How can infrastructure be criminal? How does a road, a prison, a suburban neighbourhood or a dam become a perpetrator of violence and insecurity? Material Crimes answers these questions. Each episode investigates a different piece of infrastructure, tracing its global, colonial connections across time and space. The series shows us how physical sites of everyday life are linked to networks of private and public actors who profit from violence inflicted on spaces and communities on the margins. The series also shines a spotlight on the people-powered movements exposing and challenging the many crimes of infrastructure.
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ Listening Station at Whitechapel Gallery
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ Listening Station at Whitechapel Gallery
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode
Sort by
Free Prisoners
For at least 75 years, the prison has been the core - the infrastructural centre - of Israel’s settler-colonial regime. One in five Palestinians will be detained by Israeli authorities. At any given time, every Palestinian family has at least one member in prison. This number has grown exponentially since the genocide in Gaza began, as thousands of men, women and children have been rounded up in mass arrests. But the prison is more than a physical site. In this episode, Shahd Abusalama and her friend Catherine Charrett, tell a story that for Shahd is all too personal: the story of Palestinian life under Israel’s prison complex. We hear how lives are fragmented and people traumatised by the prison’s colonial violence, inside and out. Sharing the voices of Palestinian women ex-detainees - Dareen Tatour, Najwan Odeh, Mays Abu Ghosh, Shireen Issawi, Obaida Abu-Eisheh, Khitam Saafin, Sanaa Al-Hafi, Mona Qaadan, and Aisha Odeh - we learn how multiple generations of Palestinians have struggled against the prison’s infrastructural hold.
Useful Links
Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association:
www.addameer.ps
“Messages for the Prisoners” on Ajyal Radio:
www.arn.ps
The Palestinian Prisoners' Society:
www.ppsmo.ps
Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Advocacy:
www.palprisoners.ps
Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainee Affairs:
www.cda.gov.ps
www.addameer.ps
“Messages for the Prisoners” on Ajyal Radio:
www.arn.ps
The Palestinian Prisoners' Society:
www.ppsmo.ps
Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Advocacy:
www.palprisoners.ps
Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainee Affairs:
www.cda.gov.ps
Further Reading
Nahla Abdo-Zubi. Captive Revolution: Palestinian Women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle within the Israeli Prison System (Pluto Press, 2014).
Basil Farraj. “Rejecting Defeat and Approaching Liberation: Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strikes,” Wasafiri, 39:2 (2024), pp.13-23.
Malaka Shwaikh. Engendering Hunger Strikes: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 49:4 (2022), pp.507-525.
Dareen Tatour. My Threatening Poem. Drunk Muse Press: 2023.
Basil Farraj. “Rejecting Defeat and Approaching Liberation: Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strikes,” Wasafiri, 39:2 (2024), pp.13-23.
Malaka Shwaikh. Engendering Hunger Strikes: Palestinian Women in Israeli Prisons. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 49:4 (2022), pp.507-525.
Dareen Tatour. My Threatening Poem. Drunk Muse Press: 2023.
Shahd Abusalama is a British-Palestinian academic, writer and artist, born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp, Gaza. In Spring 2025, her book Between Reality and Documentary was published by Bloomsbury and SOAS Palestine Studies. She has contributed chapters to Light in Gaza: Writings born of Fire (2022) and Gaza on Screen (2023). Her coverage of the genocide can be accessed on various publications such as the Electronic Intifada, The New Arab and Declassified UK.
Catherine Charrett is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Westminster. Her research centres broadly on questions of security, diplomacy, and spatial modes of anti-imperial resistance, with a particular focus on Palestine. She uses transdisciplinary and queer methods in her approach to research dissemination, including political drag performances. She met her collaborator Shahd in 2012 while conducting PhD fieldwork in Gaza.
Catherine Charrett is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Westminster. Her research centres broadly on questions of security, diplomacy, and spatial modes of anti-imperial resistance, with a particular focus on Palestine. She uses transdisciplinary and queer methods in her approach to research dissemination, including political drag performances. She met her collaborator Shahd in 2012 while conducting PhD fieldwork in Gaza.