• Home
• Getting Started
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• How to Use This Web Site
• About the Editors
• Introduction
• Fact Sheets
  • Basic Facts
  • Trends
  • US vs. the World
  • Poverty
  • The Economy
  • System as Racist
  • System as Anti-Youth
  • System as Anti-Queer
  • System as Anti-Women
  • System as Anti-Immigrant
  • Violence
  • Consequences
  • Timeline & History
• Overview
• Conservative Agendas
  • Tough on Crime Movement
  • Criminalizing the Reservation
  • Faith & Religion
  • Women & Reproductive Rights
  • War on Terrorism & Immigrants
  • Youth
  • Victims' Rights
  • Profits from Incarceration
  • Conservative Infrastructure
• Organizing Advice
• Resources
• Endnotes
• Download Chapters

Introduction

Who is the Right? What characterizes something as right-wing? Is there even a difference? For activists working on this issue, it may often feel as though there is no difference between the State, the Right and even Liberals. However, we here at PRA believe that differentiating between Liberals, the Right, the State, and the System is critical to developing effective and nuanced strategies that challenge oppression. The articles below offer definitions and discussions of the various forces that advocate for the maintenance and growth of the criminal justice system.

Who is the Right?

By Nikhil Aziz and PRA Research Staff

The State literally holds the keys to incarceration. And, since 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan, the Right controls the State in the United States, and thus it controls the criminal justice system...
Read more

Why We Focus on the Right, the State, and the System

By Palak Shah, Nikhil Aziz, Ph.D., and Pam Chamberlain

Oppressive ideologies and systems are embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system. At the same time, the criminal justice system legitimates and reproduces these ideologies of oppression that in turn help to maintain and expand the power of the Right, the State, and the criminal justice system itself.
Read more

Organizing Advice: Challenging and Defeating the Right

A Q&A with PRA's Director of Research

Palak Shah, Editor of the Defending Justice Activist Resource Kit talked to Nikhil Aziz, PRA's Director of Research about why it is important for progressive activists and people in general to learn about the Right.
Read more