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The Marshall Project •

Hundreds of Calls for Help: What 911 Logs Reveal About the Local Jail

When local officials try to block the public from seeing what goes on in a jail, the calls they make to 911 can offer a view into how people there are being treated, and which problems jail employees struggle to address on their own.

A surge in emergency responses to a jail can reveal patterns of medical neglect or widespread drug use, as well as other chronic issues, from detainees starting fires to fights or suicide attempts.

Corrections officers and medical personnel in jails are considered...
The Marshall Project •

They Spent Years in Solitary Confinement in Mississippi Despite Suicide Risk

Danny Austin has been out of prison for over a decade. These days, he focuses on life with his wife in North Mississippi and his work as a commercial truck driver. It’s not often that he reflects on his incarceration — especially the four years he spent in solitary confinement.

That was a bleak time at the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility. He still remembers the view looking outside his single cell. The noises of other incarcerated men, sometimes in crisis, banging on their doors. The sme...
The Marshall Project •

Mississippi Prisoners Begged for Help. They Died in Solitary Instead.

Warning: This story contains detailed descriptions of the manner of suicide in prison.

Nearly three months into a 10-year sentence for a drive-by shooting, Denise Short asked prison staffers at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl to place her on suicide watch. The 21-year-old mother had planned to take her own life, she told them in March 2024.

Prison officials ignored Short’s request, which would have required frequent well-being checks and other moves to keep her from harming...
The Marshall Project •

Trump Is Backing Away From Police Reform. Here’s What That Means for 12 Places.

One of the Justice Department’s goals under President Joe Biden was to investigate some of the nation’s most troubled police agencies, including the ones responsible for the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tyre Nichols.

Two months into President Donald Trump’s second term, the prospect of federal oversight appears likely to disappear in most of those 12 agencies.
The Marshall Project •

Jackson, MS, Wants Curfew Centers to Cut Crime. Here’s What Others Did.

After a 17-year-old was charged with the fatal shooting of 14-year-old Eugene Kelly in Jackson, Mississippi’s first murder of 2024, one council member made a familiar demand: Impose a nighttime youth curfew to “stop these kids from becoming killers.”

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba then offered an even stronger response: The city should create “youth engagement centers” to keep children off the streets after dark.

Curfews have been imposed and abandoned numerous times in Jackson over the decades.
The Marshall Project •

How Mississippi’s Jim Crow Laws Still Haunt Black Voters Today

Charles Caldwell was never meant to have a voice. Mississippi’s White ruling class made sure of it.

He was part of Mississippi’s silenced majority in 1860 — 436,600 enslaved people to 354,000 White people, according to the Census — who would be granted full citizenship after the Civil War.

By 1868, Caldwell was one of 16 Black delegates at the state’s post-war constitutional convention, which extended the right to vote to all men and created a framework for public education.
The 19th •

We asked book lovers to reflect on Hispanic Heritage Month. Here’s what they recommended.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, The 19th spoke with lifelong book lovers — from those working in publishing full time to those who have dedicated years to making book-related content on social media — about the themes that resonate with them in works by Latinx authors and the books that best represent those ideas.

The Latin American diaspora consists of multiple complex identities from many different places. Though they live in the United States, the interviewees also represent Cuba, Puerto Rico,
The 19th •

Ta’Kiya Young's shooting highlights sobering reality for Black pregnant women in America

Nadine Young left her home in Ohio under the crushing weight of grief. By the end of 1989, the young mother of four had lost both of her parents, a stillborn baby girl and her sister. She packed up and moved to Mississippi for nearly a decade, where she gave birth to a fifth son. She taught her boys to be respectable and to always do what police asked.

“I had major, major talks with them, so if they had any encounters they complied and did whatever they needed to do so they wouldn’t lose their
The 19th •

These Louisiana sisters took their fight against big industry in ‘Cancer Alley’ to court — and won

Twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner are celebrating a win in their fight against big industry in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” In a court hearing this month, Judge J. Sterling Snowdy ruled against St. John the Baptist Parish, declaring a 33-year-old industrial zoning ordinance null and void based on a procedural issue. The decision effectively stands in the way of a proposed grain export facility that would compound pollution in the area and threaten its historic landscape.

“This is a big moment for [
in-these-times •

Fighting Industrial Development and Defending Black History in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”

WALLACE, La.— There are only a handful of homes situated on Alexis Court, but there are a whole lot of memories. At one end of the short street, facing the Mississippi River, is Fee-Fo-Lay Café, run by twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner. The Fifolet, according to local lore, is a spirit that haunts the swamps and guards the treasures of pirate Jean Lafitte. Growing up, the Banner sisters heard a variation of the myth from their grandmother, and the café bears its name as an homage to their grandpare
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