Self-education recommendations
Read
A Talk to Teachers by James Baldwin
Report: Aide Says Nixon’s War on Drugs Targeted Blacks, Hippies by Tom LoBianco
Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy by Rick Perlstein
Foucault, Michel. 1979 [1975], translated by Alan Sheridan. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, “The Carceral,” pp. 293-309.
The End of Policing by Alex Vitale
After the Riot: The Capitalization of Justice and the Refiguring of Racialized Politics by Heath Pearson
Sotomayor’s Ringing Dissent by Matt Ford
What Protest Looks Like by Imani Perry
Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis
Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
When Truth is All You Have by Jim McCloskey
Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
Listen
Beyond Prisons Podcast (Available on most podcasting platforms)
Ear Hustle (Available on most podcasting platforms)
view
DuVernay, Ava (Director). 2016. 13th (on Netflix)
Sheldon, Elaine McMillion (Director). 2020. Tutwiler
Subscribe
Additional Resources
NPR interview with Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of ColorblindnessMariame Kaba's website - amazing activist, abolitionist, restorative justice practitioner)
Critical Resistance briefer on the Prison Industrial Complex (and their website more broadly)
Harvard Magazine article about Bruce Western, a sociologist specializing in the study of American mass incarceration
Prison Reform Advocates Speak Up for the Voiceless, Rolling Stone
Searching for the Truth about California's Prison Hunger Strike, Rolling Stone
The House I Live In, an award-winning documentary on the War on Drugs
Recent NYT opinion pieces on prison reform:
Writing Off Lives, Editorial, September 2013
A Possible Answer to California's Prison Woes, Editor's Blog, September 2013
Smarter Sentencing, Editorial, August 2013
Bad Prison Policy for Women, Editorial, August 2013
California's Continuing Prison Crisis, Editorial, August 2013
Help Thy Neighbor and Go Straight to Prison, Kristof, August 2013
Horrendous Abuse in Mississippi Prisons, Editorial, June 2013
A Conservative Case for Prison Reform, Viguerie, June 2013
The School-to-Prison Pipeline, Editorial, May 2013
Prison Could Be Productive, Room for Debate, December 2012
John TIerney's three-part NYT series, Time and Punishment:
For Lesser Crimes, Rethinking Life Behind Bars
Prison Population Can Shrink When Police Crowd Streets
Sam Dolnick's three-part NYT series, Unlocked, an investigation into NJ's halfway houses
As Escapees Stream Out, A Penal Business Thrives
At a Halfway House, Bedlam Reigns
The ACLU's Safe Communities, Fair Sentences Project
Report on Racially Biased Marijuana Arrests from the ACLU
Interactive Incarceration Statistics Map from The Sentencing Project