Resources to expand our understanding of the legal system and how it could be replaced or reformed:
Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore focus for a series of discussions.
- Abolition & the State (a discussion tool)
- Hope Is a Discipline: Mariame Kaba on Dismantling the Carceral State (audio interview)
- Abolition Is a Collective Vision: An Interview With Mariame Kaba (text of interview)
- No More Police: A Case for Abolition (book by Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie)
- Abolition Is a Collective Vision: An Interview With Mariame Kaba (text of interview)
- Life Without Police: The grand unintentional experiment (text)
- Police Accountability – How to get hidden records (text/video/resources)
- Alliance of Families for Justice (web site, organization)
- The Three Functions of Copaganda – Alex Karakatsanis (text)
- Yes, Black America Fears the Police. Here’s Why (text)
- New York’s Prison Package Ban Places New Burdens on the Incarcerated (text)
- Abolition and International Human Rights:
Taiwan’s Affirmation of Black American Abolitionist Movements (text) - Opinion: The Close to Home Act shows there’s a better way to youth incarceration (text)
- The future of solitary confinement in New York City jails (audio)
- Best of the Left: Why Prison Abolition is not Nearly as Scary as it Sounds (audio)
- Bail Reform Benefits (short text desc. of academic study)
- Young Turks’ Misleading Anti-Bail Reform Demagoguery (Citations Needed podcast)
Note: Young Turk critique aside, it is a good dissection of all who demagogue about bail reform and Willy Horton-type scare tactics. - Even More Broken Windows (Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything podcast)
- Africa Is a Country Podcast: Police and Power in South Africa (podcast)
- FBI Crime Data is Out. Here’s What You Need to Know. Lies, damned lies, and crime statistics. (text)
- Corporate crime:
- Why Didn’t Anyone Go to Prison for the Financial Crisis? (and generally, why less and less corporate crime is being prosecuted) (podcast)
- Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis (text)
- The endless cycle of corporate crime and why it’s so hard to stop (text)
- Kelly Lytle Hernández Amnesty or Abolition?
- Derecka Purnell How I Became a Police Abolitionist
- Revenue Over Public Safety (article)
- Incarceration and Injustice: Americas Jails (video author interview)
- No Selves to Defend: A Legacy of Criminalizing Women of Color for Self-Defense (short book)
- Alliance of Families for Justice (blog and web site)
- Chicago Police Torture Archive (text and web site)
- End the criminalization of survival (web site)
- John Jay Bail Reform Conference (7 hour conference)
- CT’s secretive police disciplinary system rarely leads to serious punishment (text)
- Teaching philosophy in a children’s prison has shown me the meaning of anger (text)
Videos, mostly on prosecutorial power (primarily from Sati)
Plea Bargains Creating A Criminal Underclass (podcast, 45-minute author interview), related to videos below
“A Prosecutor’s View: From Bureaucrat to Reformer | Josev Brewer | TEDxGreenville” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/6PjzNNgb-sA
“U.S. Prosecutors Have Too Much Power” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/pnrLEwAI7-Q
“Real Talk: Prosecutors and the Right to Counsel” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/0YJ9LAygSXE
“Just Mercy: Race and the Criminal Justice System with Bryan Stevenson” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/x5DfVmtKgzw
“True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight For Equality (HBO / KUNHARDT FILMS, 2019)” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/JfZPl4CFEUc
“The Power of Prosecutors: An Overview” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/k5jeoY4QB58
“Conversations with the Innocence Project: Prosecutorial Power and Accountability” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/3ZbF0M9pglI
“Reimagining the Role of the Prosecutor in the Community” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/9kf_66inTDo
“To Seek Justice: Defining the Power of the Prosecutor” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/XraeW42LSzY
“Redefining the Role of the Prosecutor within the Community: Panel 2: Former Prosecutors” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/Jml-e29a9u0
“In Search of Justice Rethinking the Role of the Prosecutor” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/CtcIETSVB8U
“The Power of the Prosecutor: A Reason Discussion” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/wHFMxWTLGk0
“The Power of the Prosecutor” Atlantic on YouTube
https://youtu.be/BDVaZFO7Mm8