News — Prisons

Over the weekend, a man incarcerated at Cummins Unit prison, an Arkansas state prison in Grady, tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the first prisoner in the state correctional system there to do so. The corrections department responded by quickly testing all the other men housed in the same barracks—mass testing that most other states have not done in their prisons. The results, made public on Monday, were shocking: The state corrections department announced that a whopping 43 of the 46 other men in the housing unit had tested positive. They were all asymptomatic and are now quarantined. Health experts around the...

A large rectangle of red dirt on the flat expanse of West Texas’ Permian Basin reminds Sadrac Garcia every day of what his family has lost. A few months ago, he could stand on the small porch of his brother Juan’s double-wide and peer into the window of their parents’ trailer a few meters away. Until 2017, three generations of Garcias lived on these couple of acres. The family is slowly selling off the homes and the land, an attempt to move on  after their father, Isac Garcia-­Wislar, died in the custody of a local jail. Sadrac, soft-spoken but direct,...

A large rectangle of red dirt on the flat expanse of West Texas’ Permian Basin reminds Sadrac Garcia every day of what his family has lost. A few months ago, he could stand on the small porch of his brother Juan’s double-wide and peer into the window of their parents’ trailer a few meters away. Until 2017, three generations of Garcias lived on these couple of acres. The family is slowly selling off the homes and the land, an attempt to move on  after their father, Isac Garcia-­Wislar, died in the custody of a local jail. Sadrac, soft-spoken but direct,...