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This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Nobody wants to go to jail or see a loved one taken there.

They're crowded, unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous. But we generally expect that the incarcerated

will get the basics, a bed and toilet, three meals a day,

and health care. But our guest, New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman, begins her latest article

with the story of a woman in her 60s who died of protein calorie malnutrition, the apparent

result of prolonged starvation during her four-month stay at a Tucson, Arizona jail.

Stillman finds that starving in jail is far more common than you might think. The victims are often

mentally ill people who are arrested for minor crimes and then languished behind bars untreated

and unable to make bail. Lawyers and activists say the problem has increased with the practice of counties

granting contracts to private companies to provide health care to the incarcerated.

Stillman interviewed many surviving relatives and reviewed countless records of disturbing

cases for her article titled Starved in Jail.

In addition to her work for the New Yorker, Sarah Stillman teaches journalism at Yale, where

she also runs the Yale investigative reporting lab.

Stillman won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for her article about the

little-known but widely used legal doctrine of felony murder.

That's a subject we'll get to a little later.

Well, Sarah Stillman, welcome to Fresh Air.

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