"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:

"Correctional administrators outsource food service to corporations to reduce facility operating costs, with detrimental consequences." @biancatylek.bsky.social @worthrises.bsky.social

"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

You can check out a piece we released in @inquest.bsky.social to get a sense of our methodology. We use participatory research as an entry point to bring incarcerated people into the abolitionist movement and engage in political education. inquest.org/why-incarcer...

"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

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

"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.bsky.social & Zhandarka Kurti

"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

"Given who he is and how he is, Calvin’s story will be for many a much-needed balm in this time of agitation and dislocation. In it, readers may hear echoes of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning." —Bidish Sarma

"Every teacher I had ever known had given up on me when I was free. Who would teach me now that I was in chains?" —Hugh Williams Jr.

This week Inquest explored what gets lost when attempts to quanify the "success" of reentry focus only on recidivism, and share our recommended reading list of decarceral books. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"Sensitive, rich in detail, and full of lessons for those who continue to struggle with how to transform not just our prisons but the world we share together." Garrett Felber's A CONTINUOUS STRUGGLE made @inquest.bsky.social's year in books! 🎊📚 inquest.org/the-year-in-...

Before the NYU Press office closes for the holidays, we're thrilled to share that @inquest.bsky.social has spotlighted "How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic" in their Year in Books! This significant work centers principles of disability justice amid the early COVID-19 crisis in NYC.

A curated selection from our favorite decarceral books of the year, with topics ranging from prison book programs and dangerously bad prison food to disability justice and the fight to stop the world’s tallest jail from being built.

"The dominant narrative of reentry, measured narrowly through recidivism and framed around individual responsibility, fails to reflect the lived realities of those returning from incarceration."

"Success should not be defined in punitive terms, but rather by the ability to confront trauma with care & intention." @xarnesonx.bsky.social & Bridget Conley on using restorative justice to reframe reentry as a life-long process of healing community & private trauma

"My journey to manhood has required me to prove I’m neither a monster nor a statistic." Story via @inquest.bsky.social.

This week Inquest offered a first-person essay about being sentenced to life as a young adult, plus reflections on why prison furniture is so awful. Also, we found out we are listed in Best American Essays! Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

Congratulations to Vic Liu, whose Inquest essay "Hell Is Real and It Is Beige," a lyric account of kafkaesque bureaucracy experienced while visiting a prison, has been listed as a Notable Essay in 'The Best American Essays 2025'! Please reread and, if moved, support our work.

"A friend reminded me that while I couldn’t undo the past, I could still offer context and truth to the story the world saw." @unchaindevin.bsky.social on the power of incarcerated people telling their own stories

"I became a number before I became a man." So begins @unchaindevin.bsky.social 's harrowing first-person essay about aging into adulthood while incarcerated in a NY prison—and what it takes to not only survive but transform under such brutal conditions.

"I recall an older [incarcerated Rikers book group] participant urging me to sit in a moveable chair, pointing out how uncomfortable the stools are. The dissonance between the space and the people within it is loud." A deep dive into carceral furniture

"Configurations are designed to allow surveillance and control. But I’m [specifically] interested in the ways that the senses, when faced with this sort of furnishing, are gradually stifled." Sara Medwin on how even prison *furniture* is dehumanizing

This week Inquest covered the exploitative world of reality TV filmed inside prisons, and how in Texas a quirk in the parole system can keep technically freed people locked up. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"Our lives are not entertainment." Formerly incarcerated NYC organizer Vidal Guzman on how carceral reality TV steals vulnerable people's stories

"Today, numerous reality shows mine incarceration for profit. What began as a niche genre has grown into a profitable industry that enjoys low production costs and thrives on human suffering." Formerly incarcerated organizer Vidal Guzman on entertainment industry profiteering

"Family and loved ones often have to fill the gap and help significantly with reentry plans. But if an incarcerated person doesn’t have outside support, they are basically stranded." Xandan Gulley on being paroled after a long sentence and nowhere to go:

"Those of us freed by the parole board often have nowhere to go, and continue to sit in prison until we are essentially kicked out to fend for ourselves." Incarcerated author Xandan Gulley on why paroled doesn't necessarily equal freed.

For #GivingTuesday we are sharing a thread of some 2025 features from incarcerated authors. About a third of our contributors are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, and we believe in the necessity of centering them in the work of ending mass incarceration. [1/9]

Today, on #MovementMediaMonday we join partners across the country in amplifying media that moves us toward justice. Truth-telling is an act of resistance. For the people who write from inside prisons, it’s also an act of courage.

"'I knew what my reality was. This is what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life: visiting a prison.'"

"To abolish the family is not to outright get rid of the family and leave people as isolated individuals. Instead, family abolition seeks to preserve and expand the best part of caring families while rejecting the family as the only site of care and love."

"You got the delicious / corn bread and turkey / Dressing, Slice turkey / [...] / There are about six / Officers standing in the / Dining hall, as we eat. / Watching ... / Just so no man / Double back" —from Leon Johnson's poem "Holiday Special Meal"

One of our writers, @joinjeremy.org, spoke to @inquest.bsky.social, about the obstacles he and other incarcerated journalists encounter when trying to share what is really happening inside our prisons, jails, and detention centers—the most secluded public institutions in the United States.

"A lot of my nieces & nephews were born while I was incarcerated, so for my 1st Thanksgiving after I left prison, I wanted to go visit them. But my parole officer refused to let me go. The 1st year I was home, I spent my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, & New Year’s alone."

In 2026 Inquest will pursue print distribution of our free digital magazine for people within the prison system. A gift from you can help unlock a quarterly print publication designed for circulation inside of prisons. inquest.org/donate/

This week Inquest covered the growing real estate trend of prison flipping, and the inner workings of extractive capitalism's merger with mass incarceration. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

At Inquest and our publisher @endmassinc.bsky.social we believe that every voice has the power to move systems—and people—toward freedom. Yet, too often, the voices of those most affected by incarceration are intentionally silenced. A gift from you helps change that.

“Closing prisons is not the end point of abolition, but the starting point.” Artist/activist Ashley Hunt. Read more:

"Building an abolitionist future requires recognizing the harm and trauma that occurred in carceral spaces and paying homage to those who were lost to—or who survived—the system." Abigail Glasgow on challenges + necessity of finding new uses for carceral buildings.

Thanks @inquest.bsky.social for featuring an excerpt from Legal Plunder: The Predatory Dimensions of Criminal Justice.

"Penal operations that isolate, deprive, and control do more than just warehouse; they make incarcerated populations productive by ushering them into projects that generate substantial public and private revenues." @joshpage.bsky.social & @joesoss.bsky.social on prisons & $$$

"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 on what happens when you merge extractive capitalism + the carceral state

Congratulations, Calvin Duncan! We were fortunate to get to talk with Duncan last year and hear in his own words what keeps him motivated to fight for people's freedom. inquest.org/ambassadors-...

This week, Inquest launched our Defending Prison Journalism series with an article on the perils faced by incarcerated journalists, and what must be done to protect them. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"Prison journalism should not be starved, stifled, or silenced. In a free society, attendant to the needs of all its people, including most especially wards of the state, government institutions should be held accountable to the public—by a free press."

"Journalists behind bars, describing endless forms of payback, told us that retaliation was the greatest constraint on their work." Andrew Crespo & Corinne Shanahan of @endmassinc.bsky.social break down the ways prisons stop reporting of what goes on behind their walls.

"On June 9, 2023, an audience at Carnegie Hall witnessed an opera written by a person who had been convicted of murder, in collaboration with his fellow incarcerated artists. Over two years later, this fact is still striking to me." Read this story in @inquest.bsky.social:

On Veterans Day, thinking about the military-to-prison pipeline that so many have experienced

This week Inquest covered the long history of opposition to Atlanta's racist policing, and how not even Sing Sing prison could keep Joseph Wilson from composing operas for Carnegie Hall. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...