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For men awaiting execution on Texas’ death row, Dungeons & Dragons became a lifeline — an escape from extreme isolating conditions, leading to the sort of friendships solitary confinement usually prevents. See their D&D character sheets, maps & more:
To examine why arbitrators return New York state prison guards to work after officials fired them for abusing prisoners, we built a database compiled through public records requests.
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
"Cassandra and I grew up in the same neighborhood, but we lost touch when I was arrested. I used to walk by her house to get to work when I was 15 or 16 years old. We hadn’t seen each other in years, but had begun speaking in letters when she surprised me at the Angola Prison Rodeo in 2012."
For @themarshallproject.org I spoke to a warden who wants to use AI-driven robots for “medicine distribution, cell feeding, security searches, package searches for fentanyl, all the hazardous and routine tasks that staff don't want to do." Here's how prisons/jails are integrating AI, or hoping to:
The U.S. prison system today faces the same problems as when former facilities were full: isolation, mental illness, and the disproportionate number of incarcerated Black and brown people. Educational prison tourism can show us how far we haven’t come.
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
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 ⬇️
Follow The Marshall Project - St. Louis’ reporting on criminal justice in St. Louis and across Missouri by subscribing to our local team’s email list ⬇️
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.
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.
Ahora tambiĂ©n ofrecemos este artĂculo en español:
This article is part of Immigration Nation, our limited-run newsletter covering the nexus of mass deportations and the criminal justice system. Want the rest of the series in your inbox? Sign up now ⬇️
These reused facilities show how deeply entangled criminal and immigrant enforcement infrastructure are. They also illustrate how once prisons and jails are built it can be difficult to ever fully close them.
Ahead of the 2020 election, we asked people in prison what might have helped keep them from committing the crime that led to their incarceration. Among their responses were: • affordable housing • a stable, well-paying job • mental health support
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
Bobby Bostic was only 18 when he was sentenced to 241 years behind bars. To his surprise, weeds, water and soil put the St. Louis native on the path to healing.
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
Over the past decade, the adoption of body-worn cameras has been one of the most popular and durable police reforms in the U.S. But this step for police accountability is not always particularly effective.
A warden was tasked with ending abuse at one of the highest security federal prisons in the U.S. But he says his own officers and the Bureau of Prisons stood in the way.
For journalists reporting on deaths in a local jail or prison, we created a toolkit: • Tips about the Death in Custody Reporting Act • A free illustration • A list of expert sources You also can schedule a consultation to talk through reporting obstacles.
Follow The Marshall Project - St. Louis’ reporting on criminal justice in St. Louis and across Missouri by subscribing to our local team’s email list ⬇️
Here’s how a St. Louis jail facility built for progress has become a mirror of the city’s deepest struggles, from mental illness to systemic dysfunction.
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
"What I thought would be no more than a three-day holdover at Green Haven turned out to be a 12-day punishment. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the inhumane conditions my peers and I had to endure."
From blues to gospel, country to rap, people have been making music behind bars for decades. Here’s why we should all tune in.
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
Eric Williams writes that a simple act of self-denial forced him to admit that a major source of his life’s problems was his lack of self-discipline.
Jayden Kiley was 17 and in foster care when her mother died. But for months, no one told her about Social Security death benefits — or her mom's death. Eventually, she learned she was owed ~$8,500.
Follow The Marshall Project - Jackson’s reporting on criminal justice in Hinds County and throughout Mississippi by subscribing to our Jackson newsletter ⬇️
Dozens of women in Mississippi have been charged with child abuse crimes that, based on existing state law, they may not have committed.
Even corrections officers claim Cuyahoga County Jail’s conditions impact their health. “Over the years, many officers said they have developed breathing problems from the air quality,” says the general counsel for the Ohio Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which represents corrections officers.
We’ve compiled guidance on key issues for anyone reporting on the legal system — from styles and standards to FOIA requests.
Prison culture tends to force nurses out or numb them to the violence they witness and treat, said Stephanie Gangemi, a professor at University of Colorado Colorado Springs: “The system has ways of making their lives so miserable that they don't stay.”
Jennifer Peter has been named editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project. “I’m beyond thrilled to be joining such a high-caliber news organization with such a critical mission, particularly at this time in our history,” Peter said.
A woman’s mission was to save a man from death row — by telling the story of his life. Read our comic to learn how:
When prison systems refuse to let trans people live authentically and safely as themselves, that refusal becomes part of their punishment.
"This is the heart-pounding moment of truth: They will either be apprehended by those masked agents, or allowed to walk right by them and proceed down the elevators and out of the building."
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
Thomas Koskovich writes that it's stressful when anyone dies in your prison, especially when no one ever tells you what happened.
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
Promising to take over police to fight crime, Trump’s effort has instead morphed into mostly an immigration dragnet.
Follow The Marshall Project - Cleveland’s reporting on criminal justice in Cuyahoga County by subscribing to our Cleveland newsletter ⬇️
Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Deputy Isen Vajusi pointed an assault rifle out a window while speeding more than 100 mph at times during a December 2024 chase of a stolen car, bodycam footage shows.
When most people picture U.S. prisons, they don’t usually imagine green plants, vibrant murals, wooden furniture, cuddly dogs or fish tanks. In most facilities, they’d be right. But America’s experiment with Scandinavian-inspired prison units is growing — and being tested.
Follow The Marshall Project - St. Louis’ reporting on criminal justice in St. Louis and across Missouri by subscribing to our local team’s email list ⬇️
Bishop, a transgender woman, landed in solitary after her cellmate tried to sexually assault her. She was HIV-positive and, because of the assault, classified as “sexually active” — even though she was the victim and had been on medication making the virus undetectable and untransmissible.
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
"After the court proceedings — the ones I’ve witnessed tend to take 15 to 20 minutes — we walk out with them. This is the heart-pounding moment of truth: They will either be apprehended by those masked agents, or allowed to walk right by them and proceed down the elevators and out of the building."
This article is part of Immigration Nation, our limited-run newsletter covering the nexus of mass deportations and the criminal justice system. Want the rest of the series in your inbox? Sign up now ⬇️
"No matter the future of Alligator Alcatraz, the Trump administration is turning it into a model for expanding detention capacity across the country. Similar large-scale facilities, opened in collaboration with state governments, are already in the works."
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
"Immigration enforcement has made up a large part of the policing surge. As of Tuesday, nearly half of the arrests “since the start of operations” in D.C. have been of undocumented people, an administration spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal."
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
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.
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.
Dr. James Williams is now arguably America’s leading expert on the firing squad — and the go-to expert for death row prisoners seeking an alternative to lethal injection.
Follow The Marshall Project - Cleveland’s reporting on criminal justice in Cuyahoga County by subscribing to our Cleveland newsletter ⬇️
Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Deputy Isen Vajusi pointed an assault rifle out a window while speeding more than 100 mph at times during a December 2024 chase of a stolen car, bodycam footage shows.
Follow The Marshall Project - St. Louis’ reporting on criminal justice in St. Louis and across Missouri by subscribing to our local team’s email list ⬇️
Bishop was allowed out of her cell for one hour, three days a week. She did not have access to a phone, classes or a job. For three years, she did not receive gender-affirming medical care. A corrections caseworker told Bishop she was going to “rot in there” because she had HIV, the lawsuit said.
A judge ordered Alligator Alcatraz to wind down operations (for now). But officials promise more detention centers made in the controversial facility’s image: large-scale operations opened in collab. w/ states. Here's what to expect & why it matters. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/22/f...
This article is part of Immigration Nation, our limited-run newsletter covering the nexus of mass deportations and the criminal justice system. Want the rest of the series in your inbox? Sign up now ⬇️
"Similar large-scale facilities, opened in collaboration with state governments, are already in the works. These projects mark the first time that states have gotten this involved in large-scale immigration detention."
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
"You’re witnessing unspeakable cruelty, but you can’t lash out. You have to remember that you are there strictly as a friend of immigrant community members on what may be one of the scariest days of their lives. You’re also there to alert the outside world to what’s happened to them."
“These kids were in their cells with no beds on a concrete floor with a state-issued green mattress — flame retardant — a blanket and a sheet and nothing else. No light. No nothing,” a former staffer said.
The footage of Robert Brooks’ killing shocked the public. We identified 46 allegations that corrections officers assaulted prisoners in medical wings of New York prisons since 2010; Brooks and two other prisoners died, while many others were left with severe injuries.
Dozens of women in Mississippi have been charged with child abuse crimes that, based on existing state law, they may not have committed.
The Trump administration is fueling immigration arrests, deportations and detention with the aid of state and local law enforcement. Our new limited-run newsletter Immigration Nation untangles the intersection of these powerful systems — and their impact on communities. Sign up here:
Follow The Marshall Project - St. Louis’ reporting on criminal justice in St. Louis and across Missouri by subscribing to our local team’s email list ⬇️
Honesty Bishop could hear the screams of other people in solitary confinement. Sometimes it was so cold in her cell, she could see her breath. She dealt with scabies and mold. Missouri is one of three states that singles out people with HIV, like Bishop, when it comes to solitary confinement.
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
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 ⬇️
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.”
Transgender people are a tiny fraction of the federal prison population. But they are disproportionately targeted for abuse and assault.
Follow The Marshall Project - Cleveland’s reporting on criminal justice in Cuyahoga County by subscribing to our Cleveland newsletter ⬇️
Ohio has a host of policies controlling which books people can have in prisons, how they can get them, and what they can do with them. The state banned 293 publications between February 2018 to January 2022. Search our database to see titles:
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 ⬇️
Joe Sexton’s sweeping narrative "The Hardest Case for Mercy" explored the efforts to spare the life of the Parkland school shooter. Read the story ⬇️
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
"Studies have found that state policies that punish drug use during pregnancy lead to higher rates of overdose and higher rates of infants born with withdrawal symptoms... And all of this is happening with the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which reversed abortion rights. "
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
There’s growing evidence that former officers with troubling histories of abuse can easily find second careers in private security.
🔎 We launched Investigate This! for journalists who want to use our datasets and reporting to craft original criminal justice stories in their own communities. Check out our free story toolkits with resources:
Our weekly Life Inside newsletter brings you personal stories from writers inside the criminal justice system, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to hear from people behind bars in their own words ⬇️
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.
Between 2010 and 2022, arbitrators in New York reinstated 3 out of every 4 guards fired for abuse or covering it up, according to our review of 136 cases. Outside arbitrators heavily favored prison guards, even in the face of strong evidence against them.
A rare look into data collected under the Death in Custody Reporting Act revealed serious problems. Here's how we analyzed it and uncovered serious, systematic deficiencies.
We found a dozen cases of death row prisoners who previously spent time in youth lockups. Most were in Texas, where such facilities have been plagued by abuse for decades.
A 9-year-old pepper sprayed in handcuffs, crying for her dad. A teenager wrestled to the ground, and another pepper sprayed while waiting for the bus. All were Black girls hurt by police.
"Susan seemed so earnest and calm and full of acceptance — all rare traits in the county jail, where so many people are caught up in the emotional riot of early sobriety," Keri Blakinger wrote.
In this guide, families who have lost someone to violence in St. Louis share what did – and did not – help them rebuild their lives after a tragic loss.
This piece is part of Dying Behind Bars, our series investigating the systemic failures behind deaths in custody and their toll on grieving families:
After roughly 25,000 unredacted death records from 2019 to 2023 were made available online late last year, The Marshall Project checked them against independent sources on in-custody deaths, including news reports and academic research. We found at least 681 deaths missing from the federal count.
Our weekly Closing Argument newsletter unpacks a timely topic in criminal justice with context and analysis to help you make sense of the news. Subscribe to go beyond the headlines and dig deeper into one story each week ⬇️
Over the past 15 years, formerly incarcerated people have greatly benefited from expansions to Medicaid healthcare coverage. Those gains are now at risk in the face of an estimated $1 trillion in federal spending cuts outlined in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
In prisons across the U.S., basics such as deodorant, shampoo, sneakers, thermal clothes for winter are often only available to people who can afford them. But earning enough in jobs behind bars is nearly impossible.
"Friendly Signs" explores the impact of a sign language class at San Quentin. Watch the documentary and learn about the challenges of prison filmmaking from director Rahsaan "New York" Thomas.
This article is part of Immigration Nation, our limited-run newsletter covering the nexus of mass deportations and the criminal justice system. Want the rest of the series in your inbox? Sign up now ⬇️