STAY CONNECTED

The Turn90 newsroom

Training the Brain to Stay out of Jail (The Marshall Project)

Growing up in public housing in North Charleston, S.C., in the 1970s, David Hayward was familiar with poverty, violence and loss. His mother, grandmother and brother all died when he...

Unless those at the top act, South Carolina prisons will perpetuate crime problem (Post & Courier)

South Carolina prisons are not rehabilitating criminals — they’re training them. In most of the state’s roughest correctional facilities, the yard is not so different from life on the street. Inmates...

Saying goodbye to the streets, and prison (Post & Courier)

Marty Hamilton has spent 30 years behind bars, and he’s only 47. The North Charleston native has been in prison seven times, and twice spent a year in the county...

Amy Barch is on a mission to stop crime, one criminal at a time (Post & Courier)

More than a quarter of the crime committed in Charleston County last year was the work of just 1,900 men. And 12 of them are sitting in Amy Barch’s classroom...

Turning Leaf teaches former prisoners to learn from past mistakes (Charleston City Paper)

In the shadow of the razorwire fences and bleak facade of the Al Cannon Detention Center sits the small, nondescript building that houses the Turning Leaf Project. Inside, two classrooms...

Turning Leaf getting national attention, for good reason (Post & Courier)

There are about a dozen guys sitting in this room — some of them tattooed, some with long hair or dreads — talking casually about doing drugs, committing crimes. Quietly...

A rehabilitation program that could become a national model (Post & Courier)

Shakiem Maxwell will tell you straight — he was headed down the wrong road, doing all the wrong things. At 22, he already had a rap sheet that included attempted...

This ‘Crazy’ Plan Shook Up An ‘Old School’ Federal Prosecutor’s Outlook (The Huffington Post)

Sean Kittrell has been a federal prosecutor for more than two decades. He packs a gun in Charleston, South Carolina, where he’s known as a “traditional, old-school, tough-as-nails violent crime...

U.S. official says prison system’s best reentry program cut ‘dramatically’ (The Washington Post)

The Justice Department’s second­-highest-ranking official Thursday said that the federal prison’s most successful education and reentry program has “dramatically” shrunk in recent years, leaving more than 10,000 inmates on a waiting...

A different path to a second chance (Charleston Business Journal)

Selling drugs was just a way of life for Kelvin Dayse. Growing up in the Gadsden Green housing project in downtown Charleston, Dayse said he was taught to think with...

Charleston offenders offered another chance at freedom, with new prison alternative program (Live 5 News)

Amy Barch doesn't just take chances, she gives them. In 2011, Barch founded The Turning Leaf Project, a volunteer-led initiative focused on educating criminal offenders and preparing them for successful...