“If you come here and you breathing and you got a valid driver’s license and you willing to work, then we’re willing to hire you.” Shane Bauer wanted to really understand life inside a prison. That’s not an easy task for a journalist to accomplish. So Bauer decided to take on another role. He got a gig as a correctional officer, and he definitely got a unique view of life on the inside, including stabbings, lockdowns, and inmates and officers pushed to the edge. From MoJo: My Four Months as a Prison Guard.

+ “The judge said he had arrived at his sentencing decision in part because of Mr. Loomis’s rating on the Compas assessment, a secret algorithm used in the Wisconsin justice system to calculate the likelihood that someone will commit another crime.” The NYT’s Mitch Smith on the backlash against using data to foretell defendants’ futures.