People on the street and burning car amidst debris

Los Angeles Could Have Rebuilt a Better City After the Rodney King Violence. Here's Why It Failed.

Leading gangs in Los Angeles were making peace as the city burned. How the city failed them rewrites our understanding of that moment.
photo of Otto Kerner with quote: "freedom for every citizen to live and work according to his capacities and not his color"

We Were Warned About a Divided America 50 Years Ago. We Ignored the Signs

As in the 1960s, the nation today stands at a turning point.
A still from "Judas and the Black Messiah."

The Unsettling Message of ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

The new crime thriller about a magnetic leader of the Black Panther Party is a sharp criticism of the FBI’s surveillance of social movements past and present.

The Minneapolis Uprising in Context

A proper understanding of urban rebellion depends on our ability to interpret it not as a wave of criminality, but as political violence.

How the ‘Central Park Five’ Changed the History of American Law

Ava DuVernay’s miniseries shows why more children had to stand trial as adults than at any other time before this 1989 case.

Prison Abolition Syllabus 2.0

An updated prison syllabus in response to the national prison strike of 2018.

Booked: The Origins of the Carceral State

Elizabeth Hinton discusses how twentieth-century policymakers anticipated the explosion of the prison population.

From "War on Crime" to War on the Black Community

The enduring impact of President Johnson’s Crime Commission.