How a scrappy group of parents played a key but lesser-known role in the pending closure of the Division of Juvenile Justice
Issues of mismanagement and sexual misconduct have put federal women’s prisons in the spotlight. But one scandal-plagued facility—FCI Tallahassee—has escaped serious scrutiny, even as an Appeal investigation reveals an ongoing history of sexual violence, retaliation, and other constitutional abuses that have left prisoners living in fear.
Four years after a settlement agreement that was meant to compel improvements, the Illinois Department of Corrections is still failing to provide adequate care for the state’s oldest and sickest prisoners.
Years after legalization, the state’s growers say police are taking a “seize first, ask questions later” mentality toward marijuana enforcement, sometimes with heavily militarized operations that allegedly violate their rights.
A criminal-legal reporter ventures into Night Court—the cringy sitcom reboot and the real courtroom in Manhattan.
A trans woman mutilated herself in a New Jersey men’s prison after officials refused to transfer her to a women’s facility.
New York’s Adult Survivors Act briefly waives the statute of limitations to file sexual abuse lawsuits. Some of New York’s imprisoned women are risking retaliation from guards in order to file cases alleging horrific treatment at the hands of the state.
Criminal background checks have become nearly ubiquitous in many settings. But experts warn that reports can be deeply inaccurate, with some records databases containing “phantom crimes” that appear nowhere else in public record.
An official investigation released this week concluded that “medical neglect” contributed to Alan Willison’s death at the Clayton County Jail in January, just a week after his cancer diagnosis.
Long before the murder-suicide, there had been numerous reports to CPS about suspected abuse in the Hart household.
Graphic video footage obtained by The Appeal shows 29-year-old Joshua McLemore wasting away and rolling in his own waste in the Jackson County Jail before eventually dying of malnutrition.
The New York governor is making an appeal to “mob justice” as she threatens to take her state back decades on issues of pretrial justice and policing.
I don’t know if I’ll ever receive the resentencing hearing I was once promised, but I do know this system must change.
At least 42 people have been charged with “domestic terrorism” under the state’s wide-ranging statute. Legal experts are calling it a “sloppy” and unprecedented attack on constitutional rights to free speech and protest.
A wave of bills threatens to channel more people toward incarceration, mete out longer prison terms, and limit prosecutors’ discretion.
Cuyahoga County is the latest community to debate a proposal to build a new jail in response to inhumane conditions at the current facility. Advocates say there’s no such thing as a humane jail.
Under state law, adult prison sentences are automatically enhanced based on prior youth adjudications. New legislation would rein in the practice and allow for reconsideration of extreme sentences.
Advocates have expressed shock at a rapid escalation in the severity of anti-trans legislation, which is increasingly seeking to restrict medical care and public expression, including with threats of criminal punishment.
Ron DeSantis called in the National Guard to staff Florida prisons. The staffing shortage is hurting incarcerated people.
South Florida’s political leaders have celebrated their commitment to the unhoused—but won’t admit that those placed on offense registries are increasingly becoming unhoused.
It’s been four years since a Phoenix police officer killed Jacob Harris. Records obtained by The Appeal show officials have made inconsistent or false statements about the night police killed him. As Harris’s friends grow up behind bars, his father won’t stop until he gets justice for his son.
With a special election for Clayton County sheriff coming up next week, people detained at the county’s scandal-plagued jail are speaking out about horrific conditions.
America’s largest county has launched numerous initiatives to shrink its jail population and divert people with mental illness from jail entirely. Here’s an explainer on what the major initiatives are and what, if any, progress has been made.
The Clayton County Sheriff’s Office is refusing to share information about in-custody deaths with the medical examiner’s office, which is responsible for conducting investigations.
Los Angeles County is imprisoning more people with mental illness than it did a decade ago—but is failing to provide them with basic treatment. The U.S. Department of Justice says the county jail system is decrepit, dangerous, and unfit to house anyone—let alone people with mental illness.
The Texas jail is bursting at the seams as officials push for more pretrial incarceration.
Absent structural organizing and actual political change, societal consumption of anti-Black violence instead reinforces the dehumanization of Black people that is central to white supremacy.
A judge ruled the report can be used as evidence in the civil case against an ex-NOPD officer who sexually assaulted a teenage rape victim.
Robert Suttle was required to register as a sex offender in Louisiana after being convicted of exposing someone to HIV. But despite the fact that New York does not require its own residents to register after such a crime, the state is forcing the label on him anyway—and the Manhattan DA’s office is fighting him.
In 2015, Los Angeles County created a program to reduce the number of mentally ill people trapped in jail. But since then, the number of people with mental illness incarcerated in LA has instead increased significantly.
Countless forms of detention and foster care facilities are profiting from warehousing the humans treated as remnants.
Politicians often vilify so-called violent criminals. But the “violent felon” label can mean someone committed anything from a murder to a purse-snatching or verbal threat—and doesn’t line up with what science tells us about violence.
No system designed to make money by subjugating people intends to rid us of those harms. Abolition is a vision for the future.
As cities look to make new investments in non-police responses to gun violence, the Bull City United program in Durham, North Carolina, shows the importance of stable funding and sustained commitment.
An associate professor of psychology and a clinical lecturer in law at Yale explain how they’ve seen the criminal legal system treat psychopathy as a moral failing—instead of a treatable mental illness.
Officials delayed the delivery of critical documents for months, leading to the premature dismissal of at least two appeals filed by incarcerated men. The mistakes underscore much deeper challenges for indigent prisoners.
There is nothing romantic about the police state. And yet, in some of the biggest rom-coms, white cops are underdogs looking for the right person to love.
Third in a three-part series on a teenager with a tumultuous childhood who was sent to die in prison and where his life would lead. The following narrative was compiled from interviews and court records.
The alleged “fight club” is one of many issues people say plague South Woods State Prison’s “Restorative Housing Unit,” a disciplinary wing that advocates call solitary confinement by another name.
Pregnant people are among the many casualties of a politically manufactured crisis that has led to abysmal conditions at the jail.