Illusions of Safety

On freedom from policing By Mariame Kaba We’re in the midst of yet another bipartisan crime panic. Democratic mayors in San Fran­cisco, Chicago, D.C., Atlanta, and New York City are loudly demanding “law and order”…




Force Multipliers

How the criminal, legal, and child welfare systems cooperate to punish families By Emma Peyton Williams The harmful effects of the criminal legal system on children are well-established. For years, evidence has shown that a…


Prison Lockdowns Are Becoming More Frequent

and More Brutal By Silja J.A. Talvi Every morning, Mary Frances Barbee wakes up and experiences a “microsecond of happiness before the terror sets in.” Barbee had a heart attack, transient ischemic attack and then…



Bail Reform: What’s at Stake

On any given day in 2020, roughly 630,000 people were locked up in local jails. The majority of them had not been convicted of a crime. After an arrest—wrongful or not—a person’s ability to leave…



California’s Civil Grand Juries

The last of their kind in the nation By Katy St. Clair There is a tenet of American democracy that has fallen by the wayside in most every state except for one: California. It’s the…


Educating for Democracy

By Michael Schwalbe The latest case of right-wing Republican meddling in the curriculum of North Carolina’s public universities comes in the form of a proposed requirement, engineered by the political appointees who constitute the UNC…