This week marked the 27th birthday of Chelsea Manning, the U.S. military whistleblower who currently sits in prison for leaking material to Wikileaks. Here are some birthday wishes for her from people who have spent time in similar circumstances.

For several days, the Los Angeles Times has been running an excellent series on the exploitation of farm workers in Mexico. Here is a bit of information on how the people who grow the produce you buy at Walmart are treated.

If you haven't been listening to Serial you've surely been hearing about it, so I won't summarize the whole story other than to say that there are three critical characters here. There's Hae Min Lee, who was brutally strangled 15 years ago, Adnan, her ex-boyfriend who's currently in jail for life for her murder, and Jay, their mutual friend who claims Adnan admitted to killing Hae and showed him her body. One of three things is happening—Adnan's lying, Jay's lying, or they both are.

Sometimes innocent people are wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. Sometimes they're released from prison after many years. How much money do they deserve?

Chris Epps resigned as head of the Mississippi Department of Corrections this week after more than a decade on the job. An indictment against him says he spent much of that time systematically robbing the state.

Police say a man in India took the law into his own hands when he used a fake dinner invitation to lure his daughter's alleged rapist over for a night of torture and, ultimately, murder.

After a lawsuit, the State of California has agreed to end its practice of imposing blanket "lockdowns" on prison inmates according to their race. The year is 2014.

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?

In February of 2013, William Lopez was released from prison after serving 23 years for murder. In fact, he was innocent. He was exonerated. Now he's dead.

One nice thing about America is that even if you are poor, you cannot legally be railroaded for any old criminal accusation; you are guaranteed justice and fair representation. A new report details just how much of a farce that promise is.

Last week, two men were released after spending 30 years in prison in North Carolina. They were falsely convicted of rape and murder in 1983. They were both exonerated by DNA evidence. The man who prosecuted them is, proudly, no pussy.

What is the full impact of the past two decades of the War on Crime? The Wall Street Journal says the FBI currently has close to 80 million Americans in its criminal databases—"nearly one out of every three American adults."

The Ferguson, Mo. Police Department has finally released the name of the officer who shot Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old that was gunned down six days ago.

America has an incarceration crisis. We imprison a much larger percentage of our citizenry than anyone else. We need to fix this. We do not need to fix it by selectively imprisoning people for futurecrimes that have not yet occurred.

A Georgia fourth grader was suspended from school this week after he brought a Nerf gun to class as part of a show-and-tell assignment.

We are in the midst of a weeklong editorial extravaganza in which the New York Times expounds at length on why marijuana should be legalized. What they present as a giant leap is really a baby step. All illegal drugs should be legalized and regulated.

The warden of Louisiana's Angola prison says he is prepared to release inmate Kenny "Zulu" Whitmore from solitary confinement "When I can conclude he's not going to cause me the blues." Whitmore, a Black Panther, has been in solitary for a total of 35 years.

In Washington, DC, undercover police are concocting elaborate fake robbery plots, and then arresting anyone they can convince to say they will join in. If you mixed the concepts of entrapment and Minority Report-style futurecrimes together, this is what would emerge.

After a three-year investigation, the U.S. Justice Department said today that the Newark Police Department is a corrupt, racist hive of unconstitutional behavior.

The FTC has charged T-Mobile with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars of their customers' money by billing them for services they didn't sign up for. Okay. So. Which T-Mobile executive will be going to jail?