Tag: solitary

On April 27, 2023, the United States Sentencing Commission submitted to Congress amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines that would recommend lower sentences for certain defendants. If these changes are applied retroactively, some 18,775 people…

The topic of solitary confinement was the focus of a recent episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on HBO. Thanks to the hard work of activists organizing against solitary confinement for decades, awareness of…

While the underlying logic of the cash bail system in the US may sound convincing on paper, in practice it has become a means of denying justice to, and destroying the lives of, people who…

*Editor’s note: At 00:56, host Mansa Musa misspeaks when quoting a report and says that 55 million people are in the system of mass incarceration; the correct number is 5.5 million. Over 1.9 million people…

Mass incarceration as we know it today owes much of its existence to the political rationale created by the War on Drugs. Although proffered as a solution to the public health crisis of drug addiction,…

Jessup, Maryland is home to the state’s only women’s prison, the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women, commonly known as “The Cut”. For years, advocates fought for a women’s pre-release center, which would house prisoners eligible…

The revelations of widespread torture of detainees at the illegal US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, rattled the American conscience during the Bush Jr. administration. Two decades later, detainments at Guantanamo continue, but the public…