Search About Newsletters Donate
A barbed wire fence surrounds a tan-colored building.
Closing Argument September 23
Juvenile Detention Centers Face One Scandal After Another
Despite repeated efforts at reform, allegations of mistreatment mount at youth facilities across the country.
By Lakeidra Chavis
A photo shows the silhouette of a prison tower, trees and lamp posts against an orange sunset.
Closing Argument July 22
‘Concrete Coffins’: Surviving Extreme Heat Behind Bars
Record temperatures in much of the U.S. threatening more people in prisons.
By Jamiles Lartey
An illustration shows a Black man in a white T-shirt with his arms around an older Black woman in a polka-dotted shirt and an older Black man in a newsboy cap and black T-shirt. The left side of the illustration shows a freeway, with trees at the edge of the road.
Life Inside May 12
My Brother Was Wrongfully Convicted for Murder. 20 Years Later, So Was My Son.
Although it was a coincidence, I knew it wasn’t a mistake. What Louisiana was doing to men like my brother Elvis and my son Cedric was intentional.
By Earline Brooks Colbert, as told to Jamiles Lartey
A Black man wearing a red T-shirt that reads “No kids in Angola” shouts during a protest at the Louisiana state Capitol against the state’s decision to house some youth at the adult prison Angola.
Inside Story February 2
When Kids Are Punished Like Adults
Louisianans protest temporary youth housing in notorious Angola, and Bryan Stevenson speaks on sentencing reform.
By Lawrence Bartley and Donald Washington, Jr.
A group of people walk through a dark hallway with prison cells on either side.
Feature June 9, 2022
Rethinking Prison Tourism
Many former prison sites draw on the spooky and salacious to entertain visitors. But some are having second thoughts.
By Hope Corrigan
Life Inside July 29, 2021
A Filthy New Orleans Jail Made My Son Sick. The ‘Cruel and Unusual’ Medical Treatment at Angola Prison Killed Him.
This spring, a judge ruled that the healthcare at the Louisiana State Penitentiary violated prisoners’ Eighth Amendment rights. Lois Ratcliff tells the horrifying story of her son Farrell’s decline and death.
By Lois Ratcliff as told by Jamiles Lartey
Prisoners from the Ferguson Unit picking cotton outside of Huntsville, Texas, in 1968. The unit was named after James E. Ferguson, a governor in the 1910s with a troubled record of condoning anti-Mexican violence.
News July 29, 2020
Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?
Many prisons, especially in the South, are named after racist officials and former plantations.
By Keri Blakinger
Norris Henderson founded Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) to organize incarcerated people to engage in civic issues after he was released from Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
Life Inside March 12, 2020
What I Learned About Voting Rights in the Fields of Angola
"We asked ourselves: Do we want to change our conditions, or do we want to change our circumstances?"
By Norris Henderson as told to Maurice Chammah
Case in Point May 3, 2016
Exonerated, Dead and Still on Trial
In a notorious Louisiana case, a judge gets in a last kick.
By Andrew Cohen
Albert Woodfox at the Ashe Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, La. on Feb. 19. He was released from Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. earlier in the day.
Q&A February 21, 2016
‘I’ll Believe It When I See It.’
After 42 years in solitary, Albert Woodfox walks free.
By Andrew Cohen
About
People
Jobs
Sitemap
Funders