Prison Sentences
News and opinions on the federal prison system, mass incarceration, and criminal justice reform.
It’s the end of a drawn-out legal process, haunted by the failure of the war on terror.
El Salvador has touted its tough-on-crime policies (and kept quiet on human rights issues). Now everyone wants to try.
Why are more and more older people spending their dying years behind bars?
The majority of people sitting in local jails haven’t been convicted of a crime.
The South Bend mayor’s platform aims to present a realistic vision for the justice system — and show his commitment to police reform.
The Philadelphia rapper had been caught in America’s probation system for years. On Tuesday, his case finally came to an end.
The longtime death row inmate could still face an unprecedented seventh trial — at the hands of the prosecutor who racially discriminated against him.
Want to fix the criminal justice system? Start with overzealous prosecutors.
The deep dive into the case Serial made famous tries to be nuanced and sensitive, but can’t get past its pro-Syed bias.
The Department of Justice says prison labor is good for a company’s bottom line.
Incarcerated Americans are often forced to work for cents an hour. So they’re launching what could be their biggest protest ever.
The president helped the 63-year-old grandmother, and invited her to the State of the Union but has harsh words for other drug offenders.
A new UCLA report finds that thousands in LA jails are “too poor to pay the price for freedom.”
Lawyers, not lawmakers, are killing the death penalty. There’s a critical lesson there.
“We’re leading in the direction of instigating a new drug war.”
America is number one — in incarceration.
But it would be a small dent — and it’s going to require a lot of action right up to the minute he leaves office.
Eventually, more than 40,000 federal prisoners could get let out early. This is just the beginning.
A devastating story.
Left and right are coming together to make prison reform one of the most successful transpartisanship efforts to date.
The case prompted the most sweeping overhaul of federal food safety safety regulations in 70 years.
The presidential hopeful wants to fix a “broken criminal justice system.”
Mandatory minimums were supposed to help crack down on drug crime in the ‘80s. But they’ve had huge unintended consequences.
If Vice President Joe Biden became the next president, he could be tasked with fixing a problem he helped create: mass incarceration.
A disturbing tale of mandatory minimum sentences.
How would you do it?
The stereotype that drug offenders are a totally different kind of person from “real” criminals isn’t fair — and it’s making prison reform look much easier than it is
A new report looks at the aftermath of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.
And 9 more things you should know before you start the day.
“We have 2 million people incarcerated. If we keep going this direction, we’ll soon have enough to populate an entire new country with prisoners.”
America would still have a mass incarceration crisis if every drug were legalized today.
So we’re explaining it to him.
“The bottom line is that in too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated differently under the law.”
That’s as many as he’d shortened during his entire presidency to date.
How one tiny study deeply influenced drug policy.
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev broke his silence this morning as he apologized to the victims and their families for his deadly attack in 2013.
“What good are we doing?”
He unapologetically enforced crack cocaine sentences that contributed to racial disparities.
One little-noticed passage in Clinton’s speech shows just how quickly Democrats have shifted on criminal justice reform.
Hillary Clinton wants to end the over-imprisonment of Americans. Her husband’s signature crime law is part of the problem.