Michelle West waited 32 years. Convicted in 1994 of nonviolent drug offenses, she was ordered to federal prison for two life sentences, plus an additional 50 years. On Sunday, former President Joe Biden commuted her sentence, meaning she will walk away from a low-security correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, this week as a free woman. […]
Incarceration
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Incarceration
‘We Need Everyone’: How Two Formerly Incarcerated Firefighters Are Building a Movement
This story originally published in 2022, but has been updated to reflect the recent fires ravaging neighborhoods across Los Angeles County. On Jan. 8, 2025, deadly fires tore through Los Angeles County, fueled by hurricane-force winds. The Eaton and Palisades Fires, two of the most destructive in California’s history, burned about 60 square miles within […]
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice, Incarceration
Brittany Martin, Convicted for Protesting Police Brutality, Is Home at Last
She’s home. Brittany Martin, the South Carolina woman who spent nearly four years in prison after being arrested at a George Floyd protest in June 2020, has been released. Martin, 36, had been separated from her five children and husband for nearly 1,000 days before her release on Wednesday morning. She was transferred from the […]
Posted inCulture, Incarceration
‘The Wildest Show in the South’: Spectacle and Suffering at America’s Biggest Prison
ANGOLA, La. — On a blistering fall afternoon, even by Louisiana’s standards, mainly Black incarcerated people cling tightly to bucking horses. They run from barreling bulls and get tossed around like rag dolls in events that are outlawed in rodeos across the country — but not here at the “wildest show in the South.” Each […]
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice, Incarceration, Policing, Public Safety
DOJ Launches Investigation Into This Mississippi County’s Infamous ‘Goon Squad’
Nearly two years after Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker survived hours of a sadistic torture plot conjured up by six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers, the U.S. Justice Department has launched a pattern or practice investigation into Rankin County, and its sheriff’s department. On behalf of Jenkins and Parker, their attorneys Malik […]
Posted inIncarceration, Partner Content
The Push to Investigate the Experiences of Incarcerated Women
Originally published by The 19th Women represent only about 10% of incarcerated people in the United States. Because of that, most criminal legal research and reform proposals overlook their specific needs. A growing number of researchers and advocates are pushing to change this. They’re calling for a more intentional focus on the factors that lead […]
Posted inIncarceration
Alabama Outlawed Slavery in Prisons. Is It Still Happening?
The day after Trayveka Stanley’s mother died, she was devastated. She was having trouble coping with her loss and needed time to grieve, but her plea for a day off from her prison job at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, didn’t persuade its officials. The 32-year-old was still required to show up […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Incarceration
Will Another’s Written Confession Be Enough to Set This Man Free?
This fall will mark 18 years since a New York judge sat at her bench with a clear view of two Black families whose lives had been ravaged by gun violence. On her right of the full courtroom sat supporters of Ronnie Wright, who faced being separated from his young daughter for the rest of […]
Posted inClimate Change, Criminal Justice, Environmental Justice, Incarceration
The Growing Crisis of Heatwave Deaths in America’s Prisons
Last September, at his graduation from Northwestern University, Michael Broadway reconnected with his mother, Elizabeth, for the first time in two decades. Due to her ailing health, she couldn’t visit him. As an incarcerated man, he didn’t have the option to travel to her, either. For those two decades, Broadway was held inside Stateville Correctional […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Incarceration, Partner Content
Michael Johnson Spent 3 Years in Solitary and Was About to Give Up on Life. Then He Got a Letter from his Daughter.
This story was originally reported and published by MindSite News, a nonprofit news outlet that reports on mental health. To read more stories like this, sign up for the MindSite News Daily newsletter. Michael Johnson had all but given up on living when a letter from his 14-year-old daughter, Ja’Kyra, arrived for him at Pontiac Correctional Center in 2015. […]