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Pennsylvania's state lawmakers have so far failed to reach a consensus on a new sentencing scheme. With the ruling in effect, judges will use discretion when sentencing people in pending & future second-degree murder cases. But will the law apply retroactively?

With the path forward still unclear, we spoke with a formerly incarcerated person, a victim's daughter, and a lawyer as well as Philly DA Larry Krasner about the impact of the felony murder law on their lives and what the change might mean.

Long-standing issues with vetting and training in law enforcement agencies nationwide explain how red-flag recruits wind up with a badge and gun.

The Joliet Treatment Center opened in 2017 with the promise of being a new kind of prison in Illinois, designed to provide intensive mental health treatment. But over the years, incarcerated men and civil rights lawyers who visited the facility said the conditions declined. Men were kept locked in their cells for long stretches, with nothing to do. They complained about a lack of medical care and mental health treatment, which the prison system is legally obligated to provide. Men reported that guards used excessive force.

As the men grew more despondent, some became willing to do anything to draw attention to their troubles and resorted to setting their cells — or themselves — on fire.

Amid the decades of horror stories, music has always trickled out.

The mothers of Black newborns are more likely than those of White newborns to be referred to law enforcement over allegations of substance use during pregnancy, according to The Marshall Project’s new analysis of child welfare data from eight states.

The referrals are often the result of unreliable hospital drug tests performed at childbirth that are easily misinterpreted and produce false positive results as much as half of the time, which can prompt incorrect reporting to child welfare and law enforcement authorities.

For people who have a complaint about federal prison conditions, obtaining relief is nearly impossible, a new investigation by The Marshall Project and NPR found.

With the help of the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative, a network of incarcerated legal experts, we surveyed incarcerated people, attorneys and advocates about how they would fix the remedy process. They also shared tips on how to navigate the system as it currently exists.

Every prison and jail has a handbook full of official rules: how to buy food at commissary, how to send and receive mail, what counts as a violation. But the rules that matter most — the “unofficial” ones that govern how well you fit in and how quickly you can get settled — aren’t written anywhere. Most people learn them the hard way.

Missteps in prison can carry real consequences. Here’s what incarcerated people wish they had known when they first arrived.

A freshman’s dorm mattress at Mississippi State University. A Georgia Medicaid patient’s eyeglasses. The goalpost padding at Bauxite High School in Arkansas. The burn ban flag at the Boerne Fire Department in Texas Hill Country.

This project by photographer Daniella Zalcman shows the casual prevalence of goods made by prison labor in public and private spaces nationwide.