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We Spent Two Years Investigating Abuse by Prison Guards in New York. Here Are Five Takeaways.
New York’s prison system has failed to fire nearly all corrections officers it accused of attacking people in their custody. And guards often work in groups to cover-up assaults by lying to investigators and in official reports, a Marshall Project investigation has found. Reporters examinedhow New York disciplines guards for misconduct. Using public records laws, we got a database of disciplinary records that state law had kept secret for decades. Here are five takeaways from our investigation — based on our analysis of that database, thousands of pages of documents, several videos and scores of interviews with prisoners, officials and experts.
How a ‘Blue Wall’ Inside New York State Prisons Protects Abusive Guards
BEACON, N.Y. — The way the prison guards described it in their paperwork, there was a minor disturbance the day they took Chad Stanbro to a dental clinic at a regional hospital. Stanbro, a prisoner, had been sedated but became agitated during surgery, took a swing at a dentist...
An All-Night, Pizza-Fueled Interrogation. A Dubious Confession. A DNA Surprise.
Subscribe to “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”. By the end of January 2015, Larry Driskill was in jail, maintaining he’d been manipulated into a false murder confession by Texas Ranger James Holland. Driskill’s claims raised a simple question for me: Was he alone?. To answer...
In 2022, exonerations hit a record high in the U.S.
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. English legal scholar Sir William Blackstone famously wrote in 1765 that it’s “better that ten guilty persons escape than that...
What Do People Not Understand About Working in Prisons and Jails?
The Marshall Project and The New York Times are publishing a series of articles about prisons in New York state, and how often the corrections department disciplines officers it accuses of abusing prisoners or covering up misconduct. Our review of hundreds of cases found that the agency rarely succeeds in firing these officers. We also identified more than 160 cases in which prisoners or their families won lawsuits or received settlements after alleging abuse at the hands of guards. The department seldom disciplined those officers.
How We Investigated Abuse by Prison Guards in New York
To report on how New York state prison officials discipline officers they accuse of abuse, The Marshall Project examined two primary data sets. We received one through public records requests to the state corrections agency. The other we compiled based on thousands of pages of court records released by the state attorney general’s office.
In New York Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Prisoners Rarely Get Fired
Records obtained by The Marshall Project reveal a state discipline system that fails to hold many guards accountable. Shattered teeth. Punctured lungs. Broken bones. Over a dozen years, New York State officials have documented the results of attacks by hundreds of prison guards on the people in their custody. But...
Listen as a Texas Ranger Uses Lies to Extract a Questionable Murder Confession
Subscribe to “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”. On Larry Driskill’s second day with Texas Ranger James Holland, he faced some surprising questions. Holland asked the suspect to describe how — hypothetically — he would have committed the murder of Bobbie Sue Hill. By then,...
Title 42 is Over. What Comes Next for Asylum-Seekers?
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. The end of Title 42 this week has seen tens of thousands of migrants massing at the southern border, and...
My Brother Was Wrongfully Convicted for Murder. 20 Years Later, So Was My Son.
The year my son Cedric Dent was sent to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, it changed everything for me and my family. Except for one thing: the trips I took to Louisiana State Penitentiary to see him. Those, I was used to — because I had already been making them for the last 20 years to visit my brother, another Black man locked up for a murder he didn’t commit.
To Solve a Young Mother’s Death, a Celebrated Texas Ranger Turns to Hypnosis
Subscribe to “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”. In 2005, two teenagers hiking in a creek stumbled upon the body of a woman. The police used her tattoos to establish her identity: Bobbie Sue Hill, a 29-year-old mother of five. Her boyfriend said he’d seen a man abduct her, in a white van, in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.
Connecticut Normalized Clemency. Not Anymore.
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. In the last 16 months, Connecticut experienced something like a clemency renaissance. The state Board of Pardons and Parole commuted...
‘No Safe Place’: On Memory, Trauma and Truth
Part seven of the “Violation” podcast reveals new information about Jake Wideman’s past and explains what happens next in his legal case. Two months after Jacob Wideman was arrested at work and brought back to prison — for failing to make an appointment with a psychologist on a particular day, as directed by his parole officer — he faced the Arizona parole board again.
Why Inflation Price Hikes Are Even Worse Behind Bars
When the price of a can of Maxwell House coffee increased 34 cents from a year ago at the commissary in New Jersey State Prison, Shakeil Price and many others in his unit had to cut back. At SCI Coal Township in Pennsylvania, Richard Mercaldo said the staple items he usually buys to hold him over between the prison’s scheduled meals, such as packages of ramen noodles and cookies, are getting smaller and more expensive. And at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois, Erika Ray said the $150 she budgets each month for food and hygiene items no longer covers her basic needs. “I cannot afford to purchase deodorant for $7,” she said. — The rising cost of groceries and other goods due to historic inflation has jolted shoppers across the country. Grocery prices increased by 8.4% in the last year, according to theU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In many state prisons, incarcerated people saw even steeper price hikes.
In a Texas Cold Case, a Potential Murder Witness Slowly Realizes He’s a Suspect
Subscribe to “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”. It’s hard to imagine. But what if the police told you they had proof of your involvement in a decade-old cold case? And what if they suggested you just didn’t remember committing the crime?. A couple of years...
When “Shoot-First Culture” Meets “Fear and Paranoia”
At least seven people were shot — one fatally — for showing up at the wrong place, in separate incidents over the course of just six days earlier this month. Kaylin Gillis, 20, was shot and killed in Hebron, New York, as a car she was traveling in turned around in a stranger’s driveway. Ralph Yarl, 16, was shot in Kansas City, Missouri, after ringing the wrong doorbell. Payton Washington, 18, and Heather Roth, 21, were shot in Elgin, Texas after Washington accidentally got into, and then quickly exited, a stranger's car in a parking lot. In Gaston County, North Carolina, when children went to retrieve a basketball from a stranger’s backyard, he allegedly came out of his house with a gun and fired, striking 6-year-old Kinsley White and her father.
The Marshall Project Wins a Collier Award for Exposing Abusive Conditions in Louisiana Youth Detention Facility
The investigation, in partnership with NBC News and ProPublica, was praised for its ‘meticulous research’ and real-time impact in the community. The Marshall Project is pleased to announce it won the third-place Collier Prize for State Government Accountability, awarded by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
I Raised My Kids From Prison. Soon, I’m Coming Home to a Grandson.
When I learned that my first grandchild had entered the world, I was the only soul out in the small dayroom in a quarantined unit of my Virginia prison. As I dialed my oldest son on one of the mounted telephones, I was much too excited to sit down. Instead, I stood for all 20 minutes of our afternoon call, beaming as my child broke the news that his baby had just been born. Over a blaring television, I barraged him with questions: “How much does he weigh?!” (Seven pounds, 12 ounces.) “How long is he?!” (19 ½ inches.) “Where is he now?!” (With the nurses.) “What’s he doing?!” (Getting cleaned up.)
The Parole Violation That Sent Jacob Wideman Back to Prison
Part Six of the “Violation” podcast explores: Was Jake a master manipulator, the victim of a misunderstanding — or something worse?. Six months after Jacob Wideman was released from prison on home arrest, he appeared before the parole board for a routine check-in hearing. His parole officer told the board that Jake was doing well: Jake’s employers and therapists gave him positive reviews, as did the director at his halfway house and the landlord at his apartment complex.
‘Just Say You’re Sorry’: Podcast Dissects Famed Texas Ranger’s Controversial Tactics
Our six-part podcast asks if Texas’ “serial killer whisperer” ensnared an innocent man through tactics like lying and hypnosis. Subscribe to “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”. On a winter afternoon in 2015, Larry Driskill was approached by a stranger in a cowboy hat. The...
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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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