Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside two federal women's prisons. The Bureau of Prisons heavily redacted reports that would show if women died of inadequate care.
Prison staff were fired in less than half of substantiated incidents of sexual misconduct between 2016 and 2018, and only faced legal consequences in 6 percent of cases.
"Comprehensive and accurate records are critical if patterns and causes of harm are going to be identified and corrected," said an attorney representing Louisiana inmates.
The state's "arbitrary requirement to house all male death row prisoners in permanent solitary confinement does not promote safety and security, is inconsistent with correctional best practices, and serves no penological purpose," the lawsuit claims.
"There is an obligation both to incarcerated persons and the taxpayers not to keep someone incarcerated for longer than they should be," a Louisiana district attorney said. "Timely release is not only a legal obligation, but arguably of equal importance, a moral obligation."
"It's time to address the fact that this is a system that needs better oversight on numerous fronts," Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a Friday press release.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission might make medical neglect a qualifying condition for compassionate release.
"Under the new rule, the State would have been able to prolong the botched execution process indefinitely," the Equal Justice Initiative wrote in a press release.
Justice Richard Bernstein said Pete Martel's hiring as clerk was unacceptable because "I'm intensely pro-law enforcement."
"Just because I made some bad choices in my life, they shouldn't be allowed to make bad health choices for me and my baby," said one woman whose labor was induced against her will.
Today's scheduled execution is getting attention because she's trans. But the bigger story here is how she was sentenced to die.
"The most valuable thing taken away while in prison is time," says the author of Corrections in Ink.
When I was young, I assumed government would lift people out of poverty. But those policies often do more harm than good.
Somehow deaths have climbed even though the prison population has dropped.
Long delays and management failures "allowed serious, repeated sexual abuse in at least four facilities to go undetected."
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Seventeen retired federal judges, appointed by both Republicans and Democrats, filed a brief supporting his appeal.
There is little utility to charging 10-year-olds as adults, yet Wisconsin still mandates the practice in certain cases.
Missouri law bans those under 21 from witnessing executions. Despite attempts to challenge the law, 19-year-old Khorry Ramey will be barred from attending her father's execution on Tuesday.
Biden should exercise his pardon power to help some of the people whose lives his criminal justice policies destroyed.
While the pause comes as a relief to those opposed to the death penalty, Ivey's full-throated defense of the practice makes it clear that she seeks only a temporary pause in executions, not an end to the policy.
The court says a 51-year "life" sentence for a 2015 murder violated the Eighth Amendment.
"People die from hard physical labor and inability to access medical treatment that they need," said one former inmate.
On Tuesday, voters in Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont, and Oregon approved ballot measures that removed exceptions to anti-slavery laws in their state's constitutions, effectively banning forced prison labor.
It’s a little thing, but thousands of people end up in jail over these types of avoidable technical violations.
State prisons around the country ban the roleplaying game, too, because of bizarre concerns about gang behavior and security threats.
While Biden's mass pardons for those with low-level marijuana possession convictions were greeted with cautious optimism, protesters expressed frustration over Biden's lack of action to actually release those imprisoned for nonviolent drug crimes.
Is a federal takeover of the troubled jail pending?
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Craig Ridley died after corrections officers paralyzed him in a beating then left him without medical care for days.
Reason first reported last week on the scathing contempt order, which said the Bureau of Prisons should be "deeply ashamed" of its conduct.
A federal judge wrote that the Bureau of Prisons should be "deeply ashamed" of medical delays that resulted in a man dying from treatable cancer.
The war on drugs conspires with the war on guns to make a mockery of justice.
Pardoning possession offenders is nice. Taking his boot off the necks of cannabis sellers would be even better.
The Supreme Court may soon consider if acquitted conduct sentencing is illegal.
The Federal Prison Oversight Act would create an independent ombudsman to investigate complaints about the Bureau of Prisons, something prison advocacy groups have long called for.
High recidivism rates are not surprising when life in prison features the same factors that drive crime.
Libertarians have some common ground with the abolitionists—but if they insist on anti-capitalism as a litmus test, abolitionists will find themselves isolated and marginalized.
The report says the inaccuracies "deprived Congress and the American public of information about who is dying in custody and why."
Brittany Martin, who is pregnant, was sentenced to four years in prison after telling police they'd "better be ready to die for the blue. I'm ready to die for the black."
"This is inhumane," one child told state inspectors.
Criminal justice groups say the numbers vindicate their push to keep those people from being sent back to prison.
More than 900 had been held in isolation for more than a decade.
Former Judges Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan are now serving lengthy prison sentences for what became known as the "kids-for-cash" scandal.
Joe Nathan James appeared to have suffered for hours as prison officials tried to establish an IV for lethal injection.
