The families and partners of those incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Complex at Oakdale are sharing information and support as COVID-19 hits the prison.

Tom Wolf said Friday he will use his reprieve power, a form of clemency, to reduce the state prison population.

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.

The city’s DA’s office and its public defender association urged judges to adopt video meetings to speed the release of incarcerated people. But emails obtained by The Appeal show that judges took a much more limited approach to decarceration.

‘We are still packed in like sardines,’ writes Fate Winslow, who’s serving a life sentence. ‘The prison doesn’t supply anything for us.’

People are dying in jails and prisons because elected officials hesitated at the worst possible moment.

They tell Tom Wolf that taking any unilateral actions to reduce the state’s prison population would endanger public safety.

Louisville, Kentucky judges are ordering people with COVID-19 who have allegedly defied quarantine to wear GPS ankle monitors, raising ethical questions about the government’s role in a pandemic.

Twenty-eight people were to attend weeks-long drug treatment programs after violating parole. The COVID-19 pandemic nearly trapped them in jail indefinitely.

Public defenders are working with the courts to secure release for people incarcerated in the Florida county, many of whom are jailed for low-level offenses.

Experts are urging large-scale releases. But the Department of Justice often operates contrary to expertise.

‘They’re not supplying us with masks, they’re not supplying us gloves, they’re not supplying us with decent cleaning supplies.’

Despite risks to incarcerated people and the public, Florida is sending prisoners to perform hard labor.

In Alabama and elsewhere, canceled hearings and new procedures are complicating the parole process for people hoping to be freed.

It took a prisoner’s death ‘just for them to pass out a single extra bar of soap,’ one incarcerated man said.

I am trying my best to take care of myself in the midst of this pandemic, no different from you, no different from any other human being. But it’s impossible to do that at this jail. 

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.

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.

Men in Unit B-2 at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility say staff members have harassed and abused them since they possibly came into contact with an infected officer.

Telecommunications companies that serve prisons and jails, like Securus Technologies and Global Tel Link, are offering a limited number of free calls, but families say it’s not enough.

Public defenders in Fairfax County say their clients are being sent into harm’s way.

With COVID-19 rapidly spreading across the state, there’s heightened concern that the conditions inside Lowell Correctional Institution, coupled with the prison’s sizable elderly and pregnant population, could foster a deadly outbreak.

The ruling is a setback for the state’s so-called junk science statute.

ICE has adopted no policies aimed at releasing any of the 38,000 people it keeps in county jails and private detention centers across the country.

There are no good reasons for the president to keep vulnerable people behind bars any longer.

The Office of General Counsel determined that the governor could likely use reprieves to release vulnerable people from prison to control COVID-19’s spread, but the office is advising against it, according to internal emails obtained by The Appeal.

‘It is progressively getting worse, exponentially worse,’ a resident of one halfway house told The Appeal as part of a survey of facilities. ‘Something is going to happen and it’s not going to be good.’

We can’t allow “violent criminal” rhetoric to justify leaving some of the most vulnerable people in dangerous conditions.

People held in Bristol County are ‘extremely agitated and panicking’ due to unsanitary conditions and overcrowding amid the coronavirus outbreak.

‘Continuing to maintain these youths in this hotbed of contagion poses an unconscionable and entirely preventable risk of harm,’ one lawsuit states.

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.

Prisoners are “especially vulnerable to contracting and spreading COVID-19,” Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker wrote in his executive order.

“They are treating it like any epidemic in prison—that is to isolate, treat and then release back to the population.”

State governors and the president have the authority to grant commutations and reprieves to people in prison across the country as COVID-19 spreads.

“Based on this analysis, New York City jails have become the epicenter of COVID-19,” a Legal Aid attorney said.

“The doctors said they were going to come and do screenings every day, but for the past two days, they’ve just come into the dorm and stood by the front door and yelled, ‘Does anybody have any symptoms?’”

Everyone, it seems, is telling us that we are all “in this together”: The World Health Organization, the First Minister of Scotland, LL Cool J, and Gayle King among them. This seems to mean, for most, that people should think of others when deciding whether to cancel events, whether to go to the beach, and exactly how much toilet […]

“Still no hand sanitizer, no bleach.”

The island’s Communicable Disease Unit is already overflowing with quarantined people.

New research shows that jails contribute to infectious disease deaths in the greater community.