Impacted

Most people in prison can’t vote. This is what they want you to think about when you cast your ballot.

Most people in prison can’t vote. That doesn’t mean they aren’t paying attention.

In June, I stepped into a body scanner outside the visitation room at the Washington Corrections Center and held my breath.

In 2011, more than 6,600 people imprisoned in California stopped eating for 19 days to protest extreme isolation inside the state’s prisons. The protests lead to state hearings and a lawsuit.

In prison, there is no space to grieve. I kept thinking that if only I was home, I could have given her the support she needed.

The governor’s broken promises have perpetuated an unacceptable status quo that denies incarcerated individuals a fair and transparent process for parole decisions.

Six people on North Carolina’s death row have been found innocent since I’ve been here.

“I was different than the 22-year-old who had made that devastating decision, but I couldn’t say when that shift had begun.”

We are just two of millions of children who’ve experienced family separation due to incarceration and the obscene costs of prison communications. Now we fight to make these services free.

Two years after Elena’s death, I try to understand why I was given a child just to lose her. 

If I protect and guide someone else’s child in here, maybe someone will do mine out there.

I experienced my first childbirth while I was incarcerated in a county jail.

I had to return to jail before a resentencing hearing. It meant taking a trip back through hell.

Death row prisoners rarely get last meals, writes Lyle May, who is on death row in North Carolina. But on the night of an execution, the prison staff break room is full of cookies and cake.

At Kentucky’s Northpoint Training Center, incarcerated people are not allowed to participate in programs until they’re at least four years away from their parole board date—robbing people of years of educational opportunities.

Incarcerated people have testified before state lawmakers about legislation that would directly impact their lives, including bills to change the cost of prison communications and rein in extreme sentencing practices and the use of solitary confinement.

My husband Nick died from COVID-19 in March 2020 while imprisoned pretrial. Joe Biden has said he’d help others like him before it’s too late. But so far, the president has yet to make good on his promises.

On Jan. 19, New York City Mayor Eric Adams vetoed a bill that would have effectively banned solitary confinement in his city’s jails. Incarcerated writer Chris Blackwell and CUNY Law Professor Deborah Zalesne share why the practice is so horrific.

In this excerpt formerly incarcerated writer James Kilgore denounces the growing use of e-carceration technologies like ankle monitors.

We cannot punish our way out of gun violence. Instead, we must invest in dismantling the structures that allow this violence to thrive.

Securus Technologies says a “technical glitch” last week caused the deletion of Washington prisoners’ writings. They offered compensation of two e-stamps—a value of less than $1.

Gavin Newsom’s “California Model” of prison reform isn’t the step away from mass incarceration that it purports to be.

Placement in a halfway house can significantly improve someone’s chances of reintegrating into society after prison. But numerous people imprisoned in Georgia told The Appeal that they were denied access to the state’s transitional housing programs because of their medical conditions.

A controversial death in Los Angeles this year underscores the broader failure of law enforcement agencies to keep accurate data on people who die in their custody.

Despite the frequency of in-custody deaths, their exact scope remains unknown and data is often intentionally obfuscated.

The birds quickly became the talk of the unit. Suddenly, everyone was an ornithologist, claiming to know whether barn swallows were endangered.

For the past seven summers, I have lived in solitary confinement without air conditioning. A trip to medical during a heat wave helped put the climate crisis into perspective.

Ten years ago this month, nearly 29,000 people in California prisons staged a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement.

The conditions I faced were outrageous. But the prison administration’s justification for keeping me in the hole was even worse.

Lacino Hamilton spent 26 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit before being exonerated in 2020 after DNA evidence cleared him.

The phrase “toxic masculinity” is ubiquitous these days, but there are few places where it’s more all-consuming than in a men’s prison

Los Angeles County lawmakers should enshrine the zero-bail rules into law so people in Los Angeles County jails can see their families.

David Shipley tells Phillip A. Jones, who has spent more than 30 years in U.S. prisons, about his experiences in a British “open prison.”

Incarcerated writer Nick Hacheney is getting ready to leave after being incarcerated for more than 20 years. He’s glad he’ll have his freedom—but he’s also worried about the lack of care for longtime prisoners, the trauma he’s endured, and what the world outside holds.

Months-long outages, equipment shortages, and unreliable service have plagued the roll out of new telecoms contract in California prisons.

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.

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.

I don’t know if I’ll ever receive the resentencing hearing I was once promised, but I do know this system must change.