Evidence from countries that execute people for drug offenses shows no relationship between harsh punishment and rates of drug use.
Ezra Acayan/Reuters
Just seven countries worldwide regularly execute people for drug crimes, most of them authoritarian regimes. Nothing suggests that this brutal policy actually curbs drug use.
Customers lining up to legally buy recreational marijuana in West Hollywood, Calif.
AP Photo/Richard Vogel
A study of 100,000 convicted felons shows why rethinking parole may be the key to reversing mass incarceration.
Brazil’s jailhouse preachers may not explicitly condone violence against people of other faiths, but they’ve remained largely silent as their well-armed followers wage a holy war.
Reuters/Ricardo Moraes
Robert Muggah, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
As hard-line Pentecostalism spreads across Brazil, some drug traffickers in gang-controlled areas of Rio de Janeiro are using religion as an excuse to attack nonbelievers.
Grounds of Hand Up Ministries in Oklahoma City houses sex offenders.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
Jeff Sessions wants prosecutors to ‘charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.’ That’s a step back to our failed experiment in mass incarceration.
A glimpse behind bars.
Cropped from krystiano/flickr
The number of prisons in the US swelled between 1970 and 2000, from 511 to nearly 1,663. Here’s the story of why one town in Arkansas welcomed a correction facility.
Dozens of inmates escaped after multiple recent prison riots in Brazil.
Reuters
New research from Vanderbilt University looks at the effects of mass incarceration on a little studied population: formerly imprisoned African-American men.