Justice

Reporters entertained the notion that a toddler deserved prison time with headlines like ‘No Charges for 5-Year-Old in Pembroke Pines School Attack’

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.

Some states have banned the controversial legal defense, but other efforts, including at the federal level, are facing challenges.

Former top cops say a culture of neglect at the NYPD has left inexperienced and poorly trained officers in charge of some of the department’s most sensitive cases.

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

Blind in one eye and at risk of losing vision in the other, 58-year-old Reginald Randolph is now on the verge of being sent to state prison to serve out a maximum of four years in state prison.

A man is serving two life sentences for a crime that, according to his legal team, never occurred.

Even with the recent creation of the Juvenile Sentence Review Board, the governor’s process for granting clemency remains unclear.

B.S., a 61-year-old Black man, has struggled with substance use for decades. Now, prosecutors are leveraging his record against him—and forbidding references to racial justice, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, B.S.’s potential sentence, or his health problems at his trial.

Survivors’ needs and opinions vary—and many have not found justice when they turn to the criminal legal system.

A common sense cost-benefit analysis of pretrial detention.

Former Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Bernette Johnson’s fiery dissents on mass incarceration and sentencing in America’s most carceral state garnered international attention. But the rise of the first Black woman on the court was characterized by one battle after another with the Deep South’s white power structure.

The U.S. representative has been a chief architect of mass incarceration in the state and an instigator of racial injustice.

Dubious DNA evidence—and a potential coverup by the Travis County DA’s office—are at the heart of a judge’s recommendation that Areli Escobar gets a new trial.

Some lawmakers are citing the violence in Washington as a reason to pass laws that criminalize protesting, but far-right extremists aren’t the target.

The California Supreme Court Justice is motivated not by politics but by making equal justice under the law a reality for all Californians.

From San Francisco to Philadelphia, cities across the country are creating fully unarmed response teams to address emergencies that used to call for cops.

Outside of the traditional foster care system exists a shadow system of potentially hundreds of thousands of children removed by CPS to their relatives or family friends—without a court case, monetary support, or due process.

The report found that spread inside correctional facilities contributed to community spread, particularly in California, Florida and Texas.

McAuliffe is running to become Virginia governor a second time. If he wins, he would be the only active Democratic governor to have carried out executions in office.

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.

With aggressive legal maneuvering, the incoming head of the Justice Department can reverse some of Trump’s most lasting harm and take steps toward a more humane immigration system.

Investing in local communities and rolling back the criminalization of marijuana is exactly what the country needs right now.

Eric Garcetti, who may be considered for a position in the administration, is out of touch with the city’s working class and poor people, activists say. And they fear he’ll bring that sensibility to national politics.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Transportation Secretary or Assistant to the Transportation Secretary, Rahm doesn’t belong in any of D.C.’s halls of power.

Two moped riders were left dead or injured after recent police pursuits in Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island.

Incumbents Jimmy Flannigan and Alison Alter have been targeted by conservative challengers because of the council’s votes to cut police funding and repeal a ban on public camping.

New York City’s jail population is close to reaching pre-pandemic levels. Advocates say dishonest fearmongering about bail reform—and the politicians who capitulated to it—have created a very real safety crisis.

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.

None of the Austin City Council members who voted to cut police funding lost their elections, but a police union vice president who fearmongered about the defund movement did.

Progressive lawmakers and activists say Cuomo has failed to adequately protect those who are out of work, at risk of losing their homes, or living behind bars, where the virus has spread rapidly.

When election and racial justice protests rocked the city, Lori Lightfoot used raised bridges and shutdown public transportation as crowd control measures, which harmed the city’s workers.

Law enforcement organizations have long treated mass incarceration as a job creation program. In 2020, the tide began turning against them.

For the last six months, we’ve examined the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on people incarcerated in U.S. prisons, jails, and juvenile-detention facilities. Today, we’re wrapping up the project, though it certainly doesn’t mean the crisis is over. The map we’ve been updating weekly with new outbreaks (see below) shows active cases at more than […]

Researchers with the Covid Prison Project talk about how COVID-19 has opened up possibilities for data collection, a new report shows persistent disparities in L.A. County jails, and Colorado’s El Paso County jail sets a grim state record.

An overview of gubernatorial candidates and their stances on decarceration during the pandemic, a new lawsuit argues that Massachusetts corrections officials are ignoring home-confinement requests, and new infections spike at the Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey.

A judge dismissed a lawsuit seeking the release of seriously ill prisoners from a facility that is now dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak; despite nationwide calls to shrink prison populations through sentencing reform, only one Election Day ballot measure seeks to tackle the issue; partying corrections officers are blamed for an outbreak at a North Carolina jail.