The Incarceration Issue

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Guest Editor: Christopher Blackwell
An award-winning journalist currently incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center in  Shelton, WA. He is serving a 45-year prison sentence for taking another human’s life during a drug robbery—something he takes full accountability for. He was raised in a mixed Native American/white family in the Hilltop Area of Tacoma, Washington, one of the roughest places to live in the country– ravaged by over-policing, gangs, violence, and drugs.  Christopher and his wife, Dr. Chelsea Moore, co-founded Look2Justice, a grassroots organization led by criminal legal system-impacted people that works to transform the legal system by providing civic education and empowerment programs for incarcerated people and their loved ones. His writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, HuffPost, Marshall Project, Insider, Jewish Currents, BuzzFeed, The Appeal, and many more. He is currently in the process of working on a book about solitary confinement. 

 

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• Letters from the editors: Christopher Blackwell and Glenn Ruga

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Photo essays:

• Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project by Sara Bennett

• Final Exposure: Portraits from Death Row by Lou Jones

• What My Daughter Learns of the Sea: Women in the Las Calinas Detention and Reentry Facility by Brian Frank

• Quests for Authenticity: Artists in California Prisons by Peter Merts

• The Prison Within by Katherin Hervey & Massimo Bardetti

• Still Doing Life: 25 Years Later by Howard Zehr

• Absence of Being by Michele Zousmer

 

Other essays

• Incarceration of a Nation by Christopher Blackwell

• Open Eyes Within Hidden Places by April Harris

• Interview with Jamel Shabazz by Ryan M. Moser
  (Shabazz  is a renown photography documenting the Black experience in New York and was a correctional officer at Rikers Island in New York from 1983-2003)

• Book review—Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do About It Review by Antoine Davis

• Resources

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