Prison

Across the country, jails are often used as holding pens for people who can't afford to pay bail. Local groups are working to change that.

• By Danielle Ziegelheim

While most commerce within prisons revolves around food and hygiene products, a recent report found that digital sales are the "future of commissary."

• By Mia Armstrong

Updates to stories from the Pacific Standard archive.

• By Pacific Standard Staff
• Member Exclusive

According to a new report, while the overall number of inmates in the U.S. is declining, some states are still seeing their prison populations rise.

• By Tanvi Misra

A conversation with Jasmine Heiss from the Vera Institute of Justice about a recent poll that uncovers American's souring sentiment toward incarceration policy.

• By Teresa Mathew

On the labor issues connected with using inmates as extremely low-paid workers in state and federal prisons.

• By Beth Schwartzapfel

Este artículo explica los problemas laborales relacionados con el uso de presos como trabajadores extremadamente mal pagados en las prisiones estatales y federales.

• By Beth Schwartzapfel

Two landmark Supreme Court rulings made clear that juvenile life sentences are unconstitutional. Yet hundreds remain in prison, many of them without access to educational programs.

• By Kenneth R. Rosen

People wait outside the Kobar prison in Khartoum, Sudan, on February 18th, 2018, to welcome their loved ones after the government released dozens of opposition activists.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Supporters of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel demonstrate with heart-shaped balloons during a motorcade protest on February 14th, 2018, in Berlin, Germany.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

A pile of tires burns as prison officers demonstrate in front of Villefranche-sur-Saône prison in Lyon, France, on January 15th, 2018.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Facing a shortage of space for inmates, Missouri's Greene County Jail opted to build an insta-prison in the parking lot. Is that OK?

• By Daniel A. Gross

But a tailored mindfulness program may negate the negative impact of imprisonment.

• By Tom Jacobs

The rapper's experience with probation is far from unusual for ex-prisoners.

• By Jack Denton

James Forman Jr.'s first book chronicles with compassion how the actions of black leaders sometimes hurt the very people they sought to save.

• By Brandon Tensley

Prisoners, mostly juveniles, line up in an adult prison facility in Uganda.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Pacific Standard recommends The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, a new PBS documentary that skips the statistics to demonstrate prison culture's effects outside of the bars.

• By Kristina Kutateli

President Donald Trump has restored consumer confidence in private prisons—but they were never in danger of failing to begin with.

• By Rick Paulas

Manning had been serving a 35-year-sentence, the longest ever imposed for whistleblowing.

• By Jack Denton

A new campaign rooted in the South is getting mothers in prisons and jails across the country home for Mother’s Day.

• By Melissa Gira Grant

Legal financial obligations can saddle a prisoner with exponentially increasing debt long after they’ve been released from prison. It can even land them back in jail. Can the cycle be broken?

• By Arvind Dilawar

From Indiana to Pennsylvania, second-chance legislation is increasingly becoming a viable option for some offenders.

• By Maura Ewing

Community groups are posting bail for indigent defendants, undermining the original principles of bail, and pushing for criminal justice reform.

• By Kate Wheeling

If there was ever an example of how economic incentives can warp the institutions of justice, local jails are it.

• By Jared Keller