After years of reporting, Reuters has released a first-of-its-kind national database of deaths in local jails, offering a unique resource for news organizations looking to examine inmate mortality in the facilities they cover. Next Wednesday, Peter Eisler and Grant Smith share how they gathered and cleaned the data and how you can use it for your own reporting and analysis.

Idaho legislators are the first in the nation to pass transparency protections addressing concerns about risk assessment tools in the criminal justice system.

The First Step Act was touted as beginning a reversal of decades of tough-on-crime policies. But just hours after the bill was signed by President Trump, the federal government began a shutdown of “nonessential” government operations. Now more than a month later, the shutdown has stopped efforts by the federal government to meet the new law’s first deadline - the selection of a team who will help implement a tool to assess risk and needs.

Between a federal shutdown, ongoing litigation, and new efforts to change bad policy, there’s a lot going on in the nation’s criminal justice system. Here’s what you might have missed.

The severe, gray, concrete walls of prison sometimes give way to unexpected bursts of color and potential moments of inspiration. The Massachusetts Department of Correction revealed some of these in a recent public records release containing photographs of several motivational posters hanging on its prison walls.