our capacity to create something better—together.

Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba

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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.

Michelle Daniel Jones

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organizing

An Organized Community

ICE entanglement in local law enforcement is just one iteration of a bigger system meant to police our communities. And we can fight it.

Felicia Arriaga

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Beyond Reform

Procedural Justice Isn’t Enough

In immigration court and beyond, fair process matters. But fair laws, fair legal systems, and fair societies matter far more.

Maya Pagni Barak

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Politics

Mass Incarceration on the Cheap

Fiscal arguments have only led to a reconfigured carceral state—one that replaces one type of punishment for another while still harming millions.

Jarrod Shanahan & Zhandarka Kurti

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books

Show Me Your License

For many immigrant families, even driving to school or the doctor risks a dangerous encounter with the punitive state.

Meredith Van Natta

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Policing

Making Cops Pay

Ending qualified immunity won’t solve police violence. But making officers feel the sting of their actions in court can get us a step closer to ending it.

Joanna Schwartz

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punishment theory

Unraveling Carceral Feminism

The push to increase the state’s power to punish led to more incarceration but failed to create a more just society for victims of sexual violence.

Alice Ievins

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In Depth

Criminalizing Survival

The criminal legal system heaps more violence on victims of gender-based violence. Abolishing these structures is the only way to protect them.

Leigh Goodmark

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excerpt

Defending Attica

How radical lawyers played a key role standing up for survivors of the Attica uprising.

Luca Falciola

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activism

Black Power Meets Police Power

The experiences of Michael and Zoharah Simmons show that the fight against the carceral state is embedded in a larger project of building a just world.

Dan Berger

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interventions

Brady ’s Failure

The rule was supposed to prevent prosecutors from hiding evidence. It hasn’t worked—but there’s a better way.

Thomas Dybdahl

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legal history

Blood in the Borderlands

Mexicans and Mexican Americans have long been targets of legal and extralegal violence by the police. Learning this history is a step toward ending abuses that persist to this day.

Brian Behnken

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recommendations

The Year in Books

As 2022 draws to a close, we reflect on books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to envision a world without mass incarceration.

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excerpt

A Point of No Return

Understanding the past of the Cook County Jail is understanding its present.

Melanie Newport

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Reflections

Reshaping Our Wanting

There is a place for desire in an abolitionist world, at least when desire is pleasure and love and freedom.

El Jones

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In Depth

To Free Them All

The carceral system criminalizes and retraumatizes survivors at every step. Dismantling these structures is the only way to end this violence.

Leigh Goodmark

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interventions

A Secret Stash of Power

Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.

Shira Hassan

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excerpt

Repression and Backlash

The tangle of policy responses following the 2020 uprisings over police violence shows that both Republicans and Democrats failed to meet the moment.

Elizabeth Hinton

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In Depth

Hidden Transcripts

The Reagan administration’s entrenchment of a retaliatory immigration detention regime sowed seeds of resistance that persist to this day.

Kristina Shull

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Beyond Reform

Reclaiming Safety

In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.

Mariame Kaba & Andrea J. Ritchie

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voices

Caring Collectively

Looking back on 25 years of abolitionist feminism and organizing in California.

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In Depth

Making Men Pay

For incarcerated fathers, child-support and related debt create their own feedback loops of disadvantage and punishment.

Lynne Haney

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excerpt

The Problem With Innocence

Human sacrifice, and nothing else, is the central problem that organizes the carceral geographies of the prison-industrial complex.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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In Depth

Always a Mother

Maternal incarceration is but a phase for the people who experience it. It doesn’t define them.

Geniece Crawford Mondé

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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.

Jessi Lee Jackson

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Institutions

A Veneer of Benevolence

For many years, I believed that the child welfare system could be reformed, but no more. It needs to be abolished.

Dorothy Roberts

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excerpt

Sexual Policing

Law enforcement of women’s bodies is a structural and systematic form of police violence. All of us are less safe if we don’t end this brutal expression of state-sanctioned power.

Anne Gray Fischer

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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.

Ana Muñiz

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In Their Words

Finishing Sentences

Writing about prison from prison is a form of freedom-fighting. It is not without risks — and many rewards.

Caits Meissner

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