Crime and Prison

Paying for Punishment

Debt still sends many people—especially black people—to jail.

  • Donna Murch

Waiting at Guantánamo

After fourteen years, Mohamedou Ould Slahi may finally have a chance at freedom.

  • Henry Ace Knight

Lynching by Any Other Name

Prosecutors are corrupting the intent of lynching laws.

  • Christopher Lebron

The Problem of Punishment

Rapists should be held accountable. But is more incarceration the best way?

  • Judith Levine

On Stone Mountain

Bill Clinton, white supremacy, and the birth of the modern Democratic Party.

  • Christopher Petrella

The Roots of Black Incarceration

A nineteenth-century memoir sheds light on the origins of the modern prison.

  • Joy James

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The Genetic Panopticon

DNA is a powerful forensic tool. If only crime labs could be trusted with it.

  • Brandon L. Garrett

Going Nowhere

A new law needlessly brands sex offenders’ passports

  • Judith Levine

Speaking in Tongues

Serving time in Richmond City Jail.

  • Dave Byrne

A Rock and a Hard Place

The neglect and abuse of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

  • Umar Farooq

Paris in Terror

On France’s long history of political violence.

  • Julian Bourg

The Limits of Criminal Justice Reform

Reducing prison populations isn’t enough. We need a new criminal system founded on priniciples of justice rather than fear of crime.

  • Joseph Margulies

Historical Method and the Noble Lie

Mass incarceration is so politicized that we can't talk about its origins.

  • Michael Javen Fortner

Who’s to Blame for Mass Incarceration?

Michael Javen Fortner’s Black Silent Majority makes the controversial case that African Americans backed the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

  • Donna Murch

Sandy Speaks

Sandra Bland’s “crime” was acting as she wanted you, me, and everyone to act: nobly.

  • Debbie Nathan

Cold Case

The limits of using DNA to create images of subjects.

  • Anne Fausto-Sterling

The Folly of Neoliberal Prison Reform

The demands of justice and human rights compel thoroughgoing change, whatever the cost-benefit analysis returns.

  • Marie Gottschalk

Ferguson Won’t Change Anything. What Will?

Michael Brown shouldn’t be a poster child for social justice movements.

  • Glenn C. Loury
with responses from
  • Danielle Allen
  • Christopher Lebron
  • Harold Pollack
  • Melissa Nobles
  • Tracey L. Meares & Benjamin Justice
  • Gary Segura
  • Michael C. Dawson
  • Susan Sturm
  • Dorian T. Warren
  • Doug Henwood

Slumming It

Heated response to “slum ethnography” is as old as the genre itself.

  • Claude S. Fischer

Extraordinary Criminals

Why don’t corporate wrongdoers go to prison?

  • Jessica Pishko

Lena Dunham Wasn’t a Pedophile, and Neither Were You

Why are we even debating whether a seven-year-old child was a child molester?

  • Judith Levine

The Only Government I Know

How the Criminal Justice System Degrades Democratic Citizenship

  • Vesla M. Weaver

Campus Gun Control Works

Despite recent shootings, schools, including college campuses, exemplify the success of gun control.

  • Evan DeFilippis

Trench Democracy in Criminal Justice #2: An Interview with William DiMascio

Participatory Innovation in Unlikely Places.

  • Albert W. Dzur
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