What happens when you’re sentenced to life in prison as a teenager, then released 19 years later and sent to a place that’s supposed to feel like home?
prison
Posted inBlog Post, Current Events, Nonfiction
The Collected Crimes of Sheriff Joe Arpaio
The president chose to pardon an extremely bad man before providing aid to Texas.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Bringing Her Dad Up to Speed After Thirty Years Away
Reconnecting with her father after his release from prison, Ashley Ford must also bring him into the digital age.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
On Island: Journeying to Penal Colonies, from Rikers to Robben
On journeys to Rikers Island in New York City and Robben Island in South Africa, Roohi Choudhry examines issues of incarceration and racism, and envisions a day when the convicted are no longer exiled to penal colonies.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Prisoners in Hawaii Are Being Sent to Die in Private Prisons in Arizona
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.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Murderers Will Never Tell You About Their Childhood
Mitigation specialist Jennifer Wynn investigates the upbringings of defendants on trial — often for their lives — to humanize clients in a bid to convince at least one juror to bypass the death penalty for a life in prison without parole.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Nonfiction, Quotes
The Death Penalty on Display
At The Texas Observer, Robin Ross writes on the rise of dark tourism — the macabre fascination with the Huntsville’s Texas Prison Museum — site of America’s first lethal injection.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Death Penalty on Display
At The Texas Observer, Robin Ross writes on the rise of dark tourism — the macabre fascination with the Huntsville’s Texas Prison Museum — site of America’s first lethal injection.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How to Make a ‘Jail Burrito’
In minimum security, the cook-ups took place on empty top bunk beds. Mattresses were removed, and four or five prisoners would gather around the makeshift table with beef sticks, cheese sticks, squeeze cheese, turkey sticks, dried beans, rice, bags of chips, pickles, jalapenos, packs of tuna, and anything else worth wrapping up in a tortilla. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Corruption–and Copulation–in the Baltimore City Detention Center
Joyce Mitchell, alleged accomplice to two murderers on the loose from Clinton-Dannemora correctional facility in New York, is hardly the only prison employee to ever have allegedly aided—and had sex with—detainees. From Jeffrey Toobin’s “This Is My Jail” in the April 14, 2014 issue of The New Yorker: Many relationships between guards and inmates appear to have […]