Published as part of the Brennan Center for Justice’s series on punitive excess, Michele identifies independent correctional oversight as a critical but often overlooked tool that provides a window into one of our most opaque public institutions, one that denies elected officials the option of remaining purposefully ignorant about correctional conditions.

At the onset of the pandemic, Michele drafted this rapid response paper detailing strategies that sheriffs could implement in order to prevent and respond to the spread of COVID-19 in jails.

This Foreword to a comprehensive volume on prison oversight identifies themes emerging from a major national conference on oversight and summarizes each article in the collection.