interventions
The Art of Mothering Through Bars
For incarcerated mothers, sending handmade art to their children can help nurture vital connections—but often even this is hindered by prison officials.
TOPICS
Institutions & Practices
UNDERSTANDING HOW CARCERALISM OPERATES
191 posts in ‘Institutions & Practices’
interventions
When the Judge Used to Wear Blue
Data reveals that judges with law enforcement backgrounds are more likely to order pretrial detention and set high bail. In other words, judicial appointments are jail policy.
first person
Getting Short
To imagine closeness to freedom is to invite disappointment. To speak optimism aloud in prison is to make yourself vulnerable.
Defending Prison Journalism
Speaking Power to Power
An increased visibility of prison journalism is vitally necessary, though it alone will not turn the tide of a sclerotic, brutal political system.
first person
Making Our Own Change
There’s a general disinterest within the prison system in the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals. This is cruel, and it is shortsighted.
Defending Prison Journalism
No First Amendment for Prison Journalists
The law has constructed a regime in which incarcerated journalists like myself are silenced, punished, and disappeared for telling the truth about what happens behind these walls.
Institutions
Serving Time in Public Schools
Every year, thousands of children are placed in solitary confinement by U.S. public schools as punishment for having a disability. This abuse and abandonment must stop.
Policing
Force Multipliers
ICE could never have created a large-scale deportation machine if it hadn’t enjoyed the voluntary assistance of local law enforcement.
Defending Prison Journalism
Lighting the Black Box
Prison writing has often been the spark that lights the flame of political awareness among the incarcerated population and their outside allies.
first person
A Certain Darkness
Solitary confinement steals bites from the mind, heart, and soul every day, without you even realizing it. Eventually these stolen bites equal a whole piece of you gone.
activism
“Time Is So Precious”
Organizer Pedro Figueroa recounts working while being held in immigration detention, where he earned as little as $1 a day and helped to organize historic labor actions against for-profit prison…
first person
Bare It All
This isn’t my first strip search during my incarceration. This, however, is the first time it’s being filmed.
A closer look
Inside America’s Most Secretive Supermax Prison
Colorado’s ADX is designed to hold people under conditions of the most extreme deprivation. Despite this, the men imprisoned there continue to fight for their rights and freedom.
A closer look
Inside Georgia’s Youth Detention Crisis
Even as crime falls in Georgia, the state pours vast resources into abusive youth facilities that disproportionately harm Black children, according to our investigation.
A closer look
Punishing Through Bureaucracy
An obscure policy claimed to reward me for doing the work of rehabilitation—by sending me back to a high-security prison.
first person
The Reality of Love Behind Bars
Neither of us imagined that love and prison were compatible until we met. Now the state is weaponizing our marriage.
activism
“I Was Just a Body”
Temp agencies rely on a constant stream of formerly incarcerated workers to keep jobs unstable and wages low.
interventions
The ICE Reformation Trap
Professionalization will not make immigration policing less violent. It will only increase its capacity, authority, and scope.
first person
“One Minute Remaining”
As an incarcerated mother, I have fought to remain in my children’s lives. I’ve done everything I could—and it still wasn’t enough.
first person
CPS Stole My Children
When I was falsely accused of abuse, North Carolina took away my sons. The charges were dropped but I still may never see them again.
Defending Prison Journalism
What Is the Role of the Prison Journalist?
A former editor-in-chief of a prison newspaper examines the responsibility of prison journalists, the constraints they work under, and why reporting from inside matters.
A closer look
In the Dayroom
When Rikers furniture proves so unwieldy that her inside–outside book group can’t even form a circle, the author goes on a search to understand why U.S. prison furnishings are so…
In Depth
Why Are Freed People Still in My Prison?
In Texas, when someone makes parole, they will only be released once they have an approved home. Many of us have nowhere to go, and no one to help us…
In Depth
The Myth of Forever Sleep
A new book examines why states continue to sell the American people on the utility of lethal injection—despite its well-documented, monstrous failings.
first person
I Walked Past Him
In prison, a cancer diagnosis might as well be a death sentence.
interventions
Patients Need Care, Not Policing
Providing hospital inpatients who use drugs with safe ways to do so is a critical part of what it means to “do no harm.”
Beyond Reform
Punishment in All but Name
Drug diversion programs are hyped by reformists as alternatives to prison—but they function just like punishment and people often end up incarcerated anyway.
democracy & power
The Canary in the Coal Mine
A number of factors—including a willingness of law enforcement to collude with federal authorities—make Los Angeles a distressing bellwether of a country succumbing to authoritarianism.
first person
Never Forget Attica Day
Decades of policy failures, including a culture of impunity for correctional officers, have eroded many of the gains that the Attica uprising’s incarcerated leaders fought and died to secure.
A closer look
The Dystopia of the World’s Tallest Jails
New York City’s plan to replace Rikers with skyscraper jails is a cautionary tale of how decarceral talking points can be misappropriated.