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Cleveland Police Removed Officer Names from Discipline Notices
Cleveland Director of Public Safety Karrie Howard’s decision to remove police officers’ names and badge numbers from internal department bulletins that detail discipline cases has prompted new questions about the level of transparency required for a department under federal oversight. Howard said in an email to The Marshall...
How ‘Cruel and Not Unusual’ Conditions Persist in Many Lockups
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. From endemic violence and inescapable heat, to demeaning labor conditions and inedible food, many jails and prisons across the U.S....
Changing Perceptions of Prisons and Policing
Inside Story visits Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary for a haunted Halloween tour — an event that’s part of a larger debate on prison tourism and how administrators portray the facilities and the people living in them. Host Lawrence Bartley sits down with two Baltimore police detectives —...
After Several Deaths, Feds to Close Violent Prison Unit in Illinois
The federal Bureau of Prisons is closing a notorious high-security unit at Thomson penitentiary in Illinois, after frequent reports of violence and abuse. Aninvestigation last year by The Marshall Project and NPR found that Thomson had quickly become one of the deadliest federal prisons, with five suspected homicides and two suspected suicides since 2019. The report also exposed conditions that stoked violence, where volatile prisoners were locked down together in small cells for nearly 24 hours a day.
Calls Grow Louder to Restore Cuyahoga County Sheriff to an Elected Post
The revolving door of appointed sheriffs in Cuyahoga County continues after interim Sheriff Steven Hammett quit after only eight months — the sixth lawman to resign in the last 12 years. Critics blame the rampant turnover on voters passing a measure in 2009 that took away the elected sheriff...
How Police Traffic Stops May Change After Tyre Nichols’ Death
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. When most Black American teenagers start driving, a parent or another trusted adult gives them some version of “The Talk”:...
I Write About Bad Prison Conditions. That Doesn’t Mean I Hate All Cops.
One winter day, sitting in the Big Yard of New Jersey State Prison, a close friend asked me a complicated question: “Do you hate cops more than anything?” I get questions like this a lot, not only because I write about the state of affairs at my facility, but because police officers testified against me during my trial almost two decades ago.
Prison Labor, Low Wages and the Side Hustle
Inside Story explores how prison labor, which some call “modern-day slavery” because of its low wages, gives rise to an underground economy of barter and side hustles. Comedian Luenell sits down with host Lawrence Bartley to talk about her own incarceration and how she built a life after prison in comedy clubs and on the screen, sometimes drawing from her time behind bars.
Biden Promised a Police Misconduct Database. He’s Yet to Deliver.
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. Last May, President Joe Biden sat with family members of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the White House as...
When Kids Are Punished Like Adults
In its premiere, Inside Story travels to Louisiana, where we find a community group protesting the state’s decision to move some youth to Angola, a notorious prison for adults. Equal Justice Institute lawyer Bryan Stevenson talks with host Lawrence Bartley about juvenile justice reform — and Stevenson learns of...
The High Cost of a Conversation From Cuyahoga County Jail
When Kevin Lott was locked up in the Cuyahoga County Jail in 2021, phone calls were a lifeline. But it was a lifeline with a price tag. Lott said that phone calls were a necessity for arranging bond, but his top priority after he was sentenced to five years for robbery and associated charges was keeping in touch with his children and their mother. Over the phone, Lott, 35, could try to coordinate gifts for birthdays and holidays and keep track of their progress in school. Sometimes, as he talked to his older children, their attention would be pulled away by tablets or smartphones. — “Listen, little baby, this call costs money,” he’d remind them. “Daddy’s gotta pay to talk to you.”
‘You Ain’t No Big Man’: Videos Show Disparities in Cleveland Police Response to Kids in Crisis
An ambulance was already outside the East Side Cleveland home, its lights flashing, when the police officer arrived one evening in December 2020. According to body camera footage from the incident, the aunt of an 8-year-old with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder said the boy was “acting crazy.” At one point, she said he had climbed out a window onto the house’s roof.
The Marshall Project and VICE News to Launch Inside Story Show
Inside Story is a first-of-its-kind new video series created to engage with and bring information to one of America’s largest news deserts: its prisons and jails. Developed by formerly incarcerated people, Inside Story brings critical accountability and investigative journalism on the criminal justice system to incarcerated people — and those on the outside, too.
Tyre Nichols’ Death: How Black Officers Alone Can’t Stop Brutal Policing
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. This is a unique edition, but Closing Argument makes complex issues digestible without sacrificing detail, context or nuance. Want it delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. Tyre Nichols...
Giving Incarcerated People What They Want — Better News Access
Predators, profiteers, opportunists — those are a few of the labels critics have applied to companies that supply electronic tablets in America’s prisons. The tablets give an incarcerated audience access to a selection of news outlets, study materials and entertainment, but for a price that can strain the budgets of prisoners and their loved ones.
It’s Not Just a Police Problem, Americans Are Opting Out of Government Jobs
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city of 411,000 with a violent crime rate twice the national average, police officials are struggling to fill 160 vacant officer jobs. — Having 800 officers do the work of nearly 1,000 makes public safety Tulsa’s most critical problem, Mayor G.T. Bynum said last November in his annual “State of the City” speech.
How Police Unions Try to Tilt the Scales on Oversight Boards
This is The Marshall Project’s Closing Argument newsletter, a weekly deep dive into a key criminal justice issue. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters here. If you heard about a group called “Voters for Oversight and Police Accountability,” who would you guess is funding and...
How an Illicit Cell Phone Helped Me Take College Courses from Prison
On the first day of Zoom classes, my professor went straight into content I’m all too familiar with: the school-to-prison pipeline. Every day as a certified peer support specialist at a maximum security prison, I see the long-term impacts of poverty and a broken K-12 system in marginalized communities.
‘Pig Slop’ No More? Texas Prisons Detail Plan To Improve Food
The move follows our investigation revealing meals of raw potatoes, moldy bread. The Texas prison system has a new goal: Serving slightly more edible food. As part of a long-term strategic plan, the corrections agency aims to do away with the worst of prison fare — the meager and sometimes moldy brown-bag meals served during lockdowns, which occur regularly and can last for weeks.
The Many Ingenious Ways People in Prison Use (Forbidden) Cell Phones
Sometime around the start of the pandemic, a young, blonde woman I’d never met sent me a message on Twitter. — She promised damning information about deteriorating conditions at a notorious Texas prison — and said she had video to prove it. The clips were short, but...
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The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.
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