TOPICS
160 posts in ‘Decarceral Pathways’
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.
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…
A collective, nationwide, complete refusal to work in prison would make the carceral status quo impossible to maintain.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
When parole boards are allowed to give the original crime more weight than proof of change, they become an absurdist theater of foregone conclusions.
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.
Programs that send literature to incarcerated people provide a vital lifeline, facilitating personal growth and imaginative escape.
Language of ‘trafficking’ and ‘slavery’ disempowers migrant sex workers while directing attention away from state violence.
Convincing New Mexico to stop sentencing children to die in prison required us to let go of “us” versus “them” politics.
We are fighting to end carceral reality TV—including shows such as ‘60 Days In’—because no one should profit from punishment.
Medicaid access, both pre- and post-release, is a promising path to ensuring that reentry is a genuine, lasting return to freedom.
An incarcerated researcher explores how childhood trauma often shapes the lives of those in prison.
Serving in the jury system, and preserving it, should be a goal for anyone committed to ending the scope and scale of mass incarceration.
Defense lawyers should be open to advising their clients about systemic oppression, laying bare the ways that mass incarceration ensnares.
A new generation of anti-deportation activists leaves no one behind, fighting to end the harms of the entire punishment industry.
In my many years as a public defender, I accepted the legal rationales for pretrial detention. But I can’t anymore.
The United States has long treated street and corporate wrongdoing differently. Looking beyond this dichotomy can help us end mass incarceration.
Now more than ever communities must protect our own, even as we prepare for a long battle.
Restorative justice seeks to address the root causes of violence—while also doing the work of healing the grief caused by it.
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.
Ahead of the election, immigrants' rights advocates are working hard to be ready, no matter who wins.
Should advocates looking to unwind our nation’s punitive excesses engage a Supreme Court that set them in motion?
California is discovering the hard way that you can’t leave decarceral reforms in the hands of prison officials.
Once a person is imprisoned, indigent defense stops. But the gravity of mass incarceration demands legal representation to the very end.
Today’s labor movements must see the carceral state not just as a related progressive battle, but as central to the struggle for workers’ rights.
Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.