Abstract Jailhouse lawyering is a form of resistance against the prison industrial complex that seeks to silence and disappear prisoners. This Essay describes the author’s acts of resistance, or growth as a jailhouse lawyer, from arrest to imprisonment using critical race theory and abolition theory. While it tells one person’s stories, it is both shaped by those who taught him and the...
Abolitionist Reforms and the Immigrants' Rights Movement
Abstract This Article discusses the criteria for abolitionist reforms and assesses whether current immigrants’ rights demands move us towards a more transformative agenda, one that questions the legitimacy of the state. The Article argues that calls to invest in immigrant communities and to release immigrants from detention can be radical reforms that move us closer to abolition if they are...
Abolishing Racist Policing With the Thirteenth Amendment
This Essay is also forthcoming in our print edition. Abstract Policing in America has always been about controlling the Black body. Indeed, modern policing was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy; its roots are found in slavery. Policing today continues to protect and serve the racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. But a string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving the...