democracy & power
After the Backlash
Understanding the democratic appeal of retrenchment and reaction to movements for racial justice has never been more urgent.
TOPICS
Culture & Politics
HOW OUR CULTURE AND OUR POLITICS FUEL MASS INCARCERATION
90 posts in ‘Culture & Politics’
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.
A closer look
And a Public Defender for All
We can celebrate the ascent of Ketanji Brown Jackson, while acknowledging that indigent defense remains woefully inadequate in this time of crisis.
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.
Essay
The Poverty of Access
Librarians have a responsibility to everyone in their communities — including those who are incarcerated.
In Their Words
Finishing Sentences
Writing about prison from prison is a form of freedom-fighting. It is not without risks — and many rewards.
A closer look
No Compassion
Judge Michelle Childs’ many denials of compassionate release signal a carceralism that should have no place on the Supreme Court.
Institutions
No More Compromisers
The Supreme Court doesn’t need another Stephen Breyer. It needs someone who can openly confront the immorality of our criminal legal system.
Local jails
The Sheriff and His Jail
Jails are key drivers of COVID spread. My experience with Chicago’s top jailer shows how politics can often stand in the way of public health.
Media
The Journalist Advocate
Since the days of Ferguson, I’ve used my editorial perch to amplify the voices of those crushed by our nation’s system of wealth extraction. If that also makes me an…
interventions
A Safer Cleveland
Our movement was born out of our shared grief. Our voices reminded voters that the police should never police themselves.
In Depth
Saving Austin
Emboldened reactionaries tried to get voters to super-fund our city’s police force. But we out-organized them, and they lost badly. Here’s how we did it.
Politics
So Long, Cy
The end of the Cyrus Vance era at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office calls for a reckoning — and opens up opportunities for his successor.
excerpt
Copaganda
How pop culture helped turn police officers into rock stars — and Black folks into criminals.
In Depth
Mass Clemency
In the age of mass incarceration, the president of can and should lead the nation by freeing from prison as many people as possible.
Big Data
Rigged by Design
Immigration imprisonment routinely relies on a racist notion of “risk” and should be abolished. A glimpse at how ICE’s pro-detention algorithm is manipulated to incarcerate immigrants shows why.
interventions
The True Jailers of Rikers
As demands grow louder for decarcerating and shutting down New York City’s deadly jail complex, judges and prosecutors have escaped accountability. But they’re the ones driving the crisis.
Essay
Where Choice Ends
Unless and until mass incarceration is ended, Roe v. Wade, and reproductive freedom writ large, will never be safe.
As Told To
A Judge on a Mission
Here's how a former public defender elected to judicial office in New Orleans works to chip away at mass incarceration.
Reflections
A Disruptive Innovation
Dismantling the machine that is mass incarceration requires all of us to think outside the box.
excerpt
Fear of the Black Child
American society and its criminal legal system simply won’t let Black kids be kids
Institutions
Maxed Out
Long a reflection of the American carceral system’s worst excesses, the supermax prison serves no just purpose and must cease to exist.
Reflections
When You Hear Me, You Hear Us
Incarcerated as children, four gifted poets share their art, their experiences, and themselves.
Politics
Carceral Democrats
There is empirical evidence that Democratic governors will outspend and out-incarcerate Republicans if their reelection depends on it. That’s entirely avoidable.
Politics
A Seat at the Table
Joel Castón, the first person in Washington, D.C., to run for public office and win while incarcerated, explains how giving people like him a voice is the beginning of the…