Skip navigation

Articles by Joe Watson

More Pregnant, Mentally Ill Women Incarcerated in State Prisons Nationwide

More women are being sent to prison nationwide at astonishing rates that surpass any other demographic. What's more, they are forced to deal with issues men don't, including pregnancy behind bars and a higher likelihood of mental illness in prison resulting from homelessness, sexual abuse and other traumas.

According to ...

Cook County Probation Blamed for Chicago Gun Violence, Death of High School Student

Cook County's Adult Probation Department (CCAPD) is getting considerable blame for the notoriously high prevalence of gun violence in Chicago, including the January 2013 shooting death of a high school band member who performed at President Barack Obama's second inauguration ceremony.

A recent investigation by the Chicago Tribune concluded that ...

LAPD Uses Federally-Funded Program to Track, Keep Files on Ex-Convicts

by Joe Watson

With the help of a $400,000 federal grant in October 2014, the Los Angeles Police Department has expanded a high-tech program that keeps track of ex-convicts and purportedly reduces crime, alarming critics of the program who are concerned about law enforcement gathering and keeping information on people ...

Audit Finds Possible Payroll Fraud at California Prison in Sacramento

Employees at one California prison—including medical and mental health staff and prison guards—received at least $153,000 in illegal payments due to potential payroll fraud between July 2010 and June 2013, according to a state audit.

Results of the audit were detailed in an August 2014 report by the state controller, ...

Two Illinois Jail Guards Indicted in 2011 'Take Down,' Death of Homeless Man

Two former Illinois jail guards who were employed by the Lake County Sheriff's Office north of Chicago were indicted October 29, 2014, on felony charges related to the death of a homeless man booked into jail for minor offenses.

Rodney Holmes and Robert Schlesser each face as much as two ...

Locked-Up Sex Offenders Run for Office in Small-Town Minnesota

Frustrated by legislative inaction, a group of civilly-committed sex offenders in Moose Lake, Minnesota, ran a voter-registration drive in the small town for four months leading up to this year's midterm elections, hoping to get as many as eight sex offenders elected to office in Moose Lake and Carlson County. ...

DNA Keeps Overturning Convictions, But Spike in Exonerations Owed to Other Factors

Nicole Harris, Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown have lived through their own nightmares of injustice. All three were wrongfully convicted of the heinous murders of children. Combined, they spent nearly 70 years in prison before being exonerated and forced to adapt to a world that had left them behind. ...

Successful Parole Program in Colorado Appears to be 86'ed Without Clements

A one-of-a-kind parole program in Colorado that boasts an otherworldly 98%-success rate now faces an uncertain future without Tom Clements—the former Colorado DOC chief who was murdered in 2013—advocating for the program and the prisoners who need it.

Since its launch in 2011, the Long-Term Offender Program (LTOP)—which helps middle-aged ...

Study Shows How Juvenile System Criminalizes Girls Who are Victimized by Sexual Abuse

A Norman, Oklahoma high school student, raped by a male peer and repeatedly harassed and touted by her classmates, is suspended from school after she lashes out and swings at another student.

A girl, 17, under the age of legal consent, is charged in California with solicitation of prostitution after ...

States Still Using Unconstitutional Debtors Prisons to Jail the Poor

The landmark 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bearden v. Georgia reaffirmed the outlaw of so-called "debtors prisons"—the practice of incarcerating indigent people for being unable to pay off their debts—and requires that judges consider whether defendants are too broke to pay their court fines or if they are "willfully" refusing ...