Victories for prisoners seeking relief from abusive prison conditions are all too rare. US courts are often as loathe to condemn the mistreatment of inmates and wretched prisons as the public is willing to condone -- if not encourage -- them.

Sometimes, however, inmates prevail. Two recent...

The U.S. "war on drugs" has been a bust. And despite the federal government's efforts to claim otherwise, Americans know it: a new national Angus Reid poll shows that 65% of Americans -- with the low marks even across party lines -- think the decades long effort has been a...

Cyryna Pasion, a transgender girl, landed in a detention center in Hawaii as a young teenager after family tensions over her sexual identity caused her to run away from home. She was first held with girls, then transferred to the boys' unit. There her life was a nightmare. "I was...

For many Americans, the election of President Obama was the final nail in Jim Crow's coffin.

But it only takes fifteen minutes in any courthouse, watching the parade of black defendants arrested on drug charges, to realize racism still haunts us. Ostensibly color-blind, the enforcement of the US drug laws...

NEW YORK -- Two new federal reports highlight the profound disconnect in the United States between crime and punishment.

According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the US prison and jail population has now grown to all-time high of 2.3 million. The United States not only incarcerates the greatest...

Even people who support capital punishment are uncomfortable thinking too much about the actual mechanics of putting someone to death. Lethal injection seemed to be the perfect solution. Compared to electrocution, gas or hanging, execution by lethal injection looks as humane as putting a horse to sleep, as Ronald Reagan...

NEW YORK -- Twelve years ago a federal judge called the practice of putting mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement the equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a room with no air. Since then, lawsuits against corrections departments in at least 10 states have obtained court orders or settlements...