Like many Americans, Santia Nance plans to celebrate Christmas with her loved ones. Doing so will be more challenging for Nance: Her fiancé is incarcerated in a Virginia prison and she said it’s been more difficult to visit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nance, a co-founder of Sistas in Prison Reform, which advocates for
Lawmakers in a handful of states have begun taking aim at transgender people in prison with extreme measures that seek to infringe on the rights of an especially vulnerable segment of the population. Over the past two years, elected officials have proposed a variety of mechanisms designed to suppress transgender existence behind bars. The bills
Terry Grassaree was dogged for years by questions about how he did his job as a law enforcement officer in Macon, Miss., a tiny, rural town near the state’s eastern border. There were allegations of rape inside the jail that Mr. Grassaree supervised, and lawsuits claiming that he covered up the episodes. At least five
CHAPTER 1 The Predator and the Prey In June of 2019, Danielle Sivels was living in Texas when she was arrested on an out-of-state warrant for probation violations stemming from a 2015 hit-and-run. Danielle, 34 at the time, battled mental illness, addiction, and grew up in and out of the foster care system surviving family
I read with interest Bill Keller’s piece on the Americanisation of UK prisons. However, I was surprised there was no mention of sexual violence in prison, often seen as synonymous with the US prison estate. Years ago, I was told by a researcher on prisons here in the UK that we have a collective state of