by David M. Reutter

Alaska is a small state with enormous natural resources. The native people, who largely subsist off the land, enrich its culture. The beauty of its landscape draws millions of tourists annually. Yet behind the sheen of natural and cultural richness lies a deadly and degrading ...

On December 3, 2023, Tiawana Brown became the first ex-prisoner sworn in to serve on the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina. In September 2023, the self-described “survivor of incarceration” won the Democratic primary in the city’s District 3, her life-long home, before going on to win the seat in ...

Writers are intimately familiar with the effort it takes to organize ideas and direct them through a keyboard into text. Most have the comfort of knowing their draft work waits for them to take the next step. But incarcerated writers do not have that comfort.

In November 2023, Christopher Blackwell ...

Calling it “one of the most blatant and outrageous uses of excessive force” he’s ever seen, Cleveland attorney Nick DeCello of Spangenberg Shibley & Liber LLP filed suit in federal court for the Northern District of Ohio on January 25, 2024, accusing a Lorain County Jail (LCJ) guard of assaulting ...

In a strange-but-true story—like a fox asking a hen to help raid the coop—the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) announced on October 20, 2023, that its Office of Legislative Affairs has a new attorney advisor: Molly Gill, a long-time official at sentencing reform nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM).

Gill ...

Former New York prisoner Ricardo Jimenez, 55, filed suit in federal court for the Southern District of New York on August 2, 2023, accusing New York City and three former officers with its Police Department (NYPD), as well as the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office (DAO), of violating his civil ...

According to a report on December 7, 2023, when Warden Jeremy Everett sounded the alarm two months earlier over insufficient reentry assistance at Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County Jail, the administration of County Executive Chris Ronayne demanded Everett resign.  

Reentry programs reduce the likelihood of repeat offending, and other Ohio counties have ...

Lawmakers on both coasts of the U.S. sponsored legislation in January 2024 to make telecommunications free to state prisoners and their families. This follows a national trend to ease the financial burden on families with incarcerated loved ones and reduce the associated risk of reoffending for those who can’t afford ...

David Carrillo, 49, was released from prison on January 31, 2024, a month after Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) commuted his sentence. Polis praised Carrillo for completing a GED, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in business administration while in prison. Carillo is also one of the first professor-prisoners, teaching ...

Under contract provisions that went into effect on January 1, 2024, prison telecom giant Pay Tel secured a monopoly on video visitation services at Georgia’s Glynn County Jail. A contract addendum inked in June 2023 says that the firm paid for the privilege with a $160,000 “technology grant” made to ...

A $4.8 million embezzlement scheme involving his wife and daughter. A collection of cars and cigars purchased with the ill-gotten gains. More of the money diverted to a former county councilwoman for child support payments after their affair resulted in an out-of-wedlock birth. Commissary funds from the county jail plundered ...

Marina Bueno, an incarcerated writer, hopes to attend college but faces a harsh reality—no college classes are offered at her Florida women’s prison in Homestead. In fact, only 326 out of 80,000 state prisoners were enrolled in a college class as of January 2024.

Just three out of 28 state ...

Seven years after Michigan lawmakers adopted the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act (WICA)—and 17 years after state Sen. Steve Beida (D-Warren) began working to get it passed by a legislature then dominated by Republicans and signed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder (R)—a group of state lawmakers introduced legislation to close gaps in ...

Arriving at the Hennepin County Jail in July 2022, Lucas Bellamy, 41, warned staffers at the Minneapolis lockup that he had ingested a bag of drugs. Yet when he died three days later of a perforated bowel, he had been given nothing more than anti-acid medication. Why? Because jailers assumed ...

Virginia’s General Assembly tabled a pair of bills that would have provided a path to early release for state prisoners after serving at least 15 years with good behavior, with Senators continuing S.B. 427 to next year’s session on February 28, 2024, and the House of Representatives leaving H.B. 834 ...

A suit removed to federal court for the District of South Carolina on December 15, 2023, accuses Bamberg County and its jailers of Tasering a 51-year-old mentally ill detainee and starving him to death the year before. The jail medical contractor, Southern Healthcare Partners (SHP), was also named as a ...

Alabama is notoriously stingy with parole grants to eligible prisoners, but it also leaves many to languish in work-release centers, where the unemployment rate in January 2024 hit 26%—far above the state’s overall rate of just 2.9%

Though numbering just 350 of the state’s 20,469 prisoners, the unemployed highlight the ...

Two detainees were back in custody a week after breaking out of W.C. “Dub” Brassell Adult Detention Center in Arkansas’ Jefferson County on January 22, 2024. Noah Roush, 22, and Jatonia Bryant, 23, cut a hole in the ceiling of a shower, another in the roof above that, and then ...