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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.
A report by the Vera Institute of Justice and Black & Pink highlights the many ways in which state prisons mistreat transgender people—nearly 90 percent of respondents said they’d been placed in solitary at some point.
Free prison tablet programs rely on predatory contracts with juggernauts of prison industry, Aventiv and Global Tel Link.
A former youth social worker reckons with her involvement in an institution that often does irreparable harm to the children it is supposed to help.
A recent report by the New Jersey Comptroller’s office found that a company called Street Cop trained police to shoot indiscriminately at people, medically experiment on the injured, and treat virtually anyone who isn’t a white, straight, cisgender male with open disdain. More training like this won’t make America safer.
I realized that I had fallen victim to one of white supremacy’s greatest weapons: the war on imagination.
The Thirteenth Amendment bans all “badges and incidents” of slavery. But the use of police dogs enacts cruelty on both people of color and the dogs themselves. To fully rid society of slavery, the dogs must be retired.
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.
Late last year, the U.S. Department of Justice warned the state of Tennessee that its “aggravated prostitution” statute—which makes it a felony to engage in sex work while HIV positive—violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. Activists hope the measure shows how the government can use the ADA to fight ableism around the nation.
The Appeal spoke with Robert Saleem Holbrook about the long-standing solidarity among liberation movements for Black Americans and Palestine.
A study found that in states requiring permits to purchase firearms, fatal and nonfatal police shootings were 28 percent lower.
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.
More than 70 million people in the U.S. have criminal convictions on their records. An expert talks with The Appeal about how they can break barriers.
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.
Despite the frequency of in-custody deaths, their exact scope remains unknown and data is often intentionally obfuscated.
Police pretextual stops, in which traffic police pull people over as an excuse to search them, should no longer be allowed.
In her new book, “They Killed Freddie Gray”, Justine Barron reveals much of what the public has believed about Gray’s death is incorrect.
This excerpt from Survivor Injustice asks us to reconsider what justice really looks like for crime victims.
The birds quickly became the talk of the unit. Suddenly, everyone was an ornithologist, claiming to know whether barn swallows were endangered.
The blame game against trans people is just one of the many diversionary tactics the right has used in our intractable gun violence debate.
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.
Lawmakers in seven states proposed bills to make abortion murder punishable by death. Cops arrested three women for their pregnancy outcomes.
As the saying goes, the first Pride was a riot. The only way queer people have won anything is by fighting—in the courts and in the streets.
A leader in the LGBTQ community weighs in on the attempts by elected officials to legislate gay and trans people out of existence.
Online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay make billions from shoplifted products. Why are police and lawmakers focusing on small-time thieves?
Jenkins won’t charge the security guard who shot Banko Brown to death. That’s precisely why San Franciscans elected her in the first place.
Uriah Courtney was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His conviction was overturned due to DNA evidence.
JShawn Guess recounts how being unable to earn money while in prison led to him missing out on his final moments with his mom.
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.
In Healing Justice Lineages, Cara Page and Erica Woodland document a history of care models that don’t involve the prison industrial complex.
A trans woman mutilated herself in a New Jersey men’s prison after officials refused to transfer her to a women’s facility.
Long before the murder-suicide, there had been numerous reports to CPS about suspected abuse in the Hart household.
I don’t know if I’ll ever receive the resentencing hearing I was once promised, but I do know this system must change.
A wave of bills threatens to channel more people toward incarceration, mete out longer prison terms, and limit prosecutors’ discretion.
Ron DeSantis called in the National Guard to staff Florida prisons. The staffing shortage is hurting incarcerated people.