Hannah Beckler

Dec 21, 2024 | businessinsider.com | Hannah Beckler |Nicole Einbinder

It rained heavily the night before the retaking of New York's Attica Correctional Facility. A guard, William Quinn, had been killed. Negotiations had ended. The men on the D yard waited for the inevitable. Four days earlier, on September 9, 1971, 1,281 prisoners had wrested control of Attica, taking 42 prison staffers hostage and delivering a manifesto demanding humane treatment including adequate healthcare, independent oversight, and an end to racial discrimination.

Dec 20, 2024 | businessinsider.com | Nicole Einbinder |Hannah Beckler

Over the past decade, Minnesota's prisons have experienced officer assaults, lockdowns, and chronic staffing shortages. They have faced allegations of substandard medical care, inhumane living conditions, sexual abuse by guards, and retaliation against prison employees who have sounded the alarm. "It's a very sick system," one former lieutenant told Business Insider.

Dec 20, 2024 | businessinsider.com | Nicole Einbinder |Hannah Beckler

Nearly three years into Bill Clinton's first term as president, US senators took to the floor to tackle an urgent concern. Prisoners across the country were filing too many lawsuits. "The vast majority of these suits are completely without merit," Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, said in September 1995. "It is time to lock the revolving prison door and to put the keys safely out of reach of overzealous federal courts."Sen.

Dec 19, 2024 | businessinsider.com | Hannah Beckler |Nicole Einbinder |Esther Kaplan

The prisoners write in carefully lettered script or on old electric typewriters. There are sometimes grammatical errors or misspellings. But the language is direct. They describe facing Stage 4 cancer after their symptoms went undiagnosed for years. The denial of orthotic shoes to treat a diabetic condition that led to a severe wound and amputation. Nineteen years locked in solitary confinement.

Dec 9, 2024 | businessinsider.com | Dakin Campbell |Hannah Beckler

Researchers find AI-related emissions will soon rival that of all the cars in California. AI electricity consumption could cause asthma deaths to spike by more than a third in the next six years. In Virginia alone, AI's backup diesel generators could lead to 190 air-pollution-related deaths. Researchers have found that the training of one large AI language model — like Meta's Llama 3.1 — would generate as much air pollution as a car driving round-trip from New York to Los Angeles 10,000 times.