Families are torn apart by the criminal justice system every day.

Advocates decry court’s shift to using teleconferencing for hearings.

‘We have a reaction as mothers to what’s been going on.’

With privatization of the state’s prisons in full swing, this year is on track to be its deadliest on record.

As a consequence, authorities are keeping them in cells for 22 to 23 hours a day, according to Oregon’s federal public defender.

A New York City man has been shuffled between Rikers Island and mental hospitals for 32 years.

New York’s Democratic governor has granted only a trickle of commutations, fewer than many of his Democratic and Republican predecessors.

Activists launch a new campaign to close an infamous St. Louis jail.

Kim Kardashian’s successful campaign to free a 63-year-old grandmother serving a life sentence in a drug case is a reminder that we need to go big on clemency. A 52-year-old grandfather named Euka Wadlington, also doing life in a drug case, would be a great place to start.

Debate coach Katrina Burlet says she was banned from state’s prisons after prisoners in her program argued for parole.

The judge who sentenced Brock Turner brought much-needed compassion to the bench, says public defender Sajid Khan.

People incarcerated at Angola want opportunities for education instead of hard labor in the fields.

Death penalty mitigation offers juries a chance to see defendants in a different light.

A new paper argues that President Johnson’s 1967 Commission on Law Enforcement’s report on the subject was “decades ahead of its time.”

Activists say a once-radical campaign has been co-opted.

Houston has come up with a new way to make life harder for people leaving prison on parole: by forcing the programs that provide them with housing, often paired with job placement and other services, to move outside the city limits. At the end of March, the city council approved an ordinance that imposes new regulations and […]

On Wednesday, May 16, 16-year-old Rosalyn “Bird” Holmes was able to walk out of prison and hug her mother. Though the teenager has yet to be indicted, let alone convicted, of any crime, she nonetheless spent the past 40 days in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, an adult women’s prison in Henning, Tennessee. Had it not […]

Todd Entrekin, the sheriff of the small Alabama county of Etowah, recently found himself in the national spotlight when an Alabama newspaper discovered that over the course of three years he pocketed at least $750,000budgeted for feeding the people detained in his county jail. While the inmates in his jail ate meat from a package labeled “not fit for human […]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is quietly rolling out a pair of new policies that could restrict access to books and communications for the system’s nearly 200,000 prisoners. The first of the new policies bans all books from being sent into federal facilities from outside sources including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. These retailers are […]

When Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that he would restore voting rights to New Yorkers on parole, he won instant praise from organizers who had long pushed for criminal justice reform. “This executive order will mean thousands more will be welcomed back into our democracy and assured that in 21st century America, the right to vote is […]

Marius Mason is a transgender man incarcerated at FMC Carswell, a federal women’s prison located in Fort Worth, Texas. Since at least 2014, Mason has wanted to change his legal name to his chosen name, an important step in the transition process for many transgender people. Section 45.103 of the Texas Family Code, however, prevents anyone […]

A few miles from Miami International Airport, outside of Hialeah, sits a tent camp of about 280 homeless people. There’s no electricity or running water and no bathrooms. News reports describe the stench of human waste and garbage, tents that flood when it rains, and flies, mosquitoes, and rats infesting the area. “Animals live better than this,” one resident […]

In February 2017, Mweze Kyungu was pulled over by Houston police officers in Harris County, Texas for a defective brake light and then arrested. “You kill people like me,” Kyungu told the arresting officers, “all you do is kill black people.” Thus began a nearly year-long ordeal for Kyungu in Harris County’s criminal justice system, […]

When Steven Shockey was arrested at a San Diego port of entry in December 2011, he knew his luck had run out. The 52-year-old was trying to re-enter the United States after jumping bail and fleeing to Mexico because of an arrest in Williamson County, Texas, for the aggravated assault of his ex-wife. Because of […]

Legal defense for immigrants has long been central to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s anti-Trump messaging. “We will use all the tools at our disposal to stand up for our people,” he assured immigrant New Yorkers during a high-profile speech at Cooper Union immediately following the 2016 election. His tone was similar during […]

A few days after an argument with her boyfriend led to a 911 call, Ms. L, a mother of two young boys, received an unexpected visit from Child Protective Services (CPS). The caseworker asked her if she used drugs, and Ms. L truthfully responded that she smoked marijuana from time to time. According to Ms. […]

As part of a growing push to end the use of cash bail, a national movement is calling attention to the plight of defendants held in jail simply because they can’t afford to pay their way out.

By all accounts, 71-year-old Henry Montgomery is not the same man he was when he was 17. In 1963, Montgomery skipped school and encountered Charles H. Hurt, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy, in the woods. In a panic, he shot and killed Hurt with his grandfather’s gun.

Russell Maroon Shoatz says that for 22 years straight he couldn’t sleep for more than three or four hours a night. The restricted housing unit where he lived — a solitary confinement cell, in common parlance — was smaller than most horse stalls, perpetually lit, and often cold during Pennsylvania’s long winters. Another Pennsylvania prisoner, Andre Jacobs, […]

By all accounts, 71-year-old Henry Montgomery is not the same man he was when he was 17. In 1963, Montgomery skipped school and encountered Charles H. Hurt, a plainclothes sheriff’s deputy, in the woods. In a panic, he shot and killed Hurt with his grandfather’s gun. A Baton Rouge, Louisiana jury convicted Montgomery of murder […]

In January 2017, the New York City Department of Correction began implementing regulations to address pervasive sexual abuse and harassment in its jails. Rikers Island has an alarmingly high rate of sexual violence: In 2011, the Department of Justice found that 8.6 percent of women incarcerated in the women’s housing unit at Rikers had reported being sexually […]

A 16-year-old Memphis girl charged with first-degree murder in the killing of a teen boy is being held in pretrial isolation at the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. The Shelby County District Attorney’s office charged her as an adult in the April 3, 2017 shooting death of 17-year-old Deago Brown. She was just 15 […]

For five days, 47-year-old Shannon Daves sat in solitary confinement in a Dallas County jail because she couldn’t afford to pay $500 bail. Daves, who is unemployed and homeless, was isolated because she is transgender — allegedly to protect her from the jail’s general population. She faces a misdemeanor property theft charge. She and five other indigent plaintiffs are […]

Frederick Adami, a 52-year-old resident of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, died from apparent opioid withdrawal early in the morning on Sunday, January 28, while in custody at the Bucks County Correctional Facility. Adami’s cellmate, Bruce Gramiak Jr., made a phone call to his girlfriend, Melissa Weitzel, the night before Adami’s death to tell her that his cellmate […]

Crime in New York City is at historic lows. The overall number of people in the city’s jails recently dipped below 9,000 for the first time since 1982. Yet the number of people locked up for violating the terms of their parole is on the rise. That is the conclusion of Less is More in New York City, a new […]

Alaska’s new comprehensive criminal justice reform law will reduce the prison population by 13% and save taxpayers $380 million.

Last week, councilmembers in Washington State’s largest county unanimously passed a bill that eliminates solitary confinement for youth detained in adult correctional facilities. In doing so, they joined a growing group of lawmakers across the country taking a stance against a practice that has disastrous effects on kids and teenagers tangled up in the criminal justice […]

A groundbreaking new ruling may force a reckoning over the way the most incarcerated state in the world pays for its criminal justice system. On Thursday, Judge Sarah Vance of the Eastern District of Louisiana found that New Orleans’ criminal district judges are operating their courts with a clear conflict of interest: The judges control […]

Public defenders in Charlotte say restrictions on communication hinder their ability to help jailed clients.

State law makes it easier to throw Brown away than consider traumas youth face and offer them hope of rehabilitation.