A 2015 KyCIR investigation featured Trent’s death and revealed myriad problems in jails across the state, including preventable inmate deaths, inadequate or nonexistent health care and oversight failures at all levels of government.

Several topics of our coverage merited debate in the most recent legislative session. Here’s an update on what became law and what didn’t pass through the statehouse.

Damon Hickman’s guilty plea marks the latest chapter in a long saga of abuse in a Kentucky jail, and underscores the costs of such misconduct.

The federal investigation into the Boyd County Detention Center is a rarity, only the third such investigation of a Kentucky jail or prison in the past 36 years.

Grant county officials have decided to keep its troubled jail open, abandoning a months-old plan to shutter the facility.

Capping more than a decade of turmoil over its troubled jail, Grant County fiscal court voted unanimously on Tuesday to permanently close the facility within 90 days.

The U.S. Department of Justice has issued yet another scathing assessment of the Grant County Detention Center. A KyCIR investigation previously revealed more than a decade of abuse, indifference, ineptitude and malfeasance at the jail.

WFPL's Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting has received top industry honors from a national journalism organization.

Legislation designed to hold Kentucky’s jailers more accountable has achieved mixed results so far in this year’s General Assembly.

The Kentucky Department of Corrections has named Rodney Ballard, Fayette County’s jailer, as its new commissioner.