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A guard watching prisoners at CECOT prison in El Salvador in 2025.

The Roots of Bukele’s Gulag

Understanding why Trump is using El Salvador to test the limits of illegal deportation requires returning to the US’s long history of outsourcing violence.
by John E. Washington via New York Review of Books on June 1, 2025
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
Robert Stroud in his prison cell, surrouded by books and bird cages.

Freeing Birdman of Alcatraz

Neither the Bureau of Prisons nor the Production Code Administration could stop the production of a movie about murderer and ornithologist Robert Stroud.
by Matthew Wills, David Eldridge via JSTOR Daily on March 3, 2024
Ella Fitzgerald performs at Lorton Reformatory in 1959.

In the 1960s, Prison Chaplains Created a Star Studded Music Festival at Lorton Reformatory

Syncopation and swing reigned supreme at the annual Lorton Reformatory Jazz Festival in the 1960s.
by Dominique Mickiewitz via Boundary Stones on March 1, 2024
The front of the Midgeville asylum in Georgia

What Makes a Prison?

Wherever we find the state engaged in potentially lethal repression, we find prison.
by Dan Berger via Public Books on November 1, 2023
A drawing of Corcoran State Prison with water approaching. The top of the image reads "In Harm's Way".

In California, Climate Chaos Looms Over Prisons — and Thousands of Prisoners

How decades-old decisions to build two California prisons in a dry lakebed and a chaotic climate left 8,000 incarcerated people at risk.
by Susie Cagle via The Marshall Project on October 24, 2023
Soldier in foliage drawing

How Prisoners Contributed During World War II

Prisoners not only supported the war effort in surprising ways during World War II, they fought and died in it.
by Morgan Godvin, David Dressler, Frank T. Flynn, Gordon Hawkins via JSTOR Daily on May 26, 2023
Women feeding chickens at the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls.

The Forgotten History of America’s First Public Women’s Prison

The editors of a new book talk about the history of the Indiana facility — written by people who were held there almost 150 years later.
by Candice Norwood, Elizabeth Nelson, Michelle Daniel Jones via The 19th on March 23, 2023
Johnny Cash.

Far From Folsom Prison: More to Music Inside

Johnny Cash wasn't the only superstar to play in prisons. Music, initially allowed as worship, came to be seen as a rockin' tool of rehabilitation.
by Morgan Godvin via JSTOR Daily on November 29, 2022
Photograph of Hugh Ryan.

Liberating the Archives: Hugh Ryan’s “Women’s House of Detention”

An interview on the queer history of a forgotten prison.
by Hugh Ryan, Eric Newman via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 16, 2022
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
Lithograph of Eastern State Penitentiary from above.

The Invention of Incarceration

Prisons have been controversial since their beginnings in the late 1700s — why do they keep failing to live up to expectations?
by Ashley Rubin, Greg Miller via JSTOR Daily on March 18, 2022
Photograph of prison warden T. M. Osborne and two other men in a penitentiary hallway.

Were Early American Prisons Similar to Today's?

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.
by Charles Neal via JSTOR Daily on January 19, 2022

I Survived Prison During The AIDS Epidemic. Here’s What It Taught Me About Coronavirus

COVID-19 isn’t an automatic death sentence, but the fear, vilification and isolation are the same.
by Richard Rivera via The Marshall Project on May 14, 2020
A team photo of the 1966 Ohio State Penitentiary Hurricanes from a newspaper.

Game Day at the Ohio Pen

Remembering the Ohio State Penitentiary Hurricanes—and the day my father played against them in 1965.
by David Martin via Belt Magazine on January 31, 2020

Prisons for Sale, Histories Not Included

The intertwined history of mass incarceration and environmentalism in Upstate New York's prison-building boom.
by Clarence Jefferson Hall Jr. via Edge Effects on October 23, 2018
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

Reliving Johnny Cash's 'At Folsom Prison' at 50: An Oral History

Eyewitnesses to the Man in Black's legendary 1968 concerts at the California prison recall Cash's shining moment.
by Michael Streissguth via Rolling Stone on May 7, 2018

What’s Hidden Behind The Walls Of America’s Prisons

Prisons today undergo criticism but in the 19th and the 20th century prisons treated their inmates as "slaves of the state.”
by Heather Ann Thompson via The Conversation on June 4, 2017
The inmates during a negotiating session on September 10, 1971. An uprising born of panic and confusion triggered a cascade of paranoia that extended to the Nixon White House.

Learning from the Slaughter in Attica

What the 1971 uprising and massacre reveal about our prison system and the liberal democratic state.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on August 22, 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
Eastern State Penitentiary, c. 1876.

A Brief History of Solitary Confinement

Dickens, Tocqueville, and the U.N. all agree about this American invention: It’s torture.
by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway via Longreads on February 2, 2016

The Caging of America

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

Why Do Fascists Dream Of Alligators?

Long before the new detention facility in Florida, the reptile has featured in the fantasies of Southern racists.
by Asher Elbein via Defector on July 9, 2025
Illustration by Adrià Fruitós.

Greater America Has Been Exporting Disunion for Decades

So why are we still surprised when the tide of blood reaches our own shores?
by Viet Thanh Nguyen via The Nation on June 10, 2025
Mugshot (side profile, left, and front-facing, right) of Malcolm Little (Malcolm X).

A New Discovery Sheds Light on Malcolm X’s Journey to Islam

The civil rights leader’s lone poem, written from prison, reveals his love of language — and his quest for truth.
by Patrick Parr via New Lines on February 21, 2025

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
Mexican Americans in a detention camp.

A Nation of Imprisoned Immigrants

Jails have been foundational to immigration enforcement for over a century—and have always operated with a staggering absence of oversight and public awareness.
by Brianna Nofil via Inquest on January 21, 2025
Nan Lurie's "Women's House of Detention drawing in Greenwich Village.

How Greenwich Village Became America’s Bohemia

Greenwich Village’s bohemian and queer culture roots lie in its history of incarcerating women, notably via the Women’s Court and House of Detention.
by Hugh Ryan via The Gotham Center on November 20, 2024
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