After decades of indiscriminately locking people up and throwing away the key, states are discovering yet another consequence of over-incarceration: rapidly aging prison populations.
Four more states passed laws banning the practice this legislative year, but the vast majority of state prisons still maintain the absurd idea that a woman in childbirth is a security risk.
Thousands of young, black men and women in the South are declaring “I am Troy Davis” as if their lives depend on it. And they do. The fight against systemic racism in the justice system may have finally exploded out of the courts and into the community.
Angola is the largest maximum-security prison in the country. At least 90 percent of its inmates will die there. And Evangelical Warden Burl Cain has made sure their lives look as much like “slavery times” as possible.