Inquest

This week Inquest shared more short work from formerly incarcerated filmmakers, this time focused on reentry, and recounted the day that Ivanka Trump visited the Indiana Women's Prison. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

Stream two short films from Represent Justice’s 2026 Ambassador Films collection, each exploring the role that strong community can play in supporting reentry. The second in a series we’re sharing this fall focused on Represent Justice’s 2026 Ambassadors cohort.

Jeremy wrote for @inquest.bsky.social about how he's continued to report despite placed in solitary confinement for his journalism. But it hasn't been easy.

"The most hopeful rooms in a prison are still rooms inside a prison." On what prison reform narratives will never let you see.

This week, Inquest shared insights into how incarcerated journalists investigate complex stories while their freedoms are extremely curtailed, and offered an analysis of the Department of Homeland Security's racist Instagram posting. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"Reporting from prison is a lot like reporting from a war zone." Incarcerated journalist JoinJeremy with a meta-analysis of how his reporting on Texas prison overdose deaths illustrates the challenges and dangers of reporting from inside.

For @inquest.bsky.social I wrote about how the Department of Homeland Security weaponizes kitsch in its social media posts to make its work seem wholesome. inquest.org/in-trumps-am...

"The regressive veneration of Columbus speaks to the petty and contrarian sensibility that animates much of DHS social media." Our latest, on how Trump's DHS uses social media memes to telegraph the racist intent of its immigration policing.

This week Inquest shared a personal essay on finding abolitionist ideas while incarcerated, and an exploration of how diversion is frequently just another form of punishment rather than a true alternative to carceral logic. Get the full recap here: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

“We Have These Beautiful Dreams” How a literary prize judged by incarcerated readers builds connection across prison walls and nurtures imagination in the face of oppression. Story via @inquest.bsky.social

"You can read books all day long, but if you’re not practicing, that’s not abolition." Stevie Wilson on becoming an abolitionists.

"Diversion is not in fact a tool of decarceration but a deeply embedded part of carceral capitalism." Scholar Maresi Starzmann on the lie at the heart of diversion.

This week Inquest covered the winners of this year's Inside Literary Prize and shared firsthand accounts of giving birth behind bars. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"I think back to those early nights in jail, still pregnant, drinking cups of water to fight off hunger." Marissa Potts on the terror and heartbreak of being pregnant while incarcerated.

"The initiative grew out of Freedom Reads 's work bringing libraries to prisons: alongside expanding access to literature, the organization wanted to create a platform for incarcerated readers to participate in the broader literary conversation."

This week Inquest covered the two-century history of U.S. prison publications and shared memories of experiencing 9/11 from inside Louisiana's Angola prison. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

Kristine Guillaume on the turbulent history of prison newspapers and their complex relationship to carceral censorship—part of our Defending Prison Journalism series.

"I wanted to hear somebody familiar—somebody I loved—tell me where they were. Some ordinary place that I could picture in my mind and keep them there." @really-mad.bsky.social on experiencing 9/11 inside of Louisiana's Angola prison.

This week Inquest partnered with Represent Justice to share three short films by formerly incarcerated filmmakers—streamable for free on our site—and wrapped up our 9/11 series with a reflection on Muslims and race. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"After 9/11, there was an eruption of knowledge that sought to understand what violence and discrimination against Muslims meant." Atiya Husain on how to grapple with the meaning of the War on Terror vis-a-vis race. Part of 25 Years Since 9/11 series w/ Acacia Magazine

This week, Inquest and Acacia Magazine continued our 25 Years Since 9/11 series with an essay on post-9/11 Islamophobia on death row, and an exposé about the lucrative surveillance economy that sprung up under the pretense of homeland defense. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"Twenty-five years after 9/11, the security state is no longer a response to any particular threat. It is an accumulation regime—a machine for converting tax dollars into corporate revenue." Brendan McQuade & Ed Vogel w/ Acacia Magazine

This week Inquest and Acacia launched our copublished series 25 Years Since 9/11 with an essay about the experience of being an incarcerated Muslim after the attacks, and an interview about being surveilled by the NYPD for being Muslim. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"The post-9/11 hostility being faced by incarcerated Muslims was not abstract." Incarcerated writer Rashon Venable on being Muslim in NY prisons after 9/11. Part of our ongoing 25 Years Since 9/11 series with Acacia.

"We are now a quarter century into the so-called War on Terror, which either engineered or expanded (and sometimes both) many of the horrors around human rights and civil liberties that we face today." New series launched today with Acacia magazine on 9/11 at 25.

This week, Inquest shared exclusive reporting about the struggles of incarcerated cancer patients, and an international study on the role of policing in keeping poor people and people of color marginalized. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"The rhetoric of policing, which portrays the periphery and its residents as a threat to the rest of the city, is followed by policies and violent actions that attempt to contain marginalized population[s]." —Sebastián Sclofsky / NYU Press

"U.S. prisons are both the site of—and the engine for—a vast medical crisis." —Jeshua Noel reporting from inside Missouri's FCC prison.

"I just need to be in an environment where I will heal." Incarcerated journalist Jeshua Noel reports on the challenges of receiving cancer care in Missouri's prisons.

No First Amendment for prison journalists The law has constructed a regime in which incarcerated journalists are silenced and punished for telling the truth about what happens behind these walls. Read more by incarcerated journalist Ivan Kilgore in @inquest.bsky.social:

This week, Inquest shared first-person reporting on prison dog attacks, and reviewed a new book about police unions. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"When the dog finally bit me, I did not feel it immediately. It was thrashing my leg like a toy but I was in shock, and so terrified that this might be where I die." —Jaeon Chavis, incarcerated in Virginia

Wrote about @stschrader1.bsky.social’s great new book for @inquest.bsky.social

"My biggest fear since being here had been being attacked by one of those dogs. Yet here I was." Incarcerated Virginian Jaeon Chavis shares the harrowing story of being one of the hundreds of people attacked by guard dogs in the state's prisons.

"Police almost never express solidarity with other workers and expect their own labor to be treated preferentially." Sandeep on the democratic stakes of cop's anti-union unions

"A critical history of the police union movement, tracing how it emerged as a profoundly anti-democratic institution." Sandeep reviews Stuart Schrader 's new book 'Blue Power' on the emergence of police unions as firewalls against accountability.

This week, Inquest shared a call to decarcerate social work, and published a personal essay on the bureaucratic hell of parole. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...

"Community supervision would be more aptly named community surveillance, and it plays an integral role in maintaining the punishment bureaucracy. It is incentivized to keep people on their watch for as long as possible." —Wesley Vaughan

"In the 17 months I was on [my parole officer's] caseload, I never had a permanent address approved by her. She only ever approved one W-2 job & it was temporary." Wesley Vaughan on the decarceral urgency of freeing people from parole so they can put their lives back together

"When the government finally recognizes the damage of its own failed policies, it frequently turns to social workers—and the language of compassion—to mitigate harm and make its systems look more humane." —Caroline Strudwick on freeing social work from the carceral state

This week, Inquest shared stories from elderly people in California who are sentenced to indefinite incarceration, and offered an argument for making Post-Incarceration Syndrome a formal diagnosis. Get the full recap: mailchi.mp/inquest.o...