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.
A common sense cost-benefit analysis of pretrial detention.
Advocates have been urging Governor Gavin Newsom to make greater use of his clemency power, especially for older prisoners who are more vulnerable to COVID-19.
At the urging of advocates, Governor Tom Wolf signed off on all remaining commutations applications on his desk.
Despite calls to reduce incarcerated populations, the number of people being detained for minor parole violations has been rising.
Virginia’s Department of Corrections has recently settled two lawsuits over its use of solitary confinement—a practice lawmakers are moving closer to abolishing.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has suffered from years of poor funding and political interference by the Trump administration. Fixing it could be one of the most important tasks on Biden’s criminal justice reform agenda.
The Board of Pardons unanimously recommended Bruce Norris for a commutation in December, but Tom Wolf had yet to approve it.
It’s the latest bill in the state legislature’s long history of meddling with voter-approved amendments.
The Travis County District Attorney’s office had joined the release request and, despite Jimenez being taken into custody by ICE, she is expected to be released today.
The attorney general could pick a new head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. That person should have public health experience, formerly incarcerated activists say.
At 15, Kenneth Lamont Robinson was convicted for murder under South Carolina’s accomplice liability law, despite not committing the shooting that killed Kedena Brown.
The city says COVID-19 budget constraints will set back its plans to close the jail but people incarcerated there are suffering from the disease right now.
The Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, which recorded and published the complaints, paid for the release of some incarcerated women on Saturday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The ACLU and other groups sue to free people from the deadliest federal prison; a new study finds that coronavirus-driven jail releases hasn’t caused an increase in crime; and half of people in South Dakota prisons have tested positive for COVID-19.
A new watchdog report finds ‘inadequate adherence to basic safety protocols’ during COVID-19 outbreaks in California prisons; advocates call on Gov. Cuomo to release incarcerated people and enhance medical oversight; Abbe Lowell says the First Step Act needs a Second Step Act.
A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says decarceration is the only way to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control; the CDC changes its testing guidelines after a Vermont prison guard contracts coronavirus; and our ongoing case map shows more than 60 new outbreaks.
A California appeals court orders San Quentin prison to reduce its population by half, the ACLU’s Death by Incarceration project paints a stark picture of COVID-19’s toll, and a new law grants early release to 3,000 New Jersey prisoners.
An outbreak at Montana’s Cascade County jail demonstrates the risk COVID-19 poses to rural communities, the virus has infected nearly 2,000 children in juvenile-detention facilities, and one large Michigan prison is grappling with an outbreak that’s infected roughly one-third of its staff.
A new report by researchers at Johns Hopkins University warns prisons and jails that ‘changes are urgently needed’ to prevent more COVID-19 outbreaks; Wisconsin continues to struggle with infections inside and outside its prisons; and a new video series shares the tragic story of a wife trying to get help for her husband amid an outbreak at Chicago’s Cook County Jail.
How a collaboration between scholars, public health officials, and the Wayne County jail has kept COVID-19 in check; the California prison with the most coronavirus cases kept prisoners working despite the outbreaks; two counties report spikes in infections among juvenile detainees.
Truitt Watts, who is serving a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole at Oregon State Correctional Institution, describes the programs that helped him recover from addiction and address his past.
A ’freedom fighter’ reports from the San Quentin prisons on Twitter, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a ruling made to protect elderly prisoners, and a class-action lawsuit seeks $400 million from the state of Delaware for ignoring basic COVID-19 precautions.
COVID-19 has exposed a huge gap in knowledge over the rights of hospitalized prisoners, Wisconsin sees a spike in new cases in correctional facilities, and vitamin D might help save the lives of incarcerated people.
Through a loophole in the 13th Amendment, governments and corporations profit from cheap, incarcerated labor.
President Trump has appointed a quarter of active federal appellate judges, and they have decisively hampered legal efforts to force prisons and jails to address the coronavirus.
After being COVID-free for months, Massachusetts facilities see new outbreaks; a New York lawmaker wants to make it easier for people to serve prison and jail sentences at home; and deaths continue to plague a Virginia prison.
States like California, New York, and Arizona have relied on prisoners to continue working, with little pay and in precarious conditions, during the coronavirus pandemic.