Jail

The decline under DA Larry Krasner, who took office in 2018, marks a significant change in juvenile justice in Pennsylvania.

How high or low bond is isn’t a measure of how severe the state considers a crime.

The 2020 presidential candidates recently unveiled national criminal justice agendas that reimagine public safety and punishment.

A lawsuit is challenging Mohave County’s practice of charging certain people for mandatory GPS monitoring before trial.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. When Jeffrey Epstein died in a federal jail, the attorney general was, as he tells it, “appalled” and “frankly angry to learn of the MCC’s failure to adequately […]

Black Lives Matter and other advocates have pushed county officials to abandon the $2.2 billion project with McCarthy Builders.

A new report shows that a progressive approach, like the one advanced by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, can help decrease jail populations—and crime.

In 2016, Madison Jensen died from opiate withdrawal at the Duchesne County jail. New court filings allege that jail staff, including its nurse, ignored her rapidly deteriorating health.

Establishment candidate Melinda Katz declared a narrow victory in the New York City borough’s district attorney primary, but progressive Tiffany Cabán pushed the race to the left on issues like marijuana and sex work.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Over the weekend, much of the United States experienced a heat wave. In The Atlantic last week, Robinson Meyer described what was coming as “a vast blanket of […]

Editor’s Note: The Daily Appeal is occasionally examining the 2020 presidential contenders’ records, platforms, and rhetoric on issues relating to criminal justice. You can find past installments here. An article by Campbell Robertson in the New York Times today looks at the case of Angelo Robinson, in prison in Ohio since 1997 for the murder of […]

Last week, FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) launched a campaign, calling on state and federal lawmakers to visit a prison, jail, or juvenile detention facility in the next 12 months. The challenge highlights the fact that although legislators make the laws governing when people can be sent to jail or prison, and for how long; […]

Phone calls between prisoners in Orange County and their lawyers were recorded and accessed. How wide the eavesdropping was remains an open question.

In rhetoric reminiscent of the ‘superpredator‘ scare of the 1990s, the New Orleans District Attorney warned of ‘a brazen population of delinquent teens.‘ But advocates and crime analysts alike say the data doesn’t support his fearmongering claims about kids and crime.

Beginning next week, people locked up in San Francisco will be able to call their loved ones for free. Last year, people in the city’s jails spent $1.7 million on phone calls and commissary, of which half a million went to GTL, a major corrections telecommunication company. For Mayor London Breed, who introduced the provision in the San Francisco […]

In January, when Phil Sims became the sheriff of Marshall County, Alabama, he found a cardboard box in a storage closet containing five government-issued smartphones, each with multiple holes drilled clear through them. His predecessor had destroyed them. The hard drives had been removed from his computers. Records were missing. The jail’s refrigerators and shelves […]

Jose Montelongo-Morales challenged the jail’s immigration detainer policy. He and some of his family members were arrested months later.

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler’s office, which partners with immigration enforcement, faces jail deaths and a discrimination claim from a Legal Aid attorney.

Heavy reliance on pretrial incarceration in Berks County subjects people to poor medical care and unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was interviewed this week on a local news network, he was asked about Layleen Polanco, the 27-year-old transgender woman who was recently found dead in her cell at Rikers Island. The specific cause of her death is not known, but why was she held for two months […]

Though little is known about how Layleen Polanco died, advocates say her story highlights New York City’s flawed approach to criminal justice.

A lawsuit filed by Kentrell Hurst’s children is the latest against New Orleans Sheriff Marlin Gusman over jail conditions.

As the Hampton Roads Regional Jail proposes spending $7 million for 113 new guards, advocates renew calls for officials to improve conditions—and an Appeal analysis suggests that the jail could save millions by incarcerating fewer people with mental illness.

The content of New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act represents a new kind of lawmaking—a process that originates with the people who have the most at stake and is shepherded by a diverse coalition.

The criminalization of poverty in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, has led to a staggering increase in incarcerated people, all at a huge cost for defendants and taxpayers alike.

Yesterday the news broke that Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign head who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on federal charges, will now face criminal charges in state court in Manhattan. The New York Times reports that Manafort will most likely be held at Rikers Island, segregated from the general population. […]

Since 2017, LaToni Daniel has been incarcerated pretrial in a capital murder case. During that time, Daniel became pregnant, and she just delivered a baby boy. But as she brings in new life, she also faces the death penalty.

In Pennsylvania, mothers are harshly penalized for leaving children unattended in vehicles, even for several minutes.

DA Leon Cannizzarro used jailhouse informant Ronnie Morgan to convict a man in the killing of five teenagers, but the case was overturned. Now, Morgan is petitioning for a prison transfer, reviving the murder case.

Despite accounting for less than 12 percent of the state’s adult population, roughly 40 percent of all bail bonds were issued in cases involving a Black defendant.

A number of people spent multiple days at the Atlanta City Detention Center for low-level offenses, including for driving while using a cell phone and for walking in the roadway.

Instead of building ‘humane jails’ to replace Rikers Island, let’s push the NYPD to cut down on arrests.

Antonio May, a 32 year-old father of three, died in the Fulton County Jail in September after deputies pepper-sprayed and shot him with a Taser.

At Virginia’s Hampton Roads Regional Jail, reform has been slow even after high-profile tragedies including the death of mentally disabled man incarcerated who allegedly stole $5 worth of snacks.

Activists say the sheriff is trying to add jail beds under the guise of mental health treatment.

Low-income women are fueling bail industry profits—and getting harmed in the process.

Attorneys and advocates call for change in Madison County after the deaths of three Black people at its jail and because of what they allege is a system of roadblocks targeting Black residents.

A scandal of falsified drug arrests is spreading at a Florida sheriff’s office that has also spent more than $1.33 million settling excessive force lawsuits and is at the center of the increasingly troubled Robert Kraft case.

In the deep blue home of Beto O’Rourke, attorneys and advocates are questioning the county’s multi-million-dollar contract to detain migrants and refugees.

A 22-year-old woman overdosed and died in jail. A 24-year-old faces first-degree murder charges. Did the system fail them both?