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Smuggled drugs cause chaos, death behind bars. It’s not hard to understand why. What’s harder to grasp is why state officials can’t do more to stop contraband from entering prisons. The Marshall Project Meet the drone pilot who flooded prisons with drugs. He’s now serving time in one. The Marshall Project Corrections staff are the obvious and overlooked sources of smuggling into prisons. And they are rarely prosecuted for it. The Marshall Project How an incarcerated dealer coerced a former corrections officer into smuggling. The Marshall Project This Marshall Project series was published in partnership with the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository. It was reported and written by TMP’s Doug Livingston and USA TODAY Network Ohio’s Laura A. Bischoff.
Club Fed? Not so much. The federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, got a lot of attention last year when Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred there. But as sprawling and open as the minimum-security prison appears, some women and staff whistleblowers say it conceals a sinister secret. Six women have accused staff members of pressuring them into unwanted sex acts in deserted corners where there were no security cameras or witnesses. Some of those who tried to speak up said they were punished in retaliation. In a collaboration with NBC News, this new Marshall Project investigation by Beth Schwartzapfel and Erik Ortiz brings us inside a federal prison dealing with repeated allegations of staff sexual abuse. The Marshall Project
Immigration nation. A private prison company, not the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, is investigating claims of sexual assault at the Otay Mesa Detention Center. Cal Matters Immigration arrests at or near courthouses in Massachusetts more than doubled in 2025 compared to in 2024. State legislators are trying to limit those arrests. The Boston Globe Republican sheriffs in Florida continue to complain about the Trump administration’s immigration policies but won’t ask the White House to change them. The New York Times “Due process is not a game of keep-away,” a federal judge in Minnesota wrote last week in a decision to extend an order ensuring attorney access for immigration detainees. The Associated Press
“They want you to put protesters in prison as terrorists.” Earlier this month federal prosecutors in Texas were able to convince a jury to convict a group of anti-Trump activists as “antifa” terrorists. This portends a new threat to civil liberties for left-wing protesters. Attorney General Pam Bondi promised as much following the verdict against nine people seized while protesting at an immigration detention facility in Prairieland. A police officer was wounded by one of the protesters during the melee, but the Trump administration was successful in tagging all of them as part of an “antifa” cell despite little evidence of such affiliations. The New Yorker
Rap, the First Amendment, and the death penalty. Here’s yet another chance for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on prosecutors’ use of rap lyrics to convict or sentence people. James Broadnax is scheduled to be executed in Texas in late April but there are two clear reasons why he may not be killed. Last week, another man confessed to the murder for which Broadnax has been condemned. Meanwhile, some of the most famous rappers in America have asked the justices in Washington, D.C. to stop the execution because prosecutors used Broadnax’s rap lyrics to incriminate him. TMP’s Maurice Chammah has the latest edition of Closing Argument, our weekly newsletter. The Marshall Project
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