This archive tracks meaningful progress in prison justice — from sentencing reforms and decarceration efforts to programs that support incarcerated people and returning citizens. Across 86 articles, these stories document what’s working, who’s driving change, and how communities are pushing the system toward greater fairness and humanity.
More than 6,000 people with prior federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana — and thousands of others convicted under Washington, D.C., law — could benefit.
HB 244 bans courts from charging interest or imposing fees for late payments, failing to pay, or paying in installments, among several other changes meant to reduce abusive fines and fees.
Law enforcement agencies made an estimated 424,300 arrests of youth in 2020, a 38% drop from the previous year and half the number from five years earlier.
Capital punishment was “totally abolished” in the oil-rich central African country after the president signed a new penal code.
City lawmakers have unanimously approved a measure calling for the decriminalization of psychedelics like psilocybin and ayahuasca.
Malaysia will now allow judges discretion in sentencing and offering a range of substitute sentences for crimes that carry a mandatory death sentence.
President Tokayev signed a law on ratification of the second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with the purpose of abolishing the death penalty.
The court found that GEO Group, a private prison operator that runs the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, WA, is violating the state’s minimum wage laws by paying its workers $1 per day.
Under the legislation, people aged 18 and over will be able to legally grow up to four cannabis plants per household for personal use.
The City Council voted unanimously to decriminalize the non-commercial possession and cultivation of many psychedelics for “religious, spiritual, healing, or personal growth practices.”
