The Price of America’s Inability to Track Child Deaths from Abuse and Neglect? Sometimes, More Lives.
Imgorthand/Getty This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. Experts have long suspected that the United States badly undercounts the number of children who die from abuse and neglect. The voluntary…
Stabbings, Fires, Flooded Cells: Mississippi’s Prison System Is Falling Apart
A protest about prison conditions outside the Capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, on January 7Rogelio V. Solis/AP Mississippi prisons are in crisis. On Tuesday, a congressman called for a federal investigation after at least five people incarcerated in the state were stabbed or beaten to death during a week at the start of the year. A…
New York Politicians Are Using Anti-Semitic Attacks to Scare People About Bail Reform
New York Post At the start of the year, New York enacted a set of reforms designed to ensure that fewer people land in jail before trial simply because they don’t have enough money to pay the court bail. Critics immediately pounced. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and state lawmakers are already trying…
Why Picking 12 Jurors to Hear the Weinstein Trial is So Damn Hard
Harvey Weinstein, left, arrives at court with his lead attorney Donna Rotunno.Mary Altaffer/AP On Tuesday, the first day of jury selection in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial in a lower Manhattan courtroom, Judge James Burke asked a group of 120 potential jurors if they felt that they could not remain impartial. A third raised their hands.…
Should Judges Have to Weigh the Price Tag of Sending Someone to Prison?
AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty There’s one trial that Buta Biberaj will never forget. Biberaj, a former defense attorney, remembers how Virginia jurors in 2017 requested 132 years of prison for a man who stole car tires. The jurors may have been unaware that taxpayers could pay more than $25,000 a year to keep someone incarcerated—so by proposing their…
Jail Inmates Worked for a $16 Billion Company Without Pay. Now They Want Their Wages.
The Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, CaliforniaSalwan Georges/Washington Post/Getty The last time Bert Davis was booked into Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, he was assigned to Housing Unit 31, the pod for inmate workers, and promptly sent to work in the facility’s industrial kitchen. This was routine for Davis, who had cycled in and…