Despite years of hype, these entrepreneurs are finding it’s nearly impossible to survive — Janica Alvarez and her husband, Jeff, were supposed to revolutionize the breast pump. The pump—a hulking, painful, ugly device—serves a very precise purpose: to extract milk from a mother’s breasts when she’s not with her baby. …

Houston has come up with a new way to make life harder for people leaving prison on parole: by forcing the programs that provide them with housing, often paired with job placement and other services, to move outside the city limits. At the end of March, the city council approved…

When Benjamin Dunning was homeless on the streets of Denver, Colorado for four and a half years, his number one priority was trying to stay out of sight. “My biggest job … was to find someplace to hide where I wouldn’t have contact with the police, wouldn’t have contact with…

As part of a growing push to end the use of cash bail, a national movement is calling attention to the plight of defendants held in jail simply because they can’t afford to pay their way out. Last month, it launched the next phase of its work: the Black Love…

In early February, the Philadelphia City Council made history: It voted unanimously in favor of ending the use of cash bail. The resolution, passed February 1, urges the district attorney’s office and the courts “to institute internal policies that reduce reliance on cash bail” and called on the state legislature…

Prisoners in Florida are in the midst of a huge and risky protest: They started a strike and boycott on Martin Luther King Jr. Day meant to last through the month. The protest challenges exorbitant prices at canteens; urges Florida to extend parole, as an incentive for good behavior, to…

Alaska’s new comprehensive criminal justice reform law will reduce the prison population by 13% and save taxpayers $380 million. — It happened with scant fanfare, but January 1st marked an important step on the path to eliminate the country’s money bail system: it all but disappeared in the state of Alaska. The state’s reform law passed with bipartisan majorities and was signed into law back in July 2016, but it…

Bail has been operating differently in Harris County, Texas, lately. In April, a judge issued an injunction in response to a lawsuit filed against the county by nonprofits Civil Rights Corps and Texas Fair Defense Project and law firm Susman Godfrey alleging that its practice of jailing people who couldn’t…

New Jersey has become a national leader in criminal justice reform, particularly around the hot button issue of requiring cash bail. When it passed the Bail Reform and Speedy Trial Act last year, it became one of only three locations in the United States that have virtually eliminated bail as…