Futures
The Fight Over Prison Flipping
As shuttered jails and prisons become luxury venues, a growing movement is calling for community-led alternatives that honor the sites’ violent histories.
TOPICS
Decarceral Pathways
TESTING AND SHARING DECARCERAL IDEAS
162 posts in ‘Decarceral Pathways’
Defending Prison Journalism
When Reporting Is a Crime
States have restricted, surveilled, and punished prison journalism for decades, with dire consequences—for incarcerated people and for democracy.
Defending Prison Journalism
Prison Journalism Is a Disinfecting Light. That’s Why Prisons Suppress It.
A new initiative on prison journalism from the Institute to End Mass Incarceration aims to restore prison transparency and First Amendment rights for incarcerated journalists.
activism
Fighting for Relief
A new memoir details how Calvin Duncan became one of the nation’s foremost experts in post-conviction relief, helping hundreds incarcerated in Louisiana to fight for their rights, even as he…
collective action
Strike!
A collective, nationwide, complete refusal to work in prison would make the carceral status quo impossible to maintain.
abolition
Abolition and Environmental Justice
Solidarity between abolitionist and environmental justice organizers doesn’t just happen. It results from careful, long-term work to unearth a shared set of goals.
abolition
Uneven Expansions
In the fight to abolish prisons, it’s vital to attend simultaneously to the scale of U.S. mass incarceration and how it manifests differently in specific regions.
abolition
Abolitionist Lessons from the Prison Belts
In a six-part series, we look at how organizers can adapt lessons learned in twenty-five years of abolitionist organizing to their own political terrains, with examples from Appalachia, California, and…
abolition
Building Toward Abolition
Abolition wouldn’t guarantee a society free from harm—but it could create a society in which the ways we address harm actually help people rebuild their lives.
interventions
Never Too Old to Start Over
When released, older incarcerated people have incredibly low recidivism rates—yet are still routinely denied parole and clemency. Organizers in New York are trying to change that.
Institutions
No Exit
When parole boards are allowed to give the original crime more weight than proof of change, they become an absurdist theater of foregone conclusions.
interventions
Changing Courts from the Ballot Box
In Los Angeles, judges are elected, and most are lifelong prosecutors. Community members are now fighting this carceral status quo by working to elect career public defenders.
interventions
Free Books
Programs that send literature to incarcerated people provide a vital lifeline, facilitating personal growth and imaginative escape.
advocacy
The Right to Be Called Workers
Language of ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ disempowers migrant sex workers while directing attention away from state violence.
interventions
Ending Juvenile Life Without Parole
Convincing New Mexico to stop sentencing children to die in prison required us to let go of “us” versus “them” politics.
culture
Punishment TV
We are fighting to end carceral reality TV—including shows such as ‘60 Days In’—because no one should profit from punishment.
interventions
A Bridge to Health
Medicaid access, both pre- and post-release, is a promising path to ensuring that reentry is a genuine, lasting return to freedom.
books
Freeing the Mind
An incarcerated researcher explores how childhood trauma often shapes the lives of those in prison.
interventions
Becoming Decarceral Jurors
Serving in the jury system, and preserving it, should be a goal for anyone committed to ending the scope and scale of mass incarceration.
system actors
Decarceral Counseling
Defense lawyers should be open to advising their clients about systemic oppression, laying bare the ways that mass incarceration ensnares.
Crimmigration
No Papers, No Fear
A new generation of anti-deportation activists leaves no one behind, fighting to end the harms of the entire punishment industry.
Beyond Reform
No More Pretrial Punishment
In my many years as a public defender, I accepted the legal rationales for pretrial detention. But I can’t anymore.
In Depth
Beyond Carceral Eugenics
The United States has long treated street and corporate wrongdoing differently. Looking beyond this dichotomy can help us end mass incarceration.
organizing
Build Your Fortress
Now more than ever communities must protect our own, even as we prepare for a long battle.
interventions
Uprooting Violence
Restorative justice seeks to address the root causes of violence—while also doing the work of healing the grief caused by it.
in conversation
Decarceral Judges
Most judges in Los Angeles are former prosecutors. But a leadership academy there is helping a pair of public defenders to challenge that status quo.
advocacy
Preparing for the Worst
Ahead of the election, immigrants' rights advocates are working hard to be ready, no matter who wins.
A closer look
Playing with Originalism
Should advocates looking to unwind our nation’s punitive excesses engage a Supreme Court that set them in motion?
In the States
The People v. the Prison
California is discovering the hard way that you can’t leave decarceral reforms in the hands of prison officials.
interventions
Lawyerless No More
Once a person is imprisoned, indigent defense stops. But the gravity of mass incarceration demands legal representation to the very end.