Close prisons
I think a lot about how people are being harmed all over the world, from genocides, to capitalist exploitation of labor, and from the US Empire’s endless bloodlust.
But these thoughts often come back to “How can I decrease this human harm that I see? What power do I have? Where can I make a difference?” It’s hard to figure out some action to take for Palestinians, Sudanese, or any number of others seen in the news, so then I think about who is being harmed the most close to me and in my state. And that always takes me back to prisons in my own state.
I have spent a few times in the past several months reviewing this data from the Indiana Department of Corrections and it is hard to read. As of the November 2025 data, there were 27,198 people incarcerated in Indiana. We all know the horrors prisons are, from unaccountable guards, to slave labor, to nearly no healthcare, to impossible commissary pricing, the continued use of solitary confinement (which is psychological torture), and so many more terrible things.
So many of our neighbors are silently suffering in a system we allow to exist, thrive, and expand. The prison population in Indiana continues to grow each month to the tune of 15% in the last three years (23,177 in January 2024 to 26,659 on December 1, 2025 according to another section of the report - not all totals match throughout sadly).
I added up all people who are in for drug-related crimes, either dealing or possession. That number is 5,409. That’s 20%. One-fifth of everyone in Indiana prisons is there because of the “War on Drugs.” Our laws, our government, our system is punishing thousands of our neighbors for victimless crimes. We are spending our tax dollars to create harm to people for their choice of bodily autonomy.
There are certainly other classes of crimes in this document that are also infuriating that I didn’t cover today, but don’t forget that there are thousands of people in our state who are being severely oppressed within its borders, in cages, and behind barbed wire. We are rightly outraged at the escalation by ICE and CBP, but we should also be outraged on behalf of thousands of others already trapped in the prison industrial complex.