Metropolitics

“There Is No Excused Absence in Prison”

Tanisha Cannon & Dylan O'Donoghue — 2024-07-19T05:00:00Z

More than 150 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the fight to abolish forced labor in the United States continues. In this interview, Dylan O'Donoghue talks with Tanisha Cannon, organizer and managing director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, about her work campaigning for a California state constitutional amendment that would abolish slavery in prisons.
In fall 2023, Dylan O'Donoghue, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University–Camden, conducted an interview with Dr.

- Interviews / prison, labor, forced labor, prison labor, United States, California, slavery

Photographing Prison

2020-10-02T05:00:00Z

The photographs presented here were taken by Andrea Eichenberger at the former men's and women's prison in Beauvais, in northern France, during its final year of operation and after its closure. Located in the heart of the city, the prison was originally run by the local bishopric under the Ancien Régime. It was briefly transformed into a hospital between 1813 and 1819, before becoming a prison départementale (county prison) in 1858. It closed in 2015, replaced by a new prison on the outskirts

- From the Field / prison, incarceration, France, Hauts-de-France, Northern France, Beauvais, image, photography, inmates, carceral space, experience of imprisonment, prison administration

Confronting Police Violence and an Unjust Justice System

Michele Graham — 2020-05-19T05:00:00Z

We publish Michele Graham's review of the 2018 book The War on Neighborhoods: Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided City as Black people in the US again endure the trauma of a murder in their community at the hands of police officers. Graham's reflections on the authors' findings (drawn from a neighborhood study in Chicago) emphasize the continuing legacies of historically racist policing, racist prosecution practices and racist incarceration patterns in the United States. The review

- Reviews / police violence, United States, Chicago, incarceration, prison, Black neighborhoods, neighborhood, justice, discriminatory policing, brutality

Incarceration, Human Rights, and Health: Life and Death in Rikers Island

Tawana Anthony — 2019-06-25T05:00:00Z

Tawana Anthony applauds Homer Venters' Life and Death in Rikers Island for exposing the institutional indifference to human rights that pervades Rikers Island, but notes that the book is silent on the structural changes in both the corrections and healthcare systems that would lead to significant and durable improvements.
Homer Venters, a member of Physicians for Human Rights and former head of Correctional Health Services in New York City, uses a human-rights perspective to examine

- Reviews / prison, incarceration, human rights, health, health risks, New York, United States, Rikers Island

Teaching Art and the History of Tattoos at Rikers Island: An Interview with Tamara Santibanez

Lisa Jean Moore — 2019-01-22T06:00:00Z

An interview with Tamara Santibanez, who teaches art and the cultural and social history of tattoos to youth offenders at Rikers Island prison, explains how tattoos can help develop visual literacy and explores tattooing's potential to empower inmates both personally and professionally.
Arts programs in jails and prisons support the therapeutic, developmental, and vocational goals of incarcerated persons. Artists are uniquely positioned to help prisoners express their identities, address

- Interviews / United States, New York, art, artist, arts, prison, education, art worlds, art economies, tattoos, youth offenders, Rikers Island