Category: Updates on Prisons

Updates on Prisons

Top Trends in Criminal Legal Reform, 2025

The Sentencing Project

By Nicole D. Porter
Top Trends in Criminal Justice Reform, 2025 describes key changes formerly incarcerated activists, lawmakers, and advocates took to challenge mass incarceration in at least 10 states. 
Highlights include: 
  • Decarceration Reforms: Policymakers in Delaware, Georgia, and Maryland adopted or expanded second look and rehabilitation-based release policies authorizing reconsideration of certain criminal legal sentences after a term of years.

     

  • Collateral Consequences of Conviction: Efforts to reform collateral consequences in 2025 helped guarantee voting rights for persons impacted by the legal system in Connecticut, Colorado, and Washington state, while Illinois lawmakers passed a law authorizing expungement for persons with certain criminal convictions.
  • Advancing Youth Justice: Lawmakers in California, Hawaii, and Washington state adopted policies that demonstrated a commitment to supporting young defendants, including imposing limits on non-custodial probation for youth, establishing a minimum age for delinquency prosecution, and funding community-based diversion programs with standardized reporting to improve youth outcomes.
The full briefing paper, which includes details on the authorized legislation, can be found online here.
Updates on Prisons

‘Human trafficking behind prison walls’: women jailed in Texas allege rampant sexual abuse

The Guardian

Dec. 11, 2025

Kaley Johnson

Eleven women incarcerated at a federal prison in Texas allege they have been subjected to rampant sexual abuse by staff members in the past seven years. The allegations are the latest accusations of abuse within a federal prison system rife with claims of inhumane conditions.
 

The allegations at FMC Carswell, a federal medical women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas, are particularly troubling because the facility has been the focus of sexual abuse investigations for years, with 13 staff members convicted of abuse and misconduct since 1997 and promises of reform at various times.

Now, 11 women have filed fresh lawsuits alleging they have been sexually assaulted by prison staff in recent years.

The lawsuits have been filed since 1 May in federal District of Columbia court and list Beth Reese, the chief of the office of internal affairs for the BoP, and the United States as defendants. The suits each lodge 10 civil claims against the US, including negligence, sexual battery and trafficking victims.

In the lawsuits, the women identify six staff members at the facility as perpetrators, including a doctor, chaplain and three officers. Several women say they have been assaulted by the head of the BioMed office.

Read the full story from The Guardian here!

Updates on Prisons

As California prisons face ‘wave’ of sex assault lawsuits, new audit highlights slow discipline

Cal Matters

December 9, 2025

by Nigel Duara

In summary

A new report on discipline in California prisons highlights slow handling of several sex assault cases filed against officers. In lawsuits, women have accused 83 officers of sexual misconduct.

Five California correctional officers who were accused of sexually assaulting incarcerated people over the last dozen years remain employed by the state, according to a new audit from the state prisons’ inspector general. 

The audit, released last week, is a twice-a-year summary of how the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation addresses complaints about its staff members. Overall, the inspector general found fault with the internal affairs department’s investigations into prison guard misconduct.

The audit labeled 86% of the prison system’s internal affairs disciplinary and criminal caseload as “inadequate” or “needs improvement” — only 14% of the cases handled by the internal affairs department were rated “adequate.” Inadequate means there were significant problems with the investigation that affected its final outcome. The less-serious label, “needs improvement,” meant that the process had problems, but none so serious that they compromised the investigation. 

Read the Full Story from CAL Matters here!

Updates on Prisons

Incarcerated Women and Girls

The Sentencing Project

By: Kristen M. Budd, Ph.D., Dinesh Napal and Joshua Rovner
 

Research on female incarceration is critical to understanding the full consequences of mass incarceration and to unraveling the policies and practices that lead to their criminalization. The female incarcerated population stands over seven times as high than in 1980.

Over the past quarter century, there has been a profound change in the involvement of women within the criminal legal system. This is the result of more expansive law enforcement efforts, stiffer drug sentencing laws, and post-conviction barriers to reentry that uniquely affect women. The female incarcerated population is over seven times as high than in 1980. Over sixty percent (62%) of imprisoned women in state prisons have a child under the age of 18.

Between 1980 and 2023, the number of incarcerated women increased by over 600%, rising from a total of 26,326 in 1980 to 186,244 in 2023. While 2020 saw a substantial downsizing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend reversed with a 22% increase in 2023.

Read the Full Report from the Sentencing Project here. 

Updates on Prisons

ICE opened a detention center in a former California prison. Detainees are suing over conditions inside

Cal Matters

November 13, 2025

by Nigel Duara and Cayla Mihalovich

In Summary

Immigrants in California’s newest ICE detention center allege they’re experiencing inhumane conditions and that they’re not getting access to lawyers. Until recently, the site was a state prison.

Seven detainees at an immigration detention center in California City have sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, alleging the facility is polluted by sewage leaks, infested with bugs and is denying people access to food, water and their lawyers. 

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California also claims detainees do not have appropriate clothing for the chilly desert nights, nor appropriate medical attention for life-threatening conditions. The lawsuit alleges detainees with mobility issues don’t have access to wheelchairs, and in some cases are unable to bathe or dress themselves. 

The plaintiffs are seeking to make the lawsuit a class action on behalf of all detainees housed at the California City Immigration Processing Center, which is about 75 miles east of Bakersfield and run by the private prison company CoreCivic. 

“In their haste to warehouse hundreds of men and women in this isolated facility, defendants have failed to provide for the basic human needs of the people for whose lives and wellbeing they are legally responsible,” the lawsuit alleges.

Read more from Cal Matters here.