NEWS

By Sarah Asch On July 13, 2023 Advocacy groups say physical mail is an important part of contact between those behind bars and the outside world. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is planning to transition to a digital mail platform. The roll out will happen in phases starting next week.  Once units switch to the…

By Elliot Spagat On July 2, 2023 SAN DIEGO (AP) — As the Biden administration prepared to launch speedy asylum screenings at Border Patrol holding facilities this spring , authorities pledged a key difference from a Trump-era version of the policy: Migrants would be guaranteed access to legal counsel. Nearly three months and thousands of screenings later, the promise…

By James Finn On June 13, 2023 Edwards recently said he opposes the death penalty and believes it should be banned in Louisiana. Nearly all of the 57 people on Louisiana’s death row have asked Gov. John Bel Edwards to spare their lives, a historic request made after Edwards broke his silence on how he views capital punishment and…

By James Brumback On July 13, 2023 ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into jail conditions in Georgia’s most populous county, with officials citing violence, filthy conditions and the death last year of a man whose body was found covered in insects. Investigators will look at living…

By Weihua Li and Jasmyne Ricard On July 13, 2023 The FBI’s crime data is still incomplete — and politicians are taking advantage. For more than 100 years, the FBI has been collecting crime data from local police departments across the country through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which has been the gold standard of…

By Christie Thompson and Joseph Shapiro On July 6, 2023 More than 120 prisoners held at a special unit in Thomson Penitentiary reported mistreatment, lawyers’ committee report says. Months after officials closed a violent federal prison unit in Illinois, a new report reveals more accounts of a pervasive culture of abuse inside and calls for…