Search Results for: Prison

The Mexican Mafia and the Conspiracy Behind the Tati Torrez Prison Murder

Federal Prison in Florence, Colorado. (AP Photo/Pueblo Chieftain, Chris McLean)

A rookie FBI agent spent a decade investigating the conspiracy around the murder of Manuel “Tati” Torrez, a high-ranking member of the notorious Mexican Mafia gang, la Eme. At The Atavist, Chris Outcalt reports on Torrez as “one of the graying old guard” of the gang at ADX Florence. Despite the fact that the federal maximum security prison was specially designed to keep its population of extremely violent inmates in “near total isolation,” Torrez was brutally murdered in the prison yard while the cameras were rolling. But who did it and why?

What came next was uncharted territory: an investigation of the first homicide in a place specifically designed to prevent violence of any kind. Instead of a shank or some other crude weapon, the killer had used fists and feet to pummel a fellow prisoner to a pulp. He’d committed murder in broad daylight, with cameras everywhere, yet avoided being caught in the act. Who had done it? And, more importantly, why?

Not yet 48 hours into his inaugural FBI assignment, Jon learned that he’d be investigating the first murder at the ADX, which had badly shaken the facility’s staff. A colleague explained that, as far as he could tell, the killing had everything to do with the Mexican Mafia.

“What’s that?” Jon asked. “Like a street gang?”

“No, it’s not a street gang,” his colleague replied. “It’s the mother of all street gangs. It’s like the Navy SEALs.”

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Elderly Japanese Women Are Turning to Crime to Find Companionship in Prison

A 68-year-old Japanese woman walks in Hiroshima, Japan. (Getty Images)

Of imprisoned women in Japan, nearly one in five is a senior citizen. Repeat offenders, many of these women live lonely lives even in the company of husbands and children. They’re turning to petty theft and are thriving in prison, a place where they find the companionship and security lacking in their lives on the outside. Shiho Fukada brings us the story at Bloomberg Businessweek. The Pulitzer Center provided funding for this story.

Ms. O, 78
Has stolen energy drinks, coffee, tea, a rice ball, a mango
Third term, sentenced to one year, five months
Has a daughter and a grandson

“Prison is an oasis for me—a place for relaxation and comfort. I don’t have freedom here, but I have nothing to worry about, either. There are many people to talk to. They provide us with nutritious meals three times a day. My daughter visits once a month. She says ‘I don’t feel sorry for you. You’re pathetic.’ I think she’s right.”

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Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women

Longreads Pick

Elderly Japanese women — many of whom live lonely lives even in the company of husbands and children — are turning to petty theft and are thriving in prison, a place where they find the companionship and security lacking in their lives on the outside.

Published: Mar 16, 2018
Length: 6 minutes (1,639 words)

Forensic Science Put Jimmy Genrich in Prison for 24 Years. What if It Wasn’t Science?

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Forensic science — the kind that traces the grooves in bullets, the mark of a shoe, or the scrape of a tool — emerged in the early 20th century as a way to professionalize police work. But once its findings made their way into the court system, it became almost impossible to divide the good forensic science from the bad.

 

Source: The Nation
Published: Feb 6, 2018
Length: 46 minutes (11,700 words)

From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones

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A feature, produced in a collaboration between The New York Times and The Marshall Project, about Harvard University’s eleventh-hour flip-flop on its acceptance of ex-convict Michelle Jones to its doctoral program in history. Jones, who spent more than two decades in prison for the murder of her four-year-old son, conceived non-consensually when she was 14, became a stellar academic and published scholar of American History while incarcerated. She was set to attend Harvard this fall, but after her acceptance, two professors questioned whether she had adequately portrayed her crime in her application — something that was not required. Jones will be attending NYU instead.

Author: Eli Hager
Published: Sep 13, 2017
Length: 10 minutes (2,522 words)

Hidden Costs: When Prison Labor Gets Upsold as Artisanal Kitsch

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An expose on the Maine Department of Correction Industries woodshop and other prison-based businesses like it, which frame their exploitive inmate manufacturing programs as rehabilitative when in reality they’re more like state-sanctioned slavery.

Source: The New Inquiry
Published: Aug 28, 2017
Length: 11 minutes (2,838 words)

Ray Spencer Didn’t Molest His Kids. So Why Did He Spend 20 Years in Prison for It?

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Ray Spencer spent nearly half his life in prison, convicted of raping his own children. It’s a crime he doesn’t remember committing, and as adults, his grown children began questioning their own memories and set out to find justice for their father.

Source: Esquire
Published: May 22, 2017
Length: 24 minutes (6,000 words)

Why Is The US Trying To Remake The World’s Prisons?

Longreads Pick

At Buzzfeed, journalist Doug Bock Clark follows a prison director from Niger as he travels to a remote Cañon City, Colorado—the self-proclaimed “Corrections Capital of the World—where the State Department trains prison workers from all over the world to make their corrections facilities more like those in the United States, which incarcerates 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: May 30, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,000 words)

My Father Spent 30 Years In Prison. Now He’s Out.

Longreads Pick

A touching personal essay in which writer Ashley Ford reveals that she and her father are happily rebuilding their relationship now that he has been released from prison after 30 years. Slowly they are getting to know each other in ways they never before had. One of the more challenging aspects: bringing him up to speed with cell phone technology and texting.

Source: Refinery 29
Published: Apr 28, 2017
Length: 9 minutes (2,409 words)

Prisoners in Hawaii Are Being Sent to Die in Private Prisons in Arizona

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Forty-three percent of Hawaii’s state prisoners are currently locked up in the notorious Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona. This is the story of one man, Johnathan, who died in custody just days before his 22nd birthday.

Source: Vice Magazine
Published: Mar 6, 2017
Length: 27 minutes (6,858 words)