Welcome to Archer Magazine issue #18: the INCARCERATION issue.

Guest edited by Tabitha Lean.

“There is a solidarity among those who have seen the inside of a cage that the non-criminalised will never understand,” writes guest editor, Tabitha Lean.

“When I walked out of the gates of prison, I made it my mission to dedicate my life to abolition. I wanted to use my hands to tear the system apart – brick by brick, bar by bar, word by word, policy by policy.”

Having spent almost two years in Adelaide Women’s Prison and a total of 18 months on Home Detention, Tabitha Lean uses her lived prison experience to argue that the criminal punishment system is a brutal, and too often deadly, colonial frontier for her people.

“Every inch of this edition will make your body surge with emotion – and, hopefully, rage. I hope this magazine compels you to act.”

The edition features writing about the prison system and its impacts on First Nations people; how incarceration affects young people and the children of people with lived experience; a story from a writer who was locked in detention; an image essay from Haitian photographer Zarita Zevallos; a Q&A with abolition activist Debbie Kilroy; a speech from Aunty Vickie Roach and more.

HOW TO HELP
Archer has compiled a list of organisations you can engage to support folks with lived experience of incarceration here.
More info