Bureau of Prisons

“I’d rather not live than be forced to live as a man,” a trans woman in a federal prison in New Jersey said in a sworn statement.

At least one trans woman in federal prison says Trump’s executive order has already prevented her from receiving hormone therapy, leading to “thoughts of suicide and self-harm.”

More than 700 prisoners at FPC Montgomery in Alabama refused meals over concerns that the Bureau of Prisons was violating sentencing reform provisions in the 2018 First Step Act.

Two secretive prison units that used to almost exclusively house people said to be connected to terrorism have expanded by nearly 80 percent in 15 years, and a new unit is on the way. Formerly incarcerated people say they have been used to punish dissent.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has suggested banning imprisoned people from using social media—but First Amendment defenders say the rule would chill free speech and silence whistleblowers.

BOP Director Colette Peters blamed understaffing and “crumbling” facilities for the increasing number of deaths in federal prisons during hearings last week.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and Jeff Merkley wrote a letter to the federal Bureau of Prisons and Department of Justice asking the agencies not to renew a contract with the American Correctional Association.

Legislation introduced this week follows a string of reports, including in The Appeal, that have revealed widespread sexual abuse and misconduct at Bureau of Prisons facilities.

Issues of mismanagement and sexual misconduct have put federal women’s prisons in the spotlight. But one scan­dal-plagued facility—FCI Tal­la­has­see—has es­caped serious scru­tiny, even as an Appeal investigation reveals an ongoing his­to­ry of sex­u­al vi­o­lence, re­tal­i­a­tion, and oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al abus­es that have left prisoners living in fear.

The attorney general could pick a new head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. That person should have public health experience, formerly incarcerated activists say.

Attorney General Bill Barr has scheduled executions for four people on federal death row in July and August. That’s more federal executions in one month than in the entire modern history of the federal death penalty.

Legal, medical, and religious groups warn in a new report that the widespread use of solitary confinement in response to COVID-19 risks spreading the disease further and undoing a decade of progress.

After protests broke out in several cities in response to George Floyd’s death, the agency ordered the first nationwide lockdown in 25 years.

Jeremy Hix is serving 70 months in federal prison for a sex offense—a conviction that disqualifies him for a Bureau of Prisons home confinement program, despite a health condition that puts him at risk of the coronavirus.

Criminal justice reform advocates question why the BOP plans to move people around rather than reduce prison populations.

One prisoner says a man collapsed while waiting for a temperature check and was sprayed down with disinfectant as he lay on the floor. BOP denied it.

The Bureau of Prisons could send those without homes to alternative halfway houses far from D.C. or back to prison at the end of the month.

‘It is progressively getting worse, exponentially worse,’ a resident of one halfway house told The Appeal as part of a survey of facilities. ‘Something is going to happen and it’s not going to be good.’

The intense interest in conditions at MCC after Jeffrey Epstein’s death was preceded by years when little was done to address restrictions so oppressive one observer described them as “diabolical.” Why do Americans allow brutality, even torture, to go unchecked?

Attorney General William Barr pushed back against reforms by progressive prosecutors—but perhaps his greatest vitriol was reserved for the Boston DA’s attempt to rein in police.

The region of eastern Kentucky, once reliant on mining and the coal industry, has, over the decades, become home to three federal prisons. Last year, the Daily Appeal wrote about the controversial proposal to build yet another federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky. That project had been pushed since 2005 by local backers and a powerful U.S. representative, […]

The Bureau of Prisons’ South Central regional director utilized incarcerated people from a Texas prison to work on a landscaping project at his church.