Will Speer Found Hope Enough to Share on Texas’s Death Row
He’s one of the first faith-based coordinators for Texas inmates facing the death penalty. He’s scheduled to be executed this week.
He’s one of the first faith-based coordinators for Texas inmates facing the death penalty. He’s scheduled to be executed this week.
We keep putting convicts away. And lawmakers want those numbers to rise.
For many women inside Texas prisons, a crumb of color—such as a red ribbon or a floral postage stamp—is against the rules, but worth the potential risk.
Seventy percent of Texas prisons do not have AC, except for a small number of ill and elderly inmates, an issue that the Legislature has repeatedly punted on.
In 1982, Dick J. Reavis chronicled the first government-led lethal injection in world history—and the last moments of Charlie Brooks's life.
Skip Hollandsworth tells the story of tracking down the Goree All Girl String Band, who became national radio sensations in the 1940s before suddenly disappearing.
After a riot at a prison in Dilley, corrections department employees confirm that many imprisoned across the state are able to “pop out" of their cells.
A COVID-19 outbreak in a maximum-security unit has created rifts between the local government and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Texas prison officials think they can curb contraband by banning greeting cards, but prisoners say the drugs come in through guards, not mail.
He renounced his violent San Antonio childhood during 28 years behind bars. A new life and new love awaited him outside the prison gates.
In 1967, a 56-year-old lawyer met a young inmate with a brilliant mind and horrifying stories about life inside. Their complicated alliance—and even more complicated romance—would shed light on a nationwide scandal, disrupt a system of abuse and virtual slavery across the state, and change incarceration in Texas forever.
Following a string of complaints about alleged harassment, assault, and rape, a transgender inmate in Texas was moved to a special “safekeeping” unit in what LGBT activists consider a significant victory.
For more than a decade, Michelle Lyons’s job required her to watch condemned criminals be put to death. After 278 executions, she won't ever be the same.
Another lawsuit has been filed over extreme heat in Texas prisons.
No system is perfect, but a number of the imperfections in Texas' system are showing all at once.
Paños, small cloth swatches decorated with detailed illustrations by inmates, now hang in New York museums and are snapped up by worldly collectors.
Texas Board of Pardons and Parole granted parole to a full 31 percent of inmates up for review last year, up from 27 percent in 2003.
Gawker got wind that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Connally Unit recently was shut down due to "chronic staff staffing shortages and water outages."
Last summer, four prisoners died from heat-related causes in Texas's sweltering prisons.
Politicians in West Virgina are embarrassed that Keith Judd, a federal inmate incarcerated in Texarkana, made the Democratic primary ballot.
Kenneth Hickman says TDCJ's facial hair ban violates his First Amendment rights.
Manny Fernandez of the New York Times penned a poignant piece about death in Texas’s prison system.
Thirty-seven men, 525 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. Thanks to DNA testing, their claims of innocence have finally been proved—but what happens to them now?
Freedom for Earnest Willis?
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls—inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas’ sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
What is ex–football star Bill Glass’s plan for reforming hardened prison inmates? God is in the details.
An Austin woman worried about the health of her father, an inmate at the Eastham Unit, is petitioning the prisons to feed inmates three meals every day.
The Texas attorney general takes a second look at the Mineola child sex ring cases.
A criminal justice reform activist in Texas on overcrowded prisons, Tulia, the Texas Youth Commission, and the criminalization of mental illness.
There’s something romantic about a jailbreak, even when the escapee is a cold-blooded killer on death row. That’s why our feelings about Martin Gurule were more than a little complicated.
The poor quality of health care in the state’s penal system is enough to make you sick. Plus: Inside Tex Moncrief’s IRS mess; a River Oaks bookie is tried for murder; UT’s writing program achieves Texas-size success; and things get woolly for thestate’s mohair producers.
By now we know about Brazoria County— but is there violence in other Texas prisons and jails?
A little-known financial institution could be the future of the war on poverty in Texas.
Private prisons lock out the press.
How tough should our response to juvenile crime be? No less tough than it is now—but no tougher either.
The Texas prison mess gets messier. Plus: Taking up arms in defense of the B-1 bomber.
Something stinks in the Department of Criminal Justice, and it’s a lot more than VitaPro. A special report on the worst state scandal in decades.
Kim Wozencraft meant to spend her life putting drug pushers behind bars—until she became an addict. Now, more than a decade later, she’s fighting against the justice system she once embraced.
The death of a thief in the Big Thicket has federal officials probing the conduct of local lawmen—and local lawmen complaining about a federal vendetta against the Texas prison system.
Never before had a correctional officer been tried for the murder of an inmate—and never before had such chilling details been revealed about how our prisons really work.
Before Ruiz v. Estelle, prisons in Texas were the safest, most productive, and most economical in the nation. Now—after costs have quadrupled—our prisons are the most dangerous in the U.S.
Ellis prison houses 2400 dangerous criminals, and it’s the safest place to live in Texas.
A few years ago guards ran the Rusk State Hospital for the criminally insane. Now sociopathic criminals rule the wards.
The rodeo where it really doesn’t pay to win.
The Federal prison in Fort Worth is unique in more ways than one.