As Numbers Rise, Some Prison Systems Admit Defeat, Others Try to Ignore Death Toll

by Christopher Zoukis, MBA

As nations across the world battle the coronavirus plague, American prisons continue to fail at managing this pandemic, not unlike many communities across the United States. For what appears to be primarily ...

Prisons beset with gang-related violence, overcrowding, understaffing and weak funding.

by David M. Reutter

Between late last year and early April 2020, more than 30 Mississippi prisoners died due togang violence, suicide or illness – over 10 times the average of 3.4 prisoner deaths per year between 2014 and 2018. ...

This article was produced in partnership with AL.com, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This article was originally published on September 30, 2019.

By Connor Sheets, ProPublica

Michael Tidwell’s blood sugar reading was at least 15 ...

by Christopher Zoukis

“Mother Nature is a serial killer. No one’s better. More creative. . . . She’s a bitch.”

– World War Z

Between January and August of 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services played a game, a simulation of sorts. The exercise was called Crimson Contagion, ...

Brady Violations Result in Habeas Relief for Pennsylvania Death Row Prisoner

by David Reutter

To correct a “grave miscarriage of justice,” Pennsylvania U.S. District Court Judge Anita Brody granted a writ of habeas corpus to a state prisoner and vacated his conviction and death sentence for a murder that “in ...

Two Murders in Seven Months at CCA-run Prison in Tennessee

On May 23, 2014, the Medical Examiner’s Office in Nashville completed an autopsy report on Tennessee state prisoner Jeffery Sills, 43, who was murdered at the South Central Correctional Facility in Clifton, Wayne County on March 28. The facility is ...

Two Corrections Chiefs Serve Time in Segregation

by Christopher Zoukis

Rick Raemisch, Colorado’s new corrections director, wanted to better understand the experience of solitary confinement – so he spent a night in segregation at a state prison.

Raemisch had been on the job for seven months when he decided to ...