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Institutions & Practices

UNDERSTANDING HOW CARCERALISM OPERATES

95 posts in ‘Institutions & Practices’

campaigns

150 Years Is Enough

The case for abolishing New Jersey’s youth prisons.

Andrea McChristian

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excerpt

Canaries in the Coalmine

We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are isolated.

Sonia Sotomayor

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Essay

Beyond Private Prisons

Simply targeting the corporations caging migrants and other people for profit won’t create a future without mass incarceration.

Silky Shah

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interventions

The End of Public Defenders

One path to ending mass incarceration is ending our modern conception of public defense. And being transparent about our work is one way to start.

Matthew Caldwell

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Life Inside

The Ties That Bind

Imprisonment violently separates us from those we love most. Even those we come to love on the inside.

William Peeples

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Surveillance

A Model City

How e-carceration grabbed a hold of Camden is a cautionary tale for those of us who envision a future without policing.

James Kilgore

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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.

Cristian Farias

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In Depth

The Invisible Violence of Carceral Food

There's no such thing as a 'humane' eating environment in a penal system that inherently produces illness and death.

Kanav Kathuria

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Institutions

Too Little, Too Late

The bureaucracy in charge of parole in Georgia hasn’t kept up with the reality that the state’s prison system is a hotbed of death and despair.

Hannah Riley

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interventions

Seeing the Light

We can't end mass incarceration without first ending solitary confinement once and for all.

Christopher Blackwell & Jessica Sandoval

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public health

Treating Unfreedom

Practicing correctional medicine is fundamentally an exercise in harm reduction. And it’s no match for freedom itself.

Rachael Bedard & Zachary Rosner

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In Their Words

Second Class

For public defenders in New York, representing clients unjustly criminalized for gun possession is a matter of principle. Now, they have the Supreme Court’s attention.

Avinash Samarth, Michael Thomas & Christopher Smith

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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.

Aly Panjwani

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Essay

Radicalized at the Workhouse

The criminal legal system almost took my life from me. The anger that came after now fuels my life’s work.

Inez Bordeaux

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In Depth

Carceral Wisdom

Like the value they bring to the classroom, people who have experienced the harms of the penal system have much knowledge to bring to our nation’s jury trials.

James M. Binnall

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voices

Divide and Conquer

For those of us on the inside who believe in prison abolition by any means necessary, prison closures really mean prison closures. The state and some of my fellow prisoners…

Felix Sitthivong

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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.

Angel Parker

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Essay

Where Choice Ends

Unless and until mass incarceration is ended, Roe v. Wade, and reproductive freedom writ large, will never be safe.

Crystal Hayes, Carolyn Sufrin & Jamila Perritt

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In Depth

Follow the Science

Federal law enforcement has long called the shots in the field of drug scheduling. But in the case of fentanyl analogues, Congress has a chance to lead — by doing…

Patricia Richman & Diane Goldstein

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Life Inside

‘We Are Men’

On the 50th anniversary of a flashpoint of the American penal system, the cries of Attica still resonate today.

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system actors

Resistance Is Futile

In ways large and small, defendants who try to assert their voice in the criminal legal system see their agency denied — including, sometimes, by their own lawyers.

Matthew Clair

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book review

Trials Without Justice

Plea bargaining may be a bad deal overall. But for many Black and Brown defendants, is the alternative any better?

Daniel Harawa

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interventions

Decarcerate Rikers Now

Nothing short of immediately getting people out of New York City's jail complex, and keeping others from going in, will prevent the death and horror now ravaging it.

Jessica González-Rojas

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A closer look

Cracking the Black Box

One way to keep prosecutors accountable and check their carceral impulses is by shedding some light on their vast discretion to charge crimes.

Shima Baradaran Baughman, Christopher T. Robertson & Megan S. Wright

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excerpt

Fear of the Black Child

American society and its criminal legal system simply won’t let Black kids be kids

Kristin Henning

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Life Inside

Learning and Liberation

One year after a governor's clemency, Renaldo Hudson, who spent 37 years incarcerated, reflects on violence, prisons, and the vital importance of education and support for those incarcerated.

Renaldo Hudson

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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.

Schuyler Daum

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Institutions

Making Penal Bureaucrats

Now more than ever, legal education must come to grips with its role in shaping the minds of those who might help to dismantle — or strengthen — carceral institutions…

Shaun Ossei-Owusu

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Institutions

A Most Carceral Friend

The Justice Department’s top Supreme Court lawyer is far more committed to helping prosecutors win convictions and keep people locked up than to ‘doing justice.

Darcy Covert & A.J. Wang

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Big Data

The Feature Is the Bug

For all the criticism they get, algorithms can be unlikely allies in exposing deep, structural injustices that entrench mass incarceration.

Colin Doyle

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