Pregnant Women in Prison Aren’t Getting Care, and No One Is Keeping Track

“A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that “comprehensive data on pregnant women incarcerated in state prisons and local jails do not exist” even though the U.S. has “one of the highest maternal mortality rates” and “incarcerates women at the highest rate in the world.””

https://reason.com/2025/05/23/pregnant-women-in-prison-arent-getting-care-and-no-one-is-keeping-track/

Reopening Alcatraz Is an Expensive, Unnecessary Pipe Dream

“President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he’s ordered the federal government to rebuild and reopen the infamous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. However, that plan will likely require a massive investment in a dysfunctional federal prison system that can barely staff the prisons it currently operates.”

“”The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE,” the president continued later in the post.”

“The federal penitentiary on San Francisco Bay’s Alcatraz Island opened in 1934 as a last stop for the federal prison system’s most troublesome and violent inmates. But it lasted less than three decades due to the exorbitant costs of operating an island prison. It closed in 1963.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/05/reopening-alcatraz-is-an-expensive-unnecessary-pipe-dream/

Asylum-seeker sent to Salvadoran mega-prison over autism awareness tattoo, family says

“Family and friends of a Venezuelan migrant living in Texas say officials sent him to an El Salvador mega-prison because he had an autism awareness tattoo.

Neri Jose Alvarado Borges was one of the hundreds of men deported by immigration authorities on March 15 to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, one of the most dangerous prisons in the world, his friends and family told NBC Dallas Fort Worth on Monday.

Borges has a tattoo that features a rainbow-colored ribbon composed of puzzle pieces, a symbol for autism awareness, along with the name of Borges’s autistic brother, according to the local outlet.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/asylum-seeker-sent-salvadoran-mega-155450440.html

‘Frankly Insane’: Trump’s Plan to Ship Migrants to Guantanamo Could Quickly Collapse

‘Frankly Insane’: Trump’s Plan to Ship Migrants to Guantanamo Could Quickly Collapse

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/05/frankly-insane-trumps-plan-to-ship-migrants-to-guantanamo-could-quickly-collapse-00202374

Texas Prisoners Are Being ‘Cooked Alive’ by High Temperatures, Investigation Says

“Only about 30 percent of Texas prisons are fully air-conditioned. While state law mandates that prison temperatures be kept between 65 degrees and 85 degrees, at dozens of state prisons, daily high temperatures topped that. At one prison, Garza West Unit, temperatures stayed above 100 degrees for 11 days straight in the summer of 2023.”

https://reason.com/2024/07/30/texas-prisoners-are-being-cooked-alive-by-high-temperatures-investigation-says/

An Oregon Man Was Wrongly Imprisoned for Almost a Year Because of an Error in a DMV Database

“Nicholas Chappelle spent almost a year in an Oregon prison after he was wrongfully convicted of driving with a suspended license. The reason for his incarceration? A shoddy DMV database. And the worst part is he’s not alone.
While it’s unclear just how many Oregonians have been wrongfully arrested or convicted due to errors in the database, at least 3,000 licenses have been mislabeled as indefinitely suspended. At least five wrongful arrests or convictions have been identified.”

Why Brittney Griner was released now

“There is a possibility there were other elements to the deal. There might be something entirely secret that we don’t know and won’t know, something that it would be both in Russia’s and the US’s interests to keep behind closed doors. After all, that’s how the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved, through quiet diplomacy, a complete picture of which wasn’t clear until later.”

11,000 Federal Inmates Were Sent Home During the Pandemic. Only 17 Were Arrested for New Crimes.

“Of the more than 11,000 federal inmates who were released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, 17 were returned to prison for committing new crimes, according to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).”

“of the 17, 10 committed drug crimes, while the rest of the charges included smuggling non-citizens, nonviolent domestic disturbance, theft, aggravated assault, and DUI.”

He Faces 10 Years to Life for Selling Pot, a Legal Business in Most States

“Jonathan Wall, a 26-year-old cannabis entrepreneur, has been confined at a federal supermax facility in Maryland for nearly 20 months, awaiting a May 2 trial that could send him to prison for life. Wall is accused of transporting more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana from California, where cannabis is legal for recreational use, to Maryland, which allows only medical use.

Wall’s case illustrates the draconian penalties that can still be imposed on people for selling pot at a time when most states have legalized marijuana businesses. As far as the federal government is concerned, all of those businesses are criminal enterprises. But depending on how federal prosecutors choose to exercise their discretion, selling pot can make you millions of dollars as a state-licensed supplier, or it can send you to prison for decades.”