Haunted by a running tap in prison, a man grows obsessed with water waste and climate change, pushing him to the edge.
prison
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Succession Battle For A Prison Empire
“Luxury cars, mansions, a superyacht called Convict, and wined-and-dined sheriffs—a legal war is exposing the big business of extracting profits from prisoners.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Nuns Trying to Save the Women on Texas’s Death Row
“Sisters from a convent outside Waco have repeatedly visited the prisoners—and even made them affiliates of their order. The story of a powerful spiritual alliance.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Letter to My Teenage Self: An Incarcerated Man Interrogates the Person He Once Was
“From his prison cell, Hector Ortiz reexamines the traumas, hardships, and bad choices that led to his lengthy sentence—and ultimately taught him about the man he needed to be.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Streaming Behind Bars
“I earn 40¢ a day as a dorm janitor. I can’t sacrifice a stick of deodorant to watch a bad miniseries.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Locked In, Priced Out
“The Appeal’s 9-month investigation uncovered prison commissaries’ exploitative, inconsistent systems with inside prices up to five times higher than in the community and markups as high as 600 percent.”
Posted inNonfiction
Best Of 2023: Features
At the time of this writing, Longreads editors have created nearly 650 recommendations in 2023, and just about every one of them can be considered a feature. However, you’ll find that the stories contained herein are features in the classic sense: marriages of deep reporting and indelible prose. Some are light, others emotionally taxing. Their […]
Posted inNonfiction
Inside Man
Gary Settle has helped dozens of federal prisoners get compassionate release. Will it ever be his turn to go home?
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Mercy Workers
“For three decades, a little-known group of ‘mitigation specialists’ has helped save death-penalty defendants by documenting their childhood traumas. A rare look inside one case.”