Prisons and Prisoners

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      Under Trump, U.S. Prisons Offered Gender-Affirming Care

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      The Trump administration’s approach is notable in light of a campaign ad that slams Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants.A campaign ad released by former President Donald J. Trump in battleground states slams Vice President Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants, concluding: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”But the Trump administration’s record on providing services for transgender people in the sprawling federal prison system, which houses thousands of undocumented immigrants awaiting trial or deportation, is more nuanced than the 30-second spot suggests.Trump appointees at the Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Justice Department, provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during Mr. Trump’s four years in office.In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner’s “surgery” if it was deemed medically necessary. Still, legal wrangling delayed the first such operation until 2022, long after Mr. Trump left office.“Transgender offenders may require individual counseling and emotional support,” officials wrote. “Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualized assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable).”The statement, in part, reflected guidelines that officials in the Obama administration released shortly before they left office in January 2017, which were geared at ensuring “transgender inmates can access programs and services that meet their needs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Voting Rights for Felons

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      The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state on Wednesday to allow people with felony convictions to vote after finishing their sentences, resolving confusion about who can participate in this year’s election and rejecting an argument by the state attorney general that lawmakers overstepped in extending voting rights to those with convictions.The ruling, issued with early balloting in the state already underway and voter registration deadlines approaching quickly, will help shape the state’s electorate, which can carry special importance in presidential races because of the way Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than using the winner-takes-all approach of most states. Nebraska also has a competitive U.S. Senate race this year, as well as a tightly contested U.S. House race in the Omaha area. The ruling on Wednesday was expected to affect thousands of potential voters.Nebraska, which usually votes Republican in statewide races, was part of a national trend in loosening voting rules for people with criminal records. In 2005, lawmakers in the state abolished a lifetime voting ban for people convicted of felonies, but continued to require people to wait two years to vote after finishing their sentences. This year, in a bipartisan vote, lawmakers got rid of that waiting period, clearing the way for people to cast ballots immediately after finishing prison and parole terms.Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, but the measure attracted skepticism from Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans.Just before the new measure was set to take effect this summer, Mr. Hilgers released a written opinion saying that both the new law and the 2005 law were improper. He argued that under the Nebraska Constitution, only the state’s Board of Pardons could restore voting rights to someone with a felony conviction. Mr. Evnen then instructed county election officials to stop registering voters with felony convictions. The Board of Pardons is made up of Mr. Pillen, Mr. Hilgers and Mr. Evnen.Reached on Wednesday morning, Cindi Allen, a deputy secretary of state, said Mr. Evnen’s office planned to comment on the ruling on Wednesday afternoon. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hilgers said they were reviewing the ruling.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Seeking Release on Bail, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Downplays Risk of Witness Tampering

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      In an appeal, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that a judge’s decision to withhold bail was not based on evidence that he had sought to interfere with the sex trafficking investigation.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul fighting racketeering and sex trafficking charges, filed an appeal on Tuesday of a judge’s decision to deny him bail, arguing that concerns he would intimidate witnesses if released from jail were unfounded.Mr. Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for three weeks, since the federal case against him was revealed to the public. Judge Andrew L. Carter of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered that Mr. Combs be detained ahead of his trial, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others.In their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, wrote that the government’s argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had sought to interfere with the criminal investigation into his conduct.The lawyers, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro and Jason A. Driscoll, argued in the court filing that Mr. Combs’s decision to travel to New York to face the charges, coupled with an intricate proposal for monitoring outside the government’s custody, helped support his release from jail ahead of his trial.“Mr. Combs is presumed innocent,” they wrote in the filing. “He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee. He presented a bail package that would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of running a “criminal enterprise” that helped him carry out a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence, alleging that he coerced women into “highly orchestrated” sexual encounters with prostitutes through the use of drugs, physical and emotional abuse, and financial pressure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Congo Releases More Than 700 Inmates After a Deadly Stampede

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      At least 129 people died when inmates tried to escape from Makala Prison, where conditions are abysmal and overcrowding is a major problem.More than 700 inmates were released from the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Saturday, as officials sought to ease overcrowding in a facility where at least 129 people died in an attempted jailbreak this month.Congo’s justice minister, Constant Mutamba, announced their release during a visit to the Makala Central Prison, where the deadly episode highlighted the alarming conditions faced by inmates in the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities.Mr. Mutamba promised that Kinshasa would get a new prison, though he did not give details.Of the 729 inmates released, most — 648 — were released on bail.On the evening of Sept. 2, inmates, whose cells had been without water and electricity for more than a day and a half, tried to break out to escape the stifling heat, several inmates told The New York Times.The details remain unclear, but most of the deaths occurred in a stampede that followed, while at least 24 people were fatally shot while trying to escape, the country’s authorities have said. Several female prisoners were raped, according to Human Rights Watch and Congo’s interior minister.The Makala Prison, which was built in 1957 during the era of Belgian colonial rule and little renovated since, has a capacity of 1,500, but has at times held 10 times more than that.Military reinforcements at the entrance of Makala Prison after an attempted jailbreak this month.Hardy Bope/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe prison’s director, Joseph Yusufu Maliki, has been suspended, and dozens of inmates accused of raping female inmates during the jailbreak soon faced trial.Some of the women told the television channel TV5 Monde that 10 men, some of whom were armed with scissors and knives, had raped them and threatened to kill or mutilate them if they resisted.Human rights organizations and journalists have long described conditions in Makala and other prisons in the Central African country as inhumane: overcrowded, violent and filthy.Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases at the prison, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, a human-rights activist based in Kinshasa. Mr. Cole said that out of about 15,000 inmates, only 2,500 had been convicted; the rest were awaiting trial.“Most of the inmates have no reason to be held in such inhumane conditions,” Mr. Cole said in a telephone interview. “This cannot continue.”More than 500 inmates had been released from the Makala Prison in August, before the attempted jailbreak shed a new light on the conditions there.“There is a program, across the country, that aims at building new prisons,” Patrick Muyaya, a government spokesman, said this month on the television channel France 24. “The incident that happened is going to accelerate the process that had already started.”Mr. Muyaya did not provide details on how many facilities would be built, nor when they would be operational. More

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      Correction Officers Who Failed to Aid Dying Inmate Won’t Be Charged

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      Correction Department rules “do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the New York attorney general’s office said.Michael Nieves sliced his throat with a razor around 11:40 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2022. For the next 10 minutes, correction workers at the Rikers Island jail complex stood by his cell and watched him bleed without providing medical care.Mr. Nieves later died.The failure by three correction workers to offer aid was “an omission” that contributed to Mr. Nieves’s death, the New York attorney general’s office of special investigation found in a report published on Tuesday. But because Mr. Nieves might have died even had he received immediate medical help, the attorney general, Letitia James, said her office would not charge the workers criminally.In a surprising finding, the report also said that the workers had followed correction department rules by deciding not to render help.“The D.O.C.’s rules and regulations do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release.The decision not to charge the corrections workers “is incredibly disappointing,” said Samuel Shapiro, a lawyer hired by members of Mr. Nieves’s family, who have filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court. Describing surveillance footage that captures Mr. Nieves’s suicide attempt and the workers’ response, Mr. Shapiro said, “It is incredibly disturbing to watch city employees stand there as Mr. Nieves is slowly bleeding to death from his neck and do nothing to help him.”The Department of Correction suspended all three workers for 30 days. When they returned to work, they were prohibited from having contact with detainees. In May 2023, two officers, Beethoven Joseph and Jeron Smith, were accused by the department of violating rules and a directive on suicide prevention and intervention. The disciplinary proceedings are still pending, the attorney general’s office said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gao Zhen, Artist Who Critiqued the Cultural Revolution, Is Detained in China

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      Mr. Gao is being held on suspicion of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs, an offense punishable by up to three years in prison, his brother said.Gao Zhen, a Chinese artist who has drawn international acclaim for works critiquing the Cultural Revolution, has been detained in China, his brother and artistic partner Gao Qiang said on Monday.The Gao brothers are best known for their statues depicting Mao Zedong in provocative or irreverent ways, such as “Mao’s Guilt,” a bronze statue depicting the leader on his knees, supplicant and remorseful.The police in Sanhe City detained Gao Zhen, who moved to the United States two years ago, last week while he was visiting China, his younger brother said in an email, on suspicion of slandering China’s heroes and martyrs — a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison.The police also confiscated several of the brothers’ artworks, all of which were created more than 10 years ago and “reassessed Mao’s Cultural Revolution,” Gao Qiang said. The works included “Mao’s Guilt”; “The Execution of Christ,” a statue depicting Jesus facing down a firing squad of Maos; and “Miss Mao,” a collection of statues of Mao with large breasts and a protruding, Pinocchio-like nose.About 30 police officers stormed the brothers’ art studio on Aug. 26 in Yanjiao, a town in Sanhe City about an hour away from Beijing, Gao Qiang said. The officers asked Gao Zhen, 68, to hand over his mobile phone, and when he refused, they handcuffed and arrested him, Gao Qiang said. Gao Zhen was in China with his wife and son, visiting relatives, his brother said.The next day, Gao Zhen’s wife was notified by the Sanhe City public security bureau that he was being detained on suspicion of slandering heroes and martyrs, Gao Qiang, 62, said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      First Jan. 6 Rioter to Enter Capitol Gets More Than 4 Years in Prison

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      Michael Sparks, 47, was the first rioter to breach the Capitol and among the first to be confronted by the U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman.The first rioter to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced Tuesday to more than four years in prison, federal prosecutors announced.In March, a federal jury found Michael Sparks, 47, of Elizabethtown, Ky., guilty on felony charges of obstructing an official proceeding and civil disorder and several misdemeanor charges for being on the premises of the Capitol building on Jan. 6.On Tuesday, Judge Timothy J. Kelly of U.S. District Court in Washington sentenced him to 53 months in prison and ordered him to pay a $2,000 fine. Mr. Sparks will be on supervised release for three years after his prison term ends, prosecutors said.Video footage presented in court showed that Mr. Sparks entering the Capitol building at 2:13 p.m. on Jan. 6 through a window near a door leading into the Senate Wing that rioters had smashed with a police shield.Mr. Sparks was among the initial group of rioters who were confronted by Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer, who helped hold off the mob from reaching members of Congress.The rioters chased Mr. Goodman up a flight of stairs as they demanded to know where Congress was certifying the results of the election, prosecutors said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inmate Captured in North Carolina After Escape

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      Law enforcement officers captured Ramone Alston, who had been serving a life sentence for murder, at a hotel. He was moved to a high-security prison unit and will face new charges.Authorities in North Carolina on Friday captured a man convicted of murder, whose escape from custody three days earlier had prompted an extensive search, according to the state’s Department of Adult Correction.The man, Ramone Alston, fled from a prison vehicle on Tuesday morning while being transported to a medical appointment at the U.N.C. Hospitals Hillsborough Campus.He was caught at a hotel in the city of Kannapolis just before 2 a.m. local time, in an operation that included local law enforcement officers and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Adult Correction said in a statement on Friday. Nobody was injured during the operation, it added.Mr. Alston, 30, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, will face charges of felony escape from prison, the statement said, and will be taken to a high-security unit in the state prison system to serve out that sentence while waiting to face the new charges in court. A woman, Jacobia Crisp, whom the release described as an acquaintance of Mr. Alston, was charged with felony aiding and abetting a fugitive.Authorities will investigate Mr. Alston’s movements while on the run, including whether he committed other crimes and if he had any other accomplices, the department said. Mr. Alston escaped early Tuesday when officers opened the door of the vehicle at the medical facility. Mr. Alston, who had managed to free himself from his leg restraints, ran out of the vehicle while wearing handcuffs and fled into the woods, state officials said.More than 300 law enforcement personnel from 19 agencies joined a search for him, scouring 1,335 acres.The police who had accompanied Mr. Alston were carrying weapons but did not fire at him because “it all happened so quickly,” a spokesman for the department said.Mr. Alston was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018 for his involvement in a shooting that led to the death of a 1-year-old girl on Christmas Day in 2015, according to court documents. Lawyers for Mr. Alston said he was not the person who had fired the shot that resulted in the girl’s death.Mr. Alston had been serving his sentence at Bertie Correctional Institution in Windsor, N.C., which is more than 100 miles east of the Hillsborough medical campus. More