Cops are everywhere in pop culture. It's not just The First 48, or the true-crime canon. "Friendly" cops surface even when we don't pay them any mind. Woody from Toy Story: a whole sheriff. The beloved Winston of New Girl: an embarrassingly awful rookie cop.

While it can be easy to dismiss TV as a lesser medium, we see pop culture as an opportunity to wrestle with overdue shifts around policing and justice.

And so we present to you pop justice, Scalawag's ongoing series that breaks down the ways popular culture—music, film, television, TikTok, journalism, and more—upholds the police state and ultimately stalls conversations on abolition.

For Scalawag's 3rd annual Abolition Week, pop justice exclusively features perspectives from currently and formerly incarcerated folks and systems-impacted folks. Tune through June 24th for more essays, videos, podcasts, and letters from the inside.

How the true crime shows and police dramas we watch rely on the status quo of the carceral state. Their success depends on it.

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First-hand accounts of the lived experiences of incarcerated people and how the media shapes those experiences—from their arrest, to their time inside, to re-entry.

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How music shapes our understanding of crime and policing.

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Supporting abolitionist media that listens to systems-impacted people and imagines a world beyond police.

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Breaking down the ways that history has colored our perceptions of prisons and policing today—and what it can tell us about the future.