Tag: Incarceration
Want to Fight Mass Incarceration? Start With Your Local Jail
Books & the Arts
/
April 25, 2024
A new collection of essays from academics and activists devoted to prison abolition focuses on the quiet but rapid expansion of the carceral system in small towns and municipalities.
The Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois, 2020.
(Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP via Getty Images)
“How do protagonists outsmart a monster?” Ruth Wilson Gilmore asks in the foreword to The Jail Is Everywhere. “The key: a combination of
It’s Known as “Death by Incarceration.” These People Want to End It.
“My life is either going to be a testimony or a warning,” said Derek Lee.
Lee was speaking on a video chat from behind the walls of SCI Smithfield in central Pennsylvania. Now 35 years old, Lee has been imprisoned since he was 29. If nothing changes, he will grow old and die in prison.
In 2016, a Pennsylvania court sentenced Lee to life without parole for a burglary two years earlier that ended with his accomplice fatally shooting the … Read more
Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison
The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of the Los Angeles Times, and they would be passed from one reader to the next. Back then, I swore that Prince was the best songwriter of my lifetime, and I thought Swift’s rise to teen-age stardom was an injustice. I’d look up from her wide-eyed face in the
Can a District Attorney Dismantle Mass Incarceration and Fight for Gender Justice?
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was produced as a collaboration between Bolts and The Nation.
My Family Lost Our Farm During Japanese Incarceration. I Went Searching for What Remains. – Mother Jones
Fight disinformation. Get a daily recap of the facts that matter. Sign up for the free Mother Jones newsletter.
West of Sacramento, in a rural community called Broderick, my grandfather Shigeki, and his brothers, Yoshimi, Tadao, and Hideo, were farmers. We were told the land they worked was leased by my great-uncle’s in-laws, the Abe family, who were glad to have the labor of the young and fit Murai brothers. They were quiet men, industrious and skilled. The work was
A Fight to Expose the Hidden Human Costs of Incarceration
In July, 2016, thousands of demonstrators gathered in Baton Rouge to protest the death of Alton Sterling, a Black man who was shot by a police officer after being pinned to the ground outside a convenience store, where he had been selling compact disks. Although the protests were largely peaceful, officers in full riot gear dispersed the crowds and made more than a hundred and fifty arrests. A coalition of advocates, including the A.C.L.U. of Louisiana, filed a lawsuit accusing