New and improved facilities are a critical pillar of California's corrections transformation. But bureaucratic roadblocks, indifference from county sheriffs, and critical errors in planning by local officials have meant dozens of California jails remain broken and dangerous.
Since 2011 inmate-on-inmate homicides have risen 46 percent in county jails statewide compared with the seven years before.
Proposition 47 was meant to prevent minor drug offenders from being incarcerated and instead funneled into treatment. Thus far the plan has seen mixed results.
A California bill replaces cash bail with risk-assessment algorithms, which critics argue will perpetuate the pre-trial detention of minority and low-income defendants.
Pre-trial detention hurts defendants and taxpayers.
Updates to stories from the Pacific Standard archive.
A new policy brief uses psychotropic medications as a proxy for mental illness, and finds that, despite criminal justice reforms in the state, the population of mentally ill inmates in jails is growing.
A new poll from the MacArthur Foundation finds most Americans' sentiments about the justice system are at odds with the Trump administration's punitive policies.
In Alaska, a point-based system will replace cash for determining who the state will release on bail.
A new report finds that rural jails buck the trend of declining inmate populations.
A new consultancy firm offers advice for first-time detainees, from someone who’s been there.
Movies and television don't do an adequate job capturing the day-to-day loneliness and the feelings of exclusion and shame.
Twenty years after abolishing parole, one state is examining the impact (and the politics).
More than 20 years ago, the international community agreed that teenagers should only be jailed as a last resort—and never placed in solitary confinement.
New research suggests that maintaining methadone treatment in jails and prisons would save lives.
Research shows that Republican-leaning states are less likely to pass laws to protect against wrongful convictions.
Pediatricians and psychologists say unnecessary restraints can traumatize kids and encourage worse behavior.
The only federal law that regulates detention conditions for juveniles is due for an upgrade.
While Baltimore erupts, the Supreme Court considers a timely case.
Some argue that taking parents who have committed a crime out of the family might be good for children, but the data is in. It’s not.
Cory Booker and Rand Paul’s REDEEM Act.
As a new class-action lawsuit out of California’s infamous Pelican Bay State Prison that may definitively determine the future of solitary in that state moves forward, more people are taking the position that the practice amounts to inhumane punishment.
Gradual advancements in the art and science of fire investigation continue.
