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Saint Louis University is running a prison education program that provides some Missouri inmates and prison staff with the opportunity to earn degrees. An inmate who hopes to return to Kansas City upon his release says the program gave him a new perspective on life.
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The Missouri Justice Coalition is crisscrossing the state, with stops already in Kansas City, to raise awareness about conditions inside prisons and build support for reform legislation.
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Women at the Topeka Correctional Facility play with their children at the Children’s Discovery Center. And inmates say it encourages them to stay out of trouble.
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At least 105 people have died behind bars in Missouri so far this year. Beginning next month, the Missouri Justice Coalition is going around the state — including a stop in Kansas City — to focus on prison conditions and outline the case for reform.
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Sociology professor and author Alex Vitale, who is set to speak at the UMKC Cockefair Lecture on Tuesday, is calling for the end of policing as we know it. He contends that instead of directly addressing problems like gun violence and drug addiction with effective policy, the U.S. relies on police to "manage" the results.
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A Kansas inmate says he didn't threaten officers in prison, but a disciplinary report saying he did might have cost him parole. It’s just one example of a prison disciplinary system that can be stacked against inmates when they try to fight a write up.
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The decision by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds an earlier decision that attempts to fix what critics called a “procedural vortex” that unfairly kept people in prison with confusing documents, unfair hearings and petty interpretations of violations.
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The policy comes more than a year after the Missouri Department of Corrections banned people from receiving paper mail in prison.
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The Prison Policy Initiative put Missouri and Kansas on a list of “famously hot states” that lack universal air conditioning in prisons. During excessively hot summer days, inmates say that it can feel like a "pizza oven" inside — and the state isn't doing enough to fix the issue.
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A Missouri inmate serving life without parole on a gun crime says young inmates don’t seem to care if they come and go from prison. Plus: A growing legal movement to grant natural entities like rivers and forests legal rights is having a moment in the US. Now environmentalists are setting their sights on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
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As Kansas City sees increasing rates of gun violence, some local officials and activists are looking for ways to help the formerly incarcerated reenter the work force, clean their record, and find a way out of "a cycle of violent crime.”
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The Missouri legislature stumbled its way to the end of this year’s legislative session. Catch up on the biggest things lawmakers did and what was left unaddressed. Plus: Inmates at a state prison in Lansing, Kansas, rioted three years ago but nobody has been charged yet.