The Devilish History of Devil’s Island
French Guiana's Devil’s Island has witnessed some of humanity’s hardest moments, from the brutalities of slavery to the punishments of penal servitude.
Boven Digoel, the Prison Camp in the “Siberia of Indonesia”
The number of ethnic Chinese incarcerated in Boven Digoel in the 1920s was low, but the New Guinea colonial prison nonetheless shaped Sino-Malay literature.
The Impact JSTOR in Prison Has Made on Me
Tim Johnson, serving a life sentence in North Carolina, shares how access to JSTOR creates opportunities that cultivate change in prison and beyond.
Watching an Eclipse from Prison
For incarcerated people, being able to experience something collectively with those beyond the walls is a type of reprieve that buoys the soul and psyche.
Prisoners’ Pastimes
Isabella Rosner’s Stitching Freedom showcases embroidered works made by the incarcerated and examines this craft’s historical popularity behind bars.
The Cost of Inflation in Prison
In prisons across the country, the long history of legal forced labor intersects with present-day inflation.
Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation
“Except as punishment for a crime,” reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.
Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment
Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.
Visiting Christ’s Prison Cell
After Christian crusaders captured Jerusalem, the Prison of Christ featured on pilgrims' itineraries. But was Christ actually ever imprisoned there?
The Surprising Contents of an American POW’s Journal
There were 35 million prisoners of war held during World War II. One soldier's diary full of collages and drawings brings a human dimension to that number.