Prison reform

Impactful footage obtained by the Tampa Bay Times showing perplexed Florida felons being arrested on voter fraud charges in August — on orders from Governor Ron DeSantis' elections crime unit — reignited the debate over the troubled implementation of Amendment 4. Civil rights groups including the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition are demanding a statewide voter verification system, calling out officials’ “outrageous negligence” on the matter.

Tuesday's pardons and commutations are part of a broader White House effort to make the criminal justice system more fair – a goal Biden made part of his 2020 presidential campaign.

An estimated 300,000 people were held in solitary confinement in the U.S. at the height of the pandemic. Advocates are pushing to limit the practice, citing lasting harm to prisoners' health.

Relatively few people in federal prison have been approved for compassionate release during the pandemic. Lawmakers are trying to make that option a reality for more sick and elderly people.

As part of civil lawsuit settlement, the New Jersey Department of Corrections has agreed to make it customary for prisoners to be assigned a prison stay in line with their gender identity.

The Senate and House lawmakers are reintroducing legislation to create "one stop" shops for formerly incarcerated individuals to reduce crime and keep people out of prison once they leave.

Prisoners like Kent Clark who broke the law before 1987 should have a chance at parole, unlike more recent inmates. But there are dozens of men in their 60s and older who have little hope of release.

Magistrate Judge Martin Fitzpatrick issued a 53-page order Monday that said testimony and evidence showed “actual overt retaliation by prison officials, as well as threats of retaliation.”

Four Democratic legislators called for the removal of some upper-level administrators and for mental-health evaluations of staff at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, which was the focus of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and Florida federal prosecutors.

In a bipartisan effort, Congress is close to a deal to simplify the federal financial aid form, or FAFSA, a major policy goal of retiring Republican senator Lamar Alexander.

Prisons often give disproportionately harsher punishments for minor offenses to women than to men, according to a new federal report that backs up the findings of an earlier NPR investigation.

Shocked by a Miami Herald report detailing allegations of systemic sexual abuse of female inmates by male staff at a federal facility, U.S. Sen. Marco…