Last year, the city set a goal of reducing the annual homicide rate 20 percent by 2026. It’s already surpassing that target.

This past May, Mayor Michelle Wu hailed Boston as “one of the safest major cities in the country.” Wu’s statement was not grandstanding; recent data bears out her claim, and the city has made headlines throughout the past year for its public safety numbers. No statistic is more remarkable than 2024’s plummeting homicide rate. In the first quarter ...

What If Disaster Strikes Here?

Jared Bozydaj is an incarcerated writer and activist. He is the co-founder of Products of Our Environment, a collaborative of scholars and artists working on issues of environmental justice and incarceration across the prison wall, which is supported by the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities. Adam Roberts, a founding member of the Attica Wri ...

Although the FCC has curbed the cost of phone calls in jails and prisons, telecom companies have found new ways to raise prices for incarcerated people.

In July, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) limited the rates that prison telecommunications companies can charge for phone and video calling services in prisons and jails. Historically, those rates have been exorbitant—a 15-minute phone call could cost more than $12—making it incredibly difficult for incarcerated people to communicate wi ...