West Virginia's contracts with Aramark Correctional Services have come under scrutiny after a lawsuit brought by incarcerated residents, alleging they were regularly served spoiled milk and undercooked or rotten meat.

Teri Castle, former criminal legal reform fellow at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, alleged Aramark profits by cutting corners, and then makes more money when people are forced to buy extra food from the prison commissary, run by an out-of-state company, which in turn is owned by Aramark.

Castle pointed out when incarcerated people buy commissary items, the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation also rakes in cash.

"Every time a person spends money buying food at the commissary, they get a 10% or 20% kickback," Castle reported. "This should feel extremely immoral to West Virginians, who have to bear the burden of people coming home sicker than when they entered the prison."

A recent report showed since 2015, West Virginia prisons have sent more than $57 million out of state to pay for food served in its prison system. The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to requests from the report's authors for information about prison meals, food sources or vendor contracts.

Castle believes state lawmakers should require full transparency from the prison system, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

"The West Virginia citizens should be able to see the food that they are purchasing," Castle contended. "I mean, where does it come from? Are we using West Virginia-grown food, or just sending millions of dollars out of state?"

Research shows people behind bars are more likely to suffer from chronic, diet-linked conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. And according to the report, older people make up a growing share of West Virginia prison populations, with more than 1,200 age 50 or older.


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Advocates feel Connecticut and the nation can enact legal system reforms in 2025, ranging from ways to more humanely treat incarcerated people to increasing investments in communities, rather than in the criminal justice system.

In Connecticut, some advocates pushed for reforms to parole so it is not as punitive.

Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, said while similar reforms passed in New York, they have stalled in Connecticut.

"There hasn't been much movement on that in Connecticut," Bertram acknowledged. "I think that's less because these aren't winnable reforms, it's more because legislators don't see criminal justice consistently as a priority."

Overall, she feels criminal justice not being a priority for lawmakers is why reforms do not often pass in statehouses. Connecticut's 2024 legislative session ended without major criminal justice reforms passed. One of the few related bills to pass was House Bill 5524, which allocates $25 million to youth justice centers.

While many reforms were goals from previous years, Bertram noted they are reforms with long-term benefits. One is restoring voting rights for people with felony convictions who have been released from prison. Connecticut is one of several states to restore the right in recent years but she noted some of this year's defeats can affect achieving next year's goals.

"The nation's rightward turn and its election of Donald Trump and far-right congresspeople is somewhat of a defeat in and of itself," Bertram observed. "Because the ideologies that are being promulgated by those new electeds are explicitly violent with, for example, new support for the death penalty."

Despite this and other defeats from this year, she emphasized 2024 brought plenty of positives, including Massachusetts being the first state to ban life without parole for people younger than 21, the Federal Communications Commission establishing new phone rates for prisons, and several states providing funding for public defenders.


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The Wisconsin Innocence Project is ending the year with some key victories including helping with the release of two men who each spent decades in prison but the wins highlight a long-standing systemic problem.

David Bintz spent 25 years in prison and Manuel Cucuta spent 27 years in prison. Both were sentenced to life in prison, despite glaring holes in their cases.

Christopher Lau, associate clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, noted as remarkable as their releases have been, it speaks to a greater systemic issue coloring most of their cases and reinforces what it was designed to do.

"Part of this is just historical, the way our policing and incarceration system evolved was from basically their vestiges of slavery," Lau pointed out. "We try to keep down historically underrepresented people."

He acknowledged while not everyone may adopt such views, there is a lot of pressure to close cases and keep people incarcerated, evident by the fact the U.S. incarcerates more people for longer than any other developed country in the world.

Wisconsin's incarceration rate is 615 per 100,000 residents, a higher percentage of its population than almost any democratic country in the world. Compared with Wisconsin's total population, Black and Native people are overrepresented in the incarcerated population with Black people incarcerated at a rate 11 times higher than white people.

Lau argued in order to even begin to think about reform, the U.S. and the state of Wisconsin need to reexamine priorities and funding, as well as rethink the point of doling out such long sentences when it does not keep communities safer.

"I think there are good arguments that it makes us less safe," Lau observed. "But we still keep doing it because I think it's one, easy politically, and it's because it's where we put all of our money."

He added regardless of guilt or innocence, there are simply too many people who are incarcerated. Wisconsin is one of the few states to not ban juvenile life without parole sentences. Nearly 10% of the state's total life-sentenced population were juveniles when they were sentenced. The Wisconsin Innocence Project receives hundreds of requests per month and many are from juvenile offenders.


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Navigating the process of expunging criminal records can be overwhelming but for many, it is a critical step toward building a better future.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice is making the journey easier with the release of the updated Umar Muhammad Clean Slate Toolkit.

Tanita Holmes, justice system reform counsel for the coalition, said the resource aims to help people determine their eligibility for relief and guides them through removing charges and convictions from their records. The goal? To provide a pathway to better economic and social opportunities.

"Having a criminal record can prevent these people from having employment," Holmes pointed out. "It can prevent them from having housing, unification and other benefits, state and private benefits and opportunities."

In North Carolina, nearly one in four people has a criminal record. Among them, around 60% remain unemployed within a year of release. Even those who manage to find work typically earn 40% less than their peers without a record.

Holmes said clean slate laws are essential for helping people with criminal records rebuild their lives. While North Carolina has made strides by expanding expungement laws to cover more misdemeanors, Holmes believes there is still more to be done. She argued there is a critical need to reduce barriers such as notary fees and improve access to resources.

"North Carolina could create better resources and access to judges, clerks and district attorneys," Holmes contended. "Because those are some of the people that you have to get in contact with and work with when you're getting an expunction."

Research shows clean slate laws in states such as California, Connecticut, Utah and Virginia have been effective in improving both public safety and economic outcomes, demonstrating the potential benefits of broader expungement policies.


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