Punishment

Even though a federal jury found Terence Richardson not guilty of murder, he was sentenced to life in prison. Virginia prosecutors want to keep it that way.

Prisons and jails across the Southeast have experienced utility outages, evacuations, visitation disruptions, and staff shortages in the storm’s wake.

Five women in Mississippi have been incarcerated longer than any others in the state. Each has been denied clemency a multitude of times. Here, one of the women shares their stories.

In 2019, the state passed a law restricting how long prisons can hold people in isolation. But, according to a new report, people still say they’re being isolated for weeks and even months.

More than 700 prisoners at FPC Montgomery in Alabama refused meals over concerns that the Bureau of Prisons was violating sentencing reform provisions in the 2018 First Step Act.

In the early ‘90s, Oklahoma prosecutors claimed Littlejohn and another man had killed someone, even though the victim was shot with a single bullet. A state board has recommended the governor spare Littlejohn’s life.

The term short staffing is a euphemism to divert attention from the state’s continued addiction to incarceration.

Aging in prison meant realizing my son was also a victim of my crime due to my absence from his life. I try to do what I can on visits to help my son succeed.

Texas is set to execute Robert Roberson on Oct. 17 for allegedly shaking his baby to death. But numerous experts now agree the theory used to convict Roberson isn’t real—including the detective who helped arrest him.

Correctional officers allegedly used chemical spray and pepper bombs against women in handcuffs at Central California Women’s Facility.

Although my artistic pursuits began with material necessity, they have become a way for me to express myself and find inner peace within the oppressive environment in which I am confined.

With heat waves sweeping across the country, incarcerated people in states with traditionally milder climates are facing brutal conditions that have long plagued the South and Southwest. A survey by The Appeal reveals that many of the hottest states house prisoners in units without air-conditioning.

After The Appeal published an investigation into the Phoenix Police Department’s killing of 19-year-old Jacob Harris, a community coalition sprung up to help Harris’s three young friends, who are incarcerated for his death. Now, a court has granted the trio a chance to get out of prison.

“I was sentenced and put in prison for the choices I made. I was not sentenced to being raped and abused while in prison.” 

Two secretive prison units that used to almost exclusively house people said to be connected to terrorism have expanded by nearly 80 percent in 15 years, and a new unit is on the way. Formerly incarcerated people say they have been used to punish dissent.

On Wednesday, Tiana Hill testified before the U.S. Senate Human Rights Subcommittee that staff at the notorious Clayton County Jail insisted she wasn’t pregnant—until she gave birth on a metal bed.

In June, I stepped into a body scanner outside the visitation room at the Washington Corrections Center and held my breath.

A proposed HUD rule change would stop federal housing providers from discriminating against many people harmed by mass incarceration and the war on drugs.

A group of nearly 20 federal lawmakers sent letters to two companies this week calling out abusive industry practices and requesting additional information about their profits, policies, and contracts with local governments.

In 2011, more than 6,600 people imprisoned in California stopped eating for 19 days to protest extreme isolation inside the state’s prisons. The protests lead to state hearings and a lawsuit.

In prison, there is no space to grieve. I kept thinking that if only I was home, I could have given her the support she needed.

Incarcerated laborers on Angola’s Farm Line face “substantial risk of injury or death” during extreme heat, a federal judge ruled this week, ordering corrections officials to make policy changes to “preserve human health and safety.”

The governor’s broken promises have perpetuated an unacceptable status quo that denies incarcerated individuals a fair and transparent process for parole decisions.

“I was different than the 22-year-old who had made that devastating decision, but I couldn’t say when that shift had begun.”

He hopes the settlement will lead to reforms in New York prisons, where three-quarters of trans people say corrections officers have inappropriately touched or sexually assaulted them.

My checks came out to $300-400 weekly for about 70 hours of labor.

A review of a decades-old case resurfaces questions of judicial bias in Arizona, and is relevant to the state’s current judicial appointees.

The prison telecom giant charges more than a million incarcerated people significant fees to contact their loved ones. But twice in one week, the service was down for long periods.

A new book uses parole to chronicle how the criminal legal system prioritizes punishment over actually rehabilitating people or making society safer.

State policies nearly everywhere banish those with a sexual offense in their past. Vermont does the opposite by building communities around them—with dramatically positive results.

Less than five months into 2024, deaths at the Clayton County Jail have already surpassed last year’s total. The local sheriff’s lack of transparency has only compounded the pain for grieving families.

Two years after Elena’s death, I try to understand why I was given a child just to lose her. 

If I protect and guide someone else’s child in here, maybe someone will do mine out there.

I experienced my first childbirth while I was incarcerated in a county jail.

I had to return to jail before a resentencing hearing. It meant taking a trip back through hell.

Death row prisoners rarely get last meals, writes Lyle May, who is on death row in North Carolina. But on the night of an execution, the prison staff break room is full of cookies and cake.

A suit filed this week accuses Broome County Jail staff of using threats of punishment to “create a culture of fear” that forces pretrial detainees to submit to unpaid labor.

The Appeal’s 9-month investigation uncovered prison commissaries’ exploitative, inconsistent systems with inside prices up to five times higher than in the community and markups as high as 600 percent.

Inside The Appeal’s 9-month investigation.