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An illustration shows a dark brown-skinned baby's hand gripping the index finger of a light brown adult hand against a black background. Shreds of paper showing a woman's varying expressions of worry overlap on top of the image of the two hands.
Life Inside April 1
I Had a High-Risk Pregnancy in Jail — Then I Gave Birth in Chains
When Rebecca Figueroa was arrested two months into her pregnancy, she didn’t worry because she wasn’t guilty. But seven months later, she was still in jail and totally unprepared for a high-risk pregnancy, childbirth in restraints and the constant fear of losing her daughter.
By Rebecca Figueroa as told to Carla Canning
An incarcerated person received a COVID-19 vaccination at the Bolivar County Regional Correctional Facility in Cleveland, Miss., in April.
News December 22, 2021
Omicron Has Arrived. Many Prisons and Jails Are Not Ready.
Experts fear “another potential tinderbox scenario” akin to the early days of the pandemic.
By Beth Schwartzapfel and Keri Blakinger
Inside Out October 14, 2021
They Put Me in Solitary for Drugs I Didn’t Have
Lockups use unreliable tests to claim that lawyers are sending drugs to their clients behind bars.
By Keri Blakinger
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
Inside Out September 23, 2021
Experts Say the Culture Is Often to Blame When Lock-ups Spin Out of Control
Could changes in jailers’ attitudes lead to better jail conditions and fewer deaths?
By Keri Blakinger
Life Inside August 12, 2021
Stopping Violence Over Prison Phone Time? There’s an App for That.
While Corey Devon Arthur was quarantining, people in the unit got tablets equipped with telephone apps. “If we all had the option to use a phone app, the value of violence would plunge,” he writes.
By Corey Devon Arthur
News July 15, 2021
Inside The Nation’s Overdose Crisis in Prisons and Jails
Behind bars, drug use is rampant and uniquely deadly, new data shows.
By Beth Schwartzapfel and Jimmy Jenkins
The Frame July 14, 2021
“Spaces of Detention” Takes You Inside the Facilities That Criminalize Undocumented Immigrants
Photographer, artist and anthropologist Cinthya Santos-Briones partners with formerly detained immigrants to shine a light on the insular “architecture of punishment” in New Jersey.
by Ariel Goodman
In Palm Beach County, Florida, the number of people in county jails, including the main detention center pictured here, dropped by nearly 250 during the pandemic.
News June 7, 2021
Jail Populations Creep Back Up After COVID-19
Judges, prosecutors and sheriffs in many states sent people home instead of to jail last year, but new data suggests the change is not lasting.
By Weihua Li, Beth Schwartzapfel and Michael R. Sisak
Prisoners attending a class at the mental health transition center at the Cook County Jail, in Chicago, in 2015.
News October 27, 2020
What Could Have Kept Me Out of Prison
We asked people behind bars what services and programs could have changed the course of their lives. Therapy, affordable housing and a living wage topped the list.
By Nicole Lewis, Aviva Shen and Katie Park
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