A precipitous decline of coronavirus cases in state prisons has transformed California’s correctional system from a cautionary tale of mass incarceration in the time of a plague to something more unexpected: an intensely monitored field study that could help scientists develop strategies to defeat the pandemic outside prison walls. Highly effective vaccines distributed in the prisons combined with the lack of reinfections among inmates and staff previously diagnosed with COVID-19 appear to...

Jose Armendariz, 30, has never been able to vote. Sentenced to 90 years to life in prison at 16, Armendariz is barred from casting a ballot by California’s felony disenfranchisement laws. But after learning that many of those behind bars can cast ballots, he has become an inside organizer for Unlock the Vote , an American Civil Liberties Union project aimed at registering voters in Southern California jails. Armendariz goes cell-to-cell at Orange County’s Theo Lacy Jail, educating people...

For decades, community groups have pointed out the social costs of mass incarceration: its failure to address the root causes of addiction and violence; its steep fiscal price tag; its deepening of racial inequalities. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed another danger of the system: its public-health risks. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union worked with epidemiologists and statisticians to show that, without protective measures in jails and prisons, including rapid reductions in...