Prisons

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

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

In American Purgatory, Benjamin Weber links the rise of American prisons to the expansion of American power around the globe.

Officials asserted that the puzzle, which appears next to the crossword, “may be used to create coded messages indecipherable by staff.”

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

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

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.

A trans woman mutilated herself in a New Jersey men’s prison after officials refused to transfer her to a women’s facility.

Officials delayed the delivery of critical documents for months, leading to the premature dismissal of at least two appeals filed by incarcerated men. The mistakes underscore much deeper challenges for indigent prisoners.

The alleged “fight club” is one of many issues people say plague South Woods State Prison’s “Restorative Housing Unit,” a disciplinary wing that advocates call solitary confinement by another name.

More than six years into DOJ probes, the conditions inside Georgia prisons have only further deteriorated.

Last year, the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice began transferring children to Angola, the state’s most notorious prison. Since then, kids say they’ve suffered through horrific conditions and routine mistreatment.

Some recent redevelopment projects show how the work of reforming and dismantling the prison system can move us towards a society centered around restorative justice and social wellness.

Women told The Appeal they found the routine practice degrading and dehumanizing. Prisons around the country have long humiliated people for menstruating.

Prison officials allegedly used solitary confinement to get the plaintiff to submit to an invasive examination prohibited under federal law.

A federal monitor says substandard healthcare persists—with horrific consequences—more than a decade after a lawsuit was supposed to compel changes.

Thousands of elderly people are released from U.S. prisons each year, and advocates say states urgently need to scale up their capacity to provide them with compassionate care.

The horrific experiences of women at a Virginia prison fit a broader pattern of neglect across the country.

An incarcerated writer reflects on what her “going home” story will look like when home no longer exists.

Her jeans were so tight, she couldn’t have been raped, the judges said.

Cynthia Alvarado was raped in jail before she was sentenced to life in prison for a murder she did not commit. Now that her sentence has been overturned, Alvarado is fighting for women like her.

Legionella bacteria was found in five Illinois prisons in March.

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, “prison warehousing”—which used to be a derogatory term—would look like an upgrade. At least warehouses care about the value of the goods they store.

Less than two years after racial justice protests sparked calls to “defund the police,” states and jurisdictions are using pandemic aid to pad already bloated law enforcement budgets.

Corrections officials confirmed finding legionella at five facilities over the past 12 months.

A cycle of hopelessness is taking its toll in prisons across the country, amid continued restrictions on the things that make life more bearable.

Barbed wire and a surveillance camera User 652243 via Pixabay Private Tech Surveillance Companies Are Taking Over Prisons by Nneka Ewulonu Incarcerated Americans are being watched like never before. Private American companies are rapidly digitizing prison mail. Some ankle-monitors can record whole conversations without people’s knowledge or consent. Most recently, at the end of last […]

After giving tablets to incarcerated people, prison telecoms giants are charging prisoners and their families exorbitant prices on everything from emails to movies.

Our team at the University of North Carolina analyzed death-in-custody reporting policies at every state and federal carceral entity. Data collection is a mess—and many states don’t follow the law at all.

On the night of Jan. 6, Arizona’s former prison director, Charles Ryan, drank half a bottle of tequila and got into a three-hour armed standoff that involved about 50 police officers. After a tense confrontation in which Ryan repeatedly pointed a gun at officers, Tempe police took Ryan into custody and brought him to a hospital — but he was never booked into jail. In the end, Ryan went back home like nothing had happened.

It’s been quite a year for us, to say the least. In May, we unionized. Then our former bosses shut The Appeal down. But we, the workers, resolved to save The Appeal and continue the important work we do covering the criminal legal system.  Since then, we succeeded in becoming a worker-led nonprofit newsroom. We […]

Thank you for all of your support. Your contributions have enabled us to turn The Appeal into a worker-led newsroom dedicated to exposing the harms of the criminal legal system — and to begin publishing again! Check out some of our recent pieces: We uncovered a robbery task force at DC’s Metropolitan Police Department that […]

The Appeal team has a lot to be thankful for this year, including the fact that we can spend time with our families again. We know not everyone is as fortunate, and we’re thinking of community members, especially those behind bars, who can’t be with their loved ones.  In the midst of Thanksgiving travel and […]

Sky-high costs, fear of retaliation, and isolation create roadblocks for incarcerated people to join conversations about reform.

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.

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.

The Board of Pardons unanimously recommended Bruce Norris for a commutation in December, but Tom Wolf had yet to approve it.