Mass Incarceration: A Short Curriculum
The Alabama Solution offers a view inside America’s incarceration crisis unlike anything before it and could not come at a more critical time, as criminalization and detention of all kinds rise across the country. From Border Patrol violence on streets across America to highly publicized prison deaths in New York, to massive settlements stemming from sexual abuse in Los Angeles’ youth facilities, the public is watching and listening with concern. There is growing understanding that something is deeply wrong with America’s approach to criminalization, enforcement, and incarceration.
There is a wealth of information and storytelling about the American experience of incarceration, much of it from those who have directly faced the harms of imprisonment. Below is just a small selection of works to guide audiences looking to understand more about how mass incarceration came to be, what purpose it really serves, and the powers and politics it perpetuates. As importantly, these works can offer a starting point for those in search of the tools and the courage to resist incarceration and embrace the transformative solutions we really need.
Curriculum 101
An Introduction to Mass Incarceration and its Consequences
Understanding the basics of what incarceration and criminalization look like in this country, how they operate and the impact they have on people’s lives.
Curriculum 201
Transparency: Telling the Truth about Mass Incarceration
Moving into prison journalism, incarcerated writing, firsthand testimony, and the politics of visibility.
Curriculum 301
The Making and Unmaking of Mass Incarceration
Diving deeper into the mechanisms of the system and beginning to envision what ending mass incarceration might mean.
An Introduction to Mass Incarceration and its Consequences
Understanding the basics of what incarceration and criminalization look like in this country, how they operate and the impact they have on people’s lives.
Read
An American Marriage
Tayari Jones
Winner, 2019 NAACP Image Awards, Fiction
“I Have Been Here Too Long”
Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility
Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison
Joe Garcia, The New Yorker
The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander
Winner, 2011 NAACP Image Awards, Outstanding Non-fiction
She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away
Shoshana Walter, published in collaboration with Reveal, Mother Jones, USA Today, and the Marshall Project
Winner, 2025 Institute for Nonprofit News Best Investigative Journalism Award
Watch
We Need to Talk About Injustice
Bryan Stevenson, TED
A Formerly Incarcerated Father Opens Up to His Daughter
Produced by The Skin Deep
Listen
Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore on abolition
Chenjerai Kumanyika, The Intercept
Take Action
Courtwatch
How Community Transforms the Courts
Raj Jayadev
Transparency: Telling the Truth about Mass Incarceration
Moving into prison journalism, incarcerated writing, firsthand testimony, and the politics of visibility.
Read
Freedom Writers
An Inquest collection of essays about mass incarceration by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers
Finalist for 2025 National Magazine Awards in General Excellence
Felon
Dwayne Betts
Winner, 2020 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry; 2020 American Book Award
American Prison Newspapers, 1800s-present
Voices from the Inside, Reveal Digital
Why We Need Prison Journalism More Than Ever
Chris Blackwell and Emily Nonko, The Nation
When Reporting is a Crime
Andrew Crespo and Corinne Shanahan
Part of a multi-essay series on Defending Prison Journalism.
How prisons suppress prison journalism
Brian Nam-Sonenstein, Prison Policy Initiative
A Lethal Upbringing
Robert Lee Williams
Stillwater Awards 2026 Finalist for Best Feature
Hell Is Real and It Is Beige
Vic Liu
Selected for inclusion in Best American Essays 2025
Watch
TIME
The story of Fox and Rob Richardson, directed by Garrett Bradley
Winner, 2020 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary Competition Award, Directing; Peabody Awards Documentary honoree; Nominee, 2021 Academy Award, Best Documentary Feature
Inside Story
Video series, co-created by Lawrence Bartley and Donald Washington Jr., VICE Media and the Marshall Project
Winner, National Press Photographers Association contest on visual journalism, Team Video - Portfolio
The Visiting Room Project
Marcus Kondkar
Listen
Ear Hustle
Season 1, created by Nigel Poor, Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams
Winner, Webby Awards, 2018 Best Documentary
The Making and Unmaking of Mass Incarceration
Diving deeper into the mechanisms of the system and beginning to envision what ending mass incarceration might mean.
Read
We Do This Til We Free Us
Miriam Kaba
Policing the Crisis
Stuart Hall (Chapters 1-3)
Copaganda
Alec Karakatsanis
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
William Stuntz
Mauled: when police dogs are weapons
Invisible Institute and the Marshall Project
Winner, 2021 Pulitzer Prize, National Reporting; 2021 White House Correspondents’ Association Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability, 2021 Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award
Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change
James Forman, Jr, Maria Hawilo, Premal Dharia
Uprooting Violence
Phillip Vance Smith II
Best Reported Essay, 2025 Stillwater Awards
Watch
Philly D.A.
Directed by Ted Passon, Yoni Brook, and Nicole Salazar
The House I Live In
Directed by Eugene Jarecki
2012: Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize: Documentary; 2014 Peabody Award
Listen
In the Dark, Season Two
Hosted by Madeleine Baran
Winner, 2016 Peabody Award
Serial, Season Three
Hosted by Sarah Koenig
Winner, 2014 Peabody Award; 2019 Webby Awards, Best Series
Take Action
Visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Plan a trip with friends or family to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum museum in Montgomery, Alabama
Host a book club with the material from this curriculum!