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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."



  • 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. 



  • 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.



  • 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. 



  • 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.



  • 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.