What We're Reading

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  Police shootings continue daily, despite a pandemic, protests and pushes for reform

  Published on July 30, 2021

  The Washington Post has tracked fatal shootings by police since 2015 and report that "midway through this year, fatal police shootings are down compared with the same period last year." Still, officers shot and killed an average of 1,000 people each year – about three individuals a day – over the past six years.

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  Trauma on top of trauma: why more women are dying in jails

  Published on July 13, 2021

  Candice Norwood, for the 19th News, reports on new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on in-custody deaths on the anniversary of the death of Sandra Bland. Norwood writes: "As with Sandra Bland, the majority of jail deaths occurred among people who had not been convicted of a crime, and about 40 percent in 2018 happened within the first seven days of admission."

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  Lost Opportunity, Lost Lives

  Published on June 29, 2021

  Reporter Lisa Armstrong examines how the coronavirus pandemic affected older people in prisons, who were particularly vulnerable and are also unlikely to reoffend.

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  Dead Man Waiting: A brief profile of deaths in Texas prisons among people approved for parole release

  Published on June 18, 2021

  A report by researchers at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin found an increase in the number of people who had been approved for parole and died while still incarcerated in Texas during the coronavirus pandemic.

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  For a second year, most U.S. police departments decline to share information on their use of force

  Published on June 9, 2021

  For the second time, the data that agencies voluntarily submit to the FBI on use of force is unusable because of low participation. The Washington Post reports that only 27% of departments across the country – and about 3% in Texas – participated in the data collection effort.