A staffing crisis has created dangerous conditions in prisons. To create safety, reduce the number of people entering prison, and release people who can safely return home.

By prioritizing punishment as a public safety strategy, the United States has created dangerous prisons that harm the people who live and work in them. Eighty-five percent of corrections officers report having seen someone seriously injured or killed in the workplace, and conditions are worsening as prisons struggle to keep enough staff to operate ...

Seventy-one people have died in LA County jails since the start of 2023.

How are people dying? Los Angeles County has not yet publicly issued causes of death for everyone who has died in county jails in recent months. However, even once autopsy reports are finalized, they don’t tell the whole story: when the coroner rules that a death is the result of “natural causes,” jail conditions can still be to blame. Researchers ...

Confining people to cells 23 hours a day is cruel and counterproductive, especially when we know what really makes prisons safer.

The sounds of a prison under lockdown still haunt Jerome Wright. Confined to their cells for nearly 24 hours a day, he and the people incarcerated with him might not have been able to see each other’s suffering, but they could hear it. “It is just a cacophonous sound, all day and half the night,” said Wright, who spent 30 years in prison. “There i ...