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.
incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
98 posts in ‘incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors’
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.
book review
What the Rebellion Taught Us
For a moment, the George Floyd uprising made the white supremacist power structure tremble. Let's hold on to that and carry it forward.
Crimmigration
Exploited No More
How organizing workers in immigrant detention can serve as a foundation for abolition and liberation for all.
activism
Alabama Rising
For the past decade, people incarcerated in Alabama have led successful national worker strikes. Could a new prisoners’ rights movement be underway?
collective action
Building Worker Power
How one labor union in New York is organizing and creating solidarity among formerly incarcerated workers—and winning.
Beyond Reform
Why Incarcerated People Work
A new research project seeks to understand present prison labor conditions—and build a path toward lasting freedom.
social control
Against ‘Work’
Calling incarcerated people 'workers' displaces the gravity of their situation and obscures the nature of carceral violence.
abolition
Slave Rebel or Citizen?
Abolitionist Ruchell Cinqué Magee is the country’s longest-held political prisoner.
advocacy
The Art of Freedom
How two formerly incarcerated artists are creating a community for people like them—and exposing mass incarceration through it.
Primary sources
A Platform for Prison Witness
“Including incarcerated people in national debates is not just about changing policies. It’s about creating a transformative learning experience.”
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.
collective action
An End to Bread and Water
When the state of Virginia starved them, the author and his incarcerated comrades banded together to gain recognition of their right as citizens to access the courts.
In Their Words
Remembering Tewkunzi
“All of us who’ve been inside have healing to do. There are so many survivors in prison. And then surviving prison requires its own kind of healing.”
Local jails
Pretrial Injustice
Incarceration ahead of trial is fundamentally unjust—a form of punishment that makes it virtually impossible to fight for your freedom.
voices
Poetry from Attica
From Celes Tisdale's creative writing workshop with Attica Uprising survivors.
advocacy
A Passport to the Future
Pell grant restoration for incarcerated students is long overdue. But without infrastructure and safeguards, higher education, and true freedom, will remain elusive.
legal history
Litigious Zeal
One might say incarcerated Muslims sue religiously. And true enough, a deep belief in justice is what moves them to resist oppression this way.
Policy
Decarcerating from Within
Here's how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.
voices
Caring Collectively
Looking back on 25 years of abolitionist feminism and organizing in California.
Surveillance
Deconfiguring the Security State
The roots of e-carceration run deep, and we need to articulate digital abolition as the solution.
interventions
Making Headlines
The criminal legal system is massively punitive toward people who commit sex offenses. How we treat them jeopardizes their health and safety — and our own.
Crimmigration
No End in Sight
I finished my sentence more than seven years ago. But I’m still trapped in an immigration prison, where the punishment endures.
Life Inside
Burn the Spot
Writing about people you encounter in prison carries special responsibilities.
Life Inside
The Ties That Bind
Imprisonment violently separates us from those we love most. Even those we come to love on the inside.