North Carolina

News July 29

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

Coronavirus July 16

Prison Populations Drop by 100,000 During Pandemic

But not because of COVID-19 releases.

By Damini Sharma, Weihua Li, Denise Lavoie AND Claudia Lauer

Feature July 10

Freed From Prison, Dead from COVID-19, Not Even Counted

Officials’ missteps at Butner made it the deadliest federal lockup.

By Joseph Neff and Dan Kane

News June 11

New Hope for People Who Claim Racism Tainted Their Death Sentence

The North Carolina state Supreme Court has upheld the controversial Racial Justice Act, which opponents repealed in 2013

By Joseph Neff and Beth Schwartzapfel

Coronavirus May 14

What Women Dying In Prison From COVID-19 Tell Us About Female Incarceration

Fatal victims illuminate women’s unique problems in prison, and the all-too-common ways they get there in the first place.

By Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger and Joseph Neff

News May 11

A Growing Number of State Courts Are Confronting Unconscious Racism In Jury Selection

“A judge who deals with prosecutors every day is not going to say, ‘You intentionally discriminated on the basis of race, and you lied about it with pretextual reasons.’”

By Beth Schwartzapfel

Coronavirus April 24

These Prisons Are Doing Mass Testing For COVID-19—And Finding Mass Infections

Health experts say not testing staff could be a blind spot.

By Cary Aspinwall and Joseph Neff

Coronavirus March 19

North Carolina Prisoners Still Working in Chicken Plants, Despite Coronavirus Fears

“Kinda defeats the ban on visitation, which was to protect inmates and mainly staff,” critic says.

By Joseph Neff

Feature February 18

Anatomy of Hate

It was a triple-murder fueled by rage—but was it a hate crime?

By Emily Kassie

News August 28, 2019

Same-Sex Couples in North Carolina Don’t Have Equal Abuse Protections

A lawsuit seeks protective orders even when queer couples don’t live together.

By Joseph Darius Jaafari