Matthew J. Parker: Prison Reform Envisioned by a Convicted Felon
I’ve had a lot of things done to me in both jail and prison, but coddling was never one of them. Yet in the late 1980s and 1990s, I heard this word used continually to describe prisons
Larry Levis: François Villon on the Condition of Pity in Our Time
We’re broken buttons, we’re blown dust.
There’s not one tear left in all of us.
I know, for I am François Villon, murderer
Larry Levis: Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings
So that the truant boy may go steady with the State,
So that in his spine a memory of wings
Will make his shoulders tense & bend
Like a thing already flown
Amanda Alexander, Deanna Van Buren: The Care(ful) Work of Abolishing Prisons
How to kick our national addiction to prisons
Walter Pavlich: In the Belly of the Ewe
And so he told us how he had been sown
into the belly of a ewe by his father
and a couple of uncles…
Amy Roe: When Communities Say No One Should Stay in Jail Just Because They’re Poor
Five out of six people behind bars awaiting trial are there simply because they can’t afford bail. Community bail funds offer a solution. . When Dorothy Hinton-Adams was arrested for allegedly … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Tucson, 1970
I remember standing in a long line being processed into jail. Guy behind me is furious: they’ve handcuffed him to a transvestite who is smiling at his discomfort. They put … Continue reading
