The Prison Abolition Issue
In our special Prison Abolition Issue, we asked prisoners across Canada and the U.S. to reflect on the question, "Can you imagine a world without prisons?" They write about surviving COVID outbreaks; unequal treatment of women and men inside; prisons as a tool of colonialism; the war on drugs and coercive drug treatment programs; what it would take to heal intergenerational trauma; participating in hunger strikes and prisoners' committees; and fighting to abolish prisons from inside them.
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MagazineHow the Prison Abolition Issue came to be
Roughly 10 members of the editorial collective – comprised of Inreach and Free Lands Free Peoples members, and Briarpatch staff – have met every two weeks since April to shape this special issue.
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MagazineEvidence of an unjust justice system
Governments criminalize poor people, and then allow companies to exploit prisoners’ basic needs for profit.
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MagazineFed up with being locked down
Prisons cause irreparable harm to the people inside them. Destroy the system before it can destroy more lives.
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MagazineOn Therapeutic Community
Why punitive, coercive, and obedience-based drug treatment programs in prison don’t work.
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MagazineDeath by a thousand cuts: Aging in Canadian prisons
Elderly prisoners need health care, not incarceration.
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Two poems from prison
No bullet, no sword, nor anything formed, / nothing short of a category 4 storm, / Could ever kill an Indian that’s immortal
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MagazineGuilty until proven innocent
Living on remand, it’s important to know how to fight for your rights when the justice system breaks its own rules.
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MagazineAbuse of authority
Correctional officers don’t help “correct” prisoners – most of them simply create an environment that’s toxic for both prisoners and other staff.
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MagazineCOVID and sexism in a women’s prison
Women have struggled to get what little we have in prison – but the COVID pandemic has stripped even that away.
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MagazineHealed people heal people
In a world without prisons, we could break the vicious cycle of generational poverty, trauma, and incarceration.
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Cosmetic change is not prison reform
“Prison reform” is an empty promise from politicians and corrections departments who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
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MagazineOne less prison to be torn down
How prisoners helped stop the construction of a new prison camp in Kentucky
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MagazineWhat does freedom feel like?
In unnaturally small prison cells, it’s common for prisoners’ eyesight to degrade due to a lack of stimulation, distance, and depth. It begs the question: which other senses does confinement diminish? To what degree? Do they come back?
