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Nonbinary writer K.C. Johnson soon learned that behind bars, even their underwear was subject to deliberations. Read their Life Inside essay ⬇️

Encouraged by Trump, some lawmakers are championing cash bail, undercutting reforms that advocates say made the system fairer for poor people.

"Misconduct is supposed to be reported to the Missouri Department of Public Safety, but sometimes it takes years for that to happen — if it’s ever done. ...Missouri isn’t a state that automatically revokes a police license when an officer is convicted of a serious crime."

Robots behind bars may be a ways off, but prisons and jails have been rapidly adopting other AI and machine-learning tools. Advocates critical of the technology are concerned about opaque data collection processes, privacy violations and bias.

Encouraged by Trump, some lawmakers are championing cash bail, undercutting reforms that advocates say made the system fairer for poor people.

Algoa Correctional Center is one of four Missouri prisons with no air conditioning in any of the housing units. The Marshall Project - St. Louis asked Jeremy Hann, one of the people who gave sworn testimony in a lawsuit against Algoa, to log his days during the first heat wave of the summer.

Michael Shane Hale had always found belonging in books. So when he became a library clerk in prison, he set out to redesign a place where everyone can read in peace. Read his Life Inside essay ⬇️

John Lowe was beaten to death in a prison shower in 2021. Then, for the next three years, the case was effectively forgotten by prosecutors and the prison system.

"Out of the 627 complaints, 135 officers surrendered their licenses and 150 had them revoked. The rest were unresolved, on probation, suspended or expired. In some cases, officers convicted of crimes including fraud and armed bank robbery were allowed to keep their license until it expired."

"As the immigration checkpoints expand across the country, they have sparked reactions from community members who have called out ICE agents for wearing masks, criticized the cooperation of local police, and organized to record and witness as neighbors are detained."

The St. Louis jail is a microcosm of the community’s toughest challenges — crime, untreated mental illness, concentrated poverty and indifference. A generation of leaders has struggled to make lasting changes.

“'I cried a lot, and sometimes, from the depression, I urinated in my clothes,' she said in Spanish in a phone call from Oaxaca, Mexico, where she lives now. 'I don’t know why they didn’t give me the care I needed.'"

A review of Downtown Safety Patrol traffic stops in Cleveland shows deputies rarely issue tickets or make arrests. But Marshall Project - Cleveland and News 5 Cleveland found that Black drivers received 75% of the citations issued.

Two St. Louis police officers hit a handcuffed man and shocked him with a Taser. A deputy in southwest MO was convicted of assaulting another deputy’s wife. They kept their Missouri police licenses and are still working as officers, despite being brought before a state discipline board.

Marshall Project reporter, Ivy Scott, spoke with families who have lost loved ones to homicide and are still waiting for justice. They shared the advice they wish someone had given them when they were grieving.

In his Life Inside essay, Bobby Bostic discusses his writing workshops in juvenile detention centers. “These kids are full of potential,” he writes. “Giving them guidance is my way of giving back.”

While increasing diversity isn’t a panacea for the problems of policing, experts like the ACLU’s Jenn Rolnick Borchetta believe Trump’s anti-DEI crusade could help breed an insular culture that can make police departments more prone to abuse and misconduct.

John Lowe was beaten to death in a prison shower in 2021. Then, for the next three years, the case was effectively forgotten by prosecutors and the prison system.

A mother of three said she hallucinated after weeks in an ICE segregation cell in Louisiana. She’s one of thousands now facing the psychological toll of isolation.

Astonishingly little is known about people’s access to abortions in thousands of jails across the U.S. Our review & other studies suggest that even in places where abortion remains legal, reproductive rights in jail are precarious and limited.

Denver set out to end the disparity between how police treat homicides and near-homicides. And other cities are taking notice.

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.

From blues to gospel, country to rap, people have been making music behind bars for decades. Here’s why we should all tune in.

Prisons across the U.S. are rejecting books because they argue that they could contain dangerous substances. But experts say these crackdowns do little to prevent contraband from spreading behind bars.

St. Louis activist Khanika Harper found the perfect way to marry her passion for justice with the power of love: She became a prison wedding officiant.

"Once patients were deadlocked, they would rapidly decompensate to the point where they’d bang on their doors, scream all day and night, and smear feces all over their cells. The officers would then use behavior that was a direct result of extreme confinement to justify extending it."

"According to department data, over two-thirds of the stops made by Downtown Safety Patrol deputies did not result in an arrest or citation in 2023 and 2024. ...The news outlets also found that Black drivers received 75% of the citations issued."

What explains the rise? Probably not public support — jurors have increasingly rejected the punishment. Calls to experts on the death penalty led us to four interconnected theories to explain the rise in executions this year.

While immigration checkpoints have long existed within the 100-mile border zone, checkpoints run by non-CBP agents are unusual. For @themarshallproject.org, I took a look at how communities are pushing back against the spread of checkpoints and stops. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/09/12/w...

"68-year-old George Branch said in 1972... guards attacked men who refused to eat in the mess hall. The following year, men paid their respects by wearing box-braided black shoestrings on their wrists. The corrections officers caught onto that also and violently obstructed their political action."

When prison systems refuse to let trans people live authentically and safely as themselves, that refusal becomes part of their punishment.

Since jails primarily hold people pre-trial, courts have found that depriving potentially innocent people of sunlight violates their right to due process. One judge called it ”simply punishment.”

Food behind bars often fails to meet the standards of basic nutrition.

For decades, New York prisoners have refused meals on Sept. 13 to mark the end of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Read to go inside a ritual in decline.

States have executed 30 people this year — already the highest annual total in more than a decade. Calls to experts on the death penalty led us to four interconnected theories to explain the rise in executions this year.

"All of this demonstrates how contact with local law enforcement can lead to an immigration arrest, detention and deportation, even in jurisdictions where leaders try to put distance between police and immigration enforcement."

“It is not uncommon for guards to withhold food unless we take our shirts off," writes prison journalist Kwaneta Harris in Texas.

WINNER! Excellence in Social Media Engagement, Medium Newsroom: The Marshall Project for Perils of Hospital Drug Tests During Pregnancies awards.journalists.org/entries/peri... #OJA25

Ohio’s Reagan Tokes law was intended to curb prison violence with promises of early release. Instead, the law is turning out as unbalanced as critics feared, with sentences extended at every turn.

As the immigration dragnet widens, checkpoints and traffic stops are proving powerful instruments in the Trump administration’s detention and deportation toolkit. With federal agents deployed in cities like Washington, D.C., L.A. and Chicago, these roadblocks have met pushback from communities.

“No one deserves to die like this." At least *43* people have been killed in Mississippi prisons since 2015. Poor staffing, lax oversight and gangs who rule by violence make it easier for killings to go unchecked. Read more: www.themarshallproject.org/2025/09/11/m...

Text messages and a video from a prisoner inside the Mississippi State Penitentiary have raised questions about a homicide there during a 2020 gang war. During the war, Denorris Howell was strangled to death. No one was charged with his killing.

For decades, New York prisoners have refused meals on Sept. 13 to mark the end of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. Read to go inside a ritual in decline:

Lying to suspects remains a staple of homicide detective work and is protected by the courts.

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:

"I met several other deaf people while I was incarcerated. But we were all in separate dorms," a man told us. "They housed us sometimes with blind folks, which for me made communication impossible."

At least 42 incarcerated people have been killed in the last decade. Just six people have been convicted in their deaths.

This Suicide Prevention Week, hear from Rashon Venable, who had to make sure others didn’t harm themselves behind bars as a suicide prevention aide. "As someone who lost a grandmother to suicide, I understood how devastating the effects of that can be on a family and the wider community."

People in prison died at 3.4 times the rate of the free population, with the oldest hit hardest, at the peak of the pandemic in 2020. Data holds lessons for preventing future deaths. Read our analysis ⬇️