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Futures

IMAGINING A WORLD WITHOUT MASS INCARCERATION

38 posts in ‘Futures’

Crimmigration

Exploited No More

How organizing workers in immigrant detention can serve as a foundation for abolition and liberation for all.

Lisa Knox, Hamid Yazdan Panah & Serafin Andrade

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collective action

Building Worker Power

How one labor union in New York is organizing and creating solidarity among formerly incarcerated workers—and winning.

Bernard Callegari & Han Lu

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Ideas & Essays

The Alchemy of Abolitionisms

When academics are read more than incarcerated thinkers, it becomes possible to forget the movement’s radical roots.

Joy James

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Essay

Gideon Turns Sixty

The Court’s decision must not preempt questions about the role public defenders can play in ending mass incarceration.

Premal Dharia

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In Their Words

Remembering Tewkunzi

“All of us who’ve been inside have healing to do. There are so many survivors in prison. And then surviving prison requires its own kind of healing.”

NaJei Webster

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In Depth

Criminalizing Survival

The criminal legal system heaps more violence on victims of gender-based violence. Abolishing these structures is the only way to protect them.

Leigh Goodmark

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Essay

A New Clarity

We need new words and understandings — not only for crime, freedom, and responsibility, but also for history and spacetime — because it gets us closer to an abolitionist world.

Katharine Blake

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recommendations

The Year in Books

As 2022 draws to a close, we reflect on books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to envision a world without mass incarceration.

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advocacy

A Passport to the Future

Pell grant restoration for incarcerated students is long overdue. But without infrastructure and safeguards, higher education, and true freedom, will remain elusive.

Abraham Santiago & Norman Gaines

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Reflections

Reshaping Our Wanting

There is a place for desire in an abolitionist world, at least when desire is pleasure and love and freedom.

El Jones

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Decarceral Pathways

Revoking Probation

After years of working in the system, a reformer and believer in government gives up on probation and parole.

Cristian Farias

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interventions

A Secret Stash of Power

Now more than ever, we need a clear understanding of the role of violence, trauma, and survivorship in our harm reduction practice.

Shira Hassan

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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

Kay Whitlock

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Policy

Decarcerating from Within

Here's how imprisoned writers can offer reasoned analysis on policies affecting the carceral state.

Tomas Keen & Atif Rafay

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A closer look

Growing Justice

Why understanding restorative and transformative justice on their own terms, and at their best and worst, will help us build more of both.

Cameron Rasmussen & Sonya Shah

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Beyond Reform

Reclaiming Safety

In our imaginations, we need to break the equation of policing and public safety.

Mariame Kaba & Andrea J. Ritchie

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Crimmigration

Court-Assisted Expulsions

Immigrants fighting their deportations need lawyers. That doesn’t mean federally funding their defense should be a movement goal.

Angélica Cházaro

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Beyond Reform

No More Courts

The legal institutions, processes, procedures, and actors implicated in the progression of criminal cases are simply beyond reform.

Zohra Ahmed & Rachel Foran

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voices

Caring Collectively

Looking back on 25 years of abolitionist feminism and organizing in California.

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Reflections

Inquest: Year One

A reflection from the founding editors of Inquest on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the publication.

Andrew Crespo, Premal Dharia & Cristian Farias

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A closer look

The Evidence-Based Trap

Data-driven approaches to reform can reinforce aspects of a system that’s rotten to the core.

Erin Collins

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Beyond Reform

Rethinking the State

For criminal law to become truly unexceptional, we must rethink our society, and its legal structures, as a whole.

Benjamin Levin

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prison closures

A Punishment Profiteer

A rare instance of state prisoners, state prison administrators, and the governor of California all publicly agreeing that a particular prison ought to be closed.

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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.

Piper French

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A closer look

Cops and Counselors

Mental health professionals call the police, work with the police, and act like the police. But even in our ranks, an abolitionist future is possible.

Jessi Lee Jackson

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Institutions

A Veneer of Benevolence

For many years, I believed that the child welfare system could be reformed, but no more. It needs to be abolished.

Dorothy Roberts

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In Depth

Atonement

The American penal system renders invisible the many people in its grip who are working hard to make amends.

Steve Herbert

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interventions

Abolition Is Public Health

The largest public health professional organization in the U.S. took a stand against carceral systems as fundamentally antithetical to public health. Here’s why that matters.

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In Depth

Cages in the Coalfields

A growing carceral state has slowly replaced the coal industry in large swaths of Central Appalachia. But even here, a different future is possible.

Judah Schept

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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.

Marina Roberts

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