Why The Biden Administration’s Choice To Lead The Bureau of Prisons Matters The attorney general could pick a new head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. That person should have public health experience, formerly incarcerated activists say. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
The Federal Death Penalty Has The Veneer Of Respectability. But It’s Just As Flawed As the States’ Killing Machines. Attorney General Bill Barr has scheduled executions for four people on federal death row in July and August. That’s more federal executions in one month than in the entire modern history of the federal death penalty. Ben Cohen
As Use of Solitary Confinement Surges, Advocates Call for Releasing Prisoners Legal, medical, and religious groups warn in a new report that the widespread use of solitary confinement in response to COVID-19 risks spreading the disease further and undoing a decade of progress. Joshua Manson
Federal Bureau of Prisons Locks Down Prisoners and Takes Away Communications Amid Protests After protests broke out in several cities in response to George Floyd’s death, the agency ordered the first nationwide lockdown in 25 years. Lauren Gill
Some Federal Prisoners Are Getting Out As COVID-19 Spreads. Others Have No Chance. Jeremy Hix is serving 70 months in federal prison for a sex offense—a conviction that disqualifies him for a Bureau of Prisons home confinement program, despite a health condition that puts him at risk of the coronavirus. Joshua Vaughn
Bureau of Prisons Is ‘Shifting Deck Chairs on the Titanic’ With Quarantine Plan, Critics Say Criminal justice reform advocates question why the BOP plans to move people around rather than reduce prison populations. Kira Lerner
Coronavirus Is Ready To Explode Inside Fort Dix Federal Prison, Incarcerated People and Their Loved Ones Say One prisoner says a man collapsed while waiting for a temperature check and was sprayed down with disinfectant as he lay on the floor. BOP denied it. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Closure of D.C.’s Only Men’s Halfway House Leaves Residents Scrambling For A Safe Place To Live The Bureau of Prisons could send those without homes to alternative halfway houses far from D.C. or back to prison at the end of the month. Kira Lerner
Halfway House Residents Describe ‘A Scary Situation’ As Coronavirus Sweeps The U.S. ‘It is progressively getting worse, exponentially worse,’ a resident of one halfway house told The Appeal as part of a survey of facilities. ‘Something is going to happen and it’s not going to be good.’ Lauren Gill
A No-Holds-Barred Assault on Prosecutors Attorney General William Barr pushed back against reforms by progressive prosecutors—but perhaps his greatest vitriol was reserved for the Boston DA’s attempt to rein in police. John Pfaff
Federal Prisons Official Used Prison Labor For Work On His Church The Bureau of Prisons’ South Central regional director utilized incarcerated people from a Texas prison to work on a landscaping project at his church. Lauren Gill
