prison-industrial complex

67 posts

Why isn’t PEN America paying its incarcerated literary prize winners?

It started with a tweet. “I won the @PENamerica Prison Writing Contest in 2022 and never received the $250 prize, even after much back and forth via email, which continues to this day. I know of at least one other first place winner who never received their prize money, either,

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6 Min
By: Alex Tretbar, Natalye Childress

Never eat the candy on your pillow: Circle of trust

Dear Reader, “To be or not to be?” Hamlet famously asked this question in the play by the same name written by William Shakespeare. I first encountered the life-changing power of Hamlet when I signed up for a prison playwright’s circle called Voices Inside, created by Curt Tofteland

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5 Min
By: Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

Never eat the candy on your pillow: Release 

Dear Reader, This week’s subject is release. When I first stepped foot in prison, it felt like my life ended. What would release feel like? Would leaving prison be like a new beginning? Prison has a way of distorting time. Days become weeks that feel like years. Waiting on

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5 Min
By: Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

New York affordable housing proposal showcases non-carceral solutions

This past December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled plans for Seneca, a slate of new affordable housing units located at the site of the former Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem. The minimum-security men’s prison, located at West 110th Street across from Central Park, was shuttered in 2019

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6 Min
By: Tamar Sarai

Georgia bill threatens to expand cash bail and constrict charitable funding

A Georgia bill that would require cash bail for more than two dozen additional criminalized acts is moving forward in the state legislature. Senate Bill 63 passed through the Georgia General Assembly on Feb. 6 and now waits to be signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp. If passed, SB

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5 Min
By: Jocelyn James

Death Camp USA: From Zyklon B to nitrogen hypoxia

How we choose to fight capital punishment now will shape the future of our struggle against the carceral system

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5 Min
By: William C. Anderson

Never eat the candy on your pillow: Friend or foe?

Loneliness can make people vulnerable to exploiters, and prisons are deeply lonely places

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5 Min
By: Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

Never eat the candy on your pillow: Truth inside the fences

“There’s a reason some animals gnaw off their own limbs to escape a trap. That’s what jail and prison are: a trap”

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6 Min
By: Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

Prison as censorship: Exhibition curated by Mariame Kaba serves as an abolitionist call to action

“Because prisons are not just someplace else, somewhere else … They are our communities”

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9 Min
By: Jess Zhang

Never eat the candy on your pillow: This is what prison is like

Incarceration causes total and absolute loss—it is the absence of freedoms that compound punishment. Prison is the ultimate deprivation

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6 Min
By: Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

86 cents for a day of work is a reality for most incarcerated people

Incarcerated laborers are often left out of workers’ rights efforts, but they are vastly underpaid, underprotected, and unable to save for a life beyond bars

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9 Min
By: Tina Vásquez, Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

Movements of hope: Abolition and reparations in these times

Fighting racial capitalism and white supremacy is key to closing the “hope gap” between wanting and achieving reparations and abolition

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8 Min
By: Trevor Smith, David Ragland

Showing 12 of 67 total posts

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