Emptier Jails Could Stay That Way

Covid-19 is showing us what ending mass incarceration could look like. Some judges and prosecutors like what they see. A couple of months ago, the county jail in Cleveland started doing something that, prior to the pandemic, would have been unimaginable: It began releasing hundreds of inmates. The problems at the jail were impossible to […]
Lawsuit Claims Mississippi Prisons Endangering Inmates’ Lives Amid Pandemic

A lawsuit accuses MDOC and Mississippi’s two largest prisons of “taking inadequate steps to prevent the infection and mitigate an outbreak of COVID-19.”
Neither Mississippi Nor I Should Retain Our Confederate Symbols

The Confederate Flag drapes around the plastic of my orthodontic retainer. Before securing the retainer to the roof of my mouth, I sometimes ask: how does the same mouth that affirms the dignity and equality of black Americans also harbor a symbol that, to most black Americans, stands for white supremacy and racial violence? The […]
‘I Saw All the Carnage’: Witnesses, Family Recall Gibbs-Green Deaths, Legacy in Virtual Town Hall

The night of May 14, 1970, was just like any other night on the yard, author Vernon Weakley says. He and other members of Omega Psi Phi fraternity and Delta Sigma Theta sorority were hanging out in front of Alexander Hall, a girls’ dorm, when a white guy came through campus in a truck hurling […]