VOICES FROM INSIDE THE SYSTEM
‘My Goal Is to Dismantle the System I Once Defended’
Lola Rainey is a former Arizona county prosecutor who left her work to become an abolitionist
Voices From Inside the System is a new GEN series where we interview people who have had firsthand experience in industries with especially fraught histories of systemic racism and inequity. We asked our subjects to think deeply about the role they played and the work they did. We asked them why they stayed or why they left, how they might be complicit, or if they thought they — or anyone — could fundamentally change the system.
Lola Rainey is a former Pima County prosecutor in her 60s from Tucson, Arizona. She now works as an abolitionist with a focus on bail reform. According to the ACLU, Arizona has the highest Latino incarceration rate in the country. Since 2000, the prison population in the state has increased by 60%; it is twelve times larger than it was in 1978. Rainey spoke with journalist Justine van der Leun about her experience.
Before I became a prosecutor, I wanted to write. I started working as a copy girl at a local paper in Arizona. I was entering my junior year in college; it was the summer of 1977. There were few female journalists — and no Black female…
