book review
Outsmarting a Monster
Jails are everywhere, trapping people and resources belonging to communities. And everywhere, there are organizers contesting that reality.
TOPICS
Culture & Politics
HOW OUR CULTURE AND OUR POLITICS FUEL MASS INCARCERATION
110 posts in ‘Culture & Politics’
activism
No Killing Revolutionary Hope
The oral histories of political prisoners shed light on their true character—and expose the darkness of the state.
campaigns
Beauty on the Inside
A look at how decarceral, abolitionist filmmaking can help us envision new worlds.
recommendations
The Year in Books
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.
public history
The Suburban Drug War
How white, middle-class youth in the suburbs experienced the war on drugs is a largely untold chapter in the arc of mass incarceration.
campaigns
Renewing New Orleans
Anti-jail organizers scored important wins in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But their fight isn’t over.
Politics
A Defense of Public Defender Funding
Unless Congress acts, funding for federal public defenders will take a serious hit, with disastrous consequences for the people they represent.
campaigns
Ending Carceral Censorship
Censorship should not be the mechanism by which prisons ensure security or any other goal they purport to have.
collective action
Imprisoned but United
How the peaceful takeover of Walpole prison in 1973 holds lessons for abolitionists today.
first person
Envisioning Futures
The art of knowing what we’re confronting and revealing who is being made invisible by the carceral state.
campaigns
Do You Know Their Names?
When slain by police, Black women and girls rarely garner the same communal outcry or political response as their fallen Black brothers.
Film review
Reframing Our Outrage
A new film reminds us that caring about survivors means working to prevent and respond to all violence—including carceral violence.
Essay
The Power of Fiction
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.
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.
activism
Quashing Dissent
Critical infrastructure laws are cynical attempts by corporations to manipulate public fears of terrorism to protect their own profits.
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.
abolition
Stories That Wound
The gendered norms of U.S. settler colonialism subject Indigenous and LGBTQ+ people to the violence of our cisheteropatriarchal carceral state.
Essay
The Recall: Reframed
A short film asks how we can offer justice for survivors of sexual violence without perpetuating the harms of mass incarceration.
collective action
Building Worker Power
How one labor union in New York is organizing and creating solidarity among formerly incarcerated workers—and winning.
public history
The House of D
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.
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.
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.
In Their Words
A Community Judge
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.
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.
Ideas & Essays
The Alchemy of Abolitionisms
When academics are read more than incarcerated thinkers, it becomes possible to forget the movement’s radical roots.
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.
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.