The Origins of Stop-and-Frisk
Racist policing has a long lineage in urban America.
Racist policing has a long lineage in urban America.

Chesa Boudin is a socialist and the child of revolutionaries. Now he’s running for San Francisco district attorney on a platform of ending cash bail and undoing the war on drugs.

A new Criterion series of McCarthy-era noir films is a timely collection for an era of rising government repression — though you wouldn’t know it from Criterion’s oddly subdued promotion.

In 1992, Bill Clinton spoke from the mecca of American white supremacy to launch his "tough on crime" agenda.

Despite Trump’s posturing, crime is nowhere near top of mind for most of the American electorate. So why is Joe Biden running on a triangulating law-and-order message?

The Biden administration’s Justice Department is allowing global consulting firm McKinsey to defer prosecution for its extensive role in fueling the opioid epidemic.

Brazil's fascist president loves to say that “a good thug is a dead thug.” But the saying didn't start with him — it has deep roots in Brazil's violent, racist political economy.

District attorneys usually wield their power against working people. If Tiffany Cabán wins election for Queens district attorney tomorrow, she’ll use it to fight mass incarceration.

Narendra Modi’s government is clamping down on political dissent as part of its Hindu-nationalist project. The Indian authorities have used bogus charges of “terrorism” and “conspiracy” to keep critical intellectuals locked up for years at a time.

In Germany, that supposed bastion of liberal democracy, the state treats standing up for Kurdish rights as tantamount to terrorism — and hits activists with house searches, imprisonment, and even deportation.

Alice Diop made her name making subversive documentaries about multicultural working-class France. Her latest film, Saint Omer, fictionalizes a trial that led to a national scandal: a Senegalese-born woman who claimed witchcraft led her to murder her child.

Donald Trump loves to pick “winners” and “losers.” And right now, in the eyes of the American people, Trump can sense that he is a loser and Zohran Mamdani is a winner.

Sure, lock him up. Trump certainly deserves it. But it’s not clear this indictment is the best way to prosecute him.

To end police violence, we must end policing as we know it.

New York mayor Eric Adams and the city’s transit authorities have launched a zealous crackdown on “farebeating.” It’s exactly the wrong policy for a time of towering inequality and climate transition. Public transit should be free to all.

President Obama touts Camden as a model of police demilitarization. But the city has taken counterinsurgency surveillance to a new level.

A new federal proposal would punish banks that have committed crimes by preventing them from managing retirement funds. Wall Street disagrees — and is deploying an army of lobbyists to block the proposal.

In Colombia and around the world, right-wing paramilitaries and traffickers have adopted a populist feint to win over the communities they terrorize.

Socialists’ first task in Vladimir Putin’s appalling war on Ukraine: provide unconditional solidarity with its victims.

Decades of precedent, from RICO to asset forfeiture to “good faith” exceptions, have normalized warrantless search and gutted the Fourth Amendment. Hasan Piker’s detainment is the latest proof that constitutional rights are now largely a legal fiction.