Land of the Free: the Best Investigative Reporting on U.S. Prisons

The U.S. has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world. We’ve rounded up some of the best investigative journalism on U.S. prisons and the problems that plague them. These stories cover juvenile justice, private prisons, immigration detention and other aspects of America’s vast incarceration system.

Louisiana Incarcerated: How we built the world’s prison capital, The Times-Picayune, May 2012

Louisiana’s incarceration rate tops the U.S.’s, Iran’s and China’s. This eight-part series explains how it got there: lobbying from private prison companies, cash-strapped municipalities, harsh sentencing, and limited rehabilitation for those who make it out.

Thousands of inmates are stuck in jail for petty, nonviolent crimes simply because they can’t make bail. This NPR series showed how the country’s bail system “exists almost solely to protect the interests of a powerful bail bonding industry.”

Some guards at New York City’s prison island, Rikers, weren’t just turning a blind eye to violence--they were encouraging it. The Voice has been covering the fallout from Rikers’ “ Fight Club” ever since, and five years later, they obtained gruesome photos showing rampant violence persists, despite the Correction Department’s efforts.

Atul Gawande looked at the U.S.'s widespread use of isolation, which has ballooned in the past 20 years. At least 25,000 prisoners are now held in isolation just in so-called super-max prisons. And their minds can quickly degrade. "The experience," Gawande writes, "typically leaves them unfit for social interaction."

An investigation the effects of solitary confinement on mentally ill prisoners in Pennsylvania. Also see this account from the Arizona Republic: nineteen prisoners in Arizona have killed themselves in the last two years, many of them while in solitary confinement—a widespread practice in the state.

Earlier this year the Justice Department laid out new rules aimed at eliminating widespread sexual abusein U.S. prisons. This article chronicles the ordeal of one inmate who tried to report rape in a Colorado prison.

America locks up children at a quicker rate than all other developed countries, with about 60,000 juveniles imprisoned on any given day. Photographer Richard Ross spent five years photographing the little-seen conditions inside 350 correction centers across the U.S.

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision this week to strike down mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, it’s worth revisiting these exposes of juvenile justice in Colorado and Massachusetts, two states that often sentence teens as adults.

Privately run immigration detention facilities have proliferated along the U.S.-Mexico border. But the small towns where they’re located have rarely benefited. (Such tales aren’t limited to the border, as this report from Georgia tells).

The country’s two largest private prison companies have spent tens of millions on lobbying in the past decade and doubled their campaign contributions, as the government launched tougher immigration rules. Since 2005, they’ve also more than doubled their revenues from immigration detention.

Clarification (6/29): We’ve clarified this story to note that the U.S. has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world. There are a few countries—notably North Korea—for which reliable prison statistics aren’t available.