Your Donation Will Be Doubled. Support Today!
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.
George Floyd’s ancestors were born into slavery. Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa powerfully document Floyd’s life and lineage.
The Appeal contacted 117 prosecutors and city attorneys to ask if they’ll file criminal cases against campus demonstrators. So far, only four expressed apprehension at doing so.
Studies show “negative public perceptions” of police contribute to low recruitment. Stripping away police oversight will only lead to more bad press for cops.
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.
When residents of Leyden, Massachusetts, started investigating their former police chief, they didn’t know it would end with criminal charges—and a successful push to reform the town’s government.
The recently enacted Secure D.C. bill ignores demands from District residents while giving handouts to an unelected prosecutor desperate to consolidate power.
Upon closer examination, many of the most widely covered property crime phenomena can be better understood as the predictable result of a callous corporate push for profits.
I had to return to jail before a resentencing hearing. It meant taking a trip back through hell.
Samuel Anthony moved away from Sierra Leone at six years old. That didn’t stop the U.S. from deporting him to a country where he doesn’t know anyone and doesn’t speak the most common language.
President Biden has pardoned thousands of people for cannabis-related offenses. But to truly give people “second chances,” he should push Congress to erase peoples’ marijuana-related criminal records entirely.
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.
In total, 44 states lack universal air conditioning requirements in their prisons. A new federal program called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund could help catalyze action.
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.
Inside The Appeal’s 9-month investigation.
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.
At Kentucky’s Northpoint Training Center, incarcerated people are not allowed to participate in programs until they’re at least four years away from their parole board date—robbing people of years of educational opportunities.
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.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the state can enforce a near-total abortion ban from 1864. The ban allows no abortions except to save the life of a pregnant person and carries a mandatory two- to five-year prison sentence for people who provide abortions.
Lawmakers tried and failed to track “wandering officers.” But state regulators also refuse to release data that would help journalists and the public do so.
On the hook to repay $1.3 billion of debt this year, the nation’s largest prison telecom company, Securus, is on the verge of bankruptcy. Its failure would represent a remarkable victory for advocates—and a potential beginning of the end for the industry as we know it.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has suggested banning imprisoned people from using social media—but First Amendment defenders say the rule would chill free speech and silence whistleblowers.
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.
“That video visitation is going to work,” one Genesee County official reportedly said in 2012. “A lot of people are going to swipe that Mastercard and visit their grandkids.”
Larry Jones says Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Ira Ynigo crushed his middle finger in a door and, instead of helping him, locked the door and walked away. “He watched me scream,” Jones said.
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.
The ACLU sued the state after it moved children to the former death row unit at the notorious Angola prison. But a court filing says the kids have faced abuse in their new facility, too.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the Phoenix Police Department for potential civil rights violations. During last week’s city council meeting, residents said city officials must stop fighting the inquiry.
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.
New York officials have flooded the subway system with cops and military personnel in a show of “security theater.” Will it actually make people safer—and is that even the point?
The teacher was disciplined after refusing a supervisor’s orders to tell students literacy tests weren’t racist and instead meant to ensure people “knew what they were voting for,” according to the lawsuit.
My husband Nick died from COVID-19 in March 2020 while imprisoned pretrial. Joe Biden has said he’d help others like him before it’s too late. But so far, the president has yet to make good on his promises.
BOP Director Colette Peters blamed understaffing and “crumbling” facilities for the increasing number of deaths in federal prisons during hearings last week.