https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/10/20/wisconsin-voting-districts-skew-power-small-prison-towns/8536983002/
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https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/42057/20200805/nick-hillary-s-civil-rights-case-and-how-it-links-to-a-broader-moment-of-reckoning
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Since the coronavirus pandemic began, New York State has granted early release to 1400 inmates, all of them non-violent offenders. But thousands of elderly prisoners aren’t being considered for release, because they are in for violent crimes - even if they’ve served decades of their sentence and studies show that they are unlikely to re-offend. For now, it appears that advocating for the early release of these inmates is a stance even liberal politicians like Governor Andrew Cuomo are reluctant to take.
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18 year-old Treyanna Summerville was found dead in her home in Gouverneur a few weeks ago. The St. Lawrence district attorney says the investigation is ongoing. They’ve released very few details regarding the case, in part because a minor, a 13-year-old, is facing charges of second degree homicide.
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New York's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision outlined what it calls its "reopening" plans for the state prison system at the end of May. In four pages, it goes into the process for phasing staff in, and how visits are still suspended. But one little bullet point in those four pages has become a flashpoint: the announcement that it would transfer around one hundred elderly inmates out of other prisons and up to a prison in the Adirondacks.
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While the number of people testing positive or being hospitalized for COVID-19 continues to fall around the state, those numbers are going up inside New York prisons, where nearly two thousand staff and inmates have gotten sick. Inmate Stanley Jamel Bellamy describes his experience of the crisis thus far.
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Since New York’s North Country began to reopen, one big question is what if people don’t follow the rules? And what exactly even are the rules? On the front lines of these questions are local police, but how to enforce public health is something officers are figuring out as they go.
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The results of the 2020 federal census will have a huge impact on the country over the next ten years - but in Wisconsin, mass incarceration of African-Americans is skewing the count. In a practice known as “prison gerrymandering”, inmates are counted in the district where they are imprisoned instead of the place they call home. This has the effect of shifting political power away from urban black communities and giving disproportionate representation to certain rural white populations.
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If someone in prison has a terminal illness and poses no risk to society, they should be allowed to die at home — that's the idea behind what's called "compassionate release." So far, 49 states have adopted the policy. Any day now, the first prisoner in the Massachusetts correctional system to apply for compassionate release is due a final answer.
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Wildlife interpreter David Brown says reading an animal track is like uncovering a secret; you just need the eyes to see it. We go to the woods with Brown to decode trails and find evidence of spring.
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Half a century ago, a team of inmates in a Massachusetts prison held an outstanding record on the academic debate circuit. By 1966 the Norfolk Prison Debating Society boasted 144 wins and only eight losses. They won and lost against Harvard, MIT, Princeton and the like. But when a more punitive approach to prisons swept across the U.S., the debate team dissolved. Until now.
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Many jails are turning to video chats as a way for inmates to connect with loved ones on the outside. For families, there are financial and emotional costs.
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Pam Colantuono and Minata Toure have never met, but they have a few things in common. They both live in Manchester, they’re both moms. The biggest thing they share — the thing that shapes both their lives and how they see the world — is the classic American immigration narrative.
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This Tuesday, millions of people across the country will head to the polls to cast their votes and help decide who should hold our nation’s highest offices. But there will also be millions of people who won't go to the polls. In fact, four out of 10 adults in the U.S. do not vote - and they have their reasons, too.
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Banking their hopes on an array of circumstantial evidence, prosecutors in the murder trial of an upstate boy rested their case on Tuesday after showing a video of the suspect’s car in proximity to the boy as he was heading home, minutes before the fatal attack.
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New Hampshire voters had the biggest field of candidates for governor to consider in 20 years--seven people wanted the job. But how much can a New Hampshire governor actually do, anyway?
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Republican State Senator Nancy Stiles sits in her favorite Portsmouth coffee shop, wearing a summer dress and a necklace of big yellow beads. After serving three terms in Concord representing District 24, she’s decided to step down: time to give someone else a turn. Within weeks of Stiles’ retirement, a quartet of eager Republicans stepped in the race to replace her.
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