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President Bill Clinton with then-Sen. Biden on Sept. 13, 1994, during a signing ceremony for the crime bill on the South Lawn of the White House.

The Biggest Myth About the 1994 Crime Bill Still Haunts Joe Biden. It Shouldn’t.

The law is routinely blamed for a very real problem it had nothing to do with.
by John Pfaff via Slate on June 20, 2024
Picture of a young woman with cannabis leaves.

The Pot to Prison Pipeline

How does a plant become a crime?
by Sophie Yanow, Zack Ruskin via The Nib on September 27, 2021
Two prison employees standing outside a prison cell.

The Truth About Deinstitutionalization

A popular theory links the closing of state psychiatric hospitals to the increased incarceration of people with mental illness. The reality is more complicated.
by Alisa Roth via The Atlantic on May 25, 2021
Prison security guard wearing a mask.
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The Policy Mistakes From the 1990s That Have Made Covid-19 Worse

Being tough on crime and cutting benefits from the poor left millions more susceptible to disease.
by Heather Ann Thompson via Made By History on May 4, 2020

Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong

The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created, and how we can dismantle it.
by Adaner Usmani, Jacobin via Jacobin on March 17, 2020
Prison cells

The Economic Origins of Mass Incarceration

Everything you knew about mass incarceration is wrong.
by John Clegg, Adaner Usmani via Catalyst on September 1, 2019

Mass Incarceration Didn't Start with the War on Crime

A review of "City of Inmates" by Kelly Lytle Hernández.
by Llana Barber via The Metropole on April 24, 2019
Two inmates survey the aftermath of a prison uprising.

Prisons and Class Warfare

A look at the evolution of the prison system in California.
by Clement Petitjean, Ruth Wilson Gilmore via Historical Materialism on July 25, 2018
Line graph showing a rise in Louisiana's prison incarceration rate since 1978.

Louisiana’s Turn to Mass Incarceration: The Building of a Carceral State

How Louisiana built a carceral state during the War on Crime.
by Lydia Pelot-Hobbs via American Association Of Geographers on February 1, 2018

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Mass Incarceration

The rise​ of mass incarceration in the early 1970s was fueled by white fear of black crime. But the fear of crime wasn’t confined to whites.
by Adam Shatz via London Review of Books on May 4, 2017

Booked: The Origins of the Carceral State

Elizabeth Hinton discusses how twentieth-century policymakers anticipated the explosion of the prison population.
by Elizabeth Hinton, Timothy Shenk via Dissent on August 30, 2016

Was 1960's Liberalism the Cause of Today's Overincarceration Crisis?

Today, nearly 2.2 million Americans are behind bars. Can contemporary mass incarceration's roots be traced to LBJ's Great Society?
by Lauren-Brooke Eisen via The National Book Review on June 4, 2016

I Found Prison Data Going Back to 1880. This is How Mass Incarceration Looks In Context

America put drastically more people in prison over the past few decades than at any time in the nation's history.
by Dara Lind via Vox on October 11, 2015
Clara Newton at her home outside Baltimore, holding a picture of her son Odell, who has been in prison for 41 years for a crime he committed when he was 16. State officials have recommended Odell for release three times since 1992, but he has not been freed. August 4, 2015.

The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Politicians are suddenly eager to disown failed policies on American prisons, but they have failed to reckon with the history.
by Ta-Nehisi Coates via The Atlantic on September 15, 2015

Historians and the Carceral State

Examining histories of mass incarceration and views on teaching histories of the carceral state.
via Process: A Blog for American History on June 18, 2015

The Caging of America

Why do we lock up so many people?
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on January 30, 2012

Slavery Is Not a Metaphor

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, southern slaveholders were thinking about what a prison should look like for a society that was economically and socially dependent on slavery.
by John Bardes, Melanie Newport via Public Books on February 12, 2025
A line of workmen drilling.

A Prison the Size of the State, A Police to Control the World

Two new books examine how colonial logic has long been embedded within US carceral systems.
by Marisol LeBrón via Public Books on December 17, 2024
Protestors standing against the death penalty.

An Exercise in Political Imagination: Debating William F. Buckley

Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson defended the abolition of capital punishment at a moment when political support for that movement reached its nadir.
by Robert L. Tsai via Liberal Currents on October 31, 2024
State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill Administration Building, with a restricted entrance sign in front of its doors.

The Porous Prison

How incarcerated people have become separated from American society.
by Charlotte Rosen, Reiko Hillyer via Public Books on October 3, 2024
Sheriff Joe Arpaio riding in the back of a convertible car painted like an American flag.

Are Sheriffs Above the Law?

Many vignettes of sheriffs in action are dramatic and alarming. But how representative are they?
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on September 12, 2024
Ronald Reagan addressing the nation on tax reduction legislation from the Oval Office
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History Explains the Racial Wealth Gap

Ronald Reagan's economic policies exacerbated the racial wealth gap— and they've guided all his successors.
by Calvin Schermerhorn via Made By History on December 4, 2023
Cover of the book "When Crack Was King," and Donovan X. Ranmsey.

A History of the Crack Epidemic From Below

How documenting the history of the drug war is a “community project” and reflections on 1990s rap music's anti-crack hits.
by Donovan X. Ramsey, Naomi Elias via The Nation on August 4, 2023
Aerial view of Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, 19th century.

Untangling the 19th Century Roots of Mass Incarceration

Popular accounts often trace the origins of forced penal labor to the post-Civil War South. But a vast system of forced penal labor existed in the antebellum North.
by Rebecca McLennan via LPE Project on May 16, 2023
Angela Davis attending her first news conference after being released on bail, February 24, 1972.

Angela Davis Exposed the Injustice at the Heart of the Criminal Justice System

In 1970, Angela Davis was arrested on suspicion of murder. The trial — and her eventual victory — proved to everyone that the justice system was corrupt.
by Joel Whitney via Jacobin on April 1, 2023
Agnes Wilkinson, Ahmeenah Young, and Aishah Shahidah Simmons.

Black Power Meets Police Power

The experiences of Michael and Zoharah Simmons show that the fight against the carceral state is embedded in a larger project of building a just world.
by Dan Berger via Inquest on January 24, 2023
Demonstrators protest involuntarily institutionalization of mentally ill homeless people.
partner

Locking Up the Mentally Ill Has a Long History

The prospect of removing people from communities to be put in institutions has been a project of social control.
by Elliott Young via Made By History on January 3, 2023
Tourists explore cells in Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Photo by Mark Murrmann.

The Gruesome Attraction of Prison Tourism Is Being Challenged at Last

“I’m amazed at how numb many of us can be about these sites.”
by Hope Corrigan via Mother Jones on June 9, 2022

Inventing Solitary

In 1790, Philadelphia opened the first American penitentiary, with the nation’s first solitary cells. Black people were disproportionately punished from the start.
by Samantha Melamed via Philadelphia Inquirer on June 8, 2022
A worker sits with his head in his hands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 24, 2008, as the markets endured losses.

How The Neoliberal Order Triumphed — And Why It’s Now Crumbling

Historian Gary Gerstle lays out an era's policies and ideologies, and what undermined them.
by Mario Del Pero via Washington Post on May 6, 2022
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