Crime Story Daily

PM Stories Inmates talk of COVID fear and helplessness after transfers bring ‘the beast’ to San Quentin Kim Christensen and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times Whistleblowers Say an ICE Detention Center Used Deceptive Tricks to Conceal COVID Outbreak Noah Lanard, Mother Jones Oregon’s Prisons Struggle With COVID-19 And Its Impact On People Behind Bars Geoff Norcross, Oregon Public Broadcasting Court documents detail how inmates resort to threats of setting fires to get medical help Alissa Zhu, Mississippi Clarion Ledger Coronavirus Cases Surge At Missouri Women’s Prison; Advocates Call For Action Shahla Farzan, St. Louis Public Radio After Pleading for Home Release During Coronavirus Pandemic, NSA...

PM Stories ‘The Objective Is to Save Lives’: Inside the Effort to Get ICE Detainees Released During the Coronavirus Pandemic Jasmine Aguilera, Time How the coronavirus spread through one immigration facility (California) Elliot Spagat, AP News At San Quentin, Overcrowding Laid the Groundwork for an Explosive COVID-19 Outbreak Juan Moreno Haines and Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, The Appeal San Quentin coronavirus outbreak apparently result of missed steps by prison overseer Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle 1,000 federal inmates at Texas prison test positive for COVID-19 Alicia Victoria Lozano, NBC News ‘Sleeping in a ball of sweat’: As COVID-19 stalks Florida’s inmates, so does another plague Shirsho Dasgupta...

PM Stories Prisons Are Overwhelmed With COVID-19. Why Aren’t Governors Doing More? Chesa Boudin and Miriam Aroni Krinsky, The Appeal COVID-19 races through Miami’s federal prison Carli Teproff and Devoun Cetoute, Miami Herald Coronavirus Cases Are Increasing at Texas Jail Where Efforts to Release People Amid Pandemic Fell Apart Akela Lacy, The Intercept Why is the Cook County Jail population rising? Connor Echols and Jonah Newman, Injustice Watch California is facing a wildfire fighter shortage because prisoners are getting sick with COVID Nicole Goodkind, Forbes The Coronavirus Brought Federal Prison Transfers to a Halt. Now People Are Stuck in Limbo. Liliana Segura, The Intercept As state...

This is a curated selection of highlights from Crime Story Daily this week. On the criminal justice policy front: In a piece for the New Yorker, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin surveys the “halted progress” of criminal justice reform. In recent years, Toobin writes, the cause of criminal justice reform has been a “welcome exception” to the extreme polarization afflicting so much of American politics. Prison populations have dropped in most parts of the country, in red states as well as blue; and in 2018, Trump signed into law the bipartisan First Step Act, which made modest improvements in federal sentencing...

PM Stories The deeply dangerous rush to resume federal executions David Cole, CNN The Capricious Execution of Daniel Lewis Lee Zak Cheney-Rice, New York Magazine US set to execute Dustin Honken; 3rd federal death this week Danielle Haynes, UPI From meth to murder: How a small-town Iowa boy became the state’s first death row inmate in 50 years Courtney Crowder and Tyler J. Davis, Des Moines Register A Dispatch From Federal Death Row Billie J. Allen, The Marshall Project What’s the Opposite of Punishment? Andrea Cipriano, The Crime Report All migrant children must be released from US detention by Friday because of coronavirus. Some parents fear...

PM Stories Second federal execution this week is carried out after last-minute Supreme Court ruling Los Angeles Times  The Supreme Court’s Unconscionable Rush to Kill a Prisoner Matt Ford, New Republic Every prison cell is now a coronavirus death row Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times Prison Populations Drop, But Not Because of COVID-19 Releases Damini Sharma, Weihua Li, Denise Lavoie, and Claudia Lauer, The Marshall Project 11th San Quentin inmate’s death tied to COVID-19 KTVU Texas Prisons Have More COVID-19 Cases And Deaths Than Any Other State Jamal Andress, Newsy As coronavirus spreads through Seagoville prison, inmates and family fear ‘a waiting game’ to get sick...