A Black freshman’s apparent suicide on campus is one of at least nine Black men who have been found hanging from trees since 2000.

Incredible reporting by @brittanyhailer.bsky.social for @themarshallproject.org on the tragic and dangerous conditions inside youth treatment centers. Hailer is one of the best there is out there. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/11/06/r...

In Chicago, Memphis and elsewhere, residents allege a surge of federal agents and military troops is making it harder to police and prosecute crime.

Screams and bangs echoed inside Ohio’s largest youth residential treatment center. Some children rushed outside to grab rocks. A teacher ushered her students into the cafeteria for safety. Another teacher texted her mother, pleading with her to call 911: “Call them. Call mom please.”

Diamonds Ford thought she was shooting at an intruder when cops raided her Florida home without knocking. Then she was charged with attempted murder. Read her essay ⬇️

A Black freshman’s apparent suicide on campus is one of at least nine Black men who have been found hanging from trees since 2000.

John J. Lennon tells Bill Keller that he “wanted to tell a different story about the guilty” in his new book.

Thomas Koskovich writes that it's stressful when anyone dies in your prison, especially when no one ever tells you what happened.

When someone dies behind bars, the officials who run prisons and jails don't always return all of their belongings to their loved ones. Books, drawings, letters, and other memorabilia, for many families, are precious reminders of the person they've lost.

Missouri’s competency-to-stand-trial system has become so overloaded that even people accused of low-level crimes now wait years for effective treatment. Administrators have responded with new programs, but reporting suggests that those efforts aren’t nearly enough.

Past Marshall Project reporting has found that, in the aggregate, the cost of police misconduct settlements can reach into the billions. But recently, two cities have embraced a legal maneuver that, if widely adopted, could limit how much victims actually recover from these settlements.

Hospitals routinely report parents to child welfare authorities based on error-prone drug tests. Some hospitals are changing policy as a result.

For three decades, a little-known group of “mitigation specialists” has helped save death-penalty defendants by documenting their childhood traumas. Take a rare look inside one case:

"Marcus told me he spent months trying to get medical staff to look at his swollen and swelling leg, filing healthcare request forms and speaking directly to nurses and doctors. He was dismissed and misdiagnosed, he alleged. In response to his complaints, they gave him compression socks."

Denver, Minneapolis and other cities want to avoid paying large sums owed to victims of some types of misconduct. But will the officers pay up?

We’re proud to report that Chicago Beyond will be investing in The Marshall Project, strengthening our ability to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. Chicago Beyond’s contribution is a testament to our work, and we’re excited for this partnership!

Months before his death, Ralph Marcus explained how a COVID-era leg injury led to a rare bone cancer that didn’t have to be fatal.

Being stripped of parental rights while in prison, even for minor crimes, is “the family separation crisis that no one knows about,” an advocate says.

A backlog of defendants deemed mentally unfit for trial persists despite public policy changes to address the crisis.

Death behind bars, a story in 5 objects: A receipt is a mom's last connection to her son A man watches Knicks games w/ his brother's ashes An estranged child, wonders about a father's lost bible Travel books, for places un-visited A muddy hat, too precious to pack away. tinyurl.com/482hyknt

Many former prison sites draw on the spooky and salacious to entertain visitors, especially during October. “It turns human suffering into a spectacle," as one criminologist put it. But some businesses are having second thoughts.

When someone dies behind bars, the officials who run prisons and jails don't always return all of their belongings to their loved ones. Books, drawings, letters, and other memorabilia, for many families, are precious reminders of the person they've lost.

When you get a tip about a death or multiple deaths in your local jail or prison, there are concrete steps you can take to start investigating.

“You’re yelling, so you can breathe,” said one of the officers who forcefully restrained Tasha Grant. Grant gasped, moaned and settled motionless onto her stomach while handcuffed to a hospital bed. Her death was later ruled a homicide.

Policies that dictate what happens after a death behind bars often add new layers of pain — and financial and logistical challenges — for those left behind.

"I would describe it as “shock and awe.” It is intended. It is a different approach, certainly from what I experienced and from what I was familiar with. ...It is intended to instill fear in those who might be subjected to our laws in the immigration area, as opposed to fostering public safety."

Ohio's laws that criminalize living with HIV have led to at least 200 prosecutions in recent years. This crime can be prosecuted regardless of whether the virus was transmitted or protection was used.

Objections to record-clearing bills are usually framed around questions of public safety, but there's some evidence that collateral consequences — like former prisoners being unable to find employment — can actually drive crime.

A Marshall Project - Cleveland and News 5 investigation helped spark a bipartisan bill to track pregnancy outcomes in Ohio jails and prisons.

ICE’s crackdown in Chicago reflects a deeper reshaping of the immigration system toward a singular focus: removing people with little or no review.

As a suicide prevention aide, Rashon Venable had to make sure others didn’t harm themselves. It was surprisingly easy to get such a complex job. Read his Life Inside essay ⬇️

"What we uncovered near this facility surprised even us: an overgrown potter’s field where dozens of Black boys who had died in the House of Reformation from the late 1800s to 1939 were buried. Some of the graves had headstones, but most were marked by unnamed, deteriorating cinder blocks."

In recent weeks, agents rappelled into an apartment building from a helicopter, fired pepper balls at peaceful protesters, and allegedly zip-tied the hands of children. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have not commented in some of these instances, or have justified officers’ actions.

"These are peaceful social movements but they’re being portrayed in such a way that is so aggressive and dehumanizing, to create a permission structure for violent repression [from the authorities]. ...What do we do on the chessboard, culturally? What’s our countermove?"

Even corrections officers have described how the Cuyahoga County Jail’s conditions impact their physical and mental health. “Over the years, many officers said they have developed breathing problems from the air quality,” says Adam Chaloupka of the Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

Over years and hundreds of handwritten pages of filings, Grace Pinson jumped over legal hurdles, all the way to trial. Fewer than 1% of federal prisoner civil rights claims reach that stage without an attorney, a luxury almost no one in prison can afford.

Sandy Hemme spent 43 years behind bars. Even after a judge declared her innocent and ordered her freed, Missouri's attorney general tried to send her back. The state’s legal and political systems often resist admitting error even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

As Maryland’s secretary of juvenile services, Vincent Schiraldi exposed a history of torture, neglect and Black boys buried in unmarked graves.

What’s “tactical frivolity”? L.M. Bogad — a co-founder of the Clown Army, among other things — talks about the long history of how silly tactics can add to serious movements.

ICE’s crackdown in Chicago reflects a deeper reshaping of the immigration system toward a singular focus: removing people with little or no review.

Ahora también ofrecemos este artículo en español:

“Someone in Washington needs to lose their jobs over this, because this is ridiculous,” Florida’s Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said in August of the recruiting emails, which came less than two months after Ivey vowed to shoot people ”graveyard dead” in defense of ICE officers.

These outfits are just the latest iteration in a long history of using whimsy and humor in political protests, known as “tactical frivolity.” We spoke with L.M. Bogad, a performance artist, author of “Tactical Performance: The Theory and Practice of Serious Play” and professor:

Cleveland city officials have contracted with a data analytics firm to help department leaders monitor potential bias and discrimination by officers. The move comes one year after a Marshall Project - Cleveland and News 5 analysis of 17,000 police stops:

"What we uncovered near this facility surprised even us: an overgrown potter’s field where dozens of Black boys who had died in the House of Reformation from the late 1800s to 1939 were buried. Some of the graves had headstones, but most were marked by unnamed, deteriorating cinder blocks."

Even after … • years of high-profile exonerations • research on why innocent people are convicted • judges and lawmakers’ attempts to fix the problems detectives continued to use techniques that have been found to produce false confessions.

Attorneys representing Grant’s estate condemned the “tragic and completely unnecessary” death in a statement. Grant was experiencing “a mental health crisis but rather than treat her with compassion and professionalism, officers physically restrained her ultimately causing” her death, they said.

An investigation into St. Louis’ jail found that poor jail maintenance and management, as well as understaffing, mean many detainees are left to live in unsanitary conditions. From @themarshallproject.org:

Cleveland city officials have contracted with a data analytics firm to help department leaders monitor potential bias and discrimination by officers. The move follows a Marshall Project - Cleveland analysis that found police searched Black people more often than White people in stops in 2023.

“That willingness to make yourself ridiculous can be very disarming,” said a professor who has studied — and engaged in — absurd protest methods.