More from The Appeal:
Philadelphia’s top prosecutor has made good on promises to reduce incarceration in the city. His re-election bid will be a litmus test for the progressive prosecutor movement he helped start.
Joshua Vaughn Mar 22, 2021
Advocates have been urging Governor Gavin Newsom to make greater use of his clemency power, especially for older prisoners who are more vulnerable to COVID-19.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has suffered from years of poor funding and political interference by the Trump administration. Fixing it could be one of the most important tasks on Biden’s criminal justice reform agenda.
Ethan Corey Feb 02, 2021
The Board of Pardons unanimously recommended Bruce Norris for a commutation in December, but Tom Wolf had yet to approve it.
Joshua Vaughn Feb 01, 2021
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 Jan 26, 2021
The coronavirus has ripped through our prison and jail populations, infecting and killing hundreds of thousands of people most vulnerable to COVID-19.
Brendon Woods Dec 09, 2020
A new study suggests that if counties—rather than states—bear the cost of incarceration, they may be less likely to incarcerate people.
Pennsylvania’s prisons have the second-highest number of people in the country serving life without the possibility of parole. Nine people who were released after being sentenced to die behind bars share their stories.
Joshua Vaughn Dec 07, 2020
In addition to the releases he has already ordered, the New York governor can grant commutations to free more incarcerated people to protect them from the disease. He has issued only three since the pandemic began.
The governor has rolled back bail reform, not released enough prisoners during the pandemic, and failed to rein in police abuses, advocates and prisoners say.
Rebecca McCray Nov 24, 2020
The Adolescent Redemption Project, a new group organized by Michigan prisoners sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, is advocating for progressive prosecutors.
Marcia Brown Oct 22, 2020
States like California, New York, and Arizona have relied on prisoners to continue working, with little pay and in precarious conditions, during the coronavirus pandemic.
Eliyahu Kamisher Oct 05, 2020
Several recent killings have put the spotlight on the largest sheriff’s department in the U.S., but many of the LASD’s abuses go unseen, advocates say.
Piper French Sep 15, 2020
According to people incarcerated and their loved ones, state officials are ignoring the spread of COVID-19 at New Haven Correctional Center.
Connecticut Bail Fund Hotline Volunteers Aug 05, 2020
Qualified immunity is just one obstacle of many that incarcerated people face when seeking to hold correctional officers accountable for misconduct.
Joshua Manson Jul 23, 2020
As thousands of people are freed from local jails, a group of nonprofits and activist organizations says the city's housing authority must revamp its policies that banish the formerly incarcerated.
Jerry Iannelli Jul 22, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide protests over police brutality are strengthening the case against mass incarceration, advocates argue.
Emily Nonko Jul 14, 2020
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 Jun 19, 2020
A civil rights advocate calls the scheduled executions of four men ‘appalling’ and a return to a ‘biased, arbitrary, and error-prone’ system.
Lauren Gill Jun 16, 2020
As the country reopens, we can’t quickly forget these failures of government, which have disproportionately harmed Black, Latinx, and Native people.
David A. Love Jun 12, 2020
“My dad, he’s part of the vulnerable population. If I think about it, it becomes really, really, really scary. So to be completely honest, I’m trying not to think about it.”
Amos Barshad May 30, 2020
Advocates had hoped Governor Tom Wolf would use his executive reprieve power to release thousands of people from prisons in the face of COVID-19.
Joshua Vaughn May 29, 2020
Five years after statewide hunger strikes and a landmark settlement, men incarcerated in a California prison say they’re still isolated for up to 22 hours a day.
Joshua Manson May 21, 2020
Coronavirus infections climb at the state’s only maximum-security facility for women, and those held there fear for their safety.
Lyra Walsh Fuchs May 18, 2020
John Wesley Parratt Jr. was scheduled to appear before the parole board in July. After the novel coronavirus arrived in San Quentin State Prison, he feared for his health.
Juan Moreno Haines May 14, 2020
Hepatitis C has ripped through prisons and jails, despite more effective treatments for the disease. It is a comorbidity to COVID-19, and the pandemic threatens to cut already weak state funding for prisons to treat those with the disease.
Governor Tate Reeves has touted the state’s testing efforts as ‘aggressive,’ but testing rates in the state’s prisons, where the coronavirus has already claimed at least one life, remain low.
Ko Bragg May 13, 2020
The governor’s requirements for release are too narrow in light of the threat from COVID-19, they say.
An Erie County judge said the pregnant 20-year-old would be ‘safer’ in jail from the COVID-19 outbreak.
Victoria Law May 11, 2020
Political concerns are slowing efforts to depopulate prisons in the state, advocates say.
Adam Willems May 01, 2020
Prisons, one graduate writes, should be institutions of learning, not ‘wastelands’ that willfully overlook human potential.
Rodney Spivey-Jones Apr 29, 2020
Faced with inaction on the part of state and corrections officials, incarcerated people in jails, prisons, and detention centers are protesting their treatment during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Small Business Administration has created barriers for people re-entering the workforce after serving time in prison.
Alex Sherman Apr 20, 2020
A sheriff’s deputy in Louisiana is caught on video choking a man after he says he asked for COVID-19 treatment.
Jerry Iannelli Apr 16, 2020
FCI Ray Brook was slow to respond to the spread of coronavirus among correctional officers. Now the outbreak has reached prisoners.
The Pennsylvania Innocence Project was seeking the exoneration of Rudolph Sutton when he died on April 8 from complications related to COVID-19.
Joshua Vaughn Apr 15, 2020
Tom Wolf said Friday he will use his reprieve power, a form of clemency, to reduce the state prison population.
Joshua Vaughn Apr 10, 2020
Doing so will save countless lives, and in the process, they may show us by example how to begin, finally, to dismantle mass incarceration for good.
People are dying in jails and prisons because elected officials hesitated at the worst possible moment.
Jay Willis Apr 09, 2020
They tell Tom Wolf that taking any unilateral actions to reduce the state’s prison population would endanger public safety.
It took a prisoner’s death ‘just for them to pass out a single extra bar of soap,’ one incarcerated man said.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Apr 07, 2020
The state, which accounts for roughly one-third of all positive COVID-19 cases in the country, is facing a rapid spread of the disease in its jail and prison systems.
Bryce Covert Apr 06, 2020
The emergency program seeks to release a select group of prisoners but does not go far enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in prisons, experts and Democratic lawmakers say.
Joshua Vaughn Apr 05, 2020
Incarcerated people, corrections officers, and their families and communities are bound together by the threat of a deadly and fast-moving disease. The sooner we recognize this, and take decisive action, the more lives we will save.
Cyrus Ahalt Apr 03, 2020
Los Angeles County judges must move quickly to release a broad group of people in custody.
Alicia Virani Apr 02, 2020
There are no good reasons for the president to keep vulnerable people behind bars any longer.
Jay Willis Mar 31, 2020
Decisive action by governors and the President now can save lives -- of incarcerated people, correctional and medical personnel, and nearby community members. Business as usual will not.
New research shows that jails contribute to infectious disease deaths in the greater community.
As COVID-19 spreads, ICE detained a Central American immigrant in a hospital, causing confusion and raising concerns.
Lexi McMenamin Mar 18, 2020
Sheriffs wield enormous power, and they can direct it in ways that will help contain the spread of COVID-19 and protect incarcerated people.
At a time when it’s vital to reduce jail and prison populations to prevent outbreaks, this data can help advocates identify areas where that is or is not happening.
Oliver Hinds Mar 17, 2020
In a joint statement, they emphasized the need to reduce the number of people currently incarcerated in order to contain the deadly COVID-19 virus.
The individual had no contact with people in custody for at least the past month, according to the DOC.
Kira Lerner Mar 16, 2020
Andrew Cuomo, who recently announced the state would employ prisoners to make hand sanitizer, must prepare for the particular vulnerabilities of the state’s prison population to COVID-19, advocates say.
Bryce Covert Mar 11, 2020
More than 100 people signed an open letter to Eric Holcomb requesting that he begin releasing people most likely to be seriously harmed or killed by the coronavirus.
Joshua Vaughn Mar 10, 2020
A Department of Corrections official knew the extrajudicial practice was going on but little has been done to correct it.
Victoria Law Feb 18, 2020
With Taylor Elizabeth Eldridge, a Type Investigations Ida B. Wells Fellow and Appeal contributor.
Adam H. Johnson Jan 16, 2020
The state said Michelle Heale shook the baby to death, but some experts say her conviction was based on debunked science.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Jan 15, 2020
Tia Hamilton’s State v. Us focuses closely on the criminal legal system, especially as it applies to people of color, who are statistically overrepresented in the carceral system.
Elizabeth Brico Jan 02, 2020
With Appeal contributor Zachary Siegel, a journalism fellow at Northeastern University Law School’s Health in Justice Action Lab, and Lev Facher of STAT News.
Adam H. Johnson Dec 12, 2019
Prison deaths in Mississippi have climbed nearly 40 percent in recent years, from 62 in fiscal year 2014 to a high of 85 in fiscal year 2018.
Lauren Gill Dec 09, 2019
After a two-month moratorium, the state parole board reconvened last week, granting parole to 10 out of 87 people.
Lauren Gill Nov 15, 2019
The South Bend, Indiana, mayor says his plan—which includes cutting the incarcerated population by half—will "rebalance" a system that is "unfair and racist in many ways."
Aaron Morrison Oct 26, 2019
Increasing the city’s jail capacity will lead to higher incarceration rates, advocates say.
Lauren Gill Oct 07, 2019
Candidates offered reforms for people accused of low-level, nonviolent offenses, but more than half of U.S. prisoners have committed a violent crime.
Aaron Morrison Sep 13, 2019
The parole board failed to comply with a new law about notifying victims, the board’s director said.
Lauren Gill Sep 12, 2019
The Bureau of Justice Statistics relies in part on states to self-report prison capacity numbers, which can result in a misleading snapshot of overcrowding in the U.S.
Corin Faife Aug 21, 2019
The New York Times’s coverage of the one-off case of a 77-year-old man omits key facts about how older adults are treated by our punitive legal system.
Adam H. Johnson Aug 09, 2019
Prisoners can shave time off their sentences by participating in shock incarceration programs. More than a dozen former shock prisoners say that comes at a steep cost.
Keri Blakinger May 21, 2019