The Appeal, a worker-led nonprofit newsroom that exposes the harms of the criminal legal system, announced its new Board of Directors today.

The medical examiner who helped put Tasha Shelby in prison has since said her son’s death was not a homicide.

Smart Communications, a for-profit Florida company that sells phone, videochat, and email-like services to prisons and jails, told at least one sheriff’s department that it can live “the resort life” on a trip to Florida.

After a six-year investigation, the DOJ says Orange County law-enforcement unconstitutionally used jailhouse informants to elicit confessions and incriminating evidence from people for years.

Detainees at New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility recently launched a hunger strike, motivated in part by the August death of a 23-year-old asylum seeker in custody.

Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat says the county needs more jail beds to fix the jail’s crisis. But a new ACLU report says that significant numbers of people in the jail can be released.

The politics of criminal justice is overwhelmingly local, and elected prosecutors have some of the most direct power over how justice is dispatched.

The Appeal was proud to receive an honorable mention for Best Non-Traditional News Source from the American Journalism Online Awards.

New York’s landmark solitary confinement reform law created a new, “rehabilitative” type of isolation unit. State prisons aren’t on board with the changes.

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon be hearing a case that will impact whether Texas executes Rodney Reed for capital murder— though another man has confessed to the crime.

The intense focus on increased law enforcement spending in recent years has overshadowed a historic funding boost for community violence intervention.

Data obtained by The Appeal show nearly 2,000 people in Mississippi and Louisiana are serving long—and sometimes life—sentences after they were labeled “habitual offenders.” But most are behind bars for small crimes like drug possession.

A judge allowed a Civil War-era law to go back into effect today. The law requires two to five years in prison for people who provide abortions, except to save the life of the pregnant person.

Five articles by incarcerated writers were shortlisted for the Excellence in Social Justice Reporting award.

An upcoming court ruling could decide the fate of a plan to detain “problematic youth” at a facility that previously housed prisoners awaiting execution.

Patrick Stephens, a formerly incarcerated writer, explains how arbitrary, byzantine, and punitive visiting rules tear apart the families of the incarcerated—especially after the pandemic.

On September 23, 2020, a Black man died for the alleged crime of crossing the street the wrong way. His death was due in large part to America’s long history of criminalizing public spaces and our existence in them.

Thousands of deaths in jails, prisons, and police custody have gone uncounted in recent years. Now the DOJ is calling for changes to federal law.

Roughly 30 states still have some form of HIV criminalization law or sentencing enhancement on the books. Advocates say it’s long past time for change.

The fight to remove cops from classrooms is still raging, with some successes.

County officials agree that conditions have deteriorated at L.A.’s Inmate Reception Center. But they’re resisting calls for substantive change.

Intergenerational partnerships must be prioritized amid the youth gun violence epidemic — not more police and prisons.

In June, a judge ended an emergency order to slow the spread of COVID-19 in LA’s jails, enraging civil-rights advocates.

Prison officials allegedly used solitary confinement to get the plaintiff to submit to an invasive examination prohibited under federal law.

The Appeal’s investigation into the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Division (SVD) won Best Investigative Journalism from the Nonprofit News Awards.

The stakes for getting reporting on abortion right are very high, but it costs nothing to call out politicians on their BS.

“They were destroying me,” said one person placed in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s “Program for the Aggressive Mentally Ill Offender.”

The ban had helped the Broome County Sheriff rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from detainee video and phone call fees.

Politicians are demanding greater oversight over the Virginia Department of Corrections, after women at one state prison said they’re served spoiled food.

Incarcerated people need opportunities to learn and grow.

A federal monitor says substandard healthcare persists—with horrific consequences—more than a decade after a lawsuit was supposed to compel changes.

If Brooke Jenkins fails to deliver results with “tough-on-crime” policies, will San Franciscans blame her, just as they did her predecessor, Chesa Boudin?

The new San Francisco DA is mixing “tough-on-crime” rhetoric with phony progressivism. Neither will solve the city’s problems.

Advocates of assisted outpatient treatment say it could reduce homelessness and mass shootings. Critics call it incarceration by another name.

In Stockton, California, a police-free gun violence prevention program is standing firm against the tough-on-crime backlash.

States will have a hard time stopping medication abortion. Abortion pills are safer than Tylenol and have been approved by the FDA since 2000.

Fluvanna Correctional Center patients say they’ve been threatened with disciplinary action for asking about symptoms at medical appointments.

Water at 12 state prisons has tested positive for the bacteria this year.

Florida seems to be sprinting in the opposite direction of progress. A new law allows cops to pull people over for driving loud cars.

Stacey Abrams wants to give police officers raises. Time and again, Democrats have reacted to calls for racial justice by giving more money to cops.