organizing
Harnessing Union Power for Public Defense
As public defenders, we are not “fighting the system”—we are the system. Because of this, we have power, and the numbers, to change it.
TOPICS
Culture & Politics
HOW OUR CULTURE AND OUR POLITICS FUEL MASS INCARCERATION
53 posts in ‘Culture & Politics’
Politics
Lessons from Ohio’s Bail Backlash
Fearmongering about public safety played a major role in the state’s midterm setback. But we can learn from it how to take control of the political narrative.
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.
excerpt
Defending Attica
How radical lawyers played a key role standing up for survivors of the Attica uprising.
voices
Poetry from Attica
From Celes Tisdale's creative writing workshop with Attica Uprising survivors.
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.
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.
Media
Justice and Journalism
How we're helping journalists report more deeply, more precisely, and more carefully on the law, on the criminal system, and towards justice.
excerpt
A Point of No Return
Understanding the past of the Cook County Jail is understanding its present.
Photo Essay
Archives of Resistance
The movement to end police violence has a rich visual history. In Brooklyn, a collective of volunteers is doing its part to preserve it.
Reflections
Reshaping Our Wanting
There is a place for desire in an abolitionist world, at least when desire is pleasure and love and freedom.
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.
Reflections
Goodnight Jail
Based on 'Goodnight Moon', the 1947 bedtime classic by Margaret Wise Brown.
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.
campaigns
Meeting the Moment
As a lifelong public defender, I ran to become Santa Clara County’s next district attorney. I didn’t win, but our movement did.
democracy & power
Culture Wars and Criminalization
Absent a sustained politics of solidarity, culture wars will continue to erode civil rights while criminalizing, surveilling, and punishing those who claim them
Policy
Decarcerating from Within
Here's how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.
In Depth
Hidden Transcripts
The Reagan administration’s entrenchment of a retaliatory immigration detention regime sowed seeds of resistance that persist to this day.
interventions
Nullifying Dobbs
Jurors’ conscientious refusal to convict people charged for violating abortion bans is perfectly legal — and what justice demands.
In Depth
Federal Time
Congress' rush to respond to recent mass shootings will criminalize Black and Brown communities the hardest, repeating historic mistakes that contributed to mass incarceration.
Reflections
Juneteenth and Black Liberation
Our government's history of oppression compels us to free those Black revolutionaries aging in our prisons.
Policing
Shattering Broken Windows
For decades, policing so-called ‘quality of life’ issues has had devastating effects. This approach must cease to exist.
democracy & power
Changing Everything
Beyond electing progressive prosecutors, decarceration requires an ambitious, multifaceted struggle at all levels of governance.
democracy & power
After the Backlash
Understanding the democratic appeal of retrenchment and reaction to movements for racial justice has never been more urgent.
Beyond Reform
Rethinking the State
For criminal law to become truly unexceptional, we must rethink our society, and its legal structures, as a whole.
Policy
‘Something on Women’
Carceral feminists clamored for the Violence Against Women Act. What they got in return was criminalization, incarceration, and more violence.
In Depth
Always a Mother
Maternal incarceration is but a phase for the people who experience it. It doesn’t define them.
In Depth
A Future for Susanville
The prison town of Susanville, in California, is about to lose its livelihood. Its economic survival presents a test for abolition.
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.
public health
Drug-Induced Panic
Criminalization of so-called drug-induced homicides is yet another manifestation of the failed war on drugs — and far from an adequate public health response.