prisoners' rights

Decades before the Miranda decision, a Washington triple-homicide paced the way to protect criminal suspects.

How Louisiana built a carceral state during the War on Crime.

The anniversary of two major revolts remind us that tough-on-crime policies have created intense suffering in our prisons.

State-sanctioned efforts to keep the incarcerated from reproducing began in the early 20th century and continue today.

Prisons today undergo criticism but in the 19th and the 20th century prisons treated their inmates as "slaves of the state.”

What the 1971 uprising and massacre reveal about our prison system and the liberal democratic state.

Dickens, Tocqueville, and the U.N. all agree about this American invention: It’s torture.

Examining histories of mass incarceration and views on teaching histories of the carceral state.

One man’s archive of a vanished culture.

The case he didn’t expect to lose. And why it mattered that he did.

While we may never know the full truth, we owe it to those harmed and killed to illuminate their stories.

The members of the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project scrutinize official records not only for what they reveal, but also for what they omit.

For over 20 years, Dr. Albert Kligman experimented on incarcerated men at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. Those who profited have yet to redress the harm.

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.

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.

In 1790, Philadelphia opened the first American penitentiary, with the nation’s first solitary cells. Black people were disproportionately punished from the start.

In “Captives,” former Rikers detainee Jarrod Shanahan traces the history of New York City’s sprawling jail complex, and its centrality to brutal class struggle.

A new book about Rikers Island is essentially a labor history, revealing how jail guards seized control from managers, politicians, and judges.

A new history draws on recently declassified archives to illustrate how the Korean War was an intimate civil conflict, not just a proxy battle between superpowers.

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.