Most Recent in Texas Politics:

1Voting Begins in a Month. Here’s What Is at Stake in Texas.

2Joaquin Castro Says He’ll Champion Progressive Foreign Policy

3Historic Runoff Turnout Sets Stage for Texas Democrats in 2020’s ‘Biggest Battleground’

4Amid a National Reckoning Over Racial Injustice, Royce West Seeks to Upset MJ Hegar—and the DSCC

5Doctors Reverse Course, Say Texas GOP Should Cancel In-Person Convention

6The Next Census Could Determine the Future of Port Arthur

Most Recent in Environment:

1The Wasteland Underwater

2Running from the Storm

3A Coral Reef Sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico Could Triple in Size

4A Battle is Brewing Over a Trump EPA Official’s Confidential Emails

5Marsha Jackson Is Trying to Move Shingle Mountain

6A New Study Finds a Link Between Flaring and an Increase in Premature Births

Most Recent in Border:

15,000 People Contract COVID-19 While In ICE Custody, Including This Father Of 5

2Mexico Turns To Television And Radio For Remote Learning

3New Engineering Report Finds Privately Built Border Wall Will Fail

4El ducto del coronavirus

5The Coronavirus Pipeline

6El Paso Remembered

Most Recent in Criminal Justice:

1Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

2When Asthma in Jail Becomes a Death Sentence

3In Harris County, A Group is Working to Expand Voting Access in Jails

4Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?

5How Long Can You Hide a Dead Body in a Prison Cell?

6Reform vs. Rebuild: Defunding Law Enforcement in Texas

Most Recent in Education:

1Texas Has the Widest Digital Divide in the Nation. What Does that Mean for the School Year?

2The New Ensemble

3Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

4Tough Decisions Ahead for School Leaders in Rural Texas

5‘Almost Akin to a Political Coup’: Houston Teachers Fight Back Against State Takeover of HISD

6The Creature of Martin Creek Lake Won’t Die

Most Recent in Health Care:

1Conception Deception

2Portraits of the Pandemic

3El ducto del coronavirus

4The Coronavirus Pipeline

5One of Texas’ Biggest Nursing Home Operators Beset By COVID-19 Cases and Deaths

6Telehealth Could be Great, if Texans Had Access to It

Most Recent in The Interview:

1Researcher Howard Henderson on Reimagining Policing in the U.S.

2Texas Observer Founding Editor Ronnie Dugger Reflects on 65 Years of Publication

3How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms

4Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma

5Why a Texas Gun Control Activist is Optimistic About the Chances for Reform

6American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?

Most Recent in Books:

1How Texas Women Delivered the Nineteenth Amendment

2A New Short-Story Collection Imagines a Texas Town’s Secession

3Improbable, Prophetic Houston

4Announcing the 2020 Insider Prize Winners

5‘A Saint From Texas’ Gets the Lone Star State Right

6‘After the Last Border’ Reveals the Human Cost of Trump’s Draconian Immigration Policies

Most Recent in Features:

1Young Texans Keep Spelling Bees Going From Home

3San Antonio Embraces Mandaean Refugees

4The Ghosts of Jefferson

5Little Arthouse on the Prairie

6The Clothes that Make the Man

Most Recent in Essay:

1What the Black Lives Matter Protests Mean for East Texas

2Raise a Glass to the Class of COVID-19

3What’s a Bookstore for?

4Lessons on the Long Game from Goose Island’s Whooping Cranes

5In a Pandemic, Poor Defendants Could Pay With Their Lives

6Loneliness in the Age of Coronavirus

Most Recent in Eye on Texas:

1Eye on Texas: Border Tuner

2Eye on Texas: The Broken Wheel Ranch Project

3Eye on Texas: Spike Johnston

4Eye on Texas: Loren Elliott

5Eye on Texas: Charlotte Moore

6Eye on Texas: ‘My Joyful Dance’

Most Recent in Poetry:

1Author Saeed Jones on Empathy, the Power of Memoir, and Growing up Gay in North Texas

2Remembering W.S. Merwin, Honorary Texan

3Lost in Limbo in the Hays County Jail

4Houston Poet Analicia Sotelo’s Debut Smashes Latino Stereotypes

5Parallel Planes

Kit OConnell

Kit O'Connell is a gonzo journalist and radical troublemaker from Austin. He is a staff writer at MintPress News and has also appeared in Truthout, The Establishment and Firedoglake.

Texas Activists Protest Modern-Day ‘Slavery’ in Prisons

by Kit O'Connell | Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 7:37 pm CST

huntsville walls unit death row capital punishment

Criminal Justice

Social Media Ban Could Curb Free Speech Behind Bars

Tue, Apr 19, 2016 |

Prison reform activists say a new social media policy inside Texas prisons could keep both prisoners and advocates from talking about life on the inside. Read More

The Travis County Jail in Austin. recidivism

Criminal Justice

New Technologies Connect Prisoners to the Outside World

'Returning citizens' develop apps and initiatives to reduce recidivism.

Mon, Mar 14, 2016 |

'Returning citizens' have developed apps for inmates and families, but other new tech may be more about corporate bottom lines than reducing recidivism. Read More