This page lists examples of moral problems and constitutional failures related to jury selection; disparities in sentencing largely due to race; the dismal conditions of prisons and their historical roots; conduct in the correctional systems; and the politics of the prison-industrial complex.

Human Rights Defense Center (website)

The Real Cost of Prisons Project (website)

Drug War Facts (website)

Boycott Companies That Use Prison Labor (website)

Harry Elmer Barnes, Historical Origin of the Prison System in America. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 1921.

Dylan Rodriguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime. University of Minnesota Press | Amazon page, Jan 1, 2006.

NPR, Life in Solitary Confinement. NPR, Jul 26 - 28, 2006.

Vicky Peleaz, The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery? Global Research, Mar 10, 2008.

Greg A. Greenberg and Robert A. Rosenheck, Jail Incarceration, Homelessness, and Mental Health: A National Study. Journal of Psychiatric Services, 2008.  See also Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow. Children’s Defense Fund, Dec 15, 2010.  A 20 min interview.

Ian Urbina and Sean D. Hamill, Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit. New York Times, Feb 12, 2009.

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press | Amazon page, Jan 2010.

Brahma Chellaney, China's Newest Export: Convicts. The Guardian, Jul 29, 2010.

Justice Policy Institute, Sentencing Factsheet. JPI, Apr 2011.

Justice Policy Institute, Punitive Response to Drug Use Factsheet. JPI, Apr 2011.

Eyder Paralta, Pa. Judge Sentenced To 28 Years In Massive Juvenile Justice Bribery Scandal. NPR, Aug 11, 2011.

Harry Davis, On His Film JOY ROAD and the Prison Industrial Complex. Reel Black, Oct 14, 2011.

Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald, How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. CSpan video, Oct 29, 2011.

Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration: No Place for Kids. Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011.

Michael Kelly, 13 Signs that America's Prison System is Out of Control. Business Insider, Apr 12, 2012.

Joe Palazzolo, Racial Gap in Men's Sentencing. Wall Street Journal, Feb 14, 2013.

Sam Masters, US Judge Receives 28 Year Jail Term for His Role in Kids-for-Cash Kickbacks. Independent UK, Apr 30, 2013.

The House I Live In (2013), documentary arguing that the U.S. War on Drugs has failed

Bruce Drake, Incarceration Rate Widens Between Blacks and Whites. Pew Research Center, Sep 6, 2013.

Chris Kirkham, Prisoners of Profit. Huffington Post, Oct 22, 2013.  And part 2. Huffington Post, Oct 23, 2013.

Jaisal Noor, Corporations Reap Billions From Mass Incarceration. Truthout, Oct 23, 2013.

The Young Review, Improving Outcomes for Young Black and/or Muslim Men in the Criminal Justice System. Clink, Oct 2013.

Ram Subramanian and Alison Shames, Sentencing and Prison Practices in Germany and the Netherlands: Implications for the U.S. VERA, Oct 2013.

Nicholas Kristof, Serving Life for This? New York Times, Nov 13, 2013.

American Civil Liberties Union, A Living Death: Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for What? ACLU, Nov 13, 2013.  report

American Civil Liberties Union, More Than 3,200 Serving Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses. ACLU, Nov 13, 2013.  summary article

Bobby Constantino, I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look into the Justice System. The Atlantic, Dec 17, 2013.

Paul Lewis, Obama Commutes Sentences of Eight Crack Cocaine Offenders. The Guardian, Dec 19, 2013.

Mariame Caba, Fifteen Things That We Relearned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 2013. Truthout, Dec 20, 2013.

The Sentencing Project, Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies. The Sentencing Project, 2014.

Andrew Cohen, When Good People Do Nothing: The Appalling Story of South Carolina's Prisons. The Atlantic, Jan 10, 2014.  re: mental health and incarceration

Michael Kelly and Christina Sterbenz, This World Map Shows the Enormity of America's Prison Problem. Business Insider, Jan 24, 2014.

Paul Martin, Money-Driven Criminal Justice System Drives Poverty, Crime Rate. The Durham News, Feb 14, 2014.

Angela Davis, Prison Abolition, the War on Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn't Wait on Obama. Democracy Now, Mar 6, 2014.

Keegan Hamilton, An Ex-Con Takes Aim at Multibillion-Dollar Private Prisons. Vice News, Mar 22, 2014.

Jamelle Bouie, Why Whites Support Capital Punishment. Slate, Mar 28, 2014.

Eric Fuchs, A Du Pont Heir Was Given Probation For Raping His 3-Year-Old Daughter Because He Wouldn't 'Fare Well' In Prison. Business Insider, Mar 31, 2014.

Matt Taibbi, Who Goes to Jail? The American Justice Gap from Wall Street to Main Street. Democracy Now, Apr 15, 2014.

Matt Ferner, Christian Leaders Call for Ending Drug War, Mass Incarceration. Huffington Post, Apr 16, 2014.

Dan Edge and Elizabeth Jones, Solitary Nation. PBS Frontline, Apr 22, 2014.

John Oliver, The Death Penalty. Last Week Tonight, May 4, 2014.

Ryan Denson, Billionaire Gets 4 Months For Sexually Assaulting 12-Year-Old Because He’s ‘Productive’. Addicting Info, Jun 7, 2014.

John Oliver, Prison. Last Week Tonight, Jun 20, 2014.

Chris Moore, Whole Foods Cheese is Made by Prison Labor. Mass Appeal, Jun 24, 2014.

Laura Dimon, How Solitary Confinement Hurts the Teenage Brain. The Atlantic, Jun 30, 2014.

Trish Kahle, Prison to Table: The Other Side of the Whole Foods Experience. Dissent, Jul 9, 2014.

Pamela Engel, John Oliver Brilliantly Tears Apart America's Broken Prison System. Business Insider, Jul 21, 2014.

Heather Digby Parton, Scalia’s Utter Moral Failure: How He Destroys Any Claim to a Superior System of Justice. Salon, Sep 8, 2014.

Jennifer Gonnerman, Before the Law: A Boy Was Accused of Taking a Backpack. The Courts Took the Next Three Years of His Life. New Yorker, Oct 6, 2014.

Martha Minow, We Must Ensure Everyone Has Access to Equal Justice. Boston Globe, Oct 23, 2014.  

Victoria Law, Why Prisons Don’t Work And How We Can Do Better. Popular Resistance, Nov 16, 2014.

Michelle Alexander, White Privilege and the War on Drugs. Atlanta Black Star, Dec 2, 2014.

The Young Turks, George Stinney, 14, Executed In Vile Act Of Injustice, Exonerated 70s Years Late. The Young Turks, Dec 18, 2014.

Steve Benen, This Week in God, 12.20.14. MSNBC, Dec 20, 2014.  Shows how White Protestants and Catholics believe more than the non-religious that torture is justified.

Wash Post Editorial Board, Stop Mistreating Youth at Rikers Island and Other Institutions Around the Country. Washington Post, Dec 21, 2014.

Prison Policy, States of Incarceration (website, 2014)  Comparing U.S. States against other countries on incarceration rates.

Willie Osterweil, How White Liberals Used Civil Rights to Create More Prisons. The Nation, Jan 6, 2015.

Evan Horowitz, If Crime is Falling, Why Aren't Prisons Shrinking. Boston Globe, Jan 15, 2015.

Leon Neyfakh, Why Are So Many Americans in Prison? Slate, Feb 6, 2015.  About the role of District Attorneys.

John Hagan, Gabriele Plickert, Alberto Palloni, Spencer Headworth, Making Punishment Pay: The Political Economy of Revenue, Race, and Regime in the California Prison Boom. Du Bois Journal, Mar 2015.

Mark Binelli, Inside America's Toughest Federal Prison. New York Times, Mar 26, 2015.

Joseph Erbentraut, What the U.S. Can Learn from Prison Reform Efforts Throughout the World. Huffington Post, Apr 10, 2015.

Alec Karakatsanis, Policing, Mass Imprisonment, and the Failure of America's Lawyers. Harvard Law Review, Apr 10, 2015.

Justin Wolfers, David Leonhardt, and Kevin Quealy, 1.5 Million Missing Black Men. New York Times, Apr 20, 2015.

Michael Cohen, How For-Profit Prisons Have Become the Biggest Lobby No One Is Talking About. Washington Post, Apr 28, 2015.

Jeffrey Toobin, The Milwaukee Experiment. New Yorker Magazine, May 11, 2015.

Yawu Miller, Race Colors Response to Opioid Crisis. Bay State Banner, May 20, 2015.

Bill Quigley, 40 Reasons Why Our Jails Are Full of Black and Brown People. Huffington Post, Jun 2, 2015.

David J. Krajicek, Birth of a Prison State: The Bipartisan Disaster That Puts America Behind Bars. Salon, Jun 4, 2015.

John Oliver, Bail. Last Week Tonight, Jun 7, 2015.

Matt Ford, America's Largest Mental Hospital is a Jail. The Atlantic, Jun 8, 2015.

Kaia Stern, Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education, and Healing. Routledge | Amazon page, Jun 10, 2015.

Maria Konnikova, The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment. New Yorker, Jun 12, 2015.

M. David, Private Prisons Threaten to Sue States Unless They Get More Inmates For Free Labor. Countercurrent News, Jun 24, 2015.

Aviva Shen, Justice Scalia Just Took An Important Swing At Mandatory Minimums. Think Progress, Jun 26, 2015.

Jon Basil Utley, Why We Need Criminal Justice Reform. The American Conservative, Jul 8, 2015.

Amme Voz, I Thought I'd Escaped Poverty. Then I Went to Prison. The Nation, Jul 13, 2015.

Colleen Curry, Whole Foods, Expensive Cheese, and the Dilemma of Cheap Prison Labor. Vice News, Jul 21, 2015.

John Oliver, Mandatory Minimums. (Last Week Tonight, Jul 26, 2015.

George Yancy and Joe Feagin, American Racism in the "White Frame". New York Times, Jul 27, 2015.

LSPC Admin, Obama Won't Reform Prisons by Focusing Only on Those Convicted of Nonviolent Drug Offenses. Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Jul 30, 2015.

Nicholas Turner and Jeremy Travis, What We Learned From German Prisons. New York Times, Aug 6, 2015.

E. Branch, Bernie Sanders Announces Bill To Abolish For-Profit Prison Industrial Complex. Occupy Democrats, Aug 20, 2015.

Stephanie Clifford, From the Bench, a New Look at Punishment. New York Times, Aug 26, 2015.

Kelley Davidson, These 7 Household Names Make a Killing Off of the Prison-Industrial Complex. US Uncut, Aug 30, 2015.

Jeffrey Goldberg, Sam Price-Waldman, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, Angola for Life: Rehabilitation and Reform Inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The Atlantic video, Sep 9, 2015.

Jackie Lay, Bruce Western, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mass Incarceration, Visualized. The Atlantic video, Sep 11, 2015.  excellent 3 minutes

Whitney Benns, American Slavery, Reinvented. The Atlantic, Sep 21, 2015.

Counter Current News Editorial Team, More Prisoners Proven To Be Wrongfully Convicted Than Ever Before. Counter Current, Sep 19, 2015.  A strangely disturbing trend for recent times

Susan Ferrechio, Prison Reform Brings Parties Together. Washington Examiner, Sep 28, 2015.

Allison Aubrey, Whole Foods Says It Will Stop Selling Foods Made With Prison Labor. NPR, Sep 30, 2015.

Carrie Johnson, Here's One Thing Washington Agreed On This Week: Sentencing Reform. NPR, Oct 3, 2015.

Editorial Staff, At America’s Largest Women’s Prison, Inmates Forced To Have Sex For Basic Necessities. African Globe, Dec 16, 2015.

Barack Obama, Why We Must Rethink Solitary Confinement. Washington Post, Jan 25, 2016.

Jeff Guo, America Has Locked Up So Many Black People It Has Warped Our Sense of Reality. Washington Post, Feb 26, 2016.

Star Wipe, Culture Of Prison Violence Delights Civilized, Justice-Seeking Populace. Star Wipe, Mar 16, 2016.  Jared Fogle abused in prison, and people's tweets

Michelle Alexander, What Can America Learn from Systems of Incarceration Around the World? Washington Post, Mar 18, 2016.

Alice Speri, Prisoners in Multiple States Call for Strikes to Protest Forced Labor. The Intercept, Apr 4, 2016.

German Lopez, Prison is Horrifying. For Transgender People, It's Hell. Vox, Apr 11, 2016.

Michelle Alexander, Mississippi Jails Are Losing Inmates, and Officials Are 'Devastated' By the Loss of Revenue. Huffington Post, Apr 14, 2016.

Shaundra Selvaggi, Alabama Inmates Organize Multi-Prison Strike in Protest of Prison Labor: We Won’t Contribute to Our Own Oppression. Atlanta Black Star, May 9, 2016.

Robert Verbruggen, Are Conservatives Reforming Criminal Justice? The American Conservative, Jun 1, 2016.  A helpful update on conservative states.

David Dayen, The True Cost: Why the Prison Industry is About So Much More Than Prisons. Talking Points Memo, Jun 23, 2016.

Josie Duffy Rice, Detroit's Head Prosecutor Doesn't Believe These Black Kids Can Change. Daily Kos, Jul 29, 2016.

BBC News, US To End Federal Use of Private Prisons. BBC News, Aug 18, 2016.

German Lopez, Mass Incarceration in America Explained in 22 Maps and Charts. Vox, Oct 11, 2016.

Lara Bazelon, Pennsylvania's Shame. Slate, Oct 12, 2016.  ill-trained police, underpaid defense attorneys, wrongful convictions

Mark Joseph Stern, The Supreme Court Juror Bias. Slate, Oct 12, 2016.

Michael Jonas, Mapping Incarceration in Boston. Commonwealth Magazine, Nov 10, 2016.

Rebecca McCray, Meet the Six Big Banks Keeping Private Prisons in Business. Huffington Post, Nov 17, 2016.

Dan Berger, Rattling the Cages. Jacobin Magazine, Nov 18, 2016.

James Surowiecki, Trump Sets Private Prisons Free. The New Yorker, Dec 5, 2016.

Debbie Elliott, Alabama's Prison System Goes On Trial. NPR, Dec 5, 2015.

Leila Morsy and Richard Rothstein, Mass Incarceration and Children’s Outcomes: Criminal Justice Policy is Education Policy. Economic Policy Institute, Dec 15, 2016.

Matt Ford, A Blueprint to End Mass Incarceration. The Atlantic, Dec 16, 2016.

Spencer Woodman, California Blames Incarcerated Workers for Unsafe Conditions and Amputations. The Intercept, Dec 28 2016.

Ashley Nellis and Marc Mauer, What We Can Learn from the Amazing Drop in Juvenile Incarceration. The Marshall Project, Jan 24, 2017.

Jeff Rosen, Germany: Low Crime, Clean Prisons, Lessons for America. TEDxMountainViewHighSchool, Jan 30, 2017. Outstanding comparisons between the actual prisons and the philosophies behind them.

The Young Turks, Priest Wants His Killer Spared. The Young Turks, Jan 31, 2017.  interesting case of sentencing, and what victim's wishes mean

Kirsten West Savall, White La. Judge Banned From Local Restaurant After Reportedly Calling Black Patron ‘Fat N--ger’. The Root, Feb 8, 2017.

Bill Keller, Is Prison the Answer to Violence? Marshall Project, Feb 16, 2017.

Peter N. Salib, Why Prison?: An Economic Critique. Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law, Mar 6, 2017.

John M. Eason, Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation. University of Chicago Press | Amazon page, Mar 2017.  rural southern towns have needed jobs, and prisons provide them. See also John M. Eason, Prison Building Will Continue Booming in Rural America. Salon, Mar 15, 2017.  

Joseph Shapiro, How One Inmate Changed The Prison System From the Inside. NPR, Apr 14, 2017.

Tom Vanden Brook, Black Troops As Much As Twice As Likely to Be Punished By Commanders, Courts. USA Today, Jun 7, 2017.

Editorial Board, Pulling Back on the Barbaric Use of Solitary Confinement. New York Times, Aug 5, 2017.

United States Sentencing Commission, Demographic Differences in Sentencing. United States Sentencing Commission, Nov 14, 2017.  “after controlling for a wide variety of sentencing factors, the Commission found: 1. Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders… 2. Non-government sponsored departures and variances appear to contribute significantly to the difference in sentence length between Black male and White male offenders… 3. Violence in an offender’s criminal history does not appear to account for any of the demographic differences in sentencing… 4. Female offenders of all races received shorter sentences than White male offenders during the Post-Report period, as they had for the prior four periods.”

Christopher Ingraham, Black Men Sentenced to More Time for Committing the Exact Same Crime as a White Person, Study Finds. Washington Post, Nov 16, 2017.

Deepa Bharath, Think Race Isn't a Problem in California? Think Otherwise. San Jose Mercury News, Dec 3, 2017.  Income, incarceration rates, education, health outcomes.

German Lopez, We Don't Need Mass Incarceration to Keep People Safe. This Chart Proves It. Vox, Jan 16, 2018.

John Grisham, Eight Reasons for America's Shameful Number of Wrongful Convictions. Los Angeles Times, Mar 11, 2018.

German Lopez, Christina Animashaun, and Javier Zarracina, How America Has — and Hasn’t — Changed Since Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death, in 11 Charts. Vox, Apr 4, 2018.  From economic well-being to criminal justice issues, racial inequality is still very real in America. 

Glenn Greenwald, Citing U.S. Prison Conditions, British Appeals Court Refuses to Extradite Accused Hacker Lauri Love to the U.S. The Intercept, Feb 6, 2018.

Jordyn Phelps, Inside Jared Kushner's Personal Crusade to Reform America's Prisons. ABC News, Apr 8, 2018.  and German Lopez, Congress's Prison Reform Bill, Explained. Vox, May 22, 2018.

Associated Press, Expelled Wisconsin Student Sentenced to 3 Years for Raping 3 Women. WGN9 Chicago, Jun 22, 2018.  Compared to other lengthy sentences especially for black and brown offenders.

Pat Loeb, Philadelphia Seeks to Cut its Prison Population in Half. KYW1060, Jul 4, 2018.  Reforms which have brought down the population by 37% already.

Michiko Kakutani, I Know What Incarceration Does to Families. It Happened to Mine. New York Times, Jul 13, 2018.

The Young Turks, Judge Rules You Can't Lock People Up For Being Broke. The Young Turks, Aug 10, 2018.  A report on debtors' prison practices, public fines and fees stacked against poor people, and loopholes where those fines are used to fund the benefits and staff salaries of the judge.

John Legend, It's Time for Louisiana to Strip White Supremacy from Their Constitution. Washington Post, Aug 13, 2018.  A clause requiring a non-unanimous jury, designed to make minorities on the jury irrelevant.

Amy Goodman, From Attica to South Carolina: Heather Ann Thompson on the Roots of the Nationwide Prison Strike. Democracy Now, Aug 21, 2018.  A clause requiring a non-unanimous jury, designed to make minorities on the jury irrelevant.

Radley Balko, Report: Wrongful Convictions Have Stolen at Least 20,000 Years from Innocent Defendants. Washington Post, Sep 10, 2018.

Jack Norton and Jacob Kang-Brown, Federal Farm Aid for the Big House. Vera Institute for Justice, Oct 22, 2018.  See review by Alan Pyke, Rural Jails, Brought to You by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Think Progress, Oct 23, 2018.  and more information by Ray Downs, USDA Loan, ICE Detainees Help Keep Rural Florida Jail in Business. UPI, Oct 31, 2018.  “One recipient of the low-interest loans is Baker County, Fla., a rural area of about 27,000 people in northern Florida. The USDA is set to approve a $35 million loan to the Baker County Development Corp., a nonprofit corporation created by the county to run the jail. The loan will help the county's nonprofit entity pay back bondholders who invested in the original $45 million cost to build the facility in 2008.”

Justin George, President Trump Says He Wants to Reform Prisons. His Attorney General Has Other Ideas. Politico, Oct 25, 2018.  "Jeff Sessions is overseeing a drastic cutback in the number of prisoners sent to halfway houses and home confinement."

Michelle Alexander, The Newest Jim Crow. New York Times, Nov 8, 2018.  Cautions about ankle bracelets.

Scott Maxwell, For the 28th time, Florida Sentenced a Man to Death ... Only to Realize it Made a Mistake. Orlando Sentinel, Nov 9, 2018.  

Ronald Wright, Yes, Jury Selection Is as Racist as You Think. Now We Have Proof. New York Times, Dec 4, 2018.  "A new study from North Carolina confirms some long-held folk wisdom about race and juries. The good news is there are two doable solutions."

Jeremy Diamond and Alex Rogers, The Bill That Wouldn't Die: The Unlikely Story Behind the Criminal Justice Overhaul. CNN, Dec 18, 2018.  A remarkable story of the political maneuverings; a hopeful sign that alliances can be built across the political aisle on this issue

Roger Lancaster, The Carceral Problem is Getting Worse. The Intercept, Dec 30, 2018.  despite the passage of the First Step Act

Victoria Law, End Forced Labor in Immigrant Detention. New York Times, Jan 29, 2019.  Congress is allowing private contractors to exploit detained immigrants

Jackie Kucinich, Kamala Harris’ A.G. Office Tried to Keep Inmates Locked Up for Cheap Labor. The Daily Beast, Feb 11, 2019.  "Lawyers for California also argued that allowing certain inmates to be paroled early would deplete a program that allowed prisons to fight wildfires"

David J. Burge, A Juror Who Questioned if Black Men Have Souls Sentenced One to Death. SCOTUS Must Step In. Newsweek, Feb 22, 2019.

Franklin Foer, The ‘Otherwise Blameless Life’ of Paul Manafort. The Atlantic, Mar 7, 2019.  the backdrop of his many criminal acts, against which Manafort's 47 month sentence serves as a stunning example of white privilege

Katie Benner and Shaila Dewan, Alabama’s Gruesome Prisons: Report Finds Rape and Murder at All Hours. New York Times, Apr 3, 2019.  and The Editorial Board, Alabama’s Cruel and Unusual Prisons. New York Times, Apr 6, 2019.  and The New York Times, ‘No One Feels Safe Here’: Life in Alabama’s Prisons. New York Times, Apr 29, 2019.

Elissa Nadworny, Congress Considers Making College More Accessible To People In Prison. NPR, Apr 20, 2019.

Nina Totenberg, Supreme Court Strikes Down Conviction Of Mississippi Man On Death Row For 22 Years. NPR, Jun 21, 2019.  significant because it establishes implicit racial bias as a legal problem, challenging McClesky v. Kemp. Examples of racial bias in jury selection are significant.

John Oliver, Prison Labor. Last Week Tonight, Aug 4, 2019.

Laura Paddison, How Norway Is Teaching America To Make Its Prisons More Humane. Huffington Post, Aug 22, 2019.  

Morgan Simon, GEO Group Runs Out of Banks as 100% of Banking Partners Say ‘No’ to the Private Prison Sector. Forbes, Sep 30, 2019.

Evan Gerstmann, How College In Prison Turns Around Lives And Saves Taxpayers Money. Forbes, Nov 23, 2019.

Drew Hartwell, Federal Study Confirms Racial Bias of Many Facial-Recognition Systems, Casts Doubt on Their Expanding Use. Washington Post, Dec 19, 2019.

Rebekah Sager, The Coronavirus Pandemic Shows America’s Prison System Is ‘Inhumane’. Huffington Post, Apr 7, 2020.  an interview with BLM founder Patrisse Cullors, good stats and perspective on the pandemic’s impact on our prison system

Michael Berens and John Shiffman, Special Report: Thousands of U.S. Judges Who Broke Laws, Oaths Remained on the Bench. Reuters, Jun 30, 2020.

Mark Joseph Stern, Black Judge Has to Explain to White Colleague Why Racial Profiling Is Bad. Slate, Jul 16, 2020.  

Adam Liptak, A Vast Racial Gap in Death Penalty Cases, New Study Finds. New York Times, Aug 3, 2020.  “Defendants convicted of killing white people, the study found, were far more likely to be executed than the killers of Black people.”

Peter Eisler, Linda So, Jason Szep, Grant Smith, and Ned Parker, Dying Inside: The Hidden Crisis in America’s Jails: Part One. Reuters, Oct 16, 2020.

Adrienne Taylor, Supreme Court Begins To Dismantle Police Safety Net. Overruled | TYT, Dec 7, 2020.  chipping away at “qualified immunity”?

Equal Justice Initiative, Justice Department Sues Alabama Over Unconstitutional Prison Conditions. Equal Justice Initiative, Dec 9, 2020.

Second Thought, Why The US Prison System Is The Worst In The Developed World. Second Thought, Jan 8, 2021.  15 minute video; very helpful stats and presentation

Gravel Institute, Why America Throws the Poor in Prison.  Gravel Institute, Feb 12, 2021.  Deindustrialization caused a surplus of workers, who then needed to be controlled.  Mass incarceration was the policy answer.

Elizabeth Bruenig, The Government Has Not Explained How These 13 People Were Selected to Die. New York Times, Feb 18, 2021.  “The federal death penalty cannot be fixed. It’s time to end it.”

Meribah Knight and Ken Armstrong, Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge. ProPublica, Oct 8, 2021.  “Judge Donna Scott Davenport oversees a juvenile justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee, with a staggering history of jailing children. She said kids must face consequences, which rarely seem to apply to her or the other adults in charge.” See also Nicholas Reimann, Tennessee County Reportedly Illegally Jailed Hundreds Of Children, Charging Some With Crimes That Don’t Exist. Forbes, Oct 8, 2021.  See also PBS, Tennessee Judge Jailed Minors on Bogus Charges Following Playground Fights, Cursing (PBS News Hour, Oct 12, 2021.  

Ari Melber, After Racist Juror Busted, Black Man Still Facing Execution In Oklahoma. The Beat | MSNBC, Oct 25, 2021.  Julius Jones was convicted by a jury where 11 of 12 people were white, and one juror used the N-word

Amber Ruffin, Alabama Prison Guards Are Killing Their Inmates. Here’s How We Stop It. The Amber Ruffin Show, Nov 12, 2021.

Associated Press, White Supremacist Prison Guards Work with Impunity in Florida. Associated Press | Tampa Bay Times, Nov 19, 2021.  “Few cases are thoroughly investigated by state prison inspectors; many are downplayed by officers charged with policing their own or discarded as too complicated to pursue.”

CNN, Judge Faces Call to Resign Over Racist Video Recorded At Her Home. CNN, Dec 17, 2021.  re: Judge Michelle Odinet of Lafayette, Louisiana.

Associated Press, Women’s Prison Dubbed 'Rape Club' Fostered Culture Of Abuse, Probe Finds.  Associated Press | Huffington Post, Feb 7, 2022.  “Inmates inside the federal correctional institution in Dublin, California, have alleged sexual abuse by correctional officers and threats or punishment for speaking up.”

CNN, Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers Found Guilty in Federal Hate Crime Trial.  CNN, Feb 22, 2022.  Important legal and factual detail provided.  We need to remember that this could easily have been covered up, except for the stupidity of one of the murderers releasing a videotape of the murder.

Mehdi Hasan, Race Hard To Ignore In Sentencing Differences In Voting Cases.  MSNBC, Apr 16, 2022.  Hasan compares white men who commit voter fraud to people of color:  Crystal Mason (Texas)

Amy Goodman, “Hellholes”: Heat Waves Worsen Conditions in Prisons with No Air Conditioning, Understaffing. Democracy Now, Jul 29, 2022. An 8 minute video featuring New York’s Ryker’s Island; the Northwest Detention Center (a private prison) in Takoma, WA. Thirteen states do not have universal air conditioning in state prisons. Keri Blakinger of The Marshall Project discusses Texas prisons.

Alec Karakatsanis, The Punishment Bureaucracy: How to Think About “Criminal Justice Reform”.  Yale Law Journal, Volume 128, 2018 - 19.  Mar 28, 2019.  

Dorothy E. Roberts, Abolition Constitutionalism.  Harvard Law Review, Volume 133, Number 1, November 2019. 

Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen, Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review.  The University of Chicago Press Journals, Volume 50, Number 1, Sep 22, 2021.  “Based on a much larger meta-analysis of 116 studies, the current analysis shows that custodial sanctions have no effect on reoffending or slightly increase it when compared with the effects of noncustodial sanctions such as probation. This finding is robust regardless of variations in methodological rigor, types of sanctions examined, and sociodemographic characteristics of samples. All sophisticated assessments of the research have independently reached the same conclusion. The null effect of custodial compared with noncustodial sanctions is considered a “criminological fact.” Incarceration cannot be justified on the grounds it affords public safety by decreasing recidivism. Prisons are unlikely to reduce reoffending unless they can be transformed into people-changing institutions on the basis of available evidence on what works organizationally to reform offenders.”

Thomas Ward Frampton, The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics.  Harvard Law Review, Volume 135, Number 8, June 2022.  “This Essay offers two main contributions: it (1) maps the diverse ways in which prison abolitionists most frequently respond to the challenge of “the dangerous few,” highlighting strengths and infirmities of each stance, and (2) proposes alternative, hopefully more productive, responses that interrogate and probe the implicit premises (empirical, ideological, or moral) embedded in and animating questions concerning “the dangerous few.””  

Eric Reinhart, The Public Health Case for Decarcerating America’s Prison System.  Undark, Jan 6, 2022.  “The pandemic has illustrated all too clearly how unsafe conditions in prisons boomerang back on the general population.”

Eric Reinhart, Prison Reform Is Undermining Public Health and Safety.  Time, May 31, 2022.  “For a few months in the fall of 2021, reports of unchecked violence, abuse, and neglect at the jail on New York City’s Rikers Island were plastered across national news before receding back into the routinized cruelty that constitutes the underbelly of American life. This exceptional coverage of the brutality behind bars provoked universal condemnation. But in its short-lived ascent to the forefront of political discussions and popular media, this media “event” failed to account for the most unsettling reality at play: Rikers is everywhere.”

Krish Gundu and Eric Reinhart, Why Are In-Custody Deaths Surging at Houston’s Harris County Jail?  Slate, Oct 25, 2022.  “At Houston’s Harris County Jail, more deaths and arguably even worse conditions than at Rikers have barely registered nationally. There currently exists neither plans nor sufficient political pressure to put a stop to the systematic violence Houston’s most vulnerable residents are reportedly experiencing in the jail.”

John Oliver, Solitary Confinement. Last Week Tonight, April 3, 2023. A 20 minute video surveying the mental health consequences and legal history of solitary confinement.

Amy Goodman, Racism Unleashed: Attack Dogs Maul, Bite & Terrorize Prisoners Across United States. Democracy Now, Jul 27, 2023. Virginia has the most incidents of dogs attacking prisoners.

Hedwig Lee, How Does Structural Racism Operate (in) the Contemporary US Criminal Justice System? Duke University Scholars, Annual Review of Criminology, Jan 26, 2024. See quotes by Augustus Corbett, MAGA, You're Lying! Black Men Are The Victims Of The Criminal Justice System, Not Trump. Defiant Lawyers Network, Jun 6, 2024.

Robin McDowell and Margie Mason, Hidden Prison Labor Web Linked to Foods from Target, Walmart. Associated Press, Jan 29, 2024.

Stephen Bronars, A Cost-Benefit Analysis: The Impact of Ending Slavery and Involuntary Servitude as Criminal Punishment and Paying Incarcerated Workers Fair Wages. Edgeworth Economics, Jan 31, 2024. Worth Rises is an advocacy organization that exists to dismantle the prison industry and win reparations for those the industry has harmed. It recently published a study analyzing what society would gain in terms of economic benefits from eliminating prison slave labor and paying prisoners fair wages. The study finds the wages would transform the lives of inmates, their families, their communities, and even crime victims. It would also add tax revenue to state and federal budgets from the estimated $11.6 to $18.8 billion in wages we would be paying prisoners today but for the fact that, under the Thirteenth Amendment, it is still legal to enslave them.

Katya Schwenk, Private Prisons Want You To Go Directly To Jail. The Lever, Jun 27, 2024. “From Mississippi to California, many states have taken a decided “tough on crime” tack over the past two years in a strengthening backlash to criminal justice reform efforts in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. This year, Louisiana passed a package of harsh sentencing laws that will keep some people in prison for years longer. A new parole board in Mississippi is keeping people in prison for longer terms by denying early release. In March, Washington, DC, enacted a sweeping anti-crime package. These laws, advocates warn, threaten to reverse years of progress in the fight against mass incarceration. Instead, they would again trap people in prison for lengthy terms, ripping apart communities and exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequality — while enriching the private firms that manage prisons and their shareholders.”

More Perfect Union, Alabama Is Generating Billions by Trapping People in Prison. More Perfect Union, Sep 3, 2024. Modern day convict leasing: AL takes a 40% cut from the wages earned by prison labor, about $450 million per year. AL grants parole in only 8% of cases, whereas comparison to other states suggests it should be as high as 80%. In 2022, citizens of AL voted to close the criminality loophole for slave labor in the U.S. 13th Amendment. Governor Kay Ivey went around it by executive order to heavily penalize encouraging a work stoppage. Black people make up a quarter of AL’s population, but over half of AL’s prison population. Black men are 25% less likely to get parole than White men.

Christie Thompson, Beth Schwartzapfel, and Joseph Shapiro, A Warden Faced Discipline Over Abuse at a Prison. Now He Runs a Prison Training Site. NPR, Nov 1, 2024.

Katya Schwenk, Inside The Plan To Let Trump Track Millions of Immigrants. The Lever, Nov 26, 2024. “The private prison lobby has been quietly pushing a drastic expansion of ICE’s surveillance apparatus. Trump’s reelection may be the final step.” “We’re looking at a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services,” one private prison executive told investors on a Nov. 7 earnings call.

Scott Alexander, Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know. Astral Codex Ten, Nov 27, 2024.

“Do longer prison sentences reduce crime? It seems obvious that they should. Even if they don’t deter anyone, they at least keep criminals locked up where they can’t hurt law-abiding citizens. If, as the studies suggest, 1% of people commit 63% of the crime, locking up that 1% should dramatically decrease crime rates regardless of whether it scares anyone else. And blue state soft-on-crime policies have been followed by increasing theft and disorder.

On the other hand, people in the field keep saying there’s no relationship. For example, criminal justice nonprofit Vera Institute says that Research Shows That Long Prison Sentences Don’t Actually Improve Safety. And this seems to be a common position; William Chambliss, one of the nation’s top criminologists, said in 1999 that “virtually everyone who studies or works in the criminal justice system agrees that putting people in prison is costly and ineffective.”

This essay is an attempt to figure out what’s going on, who’s right, whether prison works, and whether other things work better/worse than prison.”

Christie Thompson, Dozens of Prisoners Allege a Culture of Violence by Guards at Federal Facility in Virginia. The Marshall Project, Dec 17, 2024. In lawsuits and interviews, people held at Lee penitentiary described correctional officers breaking teeth, fracturing ribs and using the N-word. “Marcos Santiago heard the clatter of metal chains outside cell 201 next door. Locked in the most isolated unit at Lee federal prison in western Virginia, he knew that sound meant officers were readying to shackle another man to a concrete slab and leave him there for hours — as they had done to him weeks prior. Santiago was left with open wounds from the restraints on his ankles, and the sharp pain of a broken rib. Over nearly 24 hours on July 4, 2022, Santiago heard muffled thuds and screams from the adjacent cell. It sounded like guards were following the same playbook he said they’d used on him: beating him in his torso with their fists, slamming their riot shields into his body and twisting his hands and feet. In between guards’ visits, Santiago talked to the man through the air vents in their cells.”