Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.) on Wednesday pushed his party to give voting rights to felons and make their state the first in the south to abolish the death penalty. 
The number of people in American prisons fell in 2019 to its lowest point in nearly a quarter century, continuing a decade-long drop, new data show. 
Kamala Harris stopped enforcing a widely supported sex offender law during her tenure as California’s attorney general, allowing sex predators to live near children.
President Donald Trump surprised Jon Ponder, a convicted felon turned activist, with a pardon on Tuesday at the Republican National Convention. Defund the police, abolish prisons, use welfare to fight crime: These ideas and more are increasingly the rallying cries of prominent Democrats, eager for a revolution in America's criminal justice system. 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five inmates at a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, have died since March 28 after contracting the coronavirus. Harold Lee’s family fears he could be next. 
A former adviser on criminal justice issues to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) was allegedly plotting a violent prison escape, stashing guns and ammunition inside a soon-to-be-opened prison, authorities revealed this week. 
Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday officially announced the formation of a presidential commission on criminal justice, revitalizing an influential body that in the 1960s fundamentally altered the American criminal justice system. 