Search About Newsletters Donate
A photo illustration shows overlapping vertical bars, with a background of barbed wire. Several of the vertical bars have images, including of fencing, a man in handcuffs, a man lying on a bed in a cell, and people in a prison.
Inside Out March 17
Do Texas Prison Conditions Violate Human Rights Standards? One Scottish Court Says Yes
Tiny cells, lacking medical treatment and sweltering conditions cited by judge who blocked extradition.
By Keri Blakinger
A photo illustration shows President Joseph R. Biden in the center, with Michael Carvajal, resigning director of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, at the left. Imagery of barbed wire is scattered throughout the illustration.
Inside Out January 13
Biden Has Disappointed Many Prisoners and Guards. Now He Has a Chance to Do More.
A year after taking office, President Biden has yet to make good on key prison reform promises he made on the campaign trail.
By Keri Blakinger
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
News March 29, 2021
Texas Prisons Stopped In-Person Visits and Limited Mail. Drugs Got in Anyway.
Guards smuggle in most contraband, people who live in or work at prisons say.
By Keri Blakinger and Jolie Mccullough
At the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, prisoners have told their families that they have gathered snow into buckets so that they can flush dorm toilets.
News February 19, 2021
Inside Frigid Texas Prisons: Broken Toilets, Disgusting Food, Few Blankets
The deep freeze has been terrible for many Texans, but prisoners have little way to get warm.
By Keri Blakinger
News December 13, 2020
Prisoners Are Setting Fires To Protest Pandemic Conditions
But many Texas prisons don’t have working fire alarms.
By Keri Blakinger
Returned from Archive --- 30202809A. --- NYT AGGREGATORS OK --- --- 30202809A --- Orig. Caption: Springville, AL - Feb 15, 2017 - H-Dorm is currently used as the location of St. Clair's \"therapeutic community\", housing inmates with needs including substance abuse and mental health counseling...St. Clair Correctional Facility is an Alabama state men's prison located in St. Clair County, Alabama. The prison was originally built in 1983, and has an operating capacity of 1514 inmates. Within a two and a half year period ending September 2014, six inmates had been killed in the facility. The Alabama non-profit Equal Justice Initiative had already called for a change in leadership three months prior, after inmate Jodey Waldrop was killed in the early morning hours of June 3, for what they described as a pattern of serious neglect and violence, including an incident when the then-warden punched a handcuffed prisoner. As of June 2014 the prison was at 130 percent capacity...In March 2016 a correctional officer was wounded by a knife, trying to break up a fight. On May 13, 2016, another inmate was found dead of unknown causes. In June 2016 the Equal Justice Initiative filed a motion in federal court arguing that \"severe overcrowding, understaffing and dangerous conditions violate the prisoners' constitutional rights,\" and that the prison's severe understaffing poses a safety risk to guards and correctional officers. The facility runs at 59.5% of full staffing levels, giving it a staff-to-inmate ratio among the highest in U.S. prisons. NYTCREDIT: William Widmer for The New York Times
Commentary December 17, 2019
How to Fix Our Prisons? Let The Public Inside.
We need a broad national effort to recruit and place volunteers to educate and counsel incarcerated people.
By Neil Barsky
Life Inside June 27, 2019
We Thought Our Prison Strike Was a Success. Then Came the Officers in Riot Gear
“Panic ensued as everyone braced for the inevitable attack.”
By Mangaaka Ade
Life Inside November 29, 2018
The Big Chill
I had never been locked up before. No one told me that prison would be so cold.
By Tracy Meadows
Feature October 11, 2017
“Cooking Them to Death”: The Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons
As the climate changes, inmates without air-conditioning have no escape from extreme heat.
WITH VIDEO BY THE MARSHALL PROJECT, THE WEATHER CHANNEL AND DIVIDED FILMS
About
People
Jobs
Sitemap
Funders