The Terrain of Struggle
Leaving no one behind, abolitionists plan for a transformed future—even as we attempt to address pain points in the here and now.
63 posts in ‘criminal legal system’
Leaving no one behind, abolitionists plan for a transformed future—even as we attempt to address pain points in the here and now.
Restorative justice seeks to address the root causes of violence—while also doing the work of healing the grief caused by it.
Most judges in Los Angeles are former prosecutors. But a leadership academy there is helping a pair of public defenders to challenge that status quo.
Your right against self-incrimination is not safe in a criminal system that cares more about coercing convictions than about finding the truth.
Prosecutors alone won’t end mass incarceration. But their interventions can mean the world to people staring down the many harms of criminalization.
Electing progressive prosecutors is but one tool in a multifaceted, collaborative approach to ending mass incarceration.
Not all so-called progressive prosecutors are doing enough to dismantle mass incarceration. But they’re better than the alternative.
Progressive prosecutors have delivered tangible and rapid wins to a grassroots movement seeking to end mass incarceration.
Believing that prosecutors can play a role in ending mass incarceration requires imagining a prosecutor whose goal is non-reformist reforms.
Prosecution can be redefined to focus on effective problem-solving through policies and initiatives that make us a safer, healthier community.
Can a prosecutor, even a progressive or reform-minded one, really help dismantle mass incarceration?
As 2023 draws to a close, a look back at the books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to work for a world without mass incarceration.
The crisis of youth incarceration won’t be solved by cynical attempts to co-opt the language of grassroots organizing.
In the criminal system, having your life constrained and restricted, even after your sentence is over, has become a fact of life.
To truly provide justice for those with criminal records, we must question harmful binaries that separate “good” from “bad” immigrants.
Probation and parole in the United States don’t work. A longtime reformer and advocate has drawn a blueprint to end them.
Erasing court costs and fines is a relatively small change that would have an outsize impact on those harmed by mass incarceration.
Decarceral ideas and essays that have moved our readers in the past year.
Acting within the criminal legal system cannot be the solution, on its own, to the existence of the carceral state.
Organizing and collective acts of resistance allow us to not only imagine new understandings of justice and safety, but to live them out.
A new film reminds us that caring about survivors means working to prevent and respond to all violence—including carceral violence.
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.
A short film asks how we can offer justice for survivors of sexual violence without perpetuating the harms of mass incarceration.
How organizing workers in immigrant detention can serve as a foundation for abolition and liberation for all.
The carceral state molds and enforces worker compliance, vulnerability, and insecurity—both within and beyond prison walls.
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.
ICE entanglement in local law enforcement is just one iteration of a bigger system meant to police our communities. And we can fight it.
Imagining the decarceral possibilities of plea strikes and defendant unions.
Disentangling medical care from policing, prisons, and other punitive institutions remains an imperative—now more than ever.
As a newly elected judge assigned to misdemeanor court in Los Angeles, a former public defender sees her new role as serving those impacted by the system.