How a Family Allowance Could End Poverty
An old idea to keep women at home could expand economic opportunities for the nation’s poorest—and middle-class—families.
The Breakdown of the Black Family
Any attempt to address mass incarceration has to begin with an effort to tackle crime—and the social conditions linked to its rise.
Prison: America’s Most Vile Export?
The U.S. incarceration problem is now the world’s to solve.
Moynihan, Mass Incarceration, and Responsibility
Good intentions and deep sympathies cannot counter corrosive doctrines and destructive policy.
A Critique That Misses the Point
Mass incarceration is a complicated problem—and deserves to be treated as such.
America Needs a Third Reconstruction
The problem of mass incarceration is a problem of high inequality.
Race Is Always the Issue
Blackness has been relentlessly disparaged in American discourse—both covertly and overtly.
Mass Incarceration Has Become the New Welfare
America's criminal-justice system has, in its failures, given way to policy that works against a disproportionate number of African Americans.
A Call for Hope in the Age of Mass Incarceration
The four-letter word helped African Americans surpass challenges in the past, and it should still be present in the face of today’s struggles.
A Family Weathers a Life Sentence
Odell Newton was 16 when he killed a cab driver. Four decades later, his family is still hoping for his release.
The Other Half of the Moynihan Report
A little-known memorandum from Daniel Patrick Moynihan offered President Johnson policy prescriptions to address the problems his report had identified.
The Moynihan Report: An Annotated Edition
A historian unpacks The Negro Family: The Case for National Action on its 50th anniversary.
Memo to Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz
In an April 20, 1964 memorandum, Daniel Patrick Moynihan made the case for more aggressive action on behalf of African Americans.
The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that’s left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they’ve failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family” tragically helped create this system, it’s time to reclaim his original intent.
Mass Incarceration, Visualized
In this animated interview, the sociologist Bruce Western explains the current inevitability of prison for certain demographics of young black men.
Never Marry Again in Slavery
A short note about The Atlantic’s October cover story, “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration”
The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality
Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how mass incarceration has affected African American families.