C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “Weed Legalization as Privatization, Disempowerment” read and edited by Nick Ford. Marijuana’s legalization seems much more like neoliberal privatization of markets than true liberation of them. While I do not question the decency of these first major marijuana retailers, there are legitimate concerns. Those most victimized by the state’s rabid oppression…

An excellent article published last week by Radley Balko in The Washington Post explores the racially discriminatory consequences of gun control laws in the United States, as illustrated through the lens of several recent news stories. Balko begins by discussing the arrest of Shaneen Allen: Last October, Shaneen Allen, 27, was pulled over in Atlantic…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Ryan Calhoun‘s “We’re All Illegalists Now!” read and edited by Nick Ford. Being that the drug world is literally under siege by a domestic military operation, it is beyond anyone’s imagination how markets like the Silk Road could keep their doors open without a serious injection of class consciousness. All those involved in…

Prisons are the antithesis of all we stand for as anarchists. While we seek a society built around peace and bodily autonomy, prisons are violent institutions that trap inmates at gunpoint and make them vulnerable to rape and murder. Where we seek justice through restitution, reconciliation, and self-defense, prisons are based on punitive vengeance. While…

In the city of Amargosa in Brazil, citizens took to the streets after a stray bullet fire by a local police officer struck and killed a one-year-old girl. But they didn’t stay in the streets. They quickly took the police station, freeing prisoners, jacking state-owned weaponry and burning the station and police vehicles to the ground. In the end,…

Il rapimento e l’assassinio di tre adolescenti israeliani è un crimine odioso. Ma la risposta del governo israeliano è dal canto suo un’orgia di crimini violenti. Quando qualcuno commette un crimine contro qualcun altro, solo l’autore di questo crimine dovrebbe essere considerato responsabile. Non la famiglia o i compagni di camera, non quelli della sua…

On July 7th, Molly Knefel published a great piece on jury nullification in The Nation. Knefel opens by discussing the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street protester who was convicted of “assaulting” a police officer who had assaulted her, and sentenced to a prison term that most of the jurors who convicted her…

For various reasons (well, mainly money), the fourth issue of the Molinari Institute’s left-libertarian publication The Industrial Radical has been delayed for nearly a year; but today it is finally at the printer. Issue I.4 features articles by William Anderson, B-psycho, Jason Byas, Kevin Carson, Nathan Goodman, Irfan Khawaja, Tom Knapp, Smári McCarthy, Grant Mincy,…

The abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers is a contemptible crime. But the Israeli government’s response has been to engage in a violent crime spree of its own. When someone commits a violent crime against another person, the perpetrator should be held accountable. Not the perpetrator’s family or roommates, not those of the same…

Dylan Matthews recently published an article at Vox titled Prisons are terrible, and there’s finally a way to get rid of them. Matthews’ article starts out strong, beginning with an explanation of the horrific costs of prisons. He describes the appalling rates of physical and sexual assault, the data on systemic racism, and the costs…

There was a recent Facebook debate and furor over the ethics of cop killing. It was sparked, at least in part, by my stating that killing cops was still murder in a status update. The topic deserves further exploration. Killing cops is acceptable in self-defense. If a police officer commits an act of aggressive violence…

This Wednesday, June 25th at the Salt Lake City Library, I will discuss Ending the Prison State in Utah with Kirsten Tynan, director of the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA). I’m quite excited about this. I’ve admired FIJA’s work for a long time. Their work educating people across the political spectrum about jury rights and jury nullification helps…

C4SS Adviser and Contributor Cathy Reisenwitz is joined by Angela Keaton of antiwar.com to discuss the situation in Iraq as well antiwar.com’s lawsuit against the FBI for illegal spying.

America’s criminal code is massive, criminalizing a litany of seemingly harmless and ethical actions. In an excellent 2013 article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Paul Larkin explores this overcriminalization through the lens of public choice theory. Public choice theory uses the assumptions and methods of economics to study the behavior of…

Last Sunday three people were killed in Las Vegas. Two were police officers on their break at Cici’s Pizza. Rather than being a day to celebrate the death of two agents of the state as a win in the fight for freedom, it is a day to reconsider the foundations of our beliefs and the…

One of the main functions the state serves in practice is to forcibly transfer wealth to politically connected interest groups. Prisons serve that function today, and they have served it historically. In The Enterprise of Law,  economist Bruce Benson documents the rise of state controlled law enforcement in England. Stateless customary tort law had previously prevailed,…

After reading Maureen Dowd‘s gripping tale of her recent experience with the devil’s lettuce, a wave of compassion and sadness for her washed over me. Marijuana poisoning is no laughing matter. As she recounts, for hours she lay incapable of moving from her hotel bed. The weed came on strong, mere minutes after she ordered a…

In recent weeks, I’ve seen multiple stories about deaths in prisons. These deaths were all preventable and easily attributable to prison conditions. Let’s examine a few of these incidents. According to the Miami Herald, “Florida’s Department of Corrections is facing a third potential criminal probe in the wake of another inmate death at a state…

Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed something called “the USA Freedom Act.” The bill was intended by its authors to end the National Security Agency’s broad and privacy-shredding bulk data collection program, but the final version that passed is so weak that bulk data collection will still be permitted. Trevor Timm at the…

This week marks the 2014 National Week of Action Against Incarcerating Youth. Across the country, actions will be held to protest everything from the criminalization of queer and disabled youth to the isolation of youth in solitary confinement. Ultimately, what activists are protesting is systematic child abuse by the state. Kids are being locked in…