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Mass Incarceration

How America’s Corporate Class Became Legally Unaccountable

July 24, 2026 The Chris Hedges Report. , , , , , , ,
Compared to other wealthy Western nations, the United States stands out for its high incarceration rates and military spending and declining standard of living. In her new book, “Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power and Violence, in America”, which just won the Robert F. Kennedy book award, Professor Marie Gottschalk connects the dots between the “twin evils of state violence at home and imperial violence abroad.” She chronicles the rise of President Trump as a manifestation of the failures of the Democrats to stem police violence and address economic insecurity when they had opportunities to do so, and illustrates how the tendrils of US Empire permeate the current crises.

No One Should Be In Jail Because They’re Poor

July 2, 2026 Jeremy Cherson, In These Times. , , , ,
It was a chilly spring day when Nicole, now a 31-year-old medical social worker in Tulsa, Oklahoma, opened an unsolicited letter from a criminal defense attorney. The letter informed her that she had been charged with a felony and might have a warrant for her arrest. Nicole had never had a run-in with the law. A single mother of three, she had spent her career helping others navigate the very systems she now found herself caught in. An eyewitness to a robbery had identified her as a suspect. Soon after, she was formally charged. A judge set her bail at $50,000.

Building Systems Of Mutual Aid After Prison

June 25, 2026 Chris Hedges Report Documentaries, Scheer Post. , , , ,
America’s prison system does not end at the prison gate. For millions of formerly incarcerated people, release marks the beginning of another sentence—one enforced not by prison guards, but by laws, discrimination, economic exclusion, and a political system that too often values punishment over rehabilitation. While politicians routinely invoke the language of “second chances,” returning citizens face barriers to housing, employment, education, voting, and even basic dignity that make successful reentry deliberately difficult.

No New Beds

June 3, 2026 Micah Herskind, Priscilla Grim and October Krausch, In These Times. , , ,
New jail construction is quietly booming across the United States. Some may be surprised to learn that during the most intense jail-building years, from 1990 to 2005, a new facility opened every 10 days. There are nearly 2 million people presently caged in more than 6,000 correctional facilities across the country, including 1,566 state prisons and 3,116 local jails. Recent data shows that number has only grown, and the push to build new jails and prisons continues. Currently, a new $3 billion jail in Brooklyn is moving ahead, a $1.25 billion prison in Alabama is nearly complete and, among many others, lawmakers in Hawai’i are considering a new $1 billion mega-jail, a facility with more than 1,000 beds.

Louisiana’s Tough-On-Crime Policies Will Cost Taxpayers Millions More

May 25, 2026 Richard A. Webster and Charles Maldonado, Pro Publica. , , ,
The day after a shooting last month killed a teenager and injured five people at the Mall of Louisiana, Gov. Jeff Landry blasted what he referred to as “hug-a-thug” policies — reforms put in place prior to his tenure when the state was trying to shed its reputation as the nation’s incarceration capital. He also demanded harsher penalties for violent minors. “I’m done with them. It doesn’t matter how old they are,” Landry, a Republican, said during a news conference in Baton Rouge. “We’ve got 18,000 acres at Angola — if it was up to me, I would send them all there for the rest of their lives.”’

Prison System In Tennessee: A Cycle Of Racism And Control

March 14, 2026 Lindy Drolsum, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Tennessee likes to call itself “tough on crime.” But what that usually means is locking up kids too young, targeting Black and brown communities, and pouring public money into the private prisons that exist because of an exploitative and racist system. Growing up in rural Tennessee, I saw punishment take priority over real support at every turn. There was a kid in my high school who came to class daily on downers — probably Xanax, which we all knew he sold. My teacher would pull him into the hallway to talk, trying to keep him awake and connected.

We’ve Been Here Before, And We Know What Comes Next

March 2, 2026 Kyle K. Moore, Portside. , , ,
We’re a little over a year into the second Trump presidency. That second term began with the establishment of “The Department of Governmental Efficiency” (DOGE), a sustained campaign to discredit and undermine the usefulness and work of federal institutions and employees, and the issuance of multiple executive orders rescinding prior guidance on equity, including those related to federal affirmative action. The dismantling of entire federal agencies, alongside massive cuts in their capacity to make progress toward equity goals, swiftly followed (USAID, HHS, and the Department of Education are some of the most impacted agencies).

The Military Occupation Of Washington, DC: Then And Now

September 10, 2025 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , , ,
DC residents are living under an expanded military occupation ordered by Donald Trump that many are calling “unprecedented.” However, this is not the first time this action has been taken. Understanding this history is essential to properly contextualize what is happening now and to focus on the correct narrative and issue to fight going forward. I grew up in Southeast DC after my mom moved us from our hometown of Jarratt, VA to a little apartment in a four-unit building on Parkland Place when I was about five or six years old. We enjoyed free summer concerts in the park across the street from our building. I used to walk about a half a mile to Malcolm X Elementary school during the week, and to Liff’s Market across the street from that school every Sunday to get the paper for my mom and snacks for myself.

American Gulag: Alcatraz And Its Offspring

August 6, 2025 Peter Greenhill, Popular Resistance. , , ,
As if we needed more examples of the incompetence and insanity of the current federal regime, along comes their obsession with Alcatraz, in both the nominal and the actual sense.  They have been looking at the historic San Francisco Bay island prison, now a museum, with the idea in mind of renovating it and reopening it as an active prison.  This foolishness is on the heels of opening a new prison facility in the swamps of Florida that they have christened, with great pleasure, “Alligator Alcatraz.”  Both ideas come from the diseased tyrannical minds exercising destructive control over the whole country and assaulting what little remains of morality.

Trump’s Concentration Camps Are Not New To The United States

July 18, 2025 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Donald Trump is perhaps unique among modern presidents in his determination to fulfill his very retrograde vision for the United States. He goes beyond the cajoling and arm twisting that other presidents were known for, and dispenses with precedent, the Congress and the law itself in order to realize a key part of his vision, getting as many Global South immigrants out of the U.S. as he possibly can. He was quite serious about enacting a mass deportation policy. Immigrants attempting to follow the law and legalize their status are set upon in courtrooms by masked agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and are taken to detention facilities.

Putting Reentry Out Of Business

May 8, 2025 Calvin John Smiley, In These Times. , , , ,
About a decade ago, Richard Trumka, then president of the AFL-CIO, told a crowd gathered at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles that ​“the theme of this event is mass employment, not mass incarceration.” A year earlier, the AFL-CIO had committed to addressing mass incarceration as a labor issue. In his speech at the jobs and reentry organization, where he was introduced by labor leader María Elena Durazo, Trumka described why: ​“When some people are forced to work for close to nothing, all workers’ living standards are pushed down.” Then, Trumka repeated the refrain ​“it’s a labor issue because,” followed by explanations about mass incarceration’s impact on families, communities, the economy and voting, among others, until finally: ​“because labor rights and social justice and civil rights are intertwined.”

Ruling To Return Kilmar Abrego Garcia Gives Clues About How to Fight Back

April 4, 2025 Jill Clark-Gollub, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
On Friday, April 4, a Federal District Judge ordered that Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran man who was erroneously and illegally sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, be returned home by midnight on Monday, April 7, 2025. During a hearing in the lawsuit filed to demand his return, the judge discussed with the Justice Department attorney many ways in which Abrego García’s arrest and deportation were unlawful. She also reached the resounding conclusion that the US government still has effective custody over him and can restore him “to status quo”—meaning living with his family and working legally in Maryland.

Black Prisoners Organize For Dignity In Angola

February 24, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , ,
This Black History Month, Peoples Dispatch is exploring the history of the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, the site of centuries of Black struggle—first against slavery, then convict leasing, and now the US prison system, which some label as slavery in the modern day. At the helm of the US’s notorious system of mass incarceration sits Louisiana State Penitentiary. Apart from being the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, this prison, nicknamed “Angola” after the former plantation site that it sits on, is an example of the conditions of modern-day slavery that the US prison system inflicts upon its disproportionately Black incarcerated population.

The Military To Prison Pipeline

January 5, 2025 Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Like old soldiers around the country, a group of former service members gathered in Crest Hill, Illinois to remember fallen comrades on Memorial Day, 2024. Several months later, The Veteran, a newspaper published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, ran a photo of the event they attended. It shows a multi-generational group of men--white, Black and Latino—lined up proudly between two flags. In his dispatch to the newspaper, African-American Navy veteran Robert Maury explained why everyone in the Stateville Veterans Group was wearing government issued clothing of a non-military sort.

The Problem With Joe And Hunter

December 7, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden was inevitable and inevitably controversial. Hunter Biden is the quintessential nepotism baby, the recipient of privileges such as being appointed to the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Burisma paid him $50,000 per month for doing nothing other than existing with the last name Biden. The younger Biden was the butt of jokes for years, a cocaine addict who somehow managed to never have any interaction with the criminal justice system and who achieved nothing without an assist from his father.
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