The Watchmen

By Matthew Spolar and James Osborne
The Philadelphia Inquirer

A New Jersey company, watching closely as officials consider closing the Camden County jail and privatizing corrections services, has filed an application to build a facility in central Camden.
County spokeswoman Joyce Gabriel said she wa

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on October 26, 2009, Printed on October 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143499/

The tragic unraveling of the case against Cameron Todd Willingham -- the Texas man executed in 2004 for killing his own daughters by supposedly setting fire to his house -- seems to have crossed a major threshold in the debate over the death penalty in the past several weeks. For the first time in rece

Written by John Leland for the New York Times, October 17, 2009.

COXSACKIE, N.Y. — Allen Jacobs lived hard for his 50 years, and when his liver finally shut down he faced the kind of death he did not want. On a recent afternoon Mr. Jacobs lay in a hospital bed staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyes sunk in his skull, his skin lusterles

Amnesty International has appealed to the state to commute the sentence on Khristian Oliver, 32, who is due to die on November 5.

He was sentenced to death in 1999 for murdering a man whose home Oliver was burgling. The victim was shot in the face and beaten with his own rifle.

It later emerged that while deciding whether he should be given the death penalty, jurors consult

Carrie Johnson | Washington Post | Friday, October 16, 2009

The Senate's second-ranking Democrat introduced a bill Thursday that would eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powdered cocaine, an issue that has frustrated judges, civil rights advocates and drug reform proponents for more than