The history of American prison visitations are a mix of racism ("black men, denied sex, will riot in jail") and compassion — especially the late 1960s' ground-breaking, multi-day family visitation programs that allowed prisoners to play and live with their children for a whole weekend a few times every year.

The Dallas Six is a group of prisoners who were beaten, shocked and gassed by prison guards who had previously beaten them in retaliation for complaints about abuse in solitary confinement.

A number of our favorite artists have shared their vision of Kevin Segall's fantastic Collector's Shangri-La. Kevin would love to send you a set! — Read the rest

Ramsey Orta was hounded, framed, beaten and jailed by cops who also beat his disabled mother — and he's not the only citizen journalist who faced reprisals for recording the NYPD's public execution of Eric Garner.

Molly Crabapple writes, "With the exception of Vice News, ISIS has permitted no foreign journalists to document life under their rule in Raqqa. Instead, they rely on their own propaganda. To create these images, I drew from cell-phone photos an anonymous Syrian sent me of daily life in the city. — Read the rest

Randy Credico is challenging Cuomo in the primary; so much for the NYPD's vaunted stop arresting photographers memo.

Molly Crabapple writes, "For My latest piece for Vice, I spoke with the men paid $200/month to build the Louvre and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi."

Someone at Goldman Sachs fatfingered an email and sent confidential data out to the wrong person.

Matt Taibbi's The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap is a scorching, brilliant, incandescent indictment of the widening gap in how American justice treats the rich and the poor. Taibbi's spectacular financial reporting for Rolling Stone set him out as the best running commentator on the financial crisis and its crimes, and The Divide -- beautifully illustrated by Molly Crabapple -- shows that at full length, he's even better. Cory Doctorow reviews The Divide.

Molly Crabapple sez, "In the past three years, I've sketched many courtrooms and seen the "widget factory" that is the criminal justice system firsthand. Courtrooms are a violent theater. The violence happens off-scene. The courtroom itself is the performative space, the stage where the best story triumphs, and where all parties, except (usually) the defendant, are just playing parts." — Read the rest

Molly Crabapple sez, "I wrote this piece about a program in Phoenix called Project ROSE
arrests sex workers in massive raids and brings them to a church,
where they are held extra-judicially and offered alternative sentences
without lawyers, judges, or due process."

Our friend, artist Molly Crabapple, started Dr. Sketchy's figure drawing sessions in Brooklyn in 2005. Since then, it's grown into a network of art extravaganzas around the world. I have been to a bunch of the LA-based Dr. Sketchy sessions, which are produced by Bob Self of Baby Tattoo Books. — Read the rest

"The possibility of success is used to call the majority of people failures." -Molly Crabapple, Filthy Lucre

A spectacular PSA from the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls on Americans to join in a rally against mass surveillance on Oct 26, featuring everyone from Phil Donahue and John Cusak to Molly Crabapple and David Segal, as well as Congressmen like John Conyers, prominent whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Klein, Thomas Drake, and a many others, making the case for limiting government surveillance. — Read the rest

Molly Crabapple returns to where American locks up the the war on terror's inconvenient prisoners, a place where "self-satisfaction extends up the chain of command." (Previously)

The guards spoke in cliches. Working in prison was "doing the mission."

Last weekend saw the presentation of a slew of major science fiction and fantasy awards, starting with the Hugo awards, whose winners included John Scalzi's Redshirts (for best novel); Brian K Vaughan's Saga (for best graphic story); a(nother) best editor Hugo to Patrick Nielsen Hayden (my editor!); — Read the rest

NYC has a law prohibiting "loitering for the purposes of engaging in a prostitution offense" which lets cops arrest whomever they feel like, on the strength of their conviction that the person is probably a sex-worker, on the basis of flimsy circumstantial evidence like carrying a condom, talking to men, or wearing tight clothes. — Read the rest

Our friend Molly Crabapple and others are featured in this excellent PBS short documentary about illustrators.

Illustrators articulate what a photograph cannot. Using an array of techniques and styles, illustrators evoke stories and meaning in a variety of mediums, from editorial illustration in magazines and newspapers, to comics books, to activist media.

Molly Crabapple on the dangers of being a disruptive kid around hysterically risk-averse adults:

In December, a New Jersey schoolboy was arrested for drawing in class. In the post-Sandy Hook rage to blame anything (guns, video games, internet-addicted youth) the easiest thing to blame is always the kid who fails at the blankly inoffensive ideals of childhood.

Here are our top posts of 2012. Now you can enjoy them all over again!