This special issue of Synapsis offers one interdisciplinary approach to the entanglements of police, prison, and plagues. They invited scholars, journalists, physicians, advocates, and artists to reflect on mass incarceration in the time of COVID-19. Their narratives, analysis, and visualizations provide not a comprehensive scholarly account of these phenomena but rather an opening salvo that we hope sparks additional conversations, research, and political activism. These contributions, each in their own way, elucidate the world as it is and illuminate the world as it might be—a world without prisons or police, where Black life is valued and prioritized rather than denigrated and extinguished.

Guest editors: This special issue of Synapsis was edited by SOF alum Max Mishler (University of Toronto), Elsa Hardy (Yale Law School and African American Studies, Harvard University), Elizabeth Ross (Harvard Law School and African American Studies, Harvard University), and Khaleel Grant (University of Toronto).