Aug 22 Watch Piper Kerman of ‘Orange Is the New Black’ answers your questions By PBS News Hour Continue watching
Aug 07 Watch Debating criminal justice reforms to improve rehabilitation and lower recidivism By PBS News Hour The calls to address prison crowding and conditions have intensified as American inmate populations have grown. Jeffrey Brown gets debate on the shifting perceptions of the criminal justice system from Bill McCollum, former attorney general of Florida, Bryan Stevenson of… Continue watching
Jul 31 Why more than 3,300 U.S. inmates have sought clemency By Eric Tucker, Associated Press More than 3,300 federal inmates have applied since April to have their prison sentences cut short under a new Justice Department clemency initiative, according to data provided to The Associated Press. Continue reading
Jul 18 Expanded cost-cutting proposal would release 46,000 drug felons from prison By Eric Tucker, Associated Press More than 46,000 inmates, including many who have already served a decade or longer in prison, would be eligible to seek early release under the commission's decision. A judge would review the case of each prisoner seeking to get out… Continue reading
Jul 10 Mentally ill shackled and neglected in Africa’s crisis regions By Victoria Fleischer Robin Hammond had never considered the long-term mental health effects on the Africans whose stories of war, famine and conflict he had covered for 12 years as a documentary photographer. But on a 2011 reporting trip to Sudan, he witnessed… Continue reading
May 15 Watch Uninsured former inmates stand to gain health care under Medicaid expansion By PBS News Hour When American inmates are released from jail or prison, most leave without health insurance and little access to medical care. But under the federal health care law's expansion of Medicaid, that's beginning to change. Sarah Varney of Kaiser Health News… Continue watching
May 15 By the numbers: Mental illness behind bars By Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News There are now three times more people with serious mental illness incarcerated in the United States than in hospitals, and the types of behavioral and mental health problems among inmates are becoming more severe. Continue reading
May 15 Ex-prisoners more likely to die early death, study finds By Ellen Rolfes Men who are incarcerated and released are more than twice as likely to die prematurely as those who have not been imprisoned. Georgia State University criminologist William Pridemore has found that ex-prisoners are more likely die early from disease, drug… Continue reading
Apr 29 How high incarceration rates cost states and shatter communities By Murrey Jacobson The documentary profiles the path of four people caught up in the cycle of Kentucky's criminal justice system. The four come from Beecher Terrace, a housing project in the west end of Louisville where one out of every six… Continue reading
Apr 02 Watch Former inmate speaks out against U.S. ‘commitment’ to mass incarceration By PBS News Hour During Michael Santos’ 26 years in federal prisons, he read books on history and law, earned undergraduate and master’s degrees and wrote seven books about the criminal justice system. Now, just six months after his release, Santos is imploring prisoners… Continue watching