Editors of The Harbinger

RLSC’s The Harbinger is proud to present this special issue, entitled Movements for Freedom: Scholarship from the Inside. The issue features writing and art exclusively from authors who are or were incarcerated. Each piece relates to the author’s experience with the U.S. criminal punishment system. We believe the stories presented in this issue represent a powerful and important addition to RLSC’s published scholarship.

We wanted this space to serve as a platform to uplift voices that our society too often suppresses and ignores. To that end, most pieces have been subjected to very limited editing. We believe that preserving the authors’ voices has independent value. In some cases, we faced a tension between the words as written and our official RLSC style guidelines. We chose to favor the author’s choice of words, agreeing with our authors’ insistence that their choice of words reflected their experience in a more authentic way. We ask readers to engage with the pieces with this in mind, to listen for the many unique voices who contributed to this project.

We were grateful to receive far more answers to our call to submissions than we expected. We wish to thank all who submitted their work for trusting us with their stories, for their patience and hard work through the editing process. We thank also those who helped facilitate communication.

Scholarship from the Inside will be published in phases, which reflects the timing of submission and editing. Please watch this space for continued updates in the coming months. We are so excited and honored to publish this array of smart, thoughtful, and transformative work.