For New York City’s most frequently jailed people, the cycle probably goes something like this: You’re homeless, or mentally ill, or addicted to drugs. Maybe all three. Those three factors are so tightly wound together that it’s difficult to tell the causes from the effects. You get picked up for sleeping on the street, and police find a crack rock in your pocket, so you go to jail. A little while later, you get out, and a little while after that, you get picked up again. Back to jail it is.

On Tuesday, three California jail deputies were charged with what their boss called the “vile and cowardly” murder of Michael Tyree, a homeless man who was found beaten death in his cell last month while awaiting transfer to a mental health facility.

Over the 4th of July weekend, riots broke out at a private state prison near Kingman, Arizona. Special forces were called in to restore order. Now, a new report says that the government’s response may have been worse than the riots themselves.

The Wall Street Journal today states that roughly 30 percent of Americans have a criminal record of some sort. We’ve been over this before, but let’s take this opportunity to discuss exactly why the figure is so horrible. No matter how many times you’ve heard it, 30 percent of 318 million people may feel like an abstract concept, difficult to wrap your head around. The havoc wreaked upon those tens of millions of lives, however, couldn’t be more concrete.

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton wants to put you in jail and make sure you stay there. Well, only if you’re a bad guy. Good guys—you’re OK. No worries. Bad guys—get your naughty butts to the slammer.

It has become increasingly accepted to regard long-term solitary confinement of prisoners as torture. A new report from a psychologist who interviewed prisoners in long-term isolation adds to the bracing literature about how our prison system routinely destroys humans.

A Texas sheriff says Sandra Bland—the 28-year-old black woman found dead in her jail cell last week—admitted to her jailers that she had tried to commit suicide the previous year. Still, her guards say they still declined to put her on a suicide watch because she “didn’t seem depressed.”

Disgraced former congressman Michael Grimm is leaving Staten Island for a little vacation up north, the New York Times reports. Grimm, whose lawyers requested no jail time in his tax evasion case, will have eight months to think about what he’s done.

“The recent handcuffing of an inmate without food for 32 hours is part of a troubling pattern of similar mistreatment in the Los Angeles County jails since [last year]... Inspector General Max Huntsman cited three additional incidents in which inmates were allegedly tethered to objects for prolonged periods.”

A New York man who says he was rendered impotent after jailers refused to treat his six-day, prescription drug-induced erection settled with the city for $750,000 on Monday, DNAinfo reports.

A former inmate at the Manhattan Detention Complex claims in a lawsuit that damage sustained to his penis from a six-day erection that went untreated while he was in custody has left him permanently impotent. Rodney Cotton had been taking Risperdal—an antidepressant that is known to cause painful and prolonged erections known as priapism.

An Uber driver in Denver was arrested this week after he allegedly drove a woman to the airport, then drove right back to her house to rob it.

It has become increasingly clear to mainstream America that our nation's decades-long experiment with mass incarceration is fundamentally a bad idea. And though state prisons loom large in the public mind, it's actually local jails where most of the (bad) action happens.

A Muslim woman in Ohio is suing a county jail after she says corrections officers forced her to go to Christian church services, the L.A. Times reports.

Patrick Lynch, chairman of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and head spokesbaby for the inconsolable id of the NYPD, gave a private speech to his union last week. Bill de Blasio "is not running the city of New York," he said in response to a series of perceived slights from City Hall. "He thinks he's running a fucking revolution." The raging toddlers in attendance howled and smacked their tiny palms together in approval.

Terrence Pendergrass, a former Rikers Island captain who allegedly refused to help a dying mentally ill inmate who had eaten a toxic ball of cleaning powder, was found guilty of a federal civil rights charge today. As the New York Times notes, Pendergrass is the first Rikers official to be charged for a civil rights violation in over 10 years.

On January 5, 2015, Teresa Giudice will go to jail for bankruptcy, mail, and wire fraud. But before she suits up, she's making the saddest imaginable Christmas treat for her fambly—and you can, too! Teresa reveals her "Pretty Pizzelle Snacks" recipe in the currently private, link-only video above, which was sent to us by a tipster.

Even in 2014, it is still possible to come across facts about the American justice system that stagger even the most cynical of minds. For example: do you know how long people are sitting in jail in Mississippi without being charged with a crime?

A Kentucky jail inmate is under investigation for murder after he allegedly shared his contraband drug-soaked underwear with a cellmate, who died of a methadone overdose.

In the last five years, three Rikers Island inmates have died after apparent beatings from guards at the prison facility. To date, none of the guards involved in those beatings has been charged with a crime, the Associated Press reports.