Life Inside
Unsettled People
Prison transfers are routinely used to punish, disorient, and isolate incarcerated people, disconnecting them from family, friends, community, and all sense of place.
incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
91 posts in ‘incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors’
advocacy
Not a Fix-All
Electing progressive prosecutors is but one tool in a multifaceted, collaborative approach to ending mass incarceration.
Q&A
Picturing the Crisis
A new book uses art to make the horrors of mass incarceration as visual, and visceral, as possible.
culture
A Narrative of Control
Mass incarceration rests on false narratives that carceral institutions themselves control. But some of us are fighting back.
Surveillance
For the Public Good
While on parole in Oregon, homelessness, unemployment, and lack of services kept me in survival mode. This is not public safety.
poetry
The Names They Call Us
“I applaud, your / Frankenstein’s monster, forevermore.”
first person
The Banality of Mandatory Surcharges
In New York and elsewhere, exploitative court-ordered fees shouldn't saddle a person who is already poor and criminalized.
poetry
Prisoner of Poetry
“What does it mean to be an / incarcerated poet?”
Essay
Hip Hop Is My Life
I spit bars on Death Row to preserve the legacy of our people, what’s been done to us, and how we’ve fought back.
poetry
“Incarcerated Slavery” & “2 crack a smile”
“The cotton field / is replaced by walls of steel . . . ”
first person
Ink from Honey
Poetry can help incarcerated authors to reclaim the story of their life.
poetry
“Don Haitian Monument” & “The Hunters”
“Paralyzed in shock / by slave raid tactics, / my trembling hands on the wall . . .”
first person
Closed Doors
Prison is no place for grief and closure. Yet even as I mourned, glimmers of love and life surrounded me.
first person
Learning to Live
For incarcerated people, prison education programs can offer not only knowledge but also hope that a different future is possible.
A closer look
Graying in Prison
There's no aging with dignity for people serving extreme sentences. Freeing them is only a start to a deeper paradigm shift.
Policing
Unsafe on Campus
Policing on college campuses falls hardest on formerly incarcerated students, leaving them and the broader community unprotected.
advocacy
Hope Against Hope
A candid portrait of the experience of fighting for clemency in Louisiana—a route to freedom now severely threatened by the state’s new carceral governor.
In Their Words
Ambassadors to Freedom
People condemned to die in prison are telling the world about it—and fighting to free one another in the process.
Futures
Abolition Can Mend Our Democracy
How might we reimagine our rights and liberties in the absence of incarceration?
activism
No Killing Revolutionary Hope
The oral histories of political prisoners shed light on their true character—and expose the darkness of the state.
activism
Asymmetrical Partners
Activism must involve incarcerated people—but few outside advocates really understand the dangers and limitations that imprisoned organizers face.
campaigns
Beauty on the Inside
A look at how decarceral, abolitionist filmmaking can help us envision new worlds.
Reflections
Yearning to Go Home
Life-without-parole sentences hit families especially hard. Yet they fight on, committed to their loved ones’ freedom.
Essay
On Resilience
In the criminal system, having your life constrained and restricted, even after your sentence is over, has become a fact of life.
first person
Censoring Women’s Health
In prison, even learning about your own reproductive health is met with repression.
first person
Misadventures in Mail Censorship
An incarcerated writer’s grievances against a sad new normal of censorship and mail obstruction in a Pennsylvania prison.
Institutions
The Surreal Prison Censorship Regime
Society isn’t being done any favors keeping literature out of the hands of incarcerated people.
interventions
A Place to Be Free
Life in prison is hard. Transitioning back home through reentry shouldn’t be harder.
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.
advocacy
The Rubik’s Cube of Cop City
The crisis of colonized cities and state criminality. The first installment in a two-part series.