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Inquest@inquest.bsky.social |
183 followers 23 following 98 posts
A forum for ideas to end mass incarceration in its many forms. Sign up for our newsletter: inquest.org/subscribe-follow/
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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This essay concludes our roundtable about 'Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change,' coedited by Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr., and Maria Hawilo.
For all the essays in the roundtable, click here: inquest.org/the-prosecut...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Reflecting on responses from elected prosecutors, advocates, and academics on the role prosecutors ought to play in ending mass incarceration, Premal Dharia concludes: Prosecutors are only one path. And their interventions can mean the world to people staring down the prospect of criminalization.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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And Angela J. Davis, a legal scholar at American University, concludes that so-called progressive prosecutors, while imperfect, are far better than the alternative. inquest.org/better-than-...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Meanwhile, David Ayala, a formerly incarcerated organizer focused on criminal system reform, notes that electing decarceral prosecutors is but one tool in a multifaceted, collaborative approach to ending mass incarceration. inquest.org/not-a-fix-all/
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Larry Krasner, the twice-elected Philadelphia district attorney, lists the many tangible, rapid wins that progressive prosecutors like him have offered to a grassroots movement seeking the end of mass incarceration. inquest.org/power-to-the...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Next up is Mary Moriarty, the elected prosecutor in Hennepin County, Minnesota. She’s a former public defender and ran on a platform of redefining prosecution as “problem solving”—keeping people and youth away from the criminal legal system, thus keeping our communities safer in other ways.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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First up is Bennett Capers, a former prosecutor and law professor at Fordham who has been sharply critical of prosecutors.
He thinks a world where prosecutors are decarceral is possible. But that world, and everything it entails, depends entirely on us. inquest.org/maybe-if/
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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In ‘The Prosecutor Paradox,’ our new roundtable, Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr., and Maria Dawilo ask the provocative question: “Can prosecutors play a role in ending mass incarceration?” Today, elected prosecutors, advocates, and academics with differing views respond.
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Prisonculture
@prisonculture.bsky.social
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"Carceral aesthetics are dangerous: They center, consolidate, and act on behalf of the carceral state. They disappear, through dominance and foreclosure, the questions, the ideas, and the people who challenge the prison–industrial complex." inquest.org/big-screen-a...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Films that imagine decarceral futures are a cultural antidote for the carceral messages and aesthetics that are so prevalent in popular media. They "are quite simply about making things out of what we have in ways that build freedom," writes Michelle Brown of Appalachian Justice Research Center.
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Jonathan Kennedy
@getradified.bsky.social
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I’ve worked with a lot of social workers in my line of work and too many of them see themselves as cops without guns and it’s a major issue.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Social work must be anti-carceral, against oppression, and committed to ending systems, structures, and ideologies that cause people harm, write members of the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work in an excerpt from its new @haymarketbooks.bsky.social collection.
inquest.org/abolitionist...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis in 2020, communities there have been radically reimagining a world that doesn't depend on policing for safety.
Sociologist @michellesphelps.bsky.social explores these efforts—and the hard work that lies ahead in this excerpt from 'The Minneapolis Reckoning.'
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Michelle S. Phelps
@michellesphelps.bsky.social
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Organizers and policy-makers in Minneapolis have been working for years on building new public safety models. Read about the work to build unarmed behavioral health responses + community-led safety in this excerpt from The Minneapolis Reckoning at @inquest.bsky.social
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Prisonculture
@prisonculture.bsky.social
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"fire camps are still prisons, even without bars and walls. A prison, in other words, is not only about how space is constructed, but also about relationships of power and the phantasmic influence those relationships have on incarcerated people."
inquest.org/the-phantom-...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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California prison authorities operate a series of so-called fire camps—outdoor facilities where incarcerated workers live and do the dangerous work of fighting wildfires.
But as Sebastian Miller shows, these camps are prisons all the same. inquest.org/the-phantom-...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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One day, artist Vic Liu cold-called abolitionist advocate James Kilgore with a proposal: What if we reimagined one of your books visually? A few years later, 'The Warehouse: A Visual Primer on Mass Incarceration' was born. In conversation with us, they shared why visualizing the crisis matters.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Husain Rizvi of The City School and Emy Takinami of Boston Liberation Health offer a behind-the-scenes look at their campaign to bring a non-carceral mental health crisis response unit to the city of Boston.
It's "a small piece of our abolitionist horizon, they write. inquest.org/a-safer-heal...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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This week’s newsletter: Architectural violence eepurl.com/iQF9cs
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Mass incarceration shapes, and is shaped by, our shared world and built spaces. It cannot be escaped.
Dana McKinney White and Lisa Haber-Thomson explore how architects and designers ought to reckon with the past and future of our carceral landscape.
inquest.org/building-car...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Artie Ann Bates, a psychiatrist and longtime resident of Letcher County, Kentucky, doesn't want a new federal prison in her community.
Instead, she says those hundreds of millions of dollars could go to helping people in the area thrive in much more meaningful ways. inquest.org/letcher-is-us/
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Mass incarceration rests on false narratives and secrecy that carceral institutions themselves work hard to control. Meanwhile, popular culture and politics reify these untruths.
Writers like Lyle C. Mays are fighting back. An excerpt from 'Witness,' out now from @haymarketbooks.bsky.social.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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For a person who is on parole and homeless in Oregon, the criminal legal system forces them into survival mode, failing to offer "public safety" in any meaningful sense.
Is this for the public good? Wesley Vaughan, who lived this reality, explores. inquest.org/for-the-publ...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Above all else, prison education should center the holistic well-being of incarcerated people—helping them to break free of structural disadvantages holding them back. Mneesha Gellman of the Emerson Prison Initiative explains.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Vic Liu, a visual artist and author, had never stepped foot in a prison until she visited one to help a person there with his parole application.
Writing and painting about what mass incarceration does broke her—and cannot be hidden from public view.
inquest.org/hell-is-real...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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“Disabled people aren’t some separate species. We need housing and food and health care just like everyone else. If we are lacking necessary care, then the solution should be to get us care, not involve people who greatly increase the risk of violence,” writes Katie Tastrom.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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In the United States, there's a tendency to embrace nonconformity in principle—but not so for Black men, whose personal quirks can spark fear, policing, punishment, or worse, writes Monica Bell. inquest.org/im-just-diff...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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In the criminal system, mandatory surcharges are the litany of court-imposed fees that attach to conviction and punishment. But as E. Paris Whitfield, who is incarcerated in New York, writes, these predatory fees saddle people who are already poor and marginalized. They must be ended.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Public health and abolition go hand in hand. And many advocates and organizers are embracing both as they pursue decarceral projects that uplift everyone's well-being, writes senior editor @cristianfarias.bsky.social.
inquest.org/for-the-peop...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Your Saturday morning read:
In this conversation with Maya Schenwar, Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché explore their hopeful, practical new book, 'How to Abolish Prisons,' out now from @haymarketbooks.bsky.social, which shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.
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UNC Press
@uncpress.bsky.social
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Read an excerpt from RAP AND REDEMPTION ON DESTH ROW: Seeking Justice and Finding Purpose behind Bars by Alim Braxton and Mark Katz ⬇️
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Alim Braxton, who has spent decades on death row, lives and breathes hip hop. But his commitment to spitting bars is about more than just music. His rhymes aim to preserve the legacy of Black people, what’s been done to them, how they've fought back.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Today is the last day of the public-comment period for people to weigh in on whether a new federal prison should be built in Eastern Kentucky.
In this essay, @stopitkatie.bsky.social shows why the stakes of this fight extend far beyond Appalachia—and the unlikely solidarity that fuels this effort.
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elenore
@dropthatphone.bsky.social
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Having been out to all those FCIs in Kentucky & FMC Lexington to visit people from DC, this rings so true. A few rich people have made fortunes carving up some of the oldest mountains on the planet and trying to stop us from doing anything about it, together. (And shout out to Free Minds Book Club!)
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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People in prison and prison communities have many things in common—economic conditions, the quality of the air and water, and their health are interconnected in profound ways.
@stopitkatie.bsky.social explores how this interconnectedness is a point of solidarity in the fight to stop a new prison.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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From the criminalization of sex work to sex offender registries, a commitment to queer politics requires that we end state practices that treat sex as exceptional, writes Joseph Fischel. inquest.org/sticking-wit...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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For many years, a coalition of organizers has been fighting the construction of a new federal prison in Eastern Kentucky. And they've been winning—convincing the public that this project won't uplift the community. But as filmmaker and coalition member Sylvia Ryerson notes, the fight isn't over.
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Max Felker-Kantor
@mfkantor.bsky.social
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New piece on DARE for @inquest.bsky.social My book on the subject is out April 2! @uncpress.bsky.social . Link in bio
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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As @mfkantor.bsky.social shows in a new book for @uncpress.bsky.social, the D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
The campaign was also a not-so-subtle form of copaganda, putting a friendly gloss on the violent war on drugs.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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For incarcerated people, prison education programs can offer not only knowledge, but also hope that a different future is possible.
Alexander X, an incarcerated alumnus of @emersoncollege.bsky.social’s Emerson Prison Initiative, on what "learning to live" looks like. inquest.org/learning-to-...
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Post-Katrina, a furious wave of criminalization targeted sex work and Black women in New Orleans over so-called "crimes against nature."
In 'Fire Dreams,' out now from @dukepress.bsky.social @lauramctighe.bsky.social and Women With A Vision share the story of how the community fought back—and won.
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Prisonculture
@prisonculture.bsky.social
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"Cadets learn in police academy that part of being an insider is protecting themselves and the institution from outside threats. Cadets are taught that these threats endanger both their own and the larger institution’s survival."
inquest.org/the-bad-guys/
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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In her years of ethnographic work, sociologist Samantha Simon has found that police academies socialize officers into an us-versus-them mentality against communities. "This worldview makes the institution incredibly durable and resistant to any kind of change or reform," she writes.
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Anodyne
@anodynesix.bsky.social
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"[T]his carceral narrative keeps current practices firmly in place. This is especially true in New York state, where local news constantly bombards the public with skewed images and stories that demonize those accused of violence—particularly Black men—and unflaggingly glorifies carceral responses."
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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On disrupting carceral narratives to create a more just world: "We chose narrative change as a focus of our work to end state and interpersonal violence because the current punitive narrative works so powerfully against the world we believe we can build," write Charlene Allen and Cameron Rasmussen.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Carceral narratives are everywhere in society and popular culture, bombarding people with the notion that interpersonal violence must be met with state violence. But that narrative is wrong, and a coalition in New York is working hard to to change it.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Racialized and violent, modern U.S. warmaking is intimately linked with our history of mass incarceration. In this excerpt from, 'Prisoners After War,' Jason Higgins shows how Black servicemembers have experienced state violence—both during war and afterward—like few others have.
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Stuart Schrader
@stschrader1.bsky.social
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Powerful article by my brilliant former student. Pls check it out.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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The Prison Rape Elimination Act routinely revictimizes incarcerated survivors by expanding the power of the prison over them, writes E. Zimmerman. According to testimonies published by the American Prison Writing Archive, the law often lures people in prison with a false sense of safety.
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Inquest
@inquest.bsky.social
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Wayne Pray, an incarcerated writer sentenced to life without parole, urges bold action on behalf of the many thousands of "grandfathers and grandmothers" who are graying and dying in our nation's prisons. He and they "are our country's new norm," he writes.
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