prisons

What to the Incarcerated Is Juneteenth?

by Antoine Davis and Darrell Jackson

"We prisoners who are left to deteriorate inside one of America's most inhumane systems are able to find joy in celebrating Juneteenth, but not without indignities."

The Incarcerated are Producing a "Shadow Canon" of Writing on Prisons and Society

Scholars like Doran Larson and Vesla Mae Weaver are working to bring the writings of incarcerated men and women to light as valuable sources of insight not only on prison life but fundamental questions of freedom. 

Martin Sostre's Vision of Collective Liberation

by Garrett Felber

Martin Sostre's refusal to allow the New York prison system to subject him to invasive and violating searches showed how he placed bodily autonomy at the center of a radical critique of racial oppression. At what would be his 100th birthday, his legacy is considered. 

A Different Kind of Unfree Labor Haunts a Houston Suburb

by Ashanté Reese

Texas's convict labor system was a first step in reasserting white dominance over Black labor through criminal law. The discovery of remains of convicted laborers on the site of a former prison farm show the need to reckon with unfree labor after the end of slavery. 

A Former Inmate Reviews an Oral History of Riker's Island

by John J. Lennon

"Leaving Rikers feels like a better chapter of your life is about to begin—even if that next chapter is a prison sentence."

An Oral History of Riker's Island

An oral history of New York's notorious jail is chaotic and difficult, but could an account of the place be any different and be true? 

Was Emancipation Intended to Perpetuate Slavery by Other Means?

by Sean Wilentz

Protests movements have latched on to a misguided interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment that argues it allowed and even encouraged the system of mass incarceration as an extension of slavery. A new global history extends that critique to the age of emancipation in general.

Philadelphia Apologizes for Prison Experiments on Inmates

University of Pennsylvania Dermatology professor Albert Kligman tested medicines and other products on prison inmates between 1951 and 1974. 

Sociologist Brittany Friedman on the Rise and Endurance of Political Organizing by Black Prisoners

Although it is often linked to the rise of Black Power movements in the late 1960s, evidence shows that state authorities were working to eliminate civil rights organizing among Black prisoners as early as the 1950s. 

Fighting Incarceration from the Inside: Prison Litigation as Resistance

by Charlotte Rosen

The Prison Litigation Reform Act has cut incarcerated people off from their rights to access the court system to seek personal relief from abuse and cruel punishment and systemic change to the mass incarceration regime. 

Inventing Solitary Confinement

Kali Nicole Gross, Ashley Rubin, Jen Manion and Paul Takagi offer insight into the historical irony of modern incarceration's roots in Philadelphia, the nominal cradle of American liberty. 

T. Thomas Fortune: The Forgotten Founder of Abolition Democracy

by Robin D.G. Kelley

T. Thomas Fortune's critique of Reconstruction is a radical intellectual document that has valuable lessons for the activists and scholars associated with the prison abolition movement. 

University of Mississippi Makes Available Oral Histories of Student Protesters Sent to Parchman Prison Farm

Historian Garrett Felber and his students began a project to document the experiences of Mississippi students arrested in 1970 and sent to the notorious prison farm. 

Heather Ann Thompson on Mass Incarceration

Karma Chávez guest hosts a wide-ranging conversation with historian Heather Ann Thompson about policing, mass incarceration, and why overhauling the criminal justice system is the civil rights issue of our time.

Stanley George on Putting Viewers in the Middle of the Nation's Bloodiest Prison Rebellion

"It’s like the window has been cracked a little bit, so that people who might never have thought to doubt law enforcement are doubting law enforcement now, and they’re thinking about their cruelty and racism in a way they might not have thought about it five years ago."

Who Owns the Legacy of a Notorious Women's Prison?

Caitlin Davies' "Bad Girls" tells the history of London's Holloway Prison, which is now in jeopardy from a pending redevelopment plan. 

Dosing Arkansas Prisoners with Ivermectin Just Latest Incident of Medical Abuse

by Lydia Crafts

"News that an Arkansas prison doctor deceived inmates to take Ivermectin as a COVID preventative shows that nonconsensual research and the experimental use of drugs on vulnerable people remain common — despite evidence of its danger and laws designed to prevent it."

What Set the Stage for Rebellion and Violence at Attica

Tyrone Larkins, Alhajji Sharif and Akil Shaquan were incarcerated at Attica 50 years ago. Hear their story about conditions in the prison and the events of the riot and its brutal suppression. Also features an interview with historian Heather Ann Thompson.

Honoring Attica After Half a Century

by Heather Ann Thompson

Activists both inside and outside of prisons in the 1960s and 1970s confronted the violence of the state. Accountability for law enforcement is still an unrealized legacy of the 1971 Attica rebellion. 

50 Years Since Attica, Will America Observe the Human Rights of Prisoners?

by Heather Ann Thompson

"The Attica prison uprising was historic because these men spoke directly to the public, and by doing so, they powerfully underscored to the nation that serving time did not make someone less of a human being."