Category: Updates on Prisons

Updates on Prisons

US Incarcerates Women at Rates Higher than Nearly Every Country, Report Reveals

Davis Vanguard 

September 24, 2025

By: Angelina Tun 

EASTHAMPTON, Mass. — A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative finds that every U.S. state incarcerates women at higher rates than nearly every country in the world, underscoring the nation’s status as a global outlier. According to the findings, “the United States remains a global outlier, with women’s incarceration reaching near-historic highs.”

The report compares women’s incarceration rates across U.S. states with independent nations. It accounts for all types of confinement, including prisons, jails, youth detention centers, tribal jails, and immigration detention facilities. Collectively, the United States represents only 4% of the world’s population of women but holds one-quarter of the women incarcerated globally.

The data shows stark contrasts between states and nations. South Dakota, which has the highest women’s incarceration rate in the U.S., surpasses every country in the world. Montana and Idaho also rank higher than any other nation. Women in Kentucky face incarceration rates nearly equivalent to those in El Salvador, “a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.” Even New Jersey, one of the lowest-ranking U.S. states, still mirrors the United Arab Emirates, where “nonmarital sex can result in a prison sentence of six months for women.”

Read full article from The Davis Vanguard here.

 

Updates on Prisons

New Report Finds California’s Second Look Resentencing Policies Lead to Lower Recidivism, Especially for Long-Term Prisoners

September 25, 2025

By David Greenwald

  • “People resentenced and released under these policies had very low rates of new serious and violent offenses.” – Alissa Skog, researcher at the California Policy Lab

BERKELEY, CA – A new series of reports from the California Policy Lab and the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code provides the most comprehensive evidence to date on how California’s “second look” resentencing reforms have reshaped the state’s criminal legal system.

The findings show that people released under these policies have low rates of reoffending, especially those who had served long prison terms before release.

To read the full article from Davis Vanguard go here. 

Updates on Prisons

Trump Admin Spends Millions To Reopen Private California Prison

San Francisco Gate

September 9, 2025 

By Lester Black

Immigrant rights activists are warning that the Trump administration is transporting immigration detainees to a private prison in the California desert that is operating illegally and could put detainees in danger.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began transporting detainees on Aug. 29 to the California City Correctional Facility, located approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles, and it’s now become a key part of the federal government’s deportation strategy, according to Marcela Hernandez, a director of organizing at Detention Watch Network.

“This opening is going to mean more violent raids across southern and northern California,” Hernandez said. She later added that “Anybody who gets targeted in the Bay Area or in northern California could be sent here.”

Read the full story from the San Francisco Gate here.

Updates on Prisons

How to Cut the Prison Population, Save Money and Make Us Safer

The New York Times

Sept. 8, 2025

By German Lopez, opinion writer

American prisons are fast becoming the world’s worst nursing homes, increasingly filled with aging criminals who can barely walk, let alone commit another crime. The idea that we should lock up people for life, even through old age, is often framed as being tough on crime. In reality, it gives years, if not decades, of shelter, food and health care to convicted criminals and redirects money from programs we know do a better job of protecting the public.

Older people are much less likely to commit crime than the young. They are also much more expensive to lock up. Federal prisons with the largest share of older prisoners spend five times as much per person on medical care and 14 times as much on medications as other facilities, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Read full article from The New York Times here. 

Updates on Prisons

Complaints about California’s hellishly hot prison cells have been mounting for years

Cal Matters 

by Jeanne Kuang

September 4, 2025

As climate change exacerbates the risks of extreme heat across California, the state’s prison officials plan to embark on a $38 million pilot program to figure out how to keep their prison cells cool. 

It comes after years of complaints from prisoners about dangerous temperatures during the state’s brutal summer heat waves, warnings by advocates that the problem will only get worse as the planet warms and the death of an incarcerated woman last year during California’s hottest month on record — which officials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation insist was unrelated to the heat.

But don’t expect the prisons to become air conditioned anytime soon. 

Read the full story from Cal Matters here.