mass incarceration

Oregon Will Close Its Oldest Prison by Building Two, One for “Geriatric” Care

Aliza Kaplan spends most Wednesday nights inside Oregon State Penitentiary, the state’s only maximum-security institution. Kaplan, a law professor and…

August 3, 2026

The Communities We’ve Built in Prison

The informal, prisoner-led writing club at South Central Correctional Facility in Tennessee has a dozen or so members. Earlier in…

July 29, 2026

Lockdowns Are a Dangerous Way for Prisons to Respond to Gang Violence

One morning in July we wake to rumors of being on lockdown, which happens at least once a month these…

July 16, 2026

BOP to Close Six Prisons, as Trump Pushes Agency Deeper Into Chaos

The federal Bureau of Prisons plans to permanently close six facilities, citing extreme understaffing and “decades of deferred maintenance." The…

July 6, 2026

Protests as Cicero Institute Launches Homelessness Policy Summit

On June 5 right-wing think tank the Cicero Institute held its first-ever homelessness policy summit, a Washington, DC, event promoting…

June 8, 2026

Ignoring Georgia’s Public Defender Crisis, and the Obvious Way to Fix It

Georgia’s public defender shortage was recently of interest to the media when it affected the prosecution of Robert Aaron Long,…

June 4, 2026

First Analysis of Free Prison Phone Calls Shows They Reduce Violence

The first comprehensive report on the impact of offering free phone calls in United States prisons and jails shows that…

May 11, 2026

Lifers Fall Through the Cracks of the Prison Security Classification System

The Georgia Department of Corrections assigns every person in its custody a security classification: Minimum, Medium or Close. This classification…

May 4, 2026

Prison Suicide Watch Was Once a Staff Job. “Inmate Observers” Are Cheaper.

[Read Part 1 of this story here] Up until 2019, monitoring the people in the suicide watch cells at South…

April 6, 2026

With Suicide Watch Full, Prisoners Now Kept in Makeshift Cells

A decade ago when I transferred to South Central Correctional Facility, a medium-security Tennessee prison privately operated by CoreCivic, there…

April 1, 2026