Over 6,200 children have been detained by ICE so far in Trump's second term. Poor medical care. Inedible food. More than 1,600 children were held beyond the 20-day limit set by courts. "It just adds up to an incredible amount of trauma."

Your District Attorney decides: Support pretrial release or cage people pretrial. Treat root causes of crime or just punish. Prosecute police for excessive force or protect them. Oregon voters won't get to weigh in. All 15 DA races are uncontested.

A federal judge found Portland ICE protests were largely peaceful. The judge also found DHS had an unwritten policy to use excessive force on nonviolent protesters to chill constitutional rights. The violence was policy, they just didn't write it down.

I secured some funding last year to revive the Stevie Wilson DIY Young Artists Residency. I’m excited to announce that applications are open today until May 11 for young artists (ages 16-24) directly impacted by criminalization, policing, or punishment.

Louisiana now makes it a crime for police to refuse ICE cooperation. Florida created a board to punish officials who don't comply with ICE. Texas forced nearly all sheriffs to become immigration enforcers. And the crackdown on resisting ICE is spreading.

Nadia refused a prison kitchen shift in Colorado. So she was locked in solitary for 30 days. Colorado voters banned prison slavery in 2018. But it continued. This year, a judge ordered the state to stop locking people in solitary for refusing to work.

Today federal agents shot two people in Portland, Oregon. This comes just one day after ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. "ICE in our communities does not make us safe."

NYC civil summonses surged under Mayor Eric Adams—from 11,000 in 2019 (before he was mayor) to over 90,000 in 2024—undermining the spirit of a 2016 criminal justice reform. Black and Latinx communities remain disproportionately targeted in neighborhoods that are traditionally overpoliced.

Exonerations grind to a halt under Chicago's new prosecutor Eileen O'Neill Burke — despite a 77-page report documenting that Detective Brian Forberg and his partners allegedly coerced witnesses in 24 cases. All defendants are Black. 18 remain in prison.

Police are investigating a possible arson at Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos's home. Her car and carport were destroyed. This echoes a suspected arson near then-Commissioner Rene Gonzalez's home in 2024 when someone set his father's car on fire.

A judge just dismissed a lawsuit from women who were filmed by guards via body cameras during strip searches in Michigan prisons. The women experienced severe physical manifestations of psychological distress. Privacy violations dismissed. Dignity denied.

A 16-year-old NYC student with LEGAL status, protected as "abused, abandoned, or neglected," was arrested by ICE at a routine check-in. When the Trump administration punishes kids with lawful status for following the rules, it turns justice into a farce.

Trump has increased partnerships with state and local police to go after immigrants by 600% — including wildlife commissions and lottery agencies. He's building a national police force under his command, justified by lies about immigrant crime waves that research shows don't exist.

Federal prosecutors charged 2 protesters with terrorism for constitutionally protected activity. Shots were fired at an ICE protest, but neither is accused of firing the gun. The Trump administration is making good on its threat to treat anti-fascist activity as terrorism.

The Trump administration is billing unaccompanied immigrant children as young as 14 a $5,000 fine for crossing the border. The kids are in federal custody with no way to work or pay. Payment is "due now" with threats of litigation and harm to their cases.

Private prison executives casually discussed the "3,000 arrests per day" quota in earnings calls—despite the Department of Justice previously denying any quota exists. This is fueling immigration raids nationwide while companies rake in record profits.

Lamont Mealy, a mentally ill man, was locked in solitary confinement in a Maryland prison. Guards shut off water to his cell. A fellow prisoner says guards taunted him. He died of dehydration after 8 days. His family's lawsuit asserts officials covered it up.

5 years after George Floyd's murder, Minneapolis police avoid accountability through "coaching." Supervisors simply talk to officers about complaints instead of formal investigations, even for serious misconduct.

Federal agents raided the WRONG HOME in Portland—no warrant, guns drawn on a family with a baby. ICE still arrested 2 people after realizing the mistake. ICE official on the aggressive tactics: "If people interpret that as aggressive, so be it."

Incarcerated women regularly face poor treatment during their pregnancies, including inadequate nutrition, harmful cavity searches, and delivery while shackled. Prison doulas can be a lifeline for incarcerated pregnant women. But the most important solution is to abolish prison births altogether.

No physical evidence connected Anthony Boyd to a murder. But a co-defendant testified against him under the threat of capital punishment. He was sentenced to death by a 10-2 jury vote. Only two states allow death sentences even when all jurors don’t agree. Alabama plans to execute him next week.

A federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying any National Guard units to Oregon in response to ICE protests in Portland. Small protests have been going on nightly outside Portland’s ICE processing facility since Trump’s second term began in January.

Trump is sending California National Guard to Portland after a federal judge blocked his deployment Oregon National Guard over ICE protests that “did not pose a danger of a rebellion." California governor plans to sue over the deployment. “This is a breathtaking abuse of the law and power."

For the third year, California killed a bill to help incarcerated domestic violence survivors. “There are a ton of states that are far more conservative than California that passed more extensive legislation through Republican run legislatures."

The United Nations defines solitary confinement as torture. But our country’s prisons and jails continue to isolate people inside small, closet-like cells for weeks, months, and even years. "Solitary is never appropriate. Is torture ever appropriate?"

"A group of incarcerated transgender women and men have sued Georgia corrections officials, challenging a new law that prevents them from receiving gender-affirming medical care." This is cruel and unusual punishment.

Research has found that college-educated officers tend to use less force, have fewer complaints against them, and write better reports. But there is a trend of cities cutting education requirements for police in hopes of attracting more applicants.

An Alabama teen was shot alongside his friend, then prosecuted for his killing. Felony murder laws allow prosecutors to charge defendants with the death of an accomplice, even when the killing was committed by someone else.

NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested at immigration court by masked federal agents while accompanying an immigrant out of the courtroom whose case was dismissed. This is “more evidence that ICE agents are flagrantly breaking the law."

Today is International Sex Workers' Day. The criminalization of sex work increases the risk of harm to sex workers -- including harm from arrest, jailing, conviction, stigmatization, violence, and exploitation. Sex work should be decriminalized.

Amanda Cahill died in her cell in a Philly jail. Screaming for help for over an hour. Women jailed near her pleaded for medical attention, but nobody responded. Philly voters just approved a ballot measure to bolster oversight over the city’s deadly jails.

Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez announced this year her department has a “zero contact policy” with ICE. But last year received over $1 million from the federal government in exchange for sharing sensitive information about undocumented immigrants.

Temperatures reached 120 degrees outside Missouri’s Algoa Correctional Center during 2024. Now six people who are incarcerated there are suing. They describe the nearly 100-year-old prison without air conditioning, as a “coffin with a heat lamp.”

"The same forces trying to criminalize immigrants are the ones who supported mass incarceration. The same people cutting food assistance are cutting access to housing and health care. This is a shared fight, and unity is our only path forward."

Pittsburgh progressives are targeting local judge elections this year. “When we say we need less people in the jail, better outcomes for kids charged with crimes, for people to feel like their civil and human rights are respected—that all happens in the courtrooms."

LAWSUIT: Guards videotaped strip searches at Michigan women’s prison. "What these women continue to endure is nothing short of horrific. This case exposes a grotesque abuse of power that directly retraumatizes survivors of sexual assault."

Anti-abortion legislation is moving through the Texas Legislature. "It is a vote to criminalize women, trap them within the borders of Texas, and to threaten anyone who tries to help them, regardless of whether the abortion occurs legally in another state." boltsmag.org/texas-1925-a...

A 40-year-old man died from dehydration after being detained for more than two months inside the Tarrant County jail in Texas, he was one of at least three people with documented mental illness to die of thirst in the jail’s custody in recent years.

Chris Duncan has been on Louisiana’s death row for decades. A judge just vacated his conviction, which relied on the junk science of bite mark analysis. Nine people have been exonerated off Louisiana’s death row in the time that Duncan has been there.

In Mississippi Sinatra Jordan spent 940 days in jail. A trial never came. Accused of firing at police and leading them on a chase. But he didn't have a gun. Officers were eventually charged with aggravated assault for shooting his friend and shooting at him.

In a predominantly Black area of Chicago, police can now directly file gun charges without a prosecutor’s approval. This a police department with a long history of coercion, deception, and filing wrongful charges against innocent people.

The Supreme Court issued an emergency order halting the Trump administration’s efforts to fly Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvador prison before they could challenge their deportation. This order was an extraordinary rebuke to Trump. And the court didn’t even wait to let Alito write his dissent.

"Michigan’s supreme court ruled last week that it is unconstitutional to impose an automatic sentence of life without the possibility of parole on young adults up to age 20, saying they deserve an individual judgment specific to their circumstances."

Jail voting soars in Colorado after the state mandates polling places in county jails. “People that are incarcerated are ready to have their voices heard."

People behind bars work for often for just cents an hour or, in some states, nothing at all. Coerced labor inside of prisons has historical roots in slavery. After the Civil War, a network laws to criminalize formerly enslaved people created a system of prison labor.

Connecticut abolished the death penalty. But two Connecticut businesses have played a large role in U.S. executions in the past five years. A new bill would make it illegal for businesses in the state to participate in the death penalty elsewhere.

There have been at least 15 documented cases of Navajo Nation members being stopped by federal agents at their homes or workplaces over the past week, who demanded they provide proof of citizenship. "They don’t feel safe in the country where they were born or where their ancestors come from."

The trans woman who sued the federal prison system (and won) settles her remaining cases. Days before Trump’s inauguration, the Bureau of Prisons agreed to pay Grace Pinson $95,000 to drop more than a dozen pending lawsuits asserting she had been abused and mistreated in its custody.

An elementary school in Chicago denied Secret Service agents from entering who were looking for an 11-year-old who posted an anti-Trump video. "The school’s response demonstrates that our system is prepared and ready to keep our students and staff safe."

Trump orders federal prisons to house trans women in men’s facilities and directs the government to remove anti-rape protections for trans prisoners. “It’s just unconscionable in its cruelty.”