Prisons

Carmela Mose is an inmate at Central California Women’s Facility and the winner of the Securus original hip-hop track contest. Her song, “I Think,” was chosen as the winner by the rapper Lecrae, who joined Mose for a studio session – the only one in 10 years that Lecrae has ever cried. LX News storyteller Ngozi Ekeledo meets them both...

As part of an effort to keep illegal drugs and other contraband out of state prisons, New York is taking away one of the few pleasures of life behind bars. It will no longer let people send inmates care packages from home. The state began phasing in the new policy last month. Friends and family will no longer be allowed...

Recent reporting on the federal prison system has revealed layer after layer of abuse, neglect and leadership missteps in the Bureau of Prisons — including failure to tell families when a prisoner is severely ill or dying.

A follow-up to an earlier Associated Press investigation finds that the crisis at the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, is far from over.

Grassroots organizations across the country battle prison restrictions and pandemic struggles to send books to incarcerated people.

A “brutal” attack on inmates by guards at New Jersey’s only women’s prison has resulted in misconduct and other charges for the prison’s top official, the state’s acting attorney general said Wednesday.

Julius Jones is sitting in an Oklahoma prison, no longer scheduled for execution but with no chance at release. Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted Jones’ sentence to life without parole in November 2021, after the state parole board expressed about the doubts about the evidence that led to his conviction for the murder of Paul Howell. Rev. Keith Jossell, Jones’ pastor,...

The coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the labor market have pushed many prison staffing systems into crisis

“They didn’t know what to do with us,” says Jermaine Archer, who caught COVID while incarcerated at Rikers Island. The New York City jail holds people pretrial and has faced criticism for deaths and crowded conditions. NBC New York’s Kay Angrum was live outside after 2 counter-protesting groups spoke on behalf of corrections workers and the incarcerated.

Pope Francis has called for “more humane” prison life in the wake of bloodshed in a prison in Ecuador in which 118 people died and dozens more were injured.

A corrections officer at a men’s state prison in New Jersey has been arrested for allegedly assaulting and physically punishing inmates, including using a tactic described as the “fence treatment,” the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday. Jonathan Dienst reports.

A corrections officer at a men’s state prison in New Jersey has been arrested for allegedly assaulting and physically punishing inmates, including using a tactic described as the “fence treatment,” the U.S. attorney’s office said Friday. John Makos, a 41-year-old corrections officer at Bayside State Prison in Cumberland County’s Leesburg, is criminally accused of participating in a conspiracy to...

A top DOJ official cited the more than 40 suspected or confirmed homicides of Georgia prison inmates in announcing the civil rights investigation.

The California’s high court has ruled that prison inmates cannot legally possess marijuana behind bars under the state’s 2016 law allowing recreational pot.

Here’s how one nonprofit is helping the formerly incarcerated become entrepreneurs.

A doctor who worked for New York’s corrections system and took issue with a crackdown on prescription drug abuse is suing the agency, saying he was forced to quit and faced harassment for seeking appropriate care for his patients. At issue is a policy shift the system made five years ago to increase oversight at a time of heightened...

Federal regulators are considering allowing state prisons across the country more technological options to combat contraband cellphones.

Texas death row inmate Quintin Jones is scheduled to be executed May 19. But Jones is pleading to Gov. Greg Abbott for clemency, telling the New York Times contributor Suleika Jaouad that he is a different person than he was 2 decades ago. Jones was put on death row after confessing to the murder of his great-aunt. His family has...

California is giving 76,000 inmates the opportunity to leave prison earlier

It hasn’t even been a year since the U.S. government said abuse at the facility was an “open secret” — but how was abuse an open secret? And why wasn’t something done about it?