In 1994, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer finally got what was coming to him when fellow inmate Christopher Scarver beat him to death in a prison bathroom. And which of Dahmer’s many crimes finally pushed Scarver over the edge? Being too damn good at pranks.
This new Vice report on mental illness in Chicago's jails is enough to make you wonder whether mass incarceration is a less than perfect solution to America's social problems.
Two prison guards from Al Burruss Correctional Training Center in Forsyth, Ga. resigned from their positions Monday after a photo of a beaten teenage inmate kneeling on the floor with a makeshift leash tied around his neck spread across Facebook last week.
We periodically run letters from death row inmates. Today's is from Oklahoma inmate Richard Glossip, who came within one day of being executed last month before being (temporarily) spared by the Supreme Court.
As many as 2,800 prisoners being held at a federal detention facility in Raymondville, Texas will need to be moved to a new facility after demonstrations that began there on Friday, Reuters reports. Officials said that the prison had been rendered "uninhabitable."
Over the last three years, South Carolina prison officials have brought more than 400 disciplinary cases against inmates for "social networking," the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports. Penalties in such cases are exorbitant, including time in solitary confinement as well as deprivation of visitation and telephone…
It has become increasingly clear to mainstream America that our nation's decades-long experiment with mass incarceration is fundamentally a bad idea. And though state prisons loom large in the public mind, it's actually local jails where most of the (bad) action happens.
Twenty-eight inmates escaped from the Nova Mutum jail near Cuiaba, Brazil after several women drugged and handcuffed three wardens, having seduced them with promises of an orgy, the Mirror reports.
Yesterday brought a new report on the awful solitary confinement practices of the state of Texas. Today, let us share another recent report on solitary confinement in the state of Arizona, and its "decaying and detrimental effect on human beings."
Texas has one of the harshest and most punitive criminal justice systems in America. A new report shows just how inhuman the state of Texas is when it comes to doling out the punishment of solitary confinement.
As more effort has gone into seeking out innocent people in prison over the last several years, the number of exonerations has been on the rise. Last year broke all the records.
We periodically run letters from death row inmates. Today we bring you a letter from Donnie Edward Johnson, a death row inmate in Tennessee, who was sentenced to die for the 1984 murder of his wife, Connie Johnson.
Patrick Lynch, chairman of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and head spokesbaby for the inconsolable id of the NYPD, gave a private speech to his union last week. Bill de Blasio "is not running the city of New York," he said in response to a series of perceived slights from City Hall. "He thinks he's running a…
Terrence Pendergrass, a former Rikers Island captain who allegedly refused to help a dying mentally ill inmate who had eaten a toxic ball of cleaning powder, was found guilty of a federal civil rights charge today. As the New York Times notes, Pendergrass is the first Rikers official to be charged for a civil rights…
After spending more than a decade in the notorious detention camp, six Guantanamo Bay prisoners have been transferred to Uruguay for resettlement, the Pentagon announced in a statement today.
Here you will find a link that allows you to write a holiday message to a survivor of prison rape. It's free. (A rep from the charity tells us that in past years, Gawker readers "have been nothing short of amazing." You people are great sometimes.)
Sometimes innocent people are wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. Sometimes they're released from prison after many years. How much money do they deserve?
The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg, who covers Guantanamo Bay more closely than anyone, got this photo of a "how-to weigh a detainee hunger striker guide" before it was removed from the prison wall.
In addition to a place where prison guards beat inmates to death with impunity, Rikers Island is also a place where inmates die from medical mistreatment and their families are lied to about it, DNAinfo reports.
It's not as bad as dying shortly after your exoneration, but being shot 15 minutes after being released from serving 15 years in prison is still pretty bad.
