Search About Newsletters Donate
Life Inside January 30, 2020
Game of Phones
In a prison where 200 men share eight phones, making back-to-back calls is like challenging the guy behind you to a duel.
By Olethus Hill Jr.
Life Inside August 16, 2018
What It’s Like to be a Cutter in Prison
"This isn’t a place that provides treatment, help, or even empathy to those who suffer from stress, depression, and mental illness."
By Deidre Mcdonald
Life Inside August 22, 2019
Mourning a Stranger’s Suicide in Prison
“Together we prayed and talked about who this girl might have been—and who she might have become.”
By Jennifer Toon
Life Inside July 1, 2021
“Daddy, if I Come See You, Will I Have to Be Locked up, Too?”
Recently reunited with his 10-year-old daughter, Demetrius Buckley struggles to push past the barriers of a maximum security prison to be present for his curious, whip-smart little girl.
By
Life Inside June 28, 2018
This Prison Won’t Let Me Read “Game of Thrones”
Navigating the sometimes weird, arcane rules about inmate contraband.
By Kimberly Hricko
Life Inside January 11, 2018
The Curious Case of the Prisoners in the Wrong Cellblock
A mystery unfolds during an urgent phone call.
By Sterling R. Cunio
Life Inside February 4, 2021
I’ve Been Strip-Frisked Over 1,000 Times in Prison. I Consider It Sexual Assault
Strip-searching us for contraband is a perfectly legal way to rob incarcerated people of our humanity.
By Corey Devon Arthur
The Lowdown March 31, 2015
Public Shamings
Why judges sometimes opt for sandwich boards, chicken suits, and other embarrassing punishments.
By
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton makes a point during an address before the Ninth Annual Women in Policing Conference in New York, Aug. 11, 1994. She was cheered by policewomen after telling them, “I applaud all of you for the choices you have made.” From left are New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Chief John Timoney. (AP Photo/Ed Bailey)
News May 7, 2015
A (More or Less) Definitive Guide to Hillary Clinton’s Record on Law and Order
She was for reform before she was against it before she was for it.
By
Kristina Byers was one of two women who helped author a bill that will allow Indiana’s judges to delay or dismiss terminations of incarcerated parents’ rights.
News April 25, 2019
Indiana Safeguards Rights of Parents in Prison
The Marshall Project reported that some incarcerated parents were losing their children forever. Now one state is acting to prevent the severing of family ties.
By
Life Inside October 21, 2021
I Was Sentenced to Life as a Juvenile. Now I Help Kids Build Brighter Futures.
Imprisoned for 25 years, Fred Weatherspoon was shocked to return to a Chicago he didn’t recognize. He found belonging in an unexpected way — working with vulnerable young people and their families.
By Fred Weatherspoon as told by
Life Inside November 15, 2014
Dying in Attica
An aging bank robber faces the end.
By
Commentary March 28, 2016
A Judge Overturned a Death Sentence Because the Prosecutor Compared a Black Defendant to King Kong
The South Carolina prosecutor is known as ‘Death Penalty Donnie.’
By
Life Inside September 28, 2017
The Hardest Phone Call a Prosecutor Has to Make
Law school doesn’t prepare you for delivering bad news to victims and their families.
By Jean Peters Baker
Life Inside January 4, 2018
The Doctors Say I’m O.K, But Then There’s This Pain…
A fretful prisoner struggles with an ever-growing list of symptoms.
By
Life Inside September 14, 2017
I Can’t Visit My Sons in Prison Because I Have Unpaid Traffic Tickets
A mother with debts — and cancer — wonders if she’ll ever see her incarcerated children again.
By Joyce Davis, as told to
Maria García finished high school in Tempe, Arizona, this May.
News June 19, 2020
Immigrant Teens Left Out When Trump Ended DACA Are In Limbo After Supreme Court Ruling.
The justices ruled the president illegally suspended the Dreamers program. But it’s unclear if Trump will let more eligible applicants in.
By
Stephanie Parris was one of 250 people released early from Virginia prisons because of COVID-19 concerns. These early releases accounted for less than half of the state’s prison population decline in recent months.
Coronavirus July 16, 2020
Prison Populations Drop by 100,000 During Pandemic
But not because of COVID-19 releases.
By , , Denise Lavoie AND Claudia Lauer
Cary Johnson is a corrections officer at the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson, Mich.
Life Inside April 1, 2020
As a Mom Working In a Prison, I Worry About Bringing Coronavirus Home
“I tell my husband to keep my son in another room, while I put my uniform in a trash bag and take a long shower.”
By Cary Johnson as told to
Feature February 10, 2022
The Rise and Fall of a Prison Town Queen
A family feud over drugs, money and fried fish roils the heart of the Texas prison system.
By
Life Inside June 30, 2023
I Survived Pregnancy and Postpartum Depression in Jail. Now I Guide Others Like Me.
As a doula in Georgia prisons and jails, Tabatha Trammell supports incarcerated clients through pregnancy, childbirth — and giving up their newborns.
By Tabatha Trammell, as told to
Feature September 8, 2015
‘I Reviewed Jail on Yelp Because I Couldn’t Afford a Therapist.’
Why people are using sites like Yelp to vent and offer tips about prison and jail.
By
Tom Mauser, father of slain Columbine High School student Daniel Mauser, spoke at an anti-gun protest outside the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on April 30, 1999.
Q&A September 2, 2015
A Columbine Parent Reflects on the Prospects for Gun Control
After Virginia shootings, Tom Mauser reaffirms advocacy “for the long run.”
By
The police patrol a residential neighborhood in east Baltimore minutes after a curfew law took effect in Baltimore in August 2014.
Justice Lab July 31, 2018
The Curfew Myth
How a ‘90s panic spawned an anti-crime measure that doesn’t make you safer.
By
Life Inside August 2, 2018
What Happened When a Hurricane Flooded My Prison
A deluge, terror and a miracle.
By Deidre Mcdonald
News October 3, 2016
When the Cops Take Your Urine by Force
Police want a sample. They can do it the easy way, or they can do it the hard way.
By
Feature January 15, 2016
Where the Democratic Presidential Candidates Stand on Criminal Justice
A look at Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley in their fourth debate.
By The Marshall Project
A Black woman with short, gray hair and a blue, patterned top poses for a portrait in front of her white car in a garage.
Cleveland December 21, 2023
Lost Your License in Ohio Due to Debt? A New State Bill Might Fix That
A Marshall Project - Cleveland and News 5 report helped spark a bipartisan bill to end spiraling financial strain on hundreds of thousands of drivers.
By , The Marshall Project and Tara Morgan, News 5 Cleveland
From left, Sheriff Willis McCall, jailer Reuben Hatcher, Walter Irvin, Charles Greenlee and Samuel Shepherd, at the Lake County Jail in 1949.
Feature May 15, 2017
Sixty-eight Years Later, Apologies in Lake County
For the lives ruined, for justice denied, sorry.
By Gilbert King
A police dog mauled Ashley White in Talladega, Alabama, in 2015. She needed reconstructive surgery to recover.
Feature October 29, 2020
Police Wanted “A Dog That Would Bite A Black Person”
The terrifying reign of a small town’s police dog.
By Challen Stephens
Clockwise from top left: Mary Ann Johnson; Calvin Fletcher; Angel Mays; Erica Jones; Monthane Miller-Jones; Carlos Amos; Ronda Williams.
Feature June 7
St. Louis Homicide Cases Often Go Unsolved. Victims’ Families Want Justice.
These St. Louis families have waited years for answers. They say police seem to have forgotten their loved ones.
By Shahla Farzan, Rachel Lippmann and Brian Munoz, St. Louis Public Radio; and Tom Scheck, APM Reports
Life Inside April 22, 2015
Blood, Sex and Contraband
One inmate’s unexpurgated version of life in a Mississippi prison
By
Life Inside August 24, 2017
“Prison is a Real-Life Example of the World White Supremacists Want”
Charlottesville: Views from the cellblock.
By The Marshall Project
Life Inside May 19, 2015
A Lifer’s Retirement Plan
Most of us get out old and broke. Not me.
By
Q&A March 11, 2015
Tending to Tsarnaev
A trauma surgeon on the moment the accused Boston Marathon bomber became his patient.
By
Feature June 28, 2016
Meet the Full-Service Social Media Secretary for Prisoners
How Renea Royster gives prisoners access to the digital world.
By
Former US Attorney General Eric Holder arrives on stage during the second day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center, July 26, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. / AFP / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
Analysis July 29, 2016
Fact-checking the Democrats
A closer look at crime rates and how people really feel about police.
By The Marshall Project
Feature December 3, 2018
How Incarcerated Parents Are Losing Their Children Forever
Being stripped of parental rights while in prison, even for minor crimes, is “the family separation crisis that no one knows about,” one advocate said.
By and
Feature November 20, 2020
Superpredator: The Media Myth That Demonized a Generation of Black Youth
25 years ago this month, “superpredator” was coined in The Weekly Standard. Media spread the term like wildfire, creating repercussions on policy and culture we are still reckoning with today.
By and Lynnell Hancock
An illustration shows a man shouting behind the window of a prison cell, while smoke and fire billows out of it. The window forms the eyepiece of a set of blinders being worn by a prison guard. Static is shown coming out of a walkie talkie worn by the prison guard.
Feature May 9, 2022
Burned to Death in a Prison Cell
After years of warnings about broken fire alarms, two men have now died in blazes at Texas prisons.
By
Feature June 7, 2022
A Tupperware of Heroin, Or How I Ended Up in Prison
In an excerpt from her new memoir, ‘Corrections in Ink,’ Keri Blakinger puts us at the scene of her drug arrest — and her path to becoming The Marshall Project’s first formerly incarcerated staff writer.
By
Inside Out July 1, 2021
Prisons Have a Health Care Issue — And It Starts at the Top, Critics Say
When coronavirus hit federal prisons, the top officials had no health care experience.
By
Life Inside September 9, 2021
I’m a Pakistani-American Muslim in a Prison 5 Miles From the Twin Towers. Since 9/11, I’ve Been Treated Like the Enemy
It doesn’t matter how American I feel. The labels applied to me are “foreign,” “terrorist,” “inmate” and “other.”
by Tariq Maqbool
Feature April 19, 2018
Framed for Murder By His Own DNA
We leave traces of our genetic material everywhere, even on things we’ve never touched. That got Lukis Anderson charged with a brutal crime he didn’t commit.
By Katie Worth
From left: San Francisco Police Sgt. Lloyd Martin, Officer Marcus Wells, Officer Michael Scott, and Sgt. Joshua Kumli.
Q&A May 25, 2016
Four San Francisco Cops Talk About the Problems Plaguing Their Department
Five shootings, a text scandal, a hunger strike, and now a new boss.
By John Morrison
An illustration shows a Black man wearing a red jail jumpsuit and handcuffs standing next to a Black woman lawyer in a black skirt suit. Other defendants in jumpsuits sit around them, beside translucent outlines of lawyers.
Jackson February 22
This Mississippi Court Appoints Lawyers for Just 1 in 5 Defendants Before Indictment
Mississippi is known as one of the worst states for public defense. In one lower court, most defendants went without any lawyer before indictment.
By
Donovan X. Ramsey, a Black man with short hair, wears a white shirt, vest and green pants, and stands in front of a newsstand.
Q&A November 6, 2023
The Untold Story of How Crack Shaped the Justice System
In a new book, a journalist wrestles with how lessons from America’s response to crack resonate in the opioid era.
By
A collage made up of figures of, from left: Texas pastor Mark Collins dressed as George Washington; Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Lamb; activist Randy Weaver; former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack; and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association logo, which is an eagle. Sheriff's badges are scattered above the collage.
Feature October 18, 2022
Does Your Sheriff Think He’s More Powerful Than the President?
Richard Mack has built a “Constitutional sheriff” movement to resist state and federal authority on guns, COVID-19 and now election results. A new survey shows just how many sheriffs agree with him.
By
Analysis December 22, 2022
Some of Our Best Work of 2022
From coverage of prison violence and abuses in a juvenile lockup to investigations by our new Cleveland team, our reporters told stories that made a difference.
By
Feature December 2, 2021
She Was Having a Seizure. Police Shocked Her With a Taser.
How an Alabama teen sought justice after a violent police encounter upended her life.
By and
Chris Turner was paroled in 2010 after serving more than 25 years in prison.
Feature March 22, 2017
“Harmless Errors”
Eight young men and the murder story that sent them away for life
By Thomas Dybdahl
Al Capone and his bodyguard were arrested in Philadelphia in May 1929 for carrying concealed deadly weapons.
Looking Back May 28, 2018
Defending Al Capone
How the most notorious gangster of all got railroaded in Philadelphia.
By Marc Bookman
As part of the settlement of Nuñez v. City of New York, a 2011 class-action lawsuit filed by Rikers Island detainees, federal monitors periodically report on use of force across the jail complex. This image from the Eleventh Report shows at least 12 officers in a recreational area responding to two detainees who refused to be handcuffed.
Life Inside October 5, 2021
Dispatch From Deadly Rikers Island: “It Looks Like a Slave Ship in There.”
Rikers Island has been notorious for violence and neglect for decades. But detainees, corrections officers and officials tell us the New York City jail complex has plunged into a new state of emergency.
By
Feature January 4, 2016
This Boy’s Life
At 16, Taurus Buchanan threw one deadly punch—and was sent away for life. Will the Supreme Court give him, and hundreds like him, a chance at freedom?
By and
Feature November 6, 2017
Can Prosecutors Put the Same Gun in the Hands of More Than One Shooter?
They can, and they do.
By
Feature June 24, 2015
The Surprisingly Imperfect Science of DNA Testing
How a proven tool may be anything but.
By Katie Worth
Violation March 22, 2023
A Summer Camp Murder. Two Sons, Lost.
The premiere of “Violation,” a podcast from The Marshall Project and WBUR, examines the decades-long ripple effects of an inexplicable crime.
By
Looking Back December 20, 2016
Homer and Harold
An extraordinary story of justice done, and what came after.
By
Attendees at the Indy 1500 Gun & Knife show in Indianapolis in January.
Southside November 1, 2018
The Gun King
A middle-class college student from the Chicago suburbs used Facebook to sell firearms to gangsters. But was he a kingpin or a scapegoat?
By John H. Richardson
An illustration shows a yellow silhouette walking on top of a circle outline against a grunge burgundy and yellow background. Three yellow outlined silhouettes walk in different directions around the circle outline.
Violation May 3, 2023
‘No Safe Place’: On Memory, Trauma and Truth
Part Seven of the “Violation” podcast reveals new information about Jake Wideman’s past and explains what happens next in his legal case.
By
Just Say You’re Sorry June 5, 2023
When a Conviction is Challenged, What Do We Owe the Victim’s Family?
In the final episode of “Just Say You’re Sorry,” we consider what cases like Larry Driskill’s mean for families like Bobbie Sue Hill’s.
By
An illustration shows circles with portraits of seven judges and the text: “Judicial Election Guide.”
Jackson November 7
Meet the People Running for Mississippi’s Supreme Court and Other Courts
We profiled candidates for two state Supreme Court seats and other courts, and asked each to tell you in their own words why they should be elected.
By
About
People
Jobs
Sitemap
Funders