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Originally published by Foreign Affairs, September 18, 2023.

In 2003, mass atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region shocked the world. A coalition of human rights organizations mobilized in response, accusing Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his Janjaweed militia of genocide. Although the United Nations did eventually dispatch troops to protect Sudanese civilians, the response was […]

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Democratic societies need prisons – so the argument goes — as the harsh side of rule of law. No one is equal before the law, a key premise of democracy, if rules are broken without consequences. In this way, equality tempers freedom, allowing a justification for incarceration.

But prisons do not protect rule of […]

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As cited in a New York Times article this week, the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project recently announced that is releasing a “comprehensive public resource documenting prison deaths nationwide.” Already, their research demonstrates a devastating impact of COVID on incarcerated people:

In 2020, at least 6,182 people died in U.S. prisons.  This […]

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In this 32 minute interview, WPF’s Bridget Conley interviews Armand Coleman, Executive Director of the Transformational Prison Project (TPP). TPP’s mandate is “to provide spaces where those who have been harmed and those who have done the harming can come together and engage in dialogue—to build understanding and empathy toward those who have been […]

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A tale of two prisons

On January 20, 2023 By

Prison reform efforts in Massachusetts have revealed a tale of two prisons. There is the rhetorical prison that exists in Department of Correction’s (DOC) pronouncements and in the language of the 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act (CJRA). CJRA was once heralded as the “blueprint” for criminal justice reform in the United States for the […]

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The trauma of engagement with the justice system is hard to understand unless you have experienced it. Recovering from it is a lifelong process. We aim to make it better for people coming behind us.

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