Fernando Delgado of the Human Right’s Clinic and his students revel the voices of the prisoners in Brazil.

“Fernando’s work in detention centers in Brazil is unparalleled by anything being done by any clinic or NGO outside Brazil,” said Cavallaro. “He’s documented the most serious abuses in the most dangerous centers in the country.”

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There are a number of ways to put a price tag on the United States’s shameful mass incarceration system. On the most superficial level, $80 billion is how much it costs to keep more than 2.4 million people in our jails and prisons. Then there are the costs to those incarcerated themselves, who often find they’re denied basic civil rights and struggle to find employment, education, and housing for years to come after their release.

But that’s really only the beginning, according to a groundbreaking new report from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design. Surveys of hundreds of formerly incarcerated people and their families in 14 states show that the true costs — emotional and financial — “continue long after incarceration ends and reach far beyond the individual being

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On Tuesday, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, will hear oral arguments in a case that may provide a rare chance to reform New York’s antiquated, ineffective and unfair parole system.

The basic idea behind parole is simple: People can change. It isn’t always easy, but if they succeed, they should have the opportunity to get out of prison a little sooner — even if their crime was serious.

When parole works, everyone benefits. But the tough-on-crime politics of the past few decades led many states and the federal government to eliminate parole. States that retained it can be a model for rehabilitating prisoners and shrinking prisons while still keeping the public safe.

The job is delicate; any high-profile crime by a parolee can become a political disaster. But modern risk-assessment tools have helped states make smarter, more informed choices about whom to let out.

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It’s a chilling image: the sex predator skulking in the shadows of a swing set, waiting to snatch a vulnerable child.

Over the past two decades, that scenario has led to a wave of laws around the country restricting where people convicted of sex offenses may live — in many cases, no closer than 2,500 feet from schools, playgrounds, parks or other areas where children gather. In some places, these “predator-free zones” put an entire town or county off limits, sometimes for life, even for those whose offenses had nothing to do with children.

Protecting children from sexual abuse is, of course, a paramount concern. But there is not a single piece of evidence that these laws actually do that. For one thing, the vast majority of child sexual abuse is committed not by strangers but by acquaintances or relatives. And residency laws drive tens of thousands of people to the fringes of society, forcing them to live in motels, out of cars or under bridges. The laws apply to many and sometimes all sex offenders, regardless of whether they were convicted for molesting a child or for public urination.

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In a resolution that could have wide effects, California’s prison system has agreed to change how it handles solitary confinement — and to review the cases of nearly 3,000 prisoners who are currently in solitary. The changes are part of the terms of a newly settled class-action lawsuit.

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LOS ANGELES — California has agreed to an overhaul of the use of solitary confinement in its prisons, including strict limits on the prolonged isolation of inmates, as part of a landmark legal settlement filed in federal court on Tuesday.

The settlement is expected to sharply reduce the number of inmates held in the state’s isolation units, where nearly 3,000 inmates are often kept alone for more than 22 hours a day in cells that sometimes have no windows, and cap the length of time prisoners can spend there. Prison reform advocates say they hope the settlement will serve as a model for other states.

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