Survivor Injustice Asks Us To Reconsider What Justice Looks Like For Crime Victims
This excerpt from Survivor Injustice asks us to reconsider what justice really looks like for crime victims.
Kylie Cheung Aug 16, 2023
In Spite of the Consequences: Prison Letters on Exoneration, Abolition, and Freedom
Lacino Hamilton spent 26 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit before being exonerated in 2020 after DNA evidence cleared him.
Lacino Hamilton Jul 12, 2023
Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety
In Healing Justice Lineages, Cara Page and Erica Woodland document a history of care models that don’t involve the prison industrial complex.
Cara Page and Erica Woodland Apr 26, 2023
Mass incarceration is slavery. Abolition is a vision for the future.
No system designed to make money by subjugating people intends to rid us of those harms. Abolition is a vision for the future.
Olayemi Olurin Feb 22, 2023
Riots Work: An interview with Alex Mingus
Police gave Alex Mingus an award for saving a shooting victim’s life. Mingus showed up wearing a shirt that said “Smash white supremacy”.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Nov 16, 2022
“The Media Emboldens a Police State”: A conversation with movement lawyer Olayemi Olurin
Olayemi Olurin spoke with The Appeal about abolition, living in a police state, Rikers Island, and the media.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Oct 26, 2022
How Prison Abolitionists Are Meeting The Moment
The COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide protests over police brutality are strengthening the case against mass incarceration, advocates argue.
Emily Nonko Jul 14, 2020
The Bumpy Road to Police Abolition
Protesters and activists have categorically changed the national conversation about public safety. Now they have to figure out how to change public policy.
Ted Alcorn Jun 22, 2020
Freeing People As A Response To Prison Rape
Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Two years ago, the executive director of Just Detention International, an organization whose mission is to end sexual assault in jails and prisons, wrote in an opinion piece for […]
Vaidya Gullapalli Dec 13, 2019
The Failures Of Re-entry For Returning Citizens And Their Communities
Something as basic as a government ID can be impossible to get, yet a requirement to have, for people returning home from prison.
Vaidya Gullapalli Oct 25, 2019
Mental Health Crises Require Mental Health, Not Policing, Responses
At least a quarter of all people killed by police each year suffer from untreated mental illnesss. New York City’s Public Advocate is proposing a new hotline and mental health crisis teams.
Vaidya Gullapalli Sep 27, 2019
Defund The Baltimore Police
A former Baltimore cop questions how a department with a nearly half-billion-dollar budget that is riven by rampant corruption and brutality, bloated overtime spending, and unaccounted for patrol officers can continue to justify its existence
Larry Smith Aug 15, 2018
The Appeal Podcast Episode 7: What Abolitionists Mean When They Talk About Abolition
With William C. Anderson, journalist and co-author of As Black As Resistance.
Adam H. Johnson Jul 12, 2018
Responses to Violence Must Move Beyond Policing
The solution to problems like unsolved homicides, especially in communities of color, cannot be reinvestment in institutions that wage violence against them.
William C. Anderson Jun 19, 2018
How the Push to Close Rikers Went From No Jails To New Jails
Activists say a once-radical campaign has been co-opted.
Raven Rakia, Ashoka Jegroo May 29, 2018
The Sentencing of Larry Nassar Was Not ‘Transformative Justice.’ Here’s Why.
On January 24, Larry Gerard Nassar, the former national team doctor of USA Gymnastics, was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for the sexual assault of minors. The sentence was handed down with biting words from Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, after a week of intense and moving pre-sentencing statements from Nassar’s victims. Aquilina noted that if the Constitution did not forbid cruel and unusual punishment, she might have sentenced him to be made a victim of sexual violence. She settled for an unsurvivable prison sentence, saying, to great public applause, “I just signed your death warrant.”
Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba Feb 05, 2018