For 20 Years, This Prosecutor Had a Secret Job Working For the Judges Who'd Decide His Cases
One of Ralph Petty's victims is trying to hold him accountable, but she will have to overcome prosecutorial immunity.
One of Ralph Petty's victims is trying to hold him accountable, but she will have to overcome prosecutorial immunity.
The police officers who allegedly framed William Virgil were denied qualified immunity. But they're still trying to delay a trial.
Bail reforms did not lead to higher crime, and in fact should be applied more uniformly, report finds.
A new report emphasizes that the U.S. would still have a very high incarceration rate even if all drug war prisoners were released.
The record number of reduced sentences still represented a tiny share of the federal prison population.
The bill addresses treatment of women in federal prisons and sexual assault of people in police custody.
Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich said Moses would be a free woman—if she hadn't insisted on exercising her constitutional right to trial.
Louisiana refused to release Sneed for months, despite a judge ruling several times that the state was breaking the law.
A new Iranian thriller is both an elaborate social parable and an extended advertisement for the U.S. bankruptcy system.
"A future of bloodless global discipline is a chilling thing."
A New York state judge found video of guards ceding control of Rikers to gang leaders more than enough evidence to order the release of a pretrial inmate.
Bobby Sneed's story highlights how far some government agents will go to keep people locked up, flouting the same legal standards they are charged with upholding.
In 2021, the institutional rot and dysfunction at Rikers Island cascaded into a full-blown catastrophe.
Although the tests are used by prison systems and police departments across the country, a judge found they have an error rate "only marginally better than a coin-flip."
Given the dangers of jails and prisons, the pettiest of crimes can become death sentences.
If police dogs assault innocent people at their handlers’ direction, it’s usually treated as the victim’s fault.
COVID-19 has led to foot dragging in implementing some FIRST STEP Act reforms.
Coercive plea deals trample on defendants' Sixth Amendment rights.
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"A system that allows this level of sustained incompetence and cruelty... is morally bankrupt," a doctor wrote after investigating medical neglect in Arizona prisons.
A 2016 Reason story detailed the D.C. Jail's long history of failure. Now the federal government is finally paying attention.
However, the cruel policy that threatened him with years in jail remains in place.
"She was withdrawing from opioids and actively suicidal. She needed help, and she got the opposite."
Raquel Esquivel, convicted of a nonviolent drug offense in 2009, was put on home confinement during COVID-19.
In a lawsuit, Marc Crawford's widow says the state refused to give him his prescriptions and his chemotherapy.
Newsom's opposition to a judge's order requiring vaccinations for prison staffers lays bare the hypocrisy of the governor.
No accountability for government corruption.
For every 8.3 executions in the United States, one innocent person on death row has been exonerated.
The legal doctrine continues to render juries irrelevant.
Amir Meshal was never charged with a crime.
Overzealous three-strikes laws claim another victim.
Formal sentences cover for informal penalties including crowding, poor sanitation, beatings, and rape.
What happens when a community bail fund stops paying bail and starts trying to abolish it?
The men of Attica said they had "set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization" of U.S. prisoners. For all the horror and bloodshed, not much has changed.
The men must keep masturbation diaries, wear ankle monitors, and even use penile circumference gauges.
In the right circumstances, home detention is cheaper and more effective than prison.
Kevin Strickland, Christopher Dunn, and Lamar Johnson are still paying for crimes that government officials say they did not commit.
Defense lawyers say they were accused of smuggling drugs to clients based on tests so unreliable they're akin to "witchcraft, phrenology or simply picking a number out of a hat."
Such punitive measures do not make society any safer.
Controversy highlights punishing responses to mundane mistakes during post-release monitoring of felons.
In 2018, the Republican said family separations were "tragic and heart-rending."
Reason tried out the field test kits used to test for drugs in prison. They were unreliable and confusing.
Growing criticism of big-city progressive D.A.s George Gascón and Chesa Boudin underscores the importance of distinguishing necessary reform from simply failing to enforce the rule of law.