San Quentin is currently the site of one of country’s worst COVID-19 clusters, with 1,300 prisoners and 184 staff having tested positive for the coronavirus as of July 7. At least six prisoners have died from the virus.

Chris Wilson describes growing up surrounded by violence and abuse, the self-improvement plan he devised in prison and his journey toward social entrepreneurship.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Yale Law School’s Justice Collaboratory announced today a new initiative to distribute a curated 500-book collection to 1,000 medium and maximum security prisons, across every state in the U.S.

Living on LOP is an eleven-part weekly series premiering June 12, 2020. Check back every Friday for the next episode. This project is a collaboration among A Brighter Way, the Prison Creative Arts Project, and the Carceral State Project.

Voices for Justice is about speaking truth to power through a blend of spoken word pieces— both poems and personal stories that speak to the need for justice, liberation, and healing in our families and communities.

In Washington, D.C., the Free Minds Book Club positions the activities as mechanisms through which incarcerated people can express themselves in healthy and constructive ways. As Jeffrey Brown reports, inmates who participate in the organization have a much lower recidivism rate than the national average.

Police killing with impunity cannot be allowed to continue. As an organization founded on the values of Justice. Liberation. Healing we know this is a moment to speak up and stand with the Black community in ending state-sanctioned violence and killings.

Given recent events around George Floyd and far beyond, this special episode of the a16z Podcast features Shaka Senghor, a leading advocate for criminal justice reform (and bestselling author), and Terry Brown, a former police officer in East Palo Alto (who has since run his own security firms). 

Horowitz Family Foundation’s $1 million gift aims to reduce the spread of COVID-19 among the incarcerated and inform mitigation strategies in other high-density living situations.

The Horowitz Family Foundation is donating $1,000,000 to Stanford University's School of Medicine to Establish a COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund.

In a remarkable private venture, the nation’s sheriffs have joined with some leading criminal justice reform advocates, such as Jay-Z and Van Jones, to deliver masks and other personal protective equipment to every jail in America.

Community groups have pointed out the social costs of the prison system for decades. Now the pandemic has exposed its public-health risks.

The campaign, dubbed #WeMatterToo, is urging authorities to immediately release people who have served the vast majority of their sentences, especially if they have underlying health conditions

A Call to Collective Action for Nationwide Reform.

REFORM Alliance spoke with more than 20 people about what they’re looking forward to when this pandemic is all over. Turns out, we all want the same things. Watch until the end #AnswerTheirCall

R&R contributed to this story in the Marshall Project about people sitting sitting in jails awaiting hearings for violations of parole and probation supervision, putting them at heightened risk of contracting COVID-19. 

“In recent days it has come to my attention that they are housing people that has tested positive for the Coronavirus, in the unit next to me. I am steaming right now, because I am really on the verge of having to make a decision; Do I choose freedom over my health or health over my freedom…”