If the ICE officer who shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week is not prosecuted criminally, or even if he is, can he also be sued? Legal experts have different takes. Last week I spoke with a police misconduct attorney in Minnesota who seemed hopeful about the odds that Good’s family might face in court. Others I spoke with were somewhat less optimistic. Winning lawsuits against cops who kill “is challenging by design,” as Michelle Lapointe, legal director of the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights advocacy group, wrote on the group’s website. To flesh that out, I caught up with Lauren Bonds of the National Police Accountability Project, a national group that works with civil rights attorneys to file lawsuits over police misconduct. Our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, explores the legal hurdles to beating an ICE officer like Good’s killer, Jonathan Ross, in civil court. It’s notoriously tough to sue police, but it’s even harder when the officer is federal. What are the challenges? You’re absolutely right: All the problems you have with suing a regular law enforcement officer exist, and then you have additional barriers. There are two distinct pathways to sue a federal officer for misconduct or excessive force: One is a Bivens action—a court-created pathway that allows you to sue federal agents for constitutional violations. And then there’s the Federal Tort Claims Act, a statutory provision that allows for these lawsuits to move forward. The problem with Bivens is it’s been really, really narrowed in recent years by this particular Supreme Court. First there was Hernandez v. Mesa, a 2020 case where a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a child on the other side of the border in Mexico. And the court said it didn’t fit within the narrow confines of Bivens. And then there was a case in 2022, Egbert v. Boule, that foreclosed any new Bivens action: Basically the court said that this type of civil rights violation is something you can pursue under Bivens, but if it’s anything new, we’re not going that far. The Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA) is where more people are going to get relief for violations by federal officers. It basically says that any tort that you would suffer under state law [such as false arrest, assault, or battery] you can sue the federal government for—with vast exceptions: There’s one that comes up a lot for law enforcement cases, the “discretionary function” exception, which says an officer can’t be sued for anything that he or she needs to use discretion for. Courts have done a good job of interpreting that to mean discretion in terms of policymaking decisions, but some courts get it wrong. So those are the two pathways—they’re both narrow, and they’re both complicated. There’s the issue of qualified immunity for police officers, or even sovereign immunity for the federal government, right? Sovereign immunity [a legal principle that says the federal government can’t be sued without its consent] wouldn’t come up in an FTCA case, because it’s a statute in which Congress waived sovereign immunity and agreed to be sued under certain circumstances. It does come up as a defense when [the government is] saying, Oh, this case falls within an exception, but they can’t assert it otherwise. If you were to file a constitutional claim under Bivens, they could invoke qualified immunity, another protection that law enforcement officers have; it asks whether there is case law in the circuit that would have put the officer on notice that their conduct was unconstitutional. [If not, the officer is essentially off the hook.] A lot of courts have taken that requirement to an extreme place, basically saying it’s got to be identical facts—like there are cases that have been thrown out on qualified immunity because a person was sitting with their hands up versus standing with their hands up. That level of granularity has been applied to defeat civil rights claims. And so it’s a difficult barrier to overcome. Given how hard it can be to sue, what about criminal charges? It’s definitely possible. There isn’t any immunity from criminal prosecution that federal officers are entitled to, none that I’m aware of anyway. I know this issue came up when some ICE raids were planned to take place in San Francisco back in early fall, with the DA of San Francisco asserting that she did have authority to pursue criminal action against ICE agents if they broke California laws. What about the Supremacy Clause? It protects federal officers from state prosecution if they were performing their federal duties, right? The Supremacy Clause protects federal officers when they’re engaged in legal activity, and so if their conduct is illegal, they wouldn’t be protected. So in Minneapolis, if the officer engaged in a Fourth Amendment violation, he’d be beyond the protection of the Supremacy Clause. This issue has come up with California, too. The Trump administration is suing California over new state legislation that would create a crime for wearing a mask and obscuring your identity if you’re a law enforcement officer. And it’s suing Illinois [for a state law that allows residents to sue ICE agents in certain circumstances]. Those lawsuits have asserted that the Supremacy Clause makes these [state] laws unconstitutional—that you can’t take any action against federal law enforcement officers under state law. Have you heard of cases in this past year of ICE officers being sued or prosecuted for misconduct? I haven’t seen any prosecutions yet. In terms of lawsuits, we’ve seen an increase in FTCA cases against DHS agents. Regarding the recent killing in Minneapolis, what do you see as the main path to accountability, and the main challenges? There’s going to be all the standard barriers that we talked about, including the Supremacy Clause defense, particularly because you have so many high-ranking federal officials, including the president and Secretary Noem, who are saying that this shooting was the right thing to do and was consistent with him carrying out his obligations. On the civil side, this could be a potentially difficult Bivens or FTCA case. I would note, since we’re on the heels of January 6: Ashli Babbitt, the woman who died during the Capital insurrection, filed a FTCA case, or her family did, and got a $5 million settlement from the government. It’s hard to factually distinguish these cases. The federal government has authority to settle a case like that, but since the Trump administration is taking a very opposing position against Good, the woman who died in Minneapolis, I would be surprised if they would be willing to put money on the table.

Minneapolis remains on edge after the ICE killing of Renée Good last Wednesday. As ICE and Border Patrol operations intensify—Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that “hundreds more” agents are being sent to the city—residents continue to spill into the streets, filming, heckling, and tracking federal vehicles, block by block. Following this drama closely is reporter Amanda Moore, who puts it simply: “Yeah, it’s chaos.” Over the weekend she captured confrontations she describes as “extremely violent,” including a St. Paul gas station scene where agents “busted out the window of a car.” (According the DHS, the man driving the car was a Honduran national with a final removal order.) Amanda says the mood is a mix of fear and fury, with residents watching arrests unfold up close and, at times, finding themselves surrounded by “masked men… banging on your windows carrying guns.” Her bottom line on the enforcement posture: “Everything is very aggressive.” Even the timing, she notes, might be a signal of escalation. Amanda says Sundays were normally a day off from the front lines—“you could do your laundry and watch TV.” With the ramp-up of federal agents, “I guess not anymore.” Check out her latest dispatch.

In the immediate aftermath of the ICE killing of Renée Good in Minneapolis last week, the Trump administration smeared her as a “domestic terrorist,” claiming that she had weaponized her vehicle. They labeled Good a “violent rioter” and insisted every new video angle proved their version of the truth: Good was a menace and the ICE agent a potential victim. That’s despite video evidence to the contrary, showing Good, by all appearances, trying to leave the scene of the altercation, while ICE agents acted aggressively. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, spent Sunday doubling down, insisting that Good had supposedly been “breaking the law by impeding and obstructing a law enforcement operation.”  Last Thursday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz invoked Orwell’s 1984 to describe this break between what millions of people saw, and what Trump and his allies insisted had taken place: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” he quoted. “It was their final, most essential command.” So, on Sunday, I joined the throng in Manhattan for one of many dozens of protests held around the country this past weekend. In the middle of Fifth Avenue, surrounded by raucous, defiant New Yorkers, I asked protesters the simple question: What did you see?  “I mean, it seems like the bottomless, self-radicalizing thing that the government is going through,” said Anne Perryman, 85, a former journalist. “Is there any point when they’re actually at the bottom, and they’re not going to get any worse? I don’t think so.” “I think there’s a small minority of Americans who are buying that,” said Kobe Amos, a 29-year-old lawyer, describing reactions to the government’s gaslighting. “It’s obviously enough to do a lot of damage. But if you look around, people are angry.” “I saw an agent that overreacted,” he added, “and did something that was what—I think it’s murder.” Protesters also described a growing resolve amid the anger sweeping the country. “This moment has been in the works for too long,” said Elizabeth Hamby, a 45-year-old public servant and mom. “But it is our time now to say this ends with us…Because we want to be a part of the work of turning this tide in a different direction.”

Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective.  “At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.” Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen.  This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say. This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2025.

“She behaved horribly.” That’s how President Donald Trump described Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman who was repeatedly shot and killed by an ICE officer on Wednesday, roughly one mile from where a police officer murdered George Floyd nearly six years ago. Speaking to the New York Times, the president then pushed the spurious narrative that Good had run over the officer, prompting him to shoot. “She didn’t try to run him over,” he said without evidence. “She ran him over.” The remarks are consistent with the administration’s impulse to defend, often with cruel vociferousness, the conduct of ICE officers as they detain, terrorize, sometimes with gunfire, and then brag about it. But its perpetuation by the president and his allies, now that a woman in Minneapolis is dead, is taking on new levels of impunity. “This vehicle was used to hit this officer,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told reporters in New York on Thursday, where she had been addressing ICE operations in the city. “It was used as a weapon. The officer felt like his life was threatened.” As federal agents stood behind her, Noem appeared unmoved as reporters repeatedly referred to the multiple video angles that have essentially proven the outright falsehoods of the administration’s smear campaign. As for Good, who, by all accounts of those who knew her, was an exceedingly kind woman, Noem continued to charge her with “domestic terrorism,” just as Stephen Miller did on Wednesday when news of the shooting was only just unfolding. Together, the administration’s pervasive and reflexive disdain for facts—what can literally be seen without dispute—and the reflex to taint a woman now dead, crystallize a new level of ugliness for an administration that shamelessly admits: Violence is us. > Domestic terrorism. https://t.co/070fSKR8iX > > — Stephen Miller (@StephenM) January 7, 2026

The first pilot episode of Reveal exposed how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing opioids to veterans and contributing to an overdose crisis. Journalist Aaron Glantz explained how he received—surprisingly quickly—a decade’s worth of opioid prescription data from the federal government.  “Sometimes, you have to sue to get the records,” he said. “I have to think that there were some people over there in DC who were as concerned as we were about this.” After that first show was made, host Al Letson didn’t know what to expect. “We weren’t sure if any public radio stations would even air it,” he said.  Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Reveal’s VA investigation sparked outrage. Congress held hearings during a government lockdown, and there’s been a sea change in the way veterans are prescribed painkillers. And today, the show is on more than 500 stations.  This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.   This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida has ordered the public release of grand jury transcripts from the first federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, which took place during the mid-2000s.  That investigation ended without any charges. In 2007, however, federal prosecutors in Florida did indict Epstein, who managed to obtain a plea deal, copping to relatively minor charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He was given an 18-month sentence in the Palm Beach County Jail—with daytime work release—and served about 13 months. Back in July, a different judge, at the request of the Trump administration, had declined to demand release of the records from the earlier investigation. On Friday, however, US District Judge Rodney Smith, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2018, stated that the Epstein Files Transparency Act that President Donald Trump signed into law on November 19, “overrides” rules that prohibit the public disclosure of “unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials”—including grand jury transcripts. This same law compels the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors, and the FBI to release, by mid-December, materials they collected during their investigations into Epstein going back at least as far as the mid-2000s Florida case. The DOJ has not yet announced a timeline for making the information publicly available.  Earlier this year, three federal judges denied DOJ requests to unseal the federal grand jury transcripts. US District Judge Richard Berman framed the effort as a “diversion” strategy to distract from the agency’s slow-rolling of its own Epstein files: “The information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigation information and materials in the hands of the Department of Justice,” he wrote. DOJ officials are now attempting to unseal materials from three different Epstein investigations. The Trump administration has asked two New York judges for grand jury transcripts from Epstein’s 2019 sex-trafficking case and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial.  The state courts are now weighing privacy concerns from survivors and witnesses. The Epstein Files Transparency Act lists exemptions that may allow the DOJ to redact records that could result in personal identification.  The New York judges are expected to issue their decisions next week. 

In a ridiculous social media post the day before he headed off to federal prison for what was supposed to be a more than seven-year sentence, disgraced ex-congressman and known fabulist George Santos wrote, “I may be leaving the stage (for now), but trust me legends never truly exit.” Less than three months later, Santos is back, following President Donald Trump’s announcement Friday night that he was commuting Santos’ sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. And less than 48 hours after that, Santos is already back in the limelight of the Sunday morning interview circuit. On Sunday morning, he sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash on State of the Union to address questions about his pardon and his post-prison plans. He alternated between claiming prison humbled him and insisting his sentence was unfair. Santos claimed he had “no expectations” for a pardon and that he only found out about it when fellow inmates told him they saw the news announced on TV. (Joseph Murray, Santos’ lawyer, told my colleague Noah Lanard that he was in “constant communication” with lawyers at the Justice Department’s pardon office.) He told Bash that his seven-year sentence—for participating in a credit card fraud scheme to boost his campaign finances and using some of those funds for personal purchases like designer clothing and OnlyFans content—was “disproportionate,” and called for a pardon for his former staffer Sam Miele, who was sentenced to a year in prison for wire fraud for his role in Santos’ scheme. Santos essentially admitted to Bash he would not pay $370,000 in restitution to his victims, given that Trump’s pardon wipes out that obligation. “If it’s required of me by the law, yes, if it’s not, then no,” he said. “I will do whatever the law requires me to do.” Santos described his time in prison “a great equalizer” and “very sobering.” And like many formerly incarcerated celebrities, Santos said he now wants to work on prison reform that he’s free. “I told this to the President, that I’d love to be involved with prison reform, and not in a partisan way, in a real human way, in a way that we effect it, that it helps society, it helps these individuals rebuild their lives, and we have a better system with less incarcerated people.” > Santos: “I told this to the president, that I'd love to be involved with > prison reform, and not in a partisan way, in real human ways, in a way that we > effect it, that it helps society, it helps these individuals rebuild their > lives and we have a better system with less… pic.twitter.com/6qXkS9c3z3 > > — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 19, 2025 He apologized to his constituents, supporters, and ex-colleagues, and said that he has no plans to run for office within the next decade. Meanwhile, some of Santos’ fellow New York Republicans have been vocal about their opposition to Santos’ pardon. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) wrote on X: “George Santos didn’t merely lie—he stole millions, defrauded an election, and his crimes (for which he pled guilty) warrant more than a three-month sentence. He should devote the rest of his life to demonstrating remorse and making restitution to those he wronged.” Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), an Ethics Committee member who voted for Santos’ expulsion, said Santos “has shown no remorse,” adding, “The less than three months that he spent in prison is not justice.” In a statement provided to the New York Times, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) called Santos “a convicted con artist,” adding, “That will forever be his legacy, and I disagree with the commutation.” On CNN Sunday, Malliotakis said she thought Santos’ sentence was too long but that the time he served was “not sufficient.” > New York Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis on Trump commuting George > Santos’ prison sentence: > > “I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and I hope he is a changed person > who's going to focus on his second chance on doing good. I do not agree with > the commutation. I… pic.twitter.com/I77ZfKoMw7 > > — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 19, 2025 Asked by Bash about LaLota’s and Garbarino’s comments, Santos replied, “They’re entitled to their opinion.” He added that he is focused on the future. “I’ve learned a great deal and a very large slice of humble pie, if not the entire pie, for the experience I had [in prison].” “I don’t know how much more humbled I can get before people believe I’m humbled or remorseful, but I can just do the best in my actions moving forward,” he added. But later in the interview, Santos seemed to dismiss the critiques of his pardon, pointing to former President Joe Biden’s pardoning of his family members before leaving office. “Pardon me if I’m not paying too much attention to the pearl-clutching of the outrage of my of my critics and of the people, predominantly on the left, who are going to go out there and try to make a big deal out of something like this,” he said. “I’m pretty confident if President Trump had pardoned Jesus Christ off the cross,” he added, “he would have had critics.” > George Santos shrugs off criticism of Trump commuting his prison sentence: > “I'm pretty confident if President Trump had pardoned Jesus Christ off the > cross, he would have had critics.” pic.twitter.com/YxjwjV5F6u > > — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 19, 2025 For all his talk about humility, though, Santos is already back to hawking direct-to-camera personalized videos on Cameo for $300 a pop. (He once tried to get me to buy one.) As of press time, he last recorded one just after 9 a.m. Sunday morning—likely just before, or after, he appeared on CNN.

“Good afternoon,” is how Magistrate Judge Heide Herrmann welcomed detainees into DC Superior Court room C-10 when it was their turn to stand in front of the bench on Monday. But at 8:37 p.m., it was hardly “afternoon” anymore. Nor was it a good day for most of the inmates. They had been brought over from DC’s central cellblock, where accommodations consist of metal “beds” without mattresses. Some of the detainees were still in the pajamas they were wearing when they were first arrested. All were shackled at the wrists and ankles.  > “MPD knows how to do this. The other law enforcement mentioned who are out > making arrests apparently do not.” Judge Herrmann was responsible for deciding whether they would continue to be held or released on the promise to appear at their next court date. The constitution requires defendants see a judge within 48 hours of arrest, but because superior court is closed on Sundays, Mondays consist of two days’ worth of criminal misdemeanor arraignments and felony presentments. It’s often the courtroom’s busiest day. Several of the 105 cases Herrmann considered involved serious allegations: one defendant allegedly shot someone, requiring the victim to undergo bladder surgery, and there were also a litany of domestic violence charges. But since President Donald Trump has unleashed scores of federal law enforcement officers to help police DC’s modest population of 702,000, the caseload has been especially long—and often frivolous. Just a couple Mondays ago, it took a judge until almost 1:30 a.m. to get through what lawyers call the “lock-up list.” (A lawyer who sometimes represents defendants in C-10 says that before Trump’s crackdown, ending between 7-8 p.m. would have been considered an especially late Monday. ) The recent liveliness of C-10 should concern DC locals as well as the residents of blue cities that Trump has alluded to targeting next. But not because the room’s fullness proves Trump’s bold thesis that the entire city has been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.” Rather, experts say, the surging volume of charges and the allegations therein indicates a different problem: overzealous and ineffectual prosecuting. “We are in the in the DC Superior Court pretty much every day and have seen enormous changes under Trump,” says Abbe Smith, the director of a Georgetown Law School clinic that provides criminal defense assistance to people who can’t afford other representation. “None of them good.” The aggressive posturing is no doubt putting a tremendous strain on judges and public defenders. “Aye yai yai,” grumbled one of about five public defenders in the room on Monday when she learned she had more than a dozen clients left to represent after 6 p.m. At one point, even the stoic judge bemoaned the contents of some of the arrest affidavits. She attributed this to federal agents who, unlike members of the Metropolitan Police Department, are not accustomed to street patrol duty. In this case, federal agents had helped apprehend a young man arrested for smoking weed in a park. Possession of marijuana is legal in DC, but public consumption of it is not (though it’s rarely prosecuted). After he was arrested, MPD and federal agents performed a subsequent search that led them to conclude the young man was storing THC wax—a more concentrated form of weed that isn’t legal in DC—in a backpack. Law enforcement tacked on a possession charge, but the affidavit said nothing about how agents knew the backpack (and the THC wax) belonged to the defendant. “MPD knows how to do this,” the magistrate judge said of the incomplete affidavit. “The other law enforcement mentioned who are out making arrests apparently do not.” In early September, another man was approached by law enforcement because DEA agents “observed a bulge consistent with a bag of marijuana coming from the pants pocket” of the individual, the affidavit says. He willingly showed the agents the bag of marijuana (which, again, is legal in DC). They then patted him down and noticed an “abnormal bulge” in his sock. It was a small bag containing what the agents described as five Oxycodone pills. They arrested the man for possession of a controlled substance. This case was recently dismissed, but normally, such cases wouldn’t have been prosecuted in the first place. Instead, they are usually “no-papered,” meaning the prosecutor would opt against filing formal charges after the arrest. Smith says it was previously common for as many as a quarter or a third of cases to be no-papered misdemeanors because the allegations lack sufficient evidence to convict, or because there are questions about whether the defendant’s constitutional rights were violated. But now in DC, she says, “nearly every single misdemeanor is being papered.” Anecdotally, law enforcement seem to be more aggressively pursuing searches that may not be legally justified. In one instance, federal agents approached a man in a lawn chair merely for being close to a miniature bottle of wine—the kind you can buy on an airplane. Moments later, he was thoroughly searched and then charged for drug possession and for carrying a handgun without a permit. Less that two blocks from the superior court sits DC’s federal district court. Here, convictions are generally accompanied by stricter sentences. Yet, the federal charges defendants have faced in recent weeks haven’t necessarily been any more serious than those judged in local court. In between a sprinkling of serious child pornography and narcotics hearings were more negligible matters, such as shoving and vague threats. A man who allegedly shoulder-checked a National Guard member and said “I’ll kill you” was initially charged with assault and threatening to kidnap or injure a person, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. (On Tuesday, a grand jury declined to indict him. Subsequently, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office charged him with two misdemeanor counts instead.) There was also a woman arrested for assault while protesting ICE agents in July. Amid efforts to restrain her, an FBI agent’s hand was allegedly scraped against a cement wall. Extraordinarily, a grand jury opted against indicting her for felony assault three times. She’s since been charged with a misdemeanor and awaits from home a trial in October. Pirro’s office also won’t give up on convicting the the infamous former Justice Department paralegal, Sean Dunn, accused of assault for tossing a wrapped Subway sandwich at the chest of a Customs and Border Patrol agent in August. A grand jury opted against indicting him, too. (He’s since been charged with misdemeanor assault; jury selection for the trial is slated to begin November 3.) Shootings have continued amid the crime crackdown, but Trump and Pirro can count at least one win: Nobody in DC has thrown a sandwich at an officer since prosecutors tried to throw the book at Dunn. Our long national nightmare is over.

Women are the fast-growing population of incarcerated people. And if Republicans get their way, more pregnant women will be joining their ranks. That’s because conservatives are behind a growing push to criminalize pregnancy outcomes nationwide, in part by giving full rights to fetuses. And while abortion opponents have long claimed they do not want to criminalize abortion-seekers themselves, since the Supreme Court’s 2022 overruling of Roe v. Wade, a growing number of conservative lawmakers have begun introducing bills that would treat abortion as homicide and criminalize abortion-seekers. These laws will likely put more Black and Latina women behind bars, who are already imprisoned at higher rates than white women.  President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is also ensnaring pregnant immigrant women: A report issued last month by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) alleged that officials identified more than a dozen credible reports of the mistreatment of pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, which included not receiving adequate, or even urgent, medical care and being denied food. The Department of Homeland Security has disputed those allegations, saying in part, “Detention of pregnant women is rare and has elevated oversight and review.” These recent events make Rebecca Rodriguez Carey’s new book, Birth Behind Bars: The Carceral Control of Pregnant Women in Prisons, incredibly timely. Based on in-depth interviews with nearly three dozen women who were incarcerated in prisons throughout the Midwest while pregnant, the book provides rare insight into the experiences of pregnant women behind bars—an issue that lacked federal data until the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) issued its first report on the state of pregnant women in prisons earlier this year. But even the exact number of pregnant women in prisons remains unclear, in part because incarcerated women do not always have access to pregnancy tests: The BJS report, for example, cites more than 320 in state and federal custody in 2023, but past research from scholars and advocates has estimated about 3,000 pregnant people are admitted to U.S. prisons annually. “This invisibility,” Rodrigeuz Carey told me, “really contributes to systemic neglect.” In her book, Rodriguez Carey, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Emporia State University in Kansas, counters this historic invisibility by relaying women’s experiences being pregnant, laboring, and giving birth while in prison. Some stories convey the despair and desperation you may expect: Some women recounted purposefully committing crimes in order to be pregnant in prison rather than on the streets; others recalled falling into postpartum depression after being separated from their babies after giving birth while incarcerated. But the book also spotlights the surprising ways women managed to cultivate hope, by hosting makeshift baby showers and making plans for how they would make their children proud once released. I spoke with Rodriguez Carey via Zoom last month about the state of abortion access in prisons post-Roe, the persistent problem of shackling incarcerated people during childbirth, and what most surprised her during the course of her research. This interview has been lightly condensed and edited.  I was struck by the fact that some of the women you interviewed deliberately committed crimes in order to have their basic needs for food, shelter, and medical care met in prison during their pregnancies. What do these women’s experiences indicate about the state of pregnancy care in the US more broadly? Well it’s really, really bad care when you have women who are seeking refuge in a carceral system. And that’s not to say that that the care in prison is optimal care by any means, but for those who are living at the margins of society, who are in extreme poverty and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, don’t know where they are staying each night, for them the mark of being a good mother is to ensure that those basic needs are met. And so that means turning to our criminal legal system. It’s really interesting to me that the incarcerated population are the only group of people in the US that are constitutionally guaranteed health care—that really says something.  > “There’s an absence of a social safety net, and we have people turning to the > criminal legal system to ensure their basic needs are met. “ You have some prisons being more progressive with their efforts to provide wraparound services, but then you have other prisons where there’s not a lot of prenatal and postpartum care, and so there’s really just a wide variation of care there from state to state, and even from facility to facility. I think that speaks to the larger picture of inequalities in the US. There’s an absence of a social safety net, and we have people turning to the criminal legal system to ensure their basic needs are met. Even before the Dobbs decision that revoked the constitutional right to abortion, accessing it in prison was difficult. Only two percent of participants in the BJS report had abortions; other research has found an even lower rate. What sort of barriers did incarcerated people face when Roe was still the law of the land? Many states have laws that prohibit any sort of state funding to go toward abortion. That includes travel—so if an incarcerated woman is looking to access an abortion out of state, typically you have to have a correctional officer accompany that woman. That would require state funding, to be in a correctional van for transportation and to provide the salary for the accompanying correctional officer. Many women who are incarcerated may not know that they are even pregnant until they come to prison, if they are living on the streets, for example, and haven’t had access to routine health care in some time. And so by the time they learn of their pregnancy, it’s often too late, because many states have laws that regulate the number of weeks that an abortion can be performed. Many pregnant women in custody remain shackled while laboring and giving birth despite the fact that leading medical groups have denounced this practice. What did your interviewees say this experience was like for them?  They felt like they were caged animals. When you are in the state of giving birth, you are extremely vulnerable. You’re not necessarily at a risk of fleeing; there have been no documented cases to date of a woman trying to escape while in labor. Many of the women that I interviewed had cesarean sections, so they were on the operating table, numb from the waist down—you are not going anywhere at that moment. Most women who are incarcerated are there on non-violent crimes, and even if a woman is pregnant who committed a violent crime, she’s not necessarily posing a risk to society while you’re in that vulnerable state of childbirth, where your legs are in stirrups and you have a correctional officer often in the room. Many of these correctional officers are men, and a lot of the women I interviewed talked about how they had experienced sexual abuse growing up, so that adds just another layer of harm when you’re in this very vulnerable state, often in layers of undress or completely naked. Most states have laws on the books now restricting shackling during delivery. But how widespread of a problem does this remain?  It’s really hard to say. A state may have a policy, but then we know that the policy is often different from the reality of what takes place. Many states that have issued restrictions on shackling still leave it up to correctional officers if there is a point of threat or perceived harm. And I think when we look at the different layers here, of who is more likely to be considered harmful or posing a risk to society, that’s women of color. So you still have these tropes that are persisting behind bars. What about prison nursery programs that allow mothers to parent their newborns in prison—what benefits do they offer and why aren’t they more common? [Editor’s note: There are currently eleven state-run prison nursery programs, plus two more operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons.] The first prison nursery program has actually been in place since 1901, so this is not necessarily new. Women who go through a prison nursery program and have access to that oftentimes there are reduced recidivism rates, there’s improved maternal mental health and fetal health outcomes. Otherwise they’re meeting their children, and they’re saying goodbye all in a span of 24 hours, and so that’s going to have negative health implications for years to come.  There are no national mandates or standardized policies governing the incarceration of pregnant women. As a result, it’s up to individual states—and even specific correctional facilities—to decide whether to invest in such programs. Unfortunately, awareness among policymakers remains limited. Prior to the 1900s, reformatories often emphasized family bonds, allowing incarcerated women to live with their newborns—much like today’s prison nursery programs. But by the 1970s, most states moved toward a more punitive approach, passing legislation that effectively eliminated many of these programs. Some of your interviewees used their incarcerations during pregnancy as a “transformative period” and sought to “optimize pregnancy and birth outcomes” despite their circumstances. Can you say more about how they did so?  Many of the women that I interviewed had been pregnant before. Some of them had also been incarcerated before, but this was the first time they were both pregnant and incarcerated. Many of them talked about how being pregnant and incarcerated was rock bottom, and that this was very much a wake up call to do right by their unborn child. Many of the women interviewed talked about how during previous pregnancies they were out on the streets, doing drugs, getting into trouble left and right. And so when they were in prison, it was really this time where they could focus on their pregnancy. So that was really special for them, and it was a time where they were doing their best to take advantage of different programs and initiatives that they maybe had access to in their prisons, like pregnancy support groups, for example, reading all the books and trying their best to implement that advice. The women talked about how when you’re incarcerated, all you have is time to think and make the best choices for your unborn child. Is there anything that surprised you in doing this research? I think one of the biggest takeaways from me was how much hope is found inside prisons, where you have women coming together, given the absence of maternal healthcare, given the absence of institutional resources and support, creating their own networks of community and care. Food was a huge topic; pregnant women in prison don’t have access all the time to regular and nutritious foods. So you have other women who are incarcerated helping them out and coming together and saying, “Hey, I don’t want my baked potato, you can have it because I know you’re pregnant and you need these calories.” Women are also taking pregnant women, especially the younger ones, under their wings, and saying, “be sure to get a job in the kitchen while you’re incarcerated, because that way you have regular access to food.” So you see these informal networks of support. After a woman gives birth, she’s sent back to prison, often within 24 to 48 hours of giving birth and asked to fall back in line as if nothing has happened, even though her world has just been rocked. So you have women who are incarcerated really coming together and rallying around the pregnant women to provide that support and care. What gives you hope for pregnant people in prisons and their newborns?  The Kansas Children’s Discovery Center in Topeka has a program called Play Free, which allows incarcerated mothers and grandmothers to spend a day at the children’s museum playing with their kiddo, free of these cages and environments that are not child- and family-friendly at all. It’s been really great to see the transformation, where it started just as a partnership with the Topeka Correctional Facility, and has since expanded to the men’s facilities in Kansas. You have incarcerated fathers as well, and centering the children in all of this is important.