It’s graduation season in the city, including on Rikers Island, where 57 students graduated from East River Academy Tuesday. Among their commencement speakers: Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “Many of you arrived on Rikers in a cloud of uncertainty and despair,” he said. “The future felt very grim, indeed. And yet you did not surrender to that alienation. You were not overcome by the adversity that lay before you. Instead, you chose to continue moving forward. You chose to pursue your

A federal prison doctor first found the mass on Terri McGuire Mollica's uterus in 2016. According to a lawsuit, the fibroid was small, and could be removed with a simple, noninvasive surgery. But officials at FCI Aliceville, a low-security prison for women in west Alabama, never scheduled the procedure, court and medical records show. Read the full article from NPR.

Two recent studies authored by Professor Carmen Gutierrez and her colleagues show that prior incarceration is associated with various geriatric health conditions and reduced life expectancy later in life. Read the article from. Click here to read the full article from the Prison Policy Institute.

Stephen Miller, left, and Will Scharf, right, in the Oval Office earlier this year. Last spring, Will Scharf, an arch-conservative lawyer serving as the White House staff secretary, wrote a secret memo to the chief of staff that reflected growing unease in the West Wing about one of the extreme measures being weighed by Stephen Miller, the powerful adviser driving President Trump’s deportation campaign. Dated April 29, 2025, and stamped “confidential,” the memo was careful an

Every year more than 7,600 women are released from Maine prisons and jails. Having a criminal record can make it more challenging to find a job and stable housing. Some women struggle to regain custody of their children. Others lack emotional support as they confront feelings of inadequacy and isolation.

A seated soldier writing (c. 1914-1918) by Ernest Blaikley Society Impact recently organized a poetry class inside Maine State Prison, giving a small group of residents the chance to spend time writing, reading, and talking about poetry together. The class came together through Society Impact’s ongoing conversations about the importance of education and meaningful programming inside correctional settings. Gordon, our resident colleague at Maine State Prison, helped coordinate

Credit: Pablo Andrés Carvajal / EyeEm / Getty Images Society tends to view incarceration through the lens of punishment and justice. What's less visible, and often much more complex, are the effects that prison has on mental health. Prison can create and worsen mental health problems, and people had pre-existing mental health problems before their incarceration. Read the full article on Verywell Mind.

Yesterday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders held a rally at the University of Maine's Collins Center for the Arts alongside Troy Jackson, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, and Graham Platner, who is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. The group will hold another rally today in Portland.

A 234-page lawsuit, filed Friday, recounts the experiences of former residents who were held at the youth detention center in the 1990s and allege they were physically and sexually abused by staff.

Telephones inside a Missouri state women’s prison where incarcerated people pay per-minute rates to call loved ones A growing number of incarcerated people across the country now have access to free phone calls and other communication services, a shift some advocates say is strengthening family connections, improving prison conditions and easing reentry after release. Read the full article in the Maine Morning Star.

Saratoga Springs is the wealthiest city in the Capital Region of New York State and, predictably, has a high cost of living. The problem is that the city’s higher-than-average income is not evenly spread across professions and economic classes.

Credit: MDOC Mississippi has repeatedly shown that criminal justice reform can reduce incarceration without undermining public safety — and yet the state keeps reversing course. Read the full article in Mississippi Today.

Pennsylvania requires unanimous approval from a five-member pardon board before people incarcerated on life sentences can ask the governor for clemency. Read the full article in The Appeal.

Maine State Prison, the state’s largest correctional facility, located in Warren. (Photo by Evan Popp/Maine Morning Star) Incarcerated Mainers can get college degrees, earn wages through remote work and vote. There’s universal access to medication for opioid use disorder in the state’s prisons, along with mental health services, collaborations with victim service organizations and reimagined living spaces to support rehabilitation. These opportunities for personal growth help

By Raven Jiang It is easy to forget that one of the most far-reaching federal criminal justice reform bills in history was signed by Donald Trump. The First Step Act of 2018 reduced mandatory minimum prison sentences, allowed for people to be incarcerated closer to their homes and encouraged compassionate release for elderly or terminally ill prisoners. In 2020, Mr. Trump’s campaign spent millions on a Super Bowl ad that spotlighted the law. Read the full article in The New Y

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday celebrated what she said has been the fastest year of residential unit production in her administration, with the state is on pace to complete and exceed a 100,000-unit housing plan ahead of schedule. Read the full article in the Times-Union.

Former Albany police Detective Kenneth Wilcox is seen in Albany in October 1995. Wilcox has been accused of fabricating confessions from suspects and coercing witnesses to give false statement in numerous homicide cases. He died in 2006 in an on-duty car crash. Five men who were serving potential life sentences have had their convictions overturned in the past decade as department's tactics in the 1990s face scrutiny Read the full article in The Times-Union.

A handful of states from California, Pennsylvania to Maine have tried to adopt a more rehabilitative Scandinavian prison model. But such models have failed to be replicated at large scale. Why?

Pope Leo XIV told inmates at one of Equatorial Guinea’s notorious prisons on Wednesday that they are not alone, as he delivered a message of hope during a visit that drew attention to prison conditions, human rights abuses and injustices that campaigners have denounced for years here.

In Penobscot County, rising jail costs contributed to a roughly $7 million deficit that resulted in a 15% property tax increase for residents last year.