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An illustration shows the back of a person's head and shoulders. Several panels surround the head in the background, depicting police brutality, fish in a pond, a badge, paperwork, a hand holding a donut, and a boot.
Life Inside February 10
I Write About Bad Prison Conditions. That Doesn’t Mean I Hate All Cops.
As a kid in Pakistan, police treated Tariq MaQbool like a nephew. As an adult in solitary confinement, the kindness of one New Jersey corrections officer made him feel human.
By Tariq MaQbool
A white bus drives in front of a sign that says "Department of Correction: Rikers Island."
News November 28, 2022
A Rikers Officer Had Sex With a Detainee. It Took 7 Years to Fire Him.
The officer also asked the woman to cover up that another Rikers guard sexually assaulted her.
By Reuven Blau and Keri Blakinger
Life Inside October 28, 2022
I Spent Over 40 Years Working in Corrections. I Wasn’t Ready for Rikers.
Rikers Island jail complex “reflects our nation’s racist and destructive fixation on imprisonment,” writes former New York City jails commissioner Vincent Schiraldi. “It’s Exhibit A for why we need to end mass incarceration.”
By Vincent Schiraldi
Life Inside January 14, 2022
People in the Scandal-Plagued Federal Prison System Reveal What They Need in a New Director
“This is kind of like AA: To move forward, first you have to admit there’s a problem.”
By Keri Blakinger
Lance Lowry, who recently retired after 20 years as a corrections officer, outside the Huntsville Unit in Texas.
News November 1, 2021
As Corrections Officers Quit in Droves, Prisons Get Even More Dangerous
Fewer guards lead to more lockdowns, rising tensions and scant access to healthcare.
By Keri Blakinger, Jamiles Lartey, Beth Schwartzapfel, Mike Sisak and Christie Thompson
As part of the settlement of Nuñez v. City of New York, a 2011 class-action lawsuit filed by Rikers Island detainees, federal monitors periodically report on use of force across the jail complex. This image from the Eleventh Report shows at least 12 officers in a recreational area responding to two detainees who refused to be handcuffed.
Life Inside October 5, 2021
Dispatch From Deadly Rikers Island: “It Looks Like a Slave Ship in There.”
Rikers Island has been notorious for violence and neglect for decades. But detainees, corrections officers and officials tell us the New York City jail complex has plunged into a new state of emergency.
By Beth Schwartzapfel
A man from a nearby prison was shackled to the bed in a Rhode Island hospital while being treated with a ventilator for COVID-19 in the intensive care unit in December.
Coronavirus June 30, 2021
A Half-Million People Got COVID-19 in Prison. Are Officials Ready for the Next Pandemic?
People who live and work in prisons worry they remain vulnerable, even as life behind bars returns to business as usual.
By Katie Park, Keri Blakinger and Claudia Lauer
Coronavirus June 24, 2021
A State-By-State Look at 15 Months of Coronavirus in Prisons
The Marshall Project and The Associated Press collected data on COVID-19 infections in state and federal prisons every week. See how the virus affected correctional facilities near you.
By The Marshall Project
Life Inside April 29, 2021
Nothing Has Made Me Feel More American Than Going to Jail
I was born in D.C. to South Indian parents. But it wasn’t until I had to negotiate the criminal justice system that I fully realized what many Americans of color have to deal with.
By Ravi Shankar
The Language Project April 12, 2021
I Was Trained to Call Prisoners a Word They Hated
As correctional officers, we are conditioned to call prisoners ‘inmates.’ But at Sing Sing, where I worked for 25 years, that was as bad as calling them a snitch.
By Kevin Byrd, as told to Adria Watson
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