Emerging evidence suggests that violence perpetrated against women who use and inject drugs may be worse than previously expected. In our recent investigation, “Violence Against Women Who Inject Drugs,” published in JAMA Network Open in March, my colleagues and I found that experiencing violence was nearly universal for women who inject drugs in Melbourne, Australia. Eighty-two percent had been assaulted at some time. Nearly 2 in 5 women had been sexually assaulted. 

Australia is often seen as a world leader in harm reduction, with strong systems to reduce drug-related harm and social supports that can help people access income, housing, and services for domestic and family violence. However, as with many high-income countries, women who use drugs are invisibilized in policies to end violence against women. Despite facing much higher risk of abuse than other marginalized groups, they are not recognized as a key priority population in Australia’s 10-year plan to end violence against women and children.

Women described major barriers to engaging in care. They feared stigma from their health care provider—or, more frightening still, that their children would be put at risk of removal.

While much violence is suffered alone and women are often reluctant to access medical care in the aftermath, nearly one in four women who inject drugs, according to our paper, presented to the emergency department due to assault over a 10-year period. Most of these women had severe enough injuries to be admitted to hospital. 

Only one in three women reported accessing medical health care after an assault, however, and this was typically contact with a counselor. In in-depth interviews, women described major barriers to engaging in care for their assault. They feared stigma from their health care provider about their drug use, for example—or, more frightening still, that their children would be put at risk of removal. 

Women who inject drugs are also often marginalized in other ways, and sometimes lack access to a phone or money for transport to engage with violence services that they need. 

This all heightens vulnerability when drug acquisition in unregulated markets and use under prohibition can be weaponized against women as a method of control. In these circumstances, control of access to methamphetamine, which is commonly smoked in Australia, may play a particularly sinister role in sexual coercion, according to past research.

My colleagues and I have been following up on these issues. In research examining violence against people who smoke meth, which has not yet been published, we found that two in three women reported recent assault over an 8.5-year period—at an average of six separate occasions of recent violence. Nearly one-third of women reported that the person who used violence against them was a current or ex-partner. One in six of the women had presented to an emergency department after being assaulted.  

Women who use substances rarely conform to society’s perspective of the “perfect victim.” Public and institutional ideals about who is believable, deserving of sympathy or worthy of protection are often shaped by entrenched stigma towards people who use drugs. 

In many countries, responses to violence against women still fail to account for how stigma, substance use, and gendered power intersect.

When a woman is known to use drugs, signs of abuse can be dismissed, minimized or interpreted through criminality and disorder, rather than vulnerability. Consequently, violence towards this population is somehow seen as expected or even deserved. Alternatively, women are at risk of being misidentified as the primary aggressor in an abusive situation.

For many women, children become a powerful tool of coercive control. Partners can threaten to report drug use and manipulate child protection or custody fears. Women may stay in dangerous relationships, avoid health care or withdraw from support services not because they do not need help, but because seeking it, or disclosing the complete context of their situation, can be too high-risk.

The invisibilization of women who use drugs is also reflected in drug and violence policy. Resourcing and attention are more likely to be paid to those groups identifiable within formal policy documents and commitments. In Australia, harm reduction policy does not adequately address the issue of violence and ending-violence policy does not adequately identify people who use substances. And Australia is unlikely to be unique. 

In many countries, responses to violence against women still fail to account for how stigma, substance use and gendered power intersect, leaving some of the most vulnerable women outside of public discourse, unsupported and alone.

Photograph (adapted) via the CDC

The post We Need to Focus on Violence Against Women Who Use Drugs appeared first on Filter.

The 95-percent stat itself isn’t accurate; it’s from the early 2000s, and hasn’t been true for a long time. Today it’d be around 84 percent, and that’s with the extremely conservative assumption that the only people who won’t come home are the ones serving 50 years or longer. The United States Sentencing Commission considers a de facto life sentence to be anything over 39 years and two months. Which is about the average sentence length for prisoners in Georgia right now. Lifers aren’t the outliers that they used to be.

Mandatory minimums, “three strikes” or “repeat offender” laws, truth-in-sentencing laws, sentence stacking and the formal or informal elimination of parole were all already underway by the turn of the century, and even as the size of the United States prison population has changed trajectories a few times since then the proportion of people serving life has continued to grow. (This refers to people sentenced to life with parole, life without parole, de facto life, and the death penalty.)

Since 2020 when corrections officers across the country quit in droves amid the COVID-19 pandemic, lifers—specifically the long-timers who’ve already been in prison a while—have been the ones keeping the peace at their facilities, relatively speaking. But as their role becomes more critical, corrections departments are simultaneously treating them as more expendable. Moving the older and vulnerable folks into gang-controlled units to see if that diffuses the violence; skipping over them for basic resources and programming because they don’t factor into recidivism statistics.

For example, lifers are generally ineligible for medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD), just by virtue of being lifers; if a prison has a Suboxone program at all, it’s likely considered a re-entry service and only made available to people with release dates in the next few weeks or months. Even the more traditional, non-MOUD treatment programs, which mostly consist of group meetings with limited capacity, will prioritize the people whose counselors wrote it into their re-entry plan, or who were steered toward it by the parole board.

As the only people who have to stay in the system, lifers the only ones with any real reason to make it better. Or who know how anything works.

Jobs are also considered re-entry preparation. Meaning that on wait lists—rarely do prisons have enough jobs to go around—people are in some cases bumped up or down by release date. Lifers are already ineligible for many if not most of the best-paying jobs, because they can’t go to work-release camps. Even in states that don’t pay prisoners at all, lifers who are barred from those jobs can still find themselves cut off from basic resources that went with them.

Work assignments, educational or vocational programming, pretty much any meaningful way to pass the time—these things only exist in the context of re-entry, family reunification, public safety and reducing recidivism.

The few officers who do show up, to work 16-hour shifts while they bring in contraband to offset the low pay, are rookies who will quit in a few months. The private kitchen contractors, whose job is to spend less on food than the state would have, will continue to shrink the portions of the meal-replacement powders they serve instead of food because future health care costs aren’t their problem. The private health care contractors can deny necessary surgeries and stop ordering everyone’s blood-pressure medication so they can pass the savings to their shareholders, because they’re not sticking around either. So there is an obvious need to invest in lifers. As the only people who have to stay in the system, they’re the only ones with any real reason to make it better, and the long-timers are the only ones who’ve been around long enough to know how anything works.

Though lifers build up so much expertise about the prison system they live in, they’re rarely able to compare notes with lifers in other systems, or see how the forces affecting them fit in with what’s happening in the rest of the country. The following is a discussion between three lifers who’ve each been incarcerated for around 30 years, each in a different state and different type of prison environment. It was not conducted in real time but in stages, as each contributor’s responses were relayed back and forth. As such, certain responses have been organized for readability rather than reproduced in strict chronological order.

Tony Vick, in Tennessee Department of Correction custody since 1997, serving life without parole: In Tennessee the biggest way lifers are hurt is, we can’t get into any of the good prisons. All the good prisons are short term-only prisons, 10 years or less. So we can’t get to a prison that has good [programming], and less violence, because they’re all short-time prisons. They call a prison like this one a time-building prison, and they’re the worst prisons. Might as well call it a death-waiting facility.

Jonathan Kirkpatrick, in Washington State Department of Corrections custody since 1995, serving a 60-year sentence: In this state I think custody plays a bigger role than length of time. [But] length of time is factored into your custody, so for example I reached Minimum but they have a special designation, Long-Term Minimum and this is the lowest security level I can get. So we can be classified as Minimum, but we can only go to Medium-capable facilities. So we have to have two fences between us and freedom, is what that means. Some Minimum facilities, like [work-release] camps, don’t have any fences, some have one fence, but nobody Long-Term Minimum can go to those facilities.

Jimmy Iakovos (pseudonym), in Georgia Department of Corrections custody since the early 1990s, serving life with parole: Politicians with no experience with prisons make policy calls totally contrary to all that is known to work. That pressure recently caused [a mass transfer of lifers from Medium-security Calhoun State Prison] to make room for short-timers. Consider that the lifers there had earned Medium security and were accepting of the terrible heat and insects of Deep South Georgia, because they were left alone to live as comfortable as they could make it with phones and whatnot. 

Now [Calhoun] is full of short-timers who know they are leaving in X amount of months. They are tearing the place apart because they have no reason not to.

Vick: I would dare say that the most change the younger inmates passing through, the most education and positive change they get are from the old-timers taking them under their wing and trying to help. That’s more than what the state will do for you. I say that without any hesitation. That’s why you have to invest in lifers, too. They are your constant support, constant teachers, constant moral police, constant peacemakers … lifers are the Ted Talks of the prison system.

The current ideology of what Americans think about prisons, it’s going more and more toward retaliation and less toward rehabilitation. They’re giving such long sentences, they want to just forget about you. They want you to go off to prison and they don’t have to think about you anymore. So the only reason they have to think about you is if you’re gonna come out, so they’re trying harder and harder to not let that happen. Get you sent in there once and for all, and then we don’t have to worry about you no more; we just have to build more prisons. 

Iakovos: When I first began we had Pell grants for four-year degrees available. The education director at the prison then turned me down saying, You have a fresh life sentence. You have plenty of time to get that degree. I got one year in before the Pell grant was cancelled. It’s back now, but none of the colleges are jumping at the chance to get involved. 

Kirkpatrick: That’s really similar here. In the first few months of my sentence we had Pell grants, before the feds took it. Now they’re back but there’s this real emphasis on [younger folks] with this FAFSA thing. I don’t know what it stands for, but I was starting my associate degree and got a few classes in and then the college said they needed me to fill out the FAFSA grant stuff and I got denied. It’s really common, here at least, to not get anything … this quarter the Black Prisoners’ Caucus is gonna give me a couple of classes, that’s really the main way that guys are doing it. If you’re doing any amount of time here you’re not getting classes through government grants.

Vick: If there are new computer coding programs or things like that, they don’t want anybody not getting out in there. They don’t bother putting you in a program for a good-paying job, or any self-improvement type of programming, or in any class with a certificate—what do you need that class for if you don’t need the certificate to show the parole board?

Iakovos: Lifers [in GDC] are not outright denied programs, classes, vocational training etc, but we are out at the back of the line … Our superpower is waiting lists. We naturally stick around long enough to make an issue if we have been waiting patiently. Educational aide jobs do not require long-timers, but those are the ones who have been on the waiting list the longest, so 90 percent of the time are the ones that get the job.

GDC only issues raincoats, thermal underwear and knit skull caps (AKA toboggans) to people assigned to work outside details. [Lifers are no longer assigned to those details, so that change] denied us [winter] clothes. Outside of very picky shakedowns or transfers, once I’m issued an item it’s mine until I choose to get rid of it. I had a thermal top that was 16 years old before it developed a hole in it. Because I needed it for two months a year. But without it, those two months are a misery. 

Now granted, I am able to buy my own clothes. But there are lifers older than I, who have served longer than I, who have [no money] coming in. Of course we—other lifers—look out for these men as we can, but that should not be required for survival.

Vick: [Correctional industries here] no longer hires anybody .. who doesn’t have a possibility of getting out in the next 25 years. Because of all their re-entry programs that they have now. They want people to be able to count toward their statistics. And here’s the problem, some people spend years learning those big six-color [printing press] machines that cost $1 million. You can’t learn those in a year or two. I can understand them wanting a mixture of people there. And we [lifers] even advocated for that, saying, Listen, you should at least have like 20 people who have long sentences so you can have some continuity. But …

Iakovos: The Braille transcribing program here specifically requires at least five years [served], and five remaining to serve in order to be considered … most short-timers never get in. Sometimes one will be foisted upon the group through connections to administration. Worthless for the business.

A lot of people who come in with marketable job skills are reluctant to give their skills away for free. At first. Over time they get bored and or decide to keep skills sharp and gravitate to the job near their field.

Kirkpatrick: Here you can go to correctional industries for seven years. But [these days] a regular job you can only spend two years, and have to get extensions approved by an associate superintendent or above. Reason is the same, don’t want prisoners to get comfortable. But that logic doesn’t stand … it’s the officers who get comfortable in their positions and let people do things they shouldn’t. And that’s the problem. It’s not because I live here and I’m gonna be exposed to the same thing every day, day in and day out for the rest of my life. How am I supposed to not get familiar with things? This is where I live. The officers are the ones who need to get moved around so they don’t get complacent and comfortable. My opinion at least.

Vick: Yes, that’s a good point. Because if the officers are following policy, it shouldn’t matter what the inmates are doing. It’s the officers being corrupted.

Kirkpatrick: Back when I was at Stafford Creek, where they have a lot of jobs, there was a short minute where they didn’t care who worked there. Then all of a sudden everybody doing more than 20 years got fired. Took us four or five years but then it was brought to everybody’s attention that they were supposed to have 10 percent of the population that works there be lifers, it’s supposed to reflect the population of prisoners. But they hated having lifers because their whole gig is, We’re building people for getting out. They like it when people doing a really long time come in at the end of their sentence, and then what they do is, Look, we reformed this person!

Vick: About 10 years ago they started a policy of rotating certain jobs every year, out of fear that inmate and staff would get too close. It seemed ridiculous, because you got all this skill associated with jobs you have to learn. Usually lifers or long-timers were the ones that had those jobs, because they had the most knowledge. You wait your whole life to get a job like that in prison, then all of a sudden you can’t have it no more. They diminish your skill, make you feel like it doesn’t matter if you know anything or not. You’re just a number. We’ll just move you around on a spreadsheet. We’ll just put another cow in the field.

The staff here stopped following that policy to tell you the truth. Maybe sometimes, depending on the warden or job coordinator, but they haven’t really been doing it here. I think they saw that they were supposed to take people with all this experience and [replace them] and just realized, My goodness, we can’t do that or we will never pass an audit.

Kirkpatrick: Maybe it’s different in other states, but here almost all the guys who have been around for a long time—we just want to chill. Most of the time, 90 percent of us just want to chill. And if they put us in the same place it’s going to be a real mellow institution, right? And they never do that, just let us all chill out. And I sort of understand why. In a way, the old-timers are also the most dangerous, right? They have the most experience and know-how. So I understand. But there are a lot of us that, given the opportunity to go to a lower custody level, it’d be nothing but good for [DOC] and it’d be less money spent on keeping us incarcerated.

Vick: If they put all of us [lifers] in one pod they would never even have to have an officer come in. All we want is to have peace and get along. But they know if they did that the rest of the prison would be so much more violent and chaotic, they gotta disperse us. Just using us old folks to mellow it out, keep the peace. While causing us more harm, putting us in danger, denying us programming.

Lifers are often the stability in the unit. They try to keep it clean, keep it maintained. The newcomers don’t really give a flip. They don’t regard it as any sort of home, they’re just passing through. And when I first come to prison you’d see guards here 20 years, 30 years, who retired in this industry. Now very seldom do you see guards who’ve been here more than five years, and the new ones coming in, of course, they don’t have any respect for where they are. They’re just trying to collect a paycheck and clock out, and I don’t blame them.

Iakovos: The difference is, this is a lifer’s home. We are not just visitors. Lifers are invested in prisons being comfortable, and in being left alone by the guards. 

Meanwhile, the Close security prisons that those [Calhoun] lifers were sent to have become chill, because of the overwhelming chill attitude of a bunch of lifers just trying to do the time unfucked with. We know that the police have to respond to the trouble areas. So the Close security prisons are becoming the least staffed. Completely contradictory of any planned best use of resources excusing the higher cost of higher-security prisons. Lol.

Top and first inset image (cropped) via Washington Office of the Corrections Ombuds. Second inset image via They Have No Voice. Third inset image via Tennessee Department of Correction/YouTube.

The post Three Lifers on Why Prisons Need Re-Entry Support for the Prisoners Who Aren’t Coming Home appeared first on Filter.

“OSP was built so long ago that it was not built for the prison population we have now,” she told Filter. “No one, back when OSP was constructed, could have envisioned that we would double our incarceration rate.”

In 1994, Oregon voters approved a dramatic expansion of mandatory minimum sentencing with Ballot Measure 11. Over the next two decades the Oregon Department of Corrections population grew from around 6,700 people to more than 14,000. Since its peak in 2013 the population has decreased to around 12,000. Kaplan said this still puts enormous strain on the entire system but especially on OSP, which is home to about one-third of the nearly 1,000 ODOC prisoners serving life sentences. Oregon is also among the 17 states that have effectively abolished parole. ODOC data show that more than 1,300 people in ODOC custody are 61 or older.

Though most of the facility’s housing units were built in the 1950s, ODOC has acknowledged that “Oregon State Penitentiary is well beyond its useful life and doesn’t support the level of care needed” for the aging population, estimating a cost of $200 million to bring the facility into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act—a figure that “will continue to grow exponentially.” A $3 million feasibility study is underway to begin designs for construction of a centralized health care facility as well as a new facility to replace OSP.

Shannon Wight, executive director of Portland based Partnership for Safety and Justice, is disappointed that the plan to build new prisons is moving forward, when those funds would have been better spent on re-entry support and culturally specific services. She was part of the movement that changed the trajectory of the ODOC population with sentencing reform legislation in 2013, when Oregon was instead preparing to open another prison. In 2017, advocates again held off plans to open a new prisons, this time for the women’s system. Between 2000 and 2007 ODOC opened four new facilities, but has not opened any since then. 

Wight was struck by how ODOC framed the feasibility study not as a matter of public safety or the best use of taxpayer dollars, but simply as a study to find the best plot of land for new construction.

“It felt so much like the cart before the horse,” she told Filter. 

In an Oregon Secretary of State audit released in late July, the proposed centralized health care facility is referred to explicitly as a “centralized geriatric medical facility.” That audit revealed an ODOC maintenance backlog of nearly $861 million, noting that OSP in particular “continues to pose serious safety, health, and accessibility risks to adults in custody” due to “regular emergency failures, including sewer line breaks, boiler outages, and inaccessible critical services.” It recommended that the department “develop and implement a plan” for emptying “unsafe facilities, such as the Oregon State Penitentiary.” The audit references the feasibility study, though without explicitly linking it to the recommendations.

“We’re dealing with the infrastructure issue,” ODOC Communication Manager & Legislative Director Harvey Mathews told Filter.

He said that the department doesn’t want to “expand the carceral footprint or expand on the number of beds,” but is under-resourced. ODOC originally requested $5 million for the feasibility study, which Mathews considers a modest ask. 

“They should have about $70-$80 million [in] this first phase of stakeholder outreach and architectural designs and site studies,” he said, explaining that that would be about 10 percent of the estimated cost to replace just OSP, not including the separate health care facility. “But we’re doing this on a shoestring budget for now.”

Wanda Bertram of Prison Policy Initiative has studied the various ways states across the nation pitch new prison construction. She said that even when it’s not a mega-prison that’s explicitly intended to increase bedspace, opening any new facility without examining the sentencing laws that created this strain seems like a very costly, short-sighted and irresponsible approach. 

“The criminal-legal system has shown it is completely capable of filling all of the prison space that’s available,” Bertram told Filter. “The very circumstances that apparently caused [ODOC] to want to build a new prison—the aging prison population—still exist.” 

Kaplan is participating in an OSP workshop teaching incarcerated peer mentors how to work with prisoners who have Alzheimer’s or dementia, since that portion of the population is increasing both at OSP and across the state. She doesn’t see the slow and costly process of new construction as the right solution. She said the situation cries out for at least an exploration of reforms that would release people with advanced medical needs, rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a geriatric-focused facility. Between that facility and the OSP replacement, the total cost would likely be more than $1 billion.

“There’s people now who can’t walk, who can’t see, who have dementia,” she said. “It seems to me that there might be a better approach.”  

Despite the common misconception that prisons are meant to inflict punishment, being in prison is in fact the punishment in and of itself. But Kaplan said this isn’t meant to leave people with Alzheimer’s and dementia “suffering into their old age”; that goes beyond the pale of state-sanctioned punishment.

For her, this is what the feasibility study and plans for new construction don’t address.

“We have an aging prison population that needs attention right now.”

Top image (cropped) via Oregon Department of Corrections. Inset images (cropped) via Oregon Secretary of State.

The post Oregon Will Close Its Oldest Prison by Building Two, One for “Geriatric” Care appeared first on Filter.

“Y’all know how to write,” he said. “So can you help me write to my daughter?”

It turned out that Dave, incarcerated for the past 40-plus years, had never learned to read or write. Decades ago he had tried to send his daughter a letter, but it got sent back, and without knowing how to contact her he’d given up.

The writing club helped him compose a letter. A few weeks later, he got one back:

Dad,
I wrote you a long letter years ago, and when you did not respond I thought you didn’t want to talk anymore. I never knew you could not read or write. I hope it’s not too late to get to know each other.

Dave’s daughter now visits him often. He’s gotten to meet his three grandkids. This sparked the writing club to begin helping others in Dave’s position write similar letters (always checking first that the courts have not restricted contact with the recipient). As a result, more than a dozen men have reconnected with their families. If it’s not possible for someone to physically write the letter then a writing club member will put pen to paper for them and add a disclosure that the handwriting is not the author’s, but for the most part we’ve been able to support people in writing out their letters themselves. 

A lot of pain has been healed at the crochet club table.

When people saw Travis and Jeremy crocheting hats and scarves to send to family members on the outside, they asked to commission a few items to send to their own families. Travis and Jeremy always asked if they’d like to learn the skill themselves, and soon there was a full circle of big burly men crocheting and talking about their lives.

A lot of pain has been healed at that table. More recently the group crocheted enough hats and scarves to send to a homeless shelter in Nashville. They’re currently working on crocheted animals that will go to kids in the foster care system over the holidays. 

Each night Corey and Matt, both military veterans, can be seen working out together around the unit. They do burpees in the dayroom. They climb over the railing in front of the upper tier of cells and use the ledge as a pull-up bar. They have fashioned a barbell out of a broom handle and two water bags. A sign they posted in the unit reads:

THE MAN DOESN’T
CARE IF YOU
LIVE OR DIE
IT’S UP TO YOU
SEE COREY OR MATT
FOR DETAILS

Soon they were leading a group of trainees through military-style exercises. Many of those who joined were taking medication for high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes. After eight weeks, the eight guys who’d stuck with Corey and Matt’s workouts had lost an average of 20 lbs each and in some cases no longer needed their medications. Corey and Matt’s boot camp has a waiting list now.

Many of the men in my living unit, including myself, are over 60. A couple are in their 90s. They use wheelchairs and walkers, and have mostly outlived the friends and family they had on the outside. They are unable to earn even a few cents an hour through prison jobs, and have no one else to support them, yet they still need money for basics like food and toiletries, and batteries for hearing aids. Denture cream is one of the most expensive hygiene items sold at commissary, at around $9.

Prisoners with a balance of zero on their account are eligible to receive a free hygiene pack once a month. This pack includes a small container of body wash, a small razor, a small toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste. Not enough for a month for anyone, young or old.

A few years back I began ordering whatever essentials I could afford for the older men in my living unit, and soon formed a mutual aid collective with others who were moved to do the same. We try to be present in their lives, ensure that they’ve been able to bathe or that their bedding gets changed and cleaned, or sometimes read to those who never learned how or can no longer see well. But the financial need was much greater than we could meet with our own funds, and so we began writing letters and making calls to friends on the street. Over time we’ve managed to pair up many of the older folks in need with a “sponsor” in the free world, someone willing to help them with their basic needs and perhaps be a pen pal. 

Something remarkable is that all of these services are being offered for free.

Sponsors don’t always last, and so there’s a never-ending campaign of letters and calls. But we remember our own fathers and grandfathers, and can’t imagine them being mistreated or forgotten. 

After three decades of incarceration I’m becoming one of these old men myself, my body debilitated by heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure. These days my fingers can barely feel the pen in my hand. Building community in prison can be a source of purpose, and even joy, but for me at least it’s never been a completely selfless endeavor; I’ve always quietly hoped that the eldercare collective would still be there when the day comes that I need someone to read to me or make sure I have denture cream, too.

Something remarkable is that all of these services are being offered for free. Everyone in prison needs to hustle to survive, and on the outside it would be customary to charge for many of these things anyway. But these communities all began with someone just trying to make prison bearable, or to grow as a person, and finding that others around them were trying to do the same. The impulse to lend a helping hand, even in a place of such deprivation, reminds us all that we’re human.

My mamma was a great cook. The vegetables we grew on our small plot of land kept us fed, but without much to spare. A pot of vegetable soup with some cornbread was a great prize at the end of the day of farm labor. One day she accidentally over-salted the soup. We couldn’t afford to throw it out, and so as I watched, puzzled, she peeled two potatoes and dropped them into the pot to simmer. An hour later she fished them back out, tasted the broth, and declared it perfect. I learned her lesson—that there are ways of working with what we have, and that some things are too valuable to throw away.

Image (cropped) via Oregon Department of Corrections

The post The Communities We’ve Built in Prison appeared first on Filter.

The authors of a study published in International Journal of Drug Policy show how this has disproportionately affected First Nations Peoples. They looked at safer opioid supply access among registered First Nations Peoples in Ontario between 2019 and 2023, and found that during that period the number of new program initiations increased nearly fivefold—from 15 individuals to 92. The rate was also higher than that of the general Ontario population.

Safer supply programs provide eligible patients with regulated, pharmaceutical alternatives to street-supply drugs, such as hydromorphone as an alternative to the unregulated fentanyl supply.

Coauthor Ashley Smoke was an early advocate for safer supply.

“We knew people were overdosing and dying when they did not have to,” Smoke told Filter. “What was needed was access to a safe and regulated supply of the substances people were already using, so they were not forced to rely on the poisoned street supply.”

Smoke, from Alderville First Nation, is a member of the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network Lived Experience Advisory Group. They are the cofounder of the Ontario Network of People Who Use Drugs, and wear many other hats in harm reduction and drug policy. In their first experience with safer supply they were referred to a program with a strong Indigenous culture, but struggled to access it because of the distance from where they lived.

Many Indigenous people in rural and remote areas experience the same problem. The study found that in 2023, only six of the 92 individuals who started safer supply lived in First Nations communities. The programs had been concentrated in urban areas. The authors also noted that providers within First Nations communities may be unlikely to prescribe safer supply, due to wariness about overprescribing.

The researchers cite ongoing trauma from the Indian Residential Schools and child welfare system.

During approximately the same time period used for the study, the overdose rate among First Nations Peoples in Ontario tripled. In 2022 the rate of fatal overdose was approximately nine times that of the general Ontario population.

The researchers cite ongoing trauma from the Indian Residential Schools and child welfare system. Between the 1830s and 1990s more than 150,000 Indigenous children across Canada were taken from their homes and sent to government-funded, primarily Christian boarding schools. In 2015 this was formally recognized as cultural genocide.

“Indigenous communities have been disproportionately affected by the toxic drug crisis for many years,” coauthor Katie Pine told Filter. “We continue to see the impacts on individuals, families and entire communities.”

Pine is an opioid strategic planning specialist for the Anishinabek Nation, based in North Bay. She said that while it was clear the crisis was continuing to disproportionately impact First Nations communities across Ontario, not enough is known about their on-the-ground experiences of accessing safer supply. The study showed that among First Nations Peoples there is “growing engagement with this harm reduction approach,” making the province’s current stance even more concerning.

“I don’t think any of the findings were particularly surprising to me,” Pine said. “I had worked with safer supply programs and had firsthand experience supporting people who were accessing those services.”

Pine hopes the paper reaches policymakers, and those in a position to fund these types of programs.

“Before safer supply, I had lost custody of my son,” Smoke said. “My relationship with my partner was broken. I had strained relationships with family members, and so much of my life was organized around trying not to be sick, trying to manage pain, trying to access substances, and trying to survive.” 

Safer supply changed all that. Once Smoke no longer had to rely on the unpredictable street supply, the “constant pressure, fear and instability” in their life decreased. They regained custody of their son. They were able to focus on repairing their relationships and building a career. Smoke and their partner now have their own home. Smoke credits safer supply for allowing them to make these changes.

“For Indigenous people, substance use cannot be separated from colonization, residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, child welfare, criminalization, racism, poverty, grief, trauma, displacement, and disconnection from culture, land, family and community,” Smoke said. “If safer supply only focuses on the prescription, it misses the full context of people’s lives.” 

Image via Washington State Healthcare Authority

The post How Ontario’s Safer Supply Programs Impacted First Nations Peoples appeared first on Filter.

Touted by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office (SFSO) as “California’s first law enforcement-led crisis stabilization center,” RESET holds people who’ve just been arrested for public intoxication or being under the influence of a controlled substance. They are detained until staff give them a certificate declaring that they’re able to care for themselves, after which they can voluntarily stay for up to 23 hours. Earlier in 2026, an internal city memo obtained by Mission Local warned that RESET carries a “very high legal risk” of being classified as a jail or a detention facility.

The facility is located in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, and only accepts detainees from District 6, which also includes the Tenderloin. Black residents comprise less than 10 percent of the population in those neighborhoods, while white residents comprise a little over 27 percent. But at publication time the dashboard shows that a little over half of the 984 detainees admitted so far were white, and a little over one-quarter were Black, meaning Black people are being the most disproportionately detained.

RESET is located directly across from the primary intake facility for the county jail system, and San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto has stated that RESET’s benefits include “easing the strain on our jails.” But a litany of conditions make many detainees ineligible for RESET, including the administration of Narcan, active warrants, psychiatric criteria, and possession of controlled substances and/or personal property above a certain threshold.

According to a San Francisco Civil Grand Jury report published in June, 95 percent of people “held in the SFSO jail are charged with felony crimes, while typical misdemeanor-only arrestees without warrants are booked and released within a day or so, many before they are assigned a bed.” RESET’s existence may encourage officers to arrest people they might otherwise have left alone.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved RESET in early 2026 by a vote of 9-2. Both the supervisors who voted against expressed concerns that there wouldn’t be any tangible way to measure the impact of the center.

MAKING AN IMPACT: Take a sneak peek into the #RESETCenter. And take a look at the #sfsheriff new online public dashboard- which has real-time insights into admissions, outcomes, and how the program is helping individuals in crisis while allowing law enforcement officers to get… pic.twitter.com/ajqPvmhAER

— SF Sheriff’s Office (@SheriffSF) July 8, 2026

RESET represents the city’s first performance-based contract for services related to public health and homelessness. This doesn’t refer to how RESET impacts the city, but to how much the city pays to Connections Health Solutions, the Arizona-based for-profit contractor operating the program. Connections is receiving a flat monthly rate between $528,339 and $657,018 during 2026, after which the rate will be $555,797, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. But it can make up to an additional 12.5 percent by hitting certain performance metrics, including linking more than 30 percent of detainees to services and keeping the officer drop-off time under eight minutes. Data show it takes approximately five minutes for officers to turn someone over to RESET staff and return to their other duties.

Cops in San Francisco as well as elsewhere in California are more likely to stop Black residents over outstanding warrants compared to white residents. Black residents have significantly more prior arrests and convictions than their white counterparts due to this long history of unequal stops and biased enforcement. They are also more likely than whites to be referred to involuntary psychiatric holds, carceral practices rooted in longstanding clinical-racial bias.

Citywide, Black residents comprise only around 5 percent of the population; white residents, around 37 percent.

San Francisco was redlined in 1937, with immigrant neighborhoods like SoMA graded “hazardous” to justify mortgage denials and economic underinvestment. This legacy continues today. An April civil rights complaint filed by the SOMA West Neighborhood Association alleges that the city treats the area as a “containment zone” for poverty, while protecting the city’s wealthy West Side neighborhoods.

In 2024, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors formally apologized to Black residents for “systemic and structural discrimination” and “targeted acts of violence,” committing to the “rectification and redress of past policies and misdeeds.” Yet earlier in 2026 as the city was getting ready to launch RESET, it cut $57 million from the Department of Public Health budget—gutting harm reduction and HIV services, and vital programs serving Black, Brown and trans communities.

A “jail-alternative” like RESET is yet just another arm of criminalization and surveillance targeting Black residents.

Image via San Francisco Sheriff’s Office/X

The post New Public Dashboard for SF’s “Law Enforcement-Led” RESET Center appeared first on Filter.

Lockdown status is confirmed when kitchen workers arrived to deliver meals, escorted by an officer who opens the main door just enough for us to file past one at a time and receive an off-brand Styrofoam tray.

Cell phones come out. We learn the reason—another fight between rival gangs.

No one is surprised. Since he first took office in 2019, Governor Brian Kemp (R) has launched the state’s first “gang prosecution unit” and implemented five-year mandatory minimums for all gang-related convictions. Prisoners tagged by GDC as gang-affiliated have rather dim prospects with the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the members of which all have law enforcement backgrounds.

At any given GDC facility more than half the officer posts might be empty, so a minor brawl can produce more armed combatants than there are staff members in the entire prison. Coordinated use of pepper spray and Tasers can still disperse a crowd, but it leaves administrators shaken and results in a lockdown of that facility until the relevant cameras and gang leaders can be reviewed for assessment. That could be done in an hour. Or, if the fight is on a Thursday, it could take until Monday.

No visitation, no religious services, no behavioral improvement groups that are mandatory for the parole-eligible. No library access, including the law library. No yard call. No ball games in the gym. Commissary cut by half. Group counseling, education and vocational tech classes—all cancelled.

Industry workers may still sent out though, under escort, to their unpaid full-time chemical or textile factory jobs. Georgia Correctional Industries is going to get theirs unless the plant burns down.

When multiple prisons have gang fights in the same week, it can look like a system-wide war. “Organized crime” is not that organized, though.

Lockdowns are being presented as the new normal, but the state does not have the resources to make that work, at least not in a constitutionally acceptable manner. Yet they continue.

When multiple prisons have gang fights in the same week, all of GDC goes on lockdown. It can give the appearance of a system-wide gang war. “Organized crime” is not that organized, though; it’s not as if members in different prisons are contributing to a national pot. These are just fights between the same gangs at different locations.

The next day, wardens will meet with leaders of the groups involved to check whether this was anything more than a local beef. Over time they’ve learned to call leading members of all gangs to such meetings; if any are left out, their paranoia becomes everyone’s problem. Paranoid is the norm in prison; dots connect at great distances in here.

Gang leadership tends to be those with cool heads who have learned how to talk to The Man, and say whatever’s needed to get their facility’s lockdown status reduced to “modified movement.” You might be surprised how many young hotheads will answer officers with the truth (“We want to kill all the __!”), which does not have the same effect.

Modified movement status means that at least visits and classes resume. Still no yard or gym time.

Corrections departments may tout their zero-tolerance approach to gangs, but the understaffing crisis ensures that wardens and gang leaders have never been closer. Without any experienced officers around, talking to gang leaders is the only way staff get anything to report up the food chain.

Everyone cuts their eyes toward any prisoner seen talking privately to administration, but it’s common now. Used to be that no one would even address a floor-walking guard without at least one witness in tow; if a guard is involved in a bust later that day, it is potentially unhealthy to have been the last one seen speaking to them beforehand.

Contraband cell phones aren’t the cause of gang violence.

In January, one medium-security facility had such a clash between rival gangs that it actually spilled from the walkways outside the living units into the open visitation area, filled with women and children on a Sunday. Three prisoners were killed during the fight, one of whom was days away from being released, and a fourth died later following injuries. All prisons were duly locked down while GDC began an investigation, which eventually resulted in 12 prisoners charged with murder.

Contraband cell phones aren’t the cause of gang violence. Has someone’s outside family ever been extorted through the medium of a contraband cell phone? Sure. But phones also play a huge role in violence reduction. They’re used to verify whether new arrivals are who they claim to be, which immediately shuts the door on a lot of sketchy behavior that leads to violence. They’re used to generate and transfer income. Violence breaks out because the state continuously prices edible food further and further out of reach, and people are hungry.

Violence also breaks out after crackdowns on drones. A single drone delivery can easily represent tens of thousands of dollars invested. When one gang has the drone connection, a peace treaty will allow rival gangs to handle distribution; everyone eats. But when a drone is intercepted, hunger inspires confrontation among those who want their money back. It’s telling that, alongside more traditional contraband like drugs and cell phones, drones are also bringing in food.

Allow local and online businesses to hire prisoners and pay them a living wage. Require parole boards to base their release decisions on time served, and their denials only on disciplinary infractions. Sell vapes at commissary. Or, if that’s just too sensible, then at least turn a blind eye to the contraband tobacco market.

Image via Matthew Ansley/Unsplash

The post Lockdowns Are a Dangerous Way for Prisons to Respond to Gang Violence appeared first on Filter.

The Department of Homeland Security promptly issued its standard denial, used to excuse other, comparable killings like that of Renée Goode. It claimed that Araujo had “weaponized his vehicle” and tried to hit an ICE agent with it, “resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”

The three other men who were in the van with Araujo—the only full witnesses to the shooting—remain in custody, reportedly under pressure to self-deport. But from behind bars they were able to reach Araujo’s family’s lawyer. They disputed the official account.

“That is a lie,” wrote Jose Trinidad Rojas in a handwritten statement to the lawyer, obtained by the Washington Post. “It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over … there were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

Araujo’s family, too, were outraged by the official explanation. His sons said that their father knew exactly the consequences of resisting ICE. They’re certain, they said, that their father thought he was being carjacked during the incident—it had happened before, and the van contained expensive tools. How was he to know that his assailants, likely masked in an unmarked vehicle, were law enforcement officers?

States have reacted by passing laws to require federal agents to reveal their identity. The Trump administration has sued to have these laws overturned. Its latest target is New York.

In another incident from the same week, in the Chicago suburbs, masked agents slammed a man’s head into the ground, then menacingly jabbed a Taser towards another man who was filming them. When faces are covered, and in the absence of other identifying features, it’s unclear how victims of abuse might seek recourse.

Around the country, states have reacted by passing laws to require federal agents to clearly reveal their identity, rather than hide behind masks and unmarked vehicles. The Trump administration has sued to have these laws overturned. Its latest target in the courts is New York State, which recently passed a statute forbidding state and federal law enforcement agents from concealing their faces. 

The Trump administration sued New York on June 23. The state countersued, to defend its new law, later that day.

“By hiding their faces and refusing to wear identification, federal immigration officers endanger New Yorkers and intentionally evade accountability,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “Our communities should not have to live in fear of being disappeared by unidentified masked agents. If the federal government wants to brazenly defy our laws, then we will fight tooth and nail in court to ensure transparency and keep all New Yorkers safe.”

Earlier that month, White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan had threatened Governor Kathy Hochul (D) with a surge in ICE activity. “I made her a promise: you’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” he said.

The federal government’s lawsuit claims New York is threatening the officers’ safety. “Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in an accompanying press release. “New York’s anti-law enforcement policies regulate the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.”

“When you look at the history, public servants had to be accountable … But hiding behind masks? This is the kind of policing that occurs in coercive, authoritarian regimes.”

The Trump administration’s apparent outrage runs counter to the fact that law enforcement officers have, until recently, been expected to reveal their identities in all but very narrow scenarios, such as undercover work. That’s been the case since the start of modern policing.

“When you look at the history, public servants had to be accountable and revealing their identity is critical to accountability,” Josh Parker, deputy director of  policy for the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law, told Filter.

Not long ago, Parker pointed out, an officer hiding their badge number during an encounter was considered scandalous. “But hiding behind masks? This is the kind of policing that occurs in coercive, authoritarian regimes: the KGB, Nazi Germany, the Stasi,” he said.

“It’s clearly just an intimidation tactic,” Parker continued. “It’s sowing fear, having someone in plain clothes, masked, aggressively approaching people.”

Law enforcement masking additionally seems to have facilitated a spike in people impersonating federal officers, for example to commit robberies. “In 2025 alone there were 31 cases of people posing as federal agents,” Parker said. “There had been five [on average] the years before.”

He also noted that no other branch of work in the criminal-legal system allows for anonymity. “Imagine if a judge or legislator remained anonymous. Public servants with so much power over people’s lives cannot hide their identity.”

“The Houston shooting, it’s predictable. This is the lack of accountability and transparency, with the masking and the intimidation.”

Lieutenant Diane Goldstein (Ret.) served with the Redondo Beach Police Department in California for 21 years, and is now the executive director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), which advocates for drug-policy and justice-system reform. She said that officers who hide their identity violate basic tenets of accountable policing.

“First and foremost, accountability and transparency, they undergird the entire legitimacy of the criminal justice system, not just policing,” Goldstein told Filter. “Policing requires accountability and transparency. Period.”

One of the reasons officers shouldn’t hide behind masks or “investigations” that conceal the truth, she continued, is that work such as preventing and investigating acts of violence is radically undermined when the public doesn’t trust authorities.

“In standard policing, even if the officer’s name isn’t obvious, there’s a badge number. That’s how you can file a complaint,” Goldstein said. “The Houston shooting, it’s predictable. This is the lack of accountability and transparency, with the masking and the intimidation. And it’s absolutely crazy they continue to say, Our officers need to be masked so they don’t get doxxed.” 

Photograph (cropped) of ICE agents in Minneapolis in January 2026 by Chad Davis via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

Lt. Diane Goldstein serves on the board of directors of The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter. LEAP was formerly the fiscal sponsor of The Influence Foundation. Filter’s Editorial Independence Policy applies.

The post “Sowing Fear”—The Legal Battle Over Masked ICE Agents appeared first on Filter.

Three of the facilities set to close are in Texas: Beaumont FCI Low, Big Spring FCI and its adjacent satellite camp, and La Tuna FCI and its adjacent satellite camp. The other facilities are Lexington FMC and its satellite camp in Kentucky, and Petersburg FCI Low in Virginia. Taft FCI in California, which had already been emptied but still retained minimal staff operations, will also close, as will a non-operational facility at the La Tuna complex.

Approximately 5,416 people in custody and 500 BOP staff will be directly affected. The First Step Act requires that federal prisoners be housed at facilities within 500 miles of their primary residence, but only “to the extent practicable.”

In 2025, the BOP received $5 billion to address staffing and infrastructure specifically.

“BOP is currently confronting a deferred maintenance backlog exceeding $4 billion,” the agency stated in a July 1 announcement. “While funding provided through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will help address some of these needs, it is not sufficient to fully resolve the operational and infrastructure challenges that have accumulated over decades.”

At publication there were 138,941 people housed in BOP facilities across the country, and another 14,851 people in BOP custody being housed in local facilities.

BOP currently operates approximately 118 facilities

Immediately upon taking office in January 2025, Trump reversed the Biden-era order phasing out federal contracts with private detention facilities. Simultaneously, Collete Peters was forced out as BOP director, leaving the agency with either acting directors or no one in charge until Director William Marshall III was appointed in April 2025.

By that time, retention-based incentives for BOP staff had been cut in half. Already in the midst of an understaffing crisis, over the course of 2025 agency saw more than 1,400 corrections officers and other staff leave their positions. Many went to work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In September 2025, the BOP canceled its collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees, which was set to last until May 2029. In a statement announcing the termination, effective immediately, Marshall told BOP staff that “CPL-33 didn’t give you your protections, the law did,” and that the “whole purpose of ending this contract is to make your lives better.” The AFGE Council of Prisons Locals 33 has since filed a lawsuit challenging the contract termination. The union was not notified of the plan to close six BOP facilities.

No timeline was announced for the closures. A union representative told the New York Times that BOP employees affected by the layoffs would be getting 60 days’ notice. Previously, the contract had guaranteed a notice period of nine months.

On July 2, AFGE National President Everett Kelley urged Congress to suspend the closures.

“The Bureau cites staffing shortages and deteriorating infrastructure as the reasons for these closures,” Kelley wrote in an open letter. “Yet Congress has already provided approximately $3 billion for personnel and $2 billion for infrastructure through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to address those exact challenges. Those investments should be used to strengthen the federal prison system, not dismantle it. Closing these facilities will make communities less safe, place greater strain on already overworked correctional staff, reduce the Bureau’s operational capacity, and eliminate federal jobs that support families and local economies.”

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D), who represents Texas’ 16th Congressional District, told El Paso Matters that she had not been notified of the closures and believed they represent the latest step in a plan to privatize the federal prison system.

In late May, the BOP began seeking commissary vendors that could serve facilities across the entire system—implying a shift toward privatization, as only a small number of for-profit contractors would be able to serve facilities spread across the country. Current BOP policy requires each facility to handle its commissary operations independently, which in many cases has been an economic boost for local businesses.

Top image of Taft FCI in 2023 via Department of Justice. Inset graphic via Bureau of Prisons.

The post BOP to Close Six Prisons, as Trump Pushes Agency Deeper Into Chaos appeared first on Filter.

“I just couldn’t bring myself to plead to something I didn’t do,” he told Filter. “[But] if I had known how unjust the justice system was, I may have sucked it up and took the deal.”

People who oppose decarceration will often say that sentences need to be served in full, otherwise victims don’t get justice. But one problem with this is that sentence length is arbitrary—if T needs to die in prison in order for justice to be served, why was he offered 15 years?

For T and others across the country who received life or de facto life sentences after they refused a plea bargain, the extra decades behind bars come from the well-established phenomenon prisoners call “trial tax.” The government isn’t punishing them for whatever events led to their conviction. It’s punishing them for taking up time and resources by exercising their right to go to trial, and it’s sending a warning to whoever might want to go to trial next. Almost all convictions in the United States come from plea deals.

Filter surveyed 35 people currently incarcerated at South Central Correctional Facility, one of the four Tennessee prisons privately operated by CoreCivic, about the plea deals they were offered and whether they’d accepted them. Twenty-four had taken plea deals. Of the 11 who chose to go to trial, 10 are now serving life or de facto life sentences. The offers they rejected averaged 17 years. The sentences they are serving instead average 53.6 years. One of the men sentenced to life had been offered a plea for six years.

“The state offered me eight years. When I told them I needed to talk to my family first, they said, ‘Tomorrow it will be 10 years.’” 

“I always felt like my attorney was working harder trying to get me to sign a deal than he was trying to defend me,” J told Filter. Like T, he is serving a life sentence after turning down a plea offer for 15 years.

Trials are expensive. Most people can’t afford a private attorney, and end up with court-appointed counsel too overloaded with cases to spend any real time on theirs. So the public defender will push them to take the plea deal, to close the case more quickly and with the least amount of work. This was a common thread among the 35 prisoners reached by Filter, many of whom recalled being pressured with phrases like:

You have one hour to decide.

This is a one-time deal.

If you don’t take this deal, you’ll never get out of prison.

We’re giving you a chance to still have a life.

“The state offered me eight years,” said B. “When I told them I needed to talk to my family first, they said, ‘Tomorrow it will be 10 years.’” He took the deal for 10 years.

Another man who took a plea deal told Filter that after his plea hearing and sentencing, his family had seen his court-appointed attorney and the prosecutor outside shaking hands and laughing.

“I wanted to go to trial … but the lawyer wanted $100,000 just to get started.”

Most of those who went to trial did so because they thought they’d be acquitted. They wanted the opportunity to challenge the evidence, and to appeal if necessary—both of which you forfeit when you take a plea deal.

“I just knew I would be found innocent,” said H, who rejected a plea deal for 15 years. “Then my attorney said he couldn’t find my main witness.” He is now serving 50 years.

None of the 35 people surveyed had had a private attorney during their case.

“I wanted to go to trial, ’cause the state trumped up the charges against me,” said S. “But the lawyer wanted $100,000 just to get started.” He went to trial with a public defender, and is now serving 60 years.

Filter did eventually find two men who had private attorneys when they were sentenced, which is almost unheard of in a place like South Central. Their experiences were basically the opposite of what was shared by everyone who’d had a public defender.

If he hadn’t been able to afford counsel, D would almost certainly be serving life with parole; that was what the state had originally offered him. His attorney negotiated a plea for 12 years on a lesser charge.

“That $30,000 was money well spent, I’ll be home soon,” D said. “My attorney was a retired judge in my hometown, so he knew all [the prosecution’s] dirty laundry.” 

C had originally been offered 60 years. His family paid $120,000 to an attorney who hired a private investigator and got evidence that contradicted the state’s case. He went to trial and was sentenced to eight years.

Like most parts of our so-called justice system, the “trial tax” shows that justice only exists for those who can afford it. And whether people go to trial or take a plea deal, long sentences are usually more about poverty or something subjective in the courts than they are about justice.

Almost 20 years ago, while housed in a different facility, I took a class taught by a former federal prosecutor who’d gotten sick of the system. He told us that every year on January 1, a bunch of prosecutors would put $100 into a pool, and on December 31 whoever had gotten people sentenced to the most years—whether through plea bargains or at trial—would get the pot.

Like his colleagues, he’d thought this was all fun and games until one day a relative of his got into trouble with the law. He realized the prosecutor on the case would be going after the longest possible sentence, not because it was in the interest of justice but because they wanted to win the office pool.

Names have been changed

Image (cropped) via Brazoria County, Texas

The post Trial Tax: Long Prison Sentences as Punishment for Rejecting a Plea Deal appeared first on Filter.