"Although I was eventually released from jail and all charges against me were dismissed, I still have never had my parental rights reinstated or been reunited with Mansa and Kimoni." Toia Potts's terrifying first-person account of family policing.

"The youngest children sentenced to death in U.S. history were African American and Native American boys." Ngozi Ndulue offers a moving history of racial injustice, a preview of 'The Slow Death of the Death Penalty' from @NYUpress

This week, Inquest learned from the experiences of a former editor-in-chief of a prison newspaper, and heard about the experiences of studying mass incarceration as an undergrad when you have a formerly incarcerated father. Get the full recap: https://t.co/hzVMbSRw4Z

"In 2024, I was transferred without requesting it. Numerous staff members told me of the warden’s displeasure with my writing. Prison officials couldn’t infringe on my right to free speech, but they could subject me to what [they] call 'diesel therapy.'"

"We faced shrinking food portions [&] high prices for communication, but we didn’t write about them... No warden ever said, ‘You can’t print that,’ yet the threat of retaliation kept us in check." Phillip Vance Smith II on running a prison newspaper.

"The barriers that keep prisons functional are not only—perhaps not even primarily—the physical walls trapping people inside; they are the theoretical barriers that disable flow between worlds."

"Part of decarceral work involves bringing the carceral experience into reality for people who have fallen into the trap of ignorance. Carcerality must be felt to be understood." Chela Wetzel on merging study and lived experience:

@BiancaTylek @WorthRises 'The Prison Industry' from @BiancaTylek @WorthRises @thenewpress is recommended in our Year in Books by our EIC Andrew Crespo: "In this book, Tylek and Worth Rises offer the movement to end mass incarceration a critically helpful tool."

"Correctional administrators outsource food service to corporations to reduce facility operating costs, with detrimental consequences." @BiancaTylek @WorthRises

@Joshpage @JoeSoss 'Legal Plunder' from @UChicagoPress is recommended in our Year in Books by Managing Editor @adammmcgee as "innovative and refreshingly frank."

"Since the mid-1980s, government and business interests have retrofitted criminal legal institutions so that they function as generators of revenue." @joshpage.bsky.social @joesoss.bsky.social

'How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic' @NYUpress was recommended in our Year in Books by Inquest Managing Editor @adammmcgee

"Public health experts had warned early on in the crisis that under conditions of such close confinement, prison facilities were bound to become epicenters of virus transmission." Tommaso Bardelli, Aiyuba Thomas & Dylan Brown

@reproutopia 'Enemy Feminisms' by @reproutopia @haymarketbooks was recommended in our Year in Books by Inquest editor @romaissaa_b who calls it "distinctive, poetic, and rupturing, slicing through conventional thinking to reveal uncomfortable truths."

"I think most people never imagine there could be such a thing as KKK feminism or fascist feminism. And yet there is, actually." @reproutopia

@JarrodShanahan 'Skyscraper Jails' from @JarrodShanahan & Kurti @haymarketbooks was recommended in our Year in Books by IEMI lawyer Joan Stefen who writes that it "provides a framework for campaigns to cut through the counterinsurgent narrative of carceral humanism."

"The most striking feature of the skyscraper jails’ design is the degree to which these buildings have been represented by their boosters as anything but facilities for large-scale human caging." @JarrodShanahan & Zhandarka Kurti

Felber's 'A Continuous Struggle' from @AKPressDistro was recommended in our Year in Books by Inquest editor Daniel Fernandez as "full of lessons for those who continue to struggle with how to transform not just our prisons but the world we share together."

"Sostre was a revolutionary thinker, organizer, and community educator who outlined a radical vision of individual freedom and collective liberation from conditions of oppression and captivity." —Garrett Felber

Duncan & Cull's 'The Jailhouse Lawyer' @PenguinBooks was recommended by Inquest EIC @ppremaldharia in our Year in Books, saying the book "illustrate[s] the incredible depth of [Duncan's] impact."