In Texas, dying in jail is “par for the course.”
by Michael Barajas and Sophie Novack, Texas Observer
Armando Carrillo had been waiting outside the Nueces County Jail for hours when he heard sirens approaching in the middle of the night on March 5, 2018. He had visited the jail earlier ...
by Matt Clarke
The news from Pennsylvania on April 4, 2021, had a sadly familiar ring to it: A prisoner died a preventable death in a county lockup, costing a bundle to settle, so county officials were turning to a private healthcare provider. They granted a multi-million-dollar annual contract—a million ...
by Kevin Bliss and Jo Ellen Nott
On February 5, 2022, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a nine-year sentence had been handed down to the last of four Alabama prison guards convicted of beating state prisoners they suspected of smuggling contraband at Elmore Correctional Facility (ECF).
Three days ...
A lesson in why privatized prison health care is the wrong answer
by David M. Reutter
On Friday, January 18, 2022, three days before sentencing in a pay-to-play bribery and corruption scandal involving health care at the city jail in Norfolk, Virginia, attorneys for disgraced former sheriff Bob McCabe filed ...
by Kevin Bliss
When 55-year-old William Brown, a pretrial detainee from Brooklyn, suffered a medical emergency and died on December 15, 2021, it was the 16th death recorded for the year of someone incarcerated at Rikers Island, the sprawling and troubled New York City jail complex. Former Mayor Bill ...
How Unchecked Power and No Oversight Gives Rise to Abuses
by Anthony W. Accurso
On December 15, 2000, Derwin Brown was returning from a party when he was gunned down. He was holding flowers he had purchased for his wife, Phyllis, when assailants opened fire, striking him at least 10 ...
How exposure to radon in prisons may be functioning as a form of mass capital punishment
by Anthony Moffa
I can’t breathe.
–Eric Garner, George Floyd, and atleast seventy others
The thought of radioactive gas in the night air in the place you lay your head is the stuff ...