Months-long outages, equipment shortages, and unreliable service have plagued the roll out of new telecoms contract in California prisons.
As Phoenix begins to displace around 700 people from an encampment near downtown, the ACLU of Arizona is asking a judge to find the city in contempt of a court order prohibiting it from violating the rights of the unhoused.
A preliminary injunction issued this week forbids officials from forcing people charged with low-level offenses to remain in jail because they cannot afford bail.
Neely’s killing is once again a reminder that carceral approaches to homelessness reproduce, rather than ameliorate, poverty.
Uriah Courtney was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His conviction was overturned due to DNA evidence.
New York families are organizing to require caseworkers to give parents a Miranda-like warning informing them of their rights in so-called “child welfare” investigations.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services effectively serves as a policing system for parents, which disproportionately targets families of color and only rarely finds evidence of abuse or neglect.
JShawn Guess recounts how being unable to earn money while in prison led to him missing out on his final moments with his mom.
The severe restrictions I face while on supervision effectively serve as a ban on stable housing. The terms of this arrangement have left me technically homeless, forced to live in a motel.
Legislation signed by Bill Clinton makes it nearly impossible for people in prison to have their cases heard in court.
Prisons are ill-equipped to handle their aging population, which has tripled in the past two decades.
Federal lawmakers are asking the National Institute of Mental Health to research the condition—also known as post-incarceration syndrome—and share its findings with lawmakers.
Inside the towering walls and razor wire fences of U.S. prisons, slavery remains legal—and it is carried out with little oversight, often under horrific conditions.
Legislation introduced this week follows a string of reports, including in The Appeal, that have revealed widespread sexual abuse and misconduct at Bureau of Prisons facilities.
In Illinois alone, around 500 people are currently serving first-degree felony murder sentences for killings they did not commit themselves or intend to commit. Reform efforts must consider past injustices as well as future abuses.
Our legal system focuses on punishing those who cause harm without considering what victims need, a former prosecutor writes.
In Healing Justice Lineages, Cara Page and Erica Woodland document a history of care models that don’t involve the prison industrial complex.
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.