Chicago is focusing on the release of Nicole Harris, who 'confessed' to killing her son after being held 27 hours by police. Today she is free, "after serving seven years of a thirty year sentence. Her conviction in the death of her son, Jaquari, was overturned by a federal appeals court last October and earlier this month the 7th Court of Appeals ordered Harris’s release."

Andre Thomas is making the news in Texas Tribune. He's on death row, except he's blind after gouging out both eyes and hears God telling him things--like to murder his wife and children, and pluck out his eyes. Texas Ct of Criminal Appeals said "Thomas is “clearly ‘crazy’ but he is also ‘sane’ under Texas law,” because a jury had concluded he knew right from wrong at the time of his crime. Yup.

Bruce Western, Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, is highlighted both on the cover and the inside story on "The Prison Problem."  "We may have skimped on welfare, but we paid anyway, splurging on police and prisons.  Dollars diverted from education and employment found their way to prison construction."   Perhaps this unusual coverage will help Harvard graduates better understand causes, conditions, and solutions to mass incarceration. March/April 2013, The Harvard Magazine, p. 38-43

California voters accepted Prop. 36, which begins unwinding the massive over-incarceration under the draconian 3-Strikes Law.  "Throughout the entire state, around 2,800 people are eligible for sentence reductions, nearly half of which originate in Los Angeles County. Judge Ryan began receiving request even before voters passed the proposition.

When you read that inmates have gone on a hunger strike, you have to know conditions are really, really intolerable. They know they’ll be punished with […]

Writing on Corrections.com blog, Carl ToersBijns (retired prison system manager, etc.) investigates how the state and private industry can work together to create better prisons. It […]

A formerly incarcerated woman describes the suicide path of a 16-yr-old girl who bounced into and out of a New York prison. “Get out of prison, […]

A terrific writer at Texas Tribune, Maurice Chammah, describes an innovative in-prison program designed to help develop inmates into entrepreneurs. First they are taught and encouraged: […]

So California is closing prisons and shifting inmates–into already crowded prisons. Victoria Law, of Truthout, is doing the new math: “In December 2011, on the heels […]