Facing Life Without Parole Inside a California Prison
Recent reforms in prison communications have allowed Dortell Williams, serving a life sentence without parole in California, to share his experience face-to-face for the first time.
Criminal justice reform
The Coffee Shops Countering Recidivism
A criminal record keeps many qualified candidates out of work; these coffee companies are helping clear the first hurdle.
Cop City Is a Disability Justice Issue, Too
Disability justice activists are joining grassroots efforts to shut down Atlanta’s Cop City, the largest police training campus in the U.S.
Practicing New Worlds with adrienne maree brown and Andrea Ritchie
In this exclusive conversation, two visionary abolitionist authors and reflect on the how the newest book in the Emergent Strategy series came to be.
Black Americans Back Defunding Police
A new survey by the Movement for Black Lives finds that a majority of Black Americans support reallocating police funding toward community care.
Murmurations: Moving from Punishment to Accountability
How can we hold accountable systems that are designed only to understand punishment?
The Vision of a Renewable Rikers Island in NYC
This community-developed plan could serve as a model for how to simultaneously decarcerate and decarbonize.
Repairing Decades of Racist School Reforms
In a new book, Bettina Love, Ph.D., lays out the harms created by decades of school reforms and charts a path toward repair.
Police Diversion Programs Work. Here’s Why
Treatment programs rather than incarceration are far more effective for drug-related offenses.
Becoming Abolitionist: A Lawyer’s Radical Vision
“The only way that we are going to get people to have a decent, equitable future is to completely re-envision this entire rubric that is suffocating and killing our people,” says lawyer Noelle Hanrahan.
Reversing the Damage of Cannabis Criminalization
People of color were the most harmed by the war on cannabis, but we can heal the damage of prohibition and ensure a fairer future.
The Yearning for Redemption
Re-entering society after being incarcerated takes a heavy emotional toll.
Freeing Black Mothers From Jail
A campaign to free Black mothers from pretrial detention highlights the role that women play in helping one another navigate a dehumanizing system.
Resistance to Atlanta’s Cop City Ramps Up
A week of action in Atlanta this March showcases widespread opposition to a planned police training center, which would be the largest in the nation. An organizer explains what’s at stake.
Judging the Judges
How Los Angeles abolitionist organizers are taking on pretrial incarceration and judicial power through community resistance.
Disrupting the Business of Bail
The Minnesota Freedom Fund offers resources to low-income people of color who are jailed—and so much more.
Abolishing the Nation’s Largest Jail System
L.A. County activists are working to replace violent jails with mental health facilities, and to reallocate funding from incarceration toward social services.
Where Racial Disparities Are Shrinking Fast … In Prisons
A big decrease in the incarceration rate of Black adults may lead to parity in the near future.
What Do We Do While Waiting to Realize Prison Abolition?
Attorney Sia Henry shares a wrenching personal experience highlighting the challenges of operating in world where prison abolition is not yet a reality.
An Abolitionist Makes a Case for “No More Police”
The demand to “defund the police” asks politicians to go beyond platitudes and actually end the violence of policing, shifting resources in ways that promote the redistribution of wealth.
Reimagining Safety and Liberation Without Police
We can work for safety and liberation by investing in community-based alternatives to policing, like mental health programs, public education, restorative justice practices, and economic justice.
Mass Shootings and the Culture of Violence in the U.S.
Gun violence cannot be abstracted from a broader culture of violence and authoritarianism that calls for more gun ownership, more police, and more national security.
Seeking Just Trials
Trials are far from impartial if the defendant is poor or reliant on public defenders. These people are working to re-balance the scales of justice.
Why Fatal Police Interactions Are Avoidable
Police too often claim that confusion during an encounter caused them to fire fatal shots, as in the case of Patrick Lyoya. But there are solutions.
Instead of “Tough on Crime” Policies, California Could Fund Better Solutions
State legislatures and elected officials around the country have almost always responded to crime with more police funding in spite of little to no positive results. Instead, they could tackle the recidivism rate, solve the housing crisis, and reduce poverty.
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