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News June 19, 2015
How Germany Treats Juveniles
Inside the German prison system, day four.
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News June 16, 2015
How Germany Does Prison
Americans on a mind-boggling incarceration road trip. Day One.
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Detail of the uniform of a correctional officer at the Waldeck Prison in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany.
News June 22, 2015
The Stiff Competition to Work in German Prisons
How Germany does prison, day five.
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The view outside Tegel-Prison from the bus carrying the delegation.
News June 18, 2015
Can German Prisons Teach America how to Handle Its Most Violent Criminals?
How Germany does prison, day three.
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News June 17, 2015
Germany’s Kinder, Gentler, Safer Prisons
Blank stares and culture shock. How Germany does prison, day two.
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Visitors at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in Hamburg, Germany.
Commentary December 20, 2018
Out From the Holocaust
Germany reckoned with its past to build a better justice system. America should too.
By Amy L. Solomon
Feature September 25, 2015
Prison Without Punishment
Germany allows inmates to wear their own clothes, cook their own meals, and have romantic visits. Could that work in the United States?
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Feature September 26, 2024
The Future of Prisons?
Inspired by Germany, South Carolina let prisoners design their own units, write house rules and settle their own disputes. Then came politics.
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Inmates watch television at the Missouri River Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility in Bismarck, N.D., which has based some of its programs on those found in a prison in Norway.
News October 31, 2017
I Did It Norway
Some American prisons are singing a European tune.
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John Pittman, left, is Davon Eldemire’s mentor and is helping him plan for life after release.
Feature May 8, 2018
The Connecticut Experiment
Young brains are still evolving. One prison is trying to take advantage of that.
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Life Inside August 10, 2017
What I Learned From the Neo-Nazi in My Prison Book Club
An inmate who grew up worshipping Hitler forces a reading group facilitator to challenge her own beliefs.
By Karen Lausa
Lt. Russell Hanes, left, and counselor Colleen McClay, in bright red at center, chat with women who are incarcerated at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Conn., in August.
News October 9, 2018
More Women Are Behind Bars Now. One Prison Wants to Change That.
Connecticut’s WORTH program uses therapy, classes and mentoring to try to keep women from coming back.
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On the way to solitary confinement in the Otis Bantum Correctional Center.
Commentary April 18, 2016
Some of Our Best Work of the Past Year
From David Simon's Baltimore anguish to elite police fraternities to teens behind bars.
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Life Inside June 10, 2021
I Hate to Admit It, but Prison Is a Blessing in Disguise.
Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick suffered multiple traumas before age 18. He masked his pain with Percocet, weed and drug-selling. Now, at a Pennsylvania prison with the right programs, he’s finally starting to heal.
By Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick
Life Inside February 4, 2022
How I Went From Gangster to Geek
Prison forced me to be still and start my mental metamorphosis.
By Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick
The solitary cell at Menard Correctional Facility in Illinois where Bernard Simmons was found dead.
Justice Talk March 31, 2016
Highlights From Our Justice Talk On Solitary Confinement
From comparisons to “Orange Is the New Black” to accounts from people who spent time in solitary, this is what you missed in our chat with Digg.
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Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, right, at a crime scene in Riverside, Calif., in 2019.
Coronavirus May 18, 2020
The Rise of the Anti-Lockdown Sheriffs
Opposition to stay-at-home orders is the latest example of a history of powerful sheriffs, which stretches back to the end of slavery and the settling of the frontier.
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An illustration shows a portrait of a Black man in blue and black ballpoint pen ink. White silhouettes of birds flying overlap his face.
Life Inside August 19, 2022
Dear Ira: I Want You to Know You Did Not Die in Vain
Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick participated in the robbery and shootout that claimed the life of a Delaware man named Ira Hopkins. Here is Pennick’s letter to Hopkins, “a loving son and uncle, an amazing chef and a leader.”
By Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick
Q&A September 18, 2015
‘Sex is Not a Service’
A former prostitute makes the case for busting johns.
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Judge Denise Navarre Cubbon in her courtroom with a juvenile offender in 2015 at the Lucas County Juvenile Court in Toledo, Ohio.
Justice Lab October 27, 2016
Who’s a Kid?
Science — and law enforcement — are rethinking young adults.
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An illustration shows a blue eye with a scene in its pupil. The scene is an outline of a person in an orange prison uniform sitting down on a bed, in the corner of their cell.
Life Inside February 9, 2024
My Biggest Daily Challenge in Prison Isn’t Violence. It’s the Monotony.
Boredom may seem like a small price to pay for committing a crime. But life on the inside isn’t so much a physical battle as it is a mental one.
By Jy’Aire Smith-Pennick
A conjugal visit bedroom at Auburn State Prison in Auburn, N.Y.
News February 11, 2015
‘Heaven’
Happiness is a family sleepover.
By Sheila Anne Feeney
Angel Campos Nava, right, was brought to the Franklin County Courthouse in Russellville, Ala. in April, 2013.
News September 22, 2016
How Mexico Saves Its Citizens from the Death Penalty in the U.S.
A fund is designated to train, pay and advise American defense lawyers.
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Bryan Stevenson receives a Honorary Doctor of Law from Rutgers University in Camden, N.J., in May.
Q&A June 24, 2015
Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race
“I don’t believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved.”
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Ayanna Brooks and her boyfriend, Joseph Burroughs, were walking her dog, Neptune, in their Washington, D.C., neighborhood in December 2018 when a police dog from the Takoma Park, Maryland, K-9 unit bit her.
Feature October 15, 2020
She Went Out For A Walk. Then Drogo The Police Dog Charged.
Growing up, few Black families in Ayanna Brooks’s neighborhood had dogs. A vicious attack reminded her why.
By and
A collage made up of figures of, from left: Texas pastor Mark Collins dressed as George Washington; Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb; activist Randy Weaver; former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack; and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association logo, which is an eagle. Sheriff's badges are scattered above the collage.
Feature October 18, 2022
Does Your Sheriff Think He’s More Powerful Than the President?
Richard Mack has built a “Constitutional sheriff” movement to resist state and federal authority on guns, COVID-19 and now election results. A new survey shows just how many sheriffs agree with him.
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A collage of, clockwise from top left: a photo of a woman with two children in their home; drawings of the faces of judicial candidates in circles with the text “Judicial Election Guide” in the center; an illustration of a surveillance device with a projection of a car coming out of a camera; drawings of four trans people, and above them an audio waveform; a collage of pictures, a gun, a police baton and helmet for The Marshall Project's story on the Black Shield organization; and a drawing of a school chair, with the words “The Hardest Case for Mercy” around it.
Analysis December 16, 2024
Some of Our Best Work for 2024
Online, in print, and on radio and TV, we delved into prison health care, political views of people behind bars, arrests of women who miscarry and more.
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Looking Back December 20, 2016
Homer and Harold
An extraordinary story of justice done, and what came after.
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Feature April 19, 2018
Framed for Murder By His Own DNA
We leave traces of our genetic material everywhere, even on things we’ve never touched. That got Lukis Anderson charged with a brutal crime he didn’t commit.
By Katie Worth
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