🚨NEW: Nearly 200,000 women and girls are incarcerated in the U.S. on any given day — a number that stands out globally.

Where are they held? For what charges? And what conditions do they face?

Our latest report, Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, answers that & more 🧵

The disproportionate criminalization of Black people starts at a young age.

While Black and white kids use drugs at similar rates, Black youth make up 24% of kids confined for drug offenses, despite comprising just 14% of the general youth population.

-Cells infested with mold and vermin
-Floors covered with waste and sewage
-Deadly temperatures during extreme weather

This isn't a scene out of a horror movie. It's the real-life conditions that incarcerated people endure every single day.

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While families struggle through an affordability crisis, the U.S. continues to spend $445 billion on mass incarceration each year.

That's a lot of money that could be spent on caring for communities instead of criminalizing them.

"Parole is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. While parole does mean I’ve been released from prison, it’s also not exactly freedom. Much of my life feels like an adherence to a strict set of guidelines that dictate everything I can and cannot do."

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Both probation & parole impose an excessive number of conditions that can be nearly impossible to comply with all the time, like curfews or paying hefty fines.

If they're missed, that could be a violation that lands someone in prison.

And failure of these systems because of conditions is high: Supervision violations account for more than 25% of all prison admissions.

This is not a system designed for success.

The bottom line is that ICE is using taxpayer dollars to turn local law enforcement into its bounty hunters, and sheriffs are thrilled to play along.

But remember that local collaboration is voluntary and, as Election Day nears, sheriffs are elected officials!

And, importantly, even if your local government isn't getting paid by ICE, there are many ways that it likely is still quietly fueling the agency's agenda.

Learn more here 👇
prisonpolicy.org/blog/2026/02/2…

Why do local law enforcement want to carry out ICE's dirty work in their own communities so badly?

Well, because contracts with ICE are lucrative and yet another way for greedy sheriffs to line their pockets off mass incarceration.

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This year, the federal agency also started offering money to departments that enrolled in its 287(g) program, which deputizes local police to act as immigration enforcement agents:

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The deportation agenda can't happen without local law enforcement. To make this happen, ICE has spent millions bankrolling them.

For example, ICE often rents out beds from local jails to hold people:
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For some kids, vaping in school can lead to arrest.

Thanks to Texas' investment in expanding police presence at schools, thousands of young kids are being shuffled into the juvenile justice system — often for minor offenses.

Kids need care, not cages.

nytimes.com/2026/10/15/us/…

Shuffling children into the juvenile system doesn't "teach them a lesson." What it actually does is traumatize them, creating wounds that could last a lifetime. Sometimes, it even saddles them with a criminal record that haunts them for years.

In a country where almost 40% of people in state prisons were first arrested before they turned 16 years old, it's clear that children are being set up for failure.

Learn more about youth confinement 👇

prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2…

While the U.S. strips away access to SNAP, 1 in 5 formerly incarcerated people is experiencing food insecurity. That's about 1 million people nationwide.

We should be making it easier for vulnerable people to access healthy food, not harder.

🧵Everyone has to eat. The so-called "#WarOnDrugs" steals lives in man ways — through #StateViolence, #Overdose, & systemically cutting people off from the very things needed to survive, including food. As noted in this @NCHealthNews coverage, drug charges
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A reminder during Prison Banned Books Week: Prisons & jails are the largest censors in the U.S.

They say it's for "security," but the most banned book is a cookbook. 🤨

Book bans are designed to isolate and control incarcerated people — not keep them safe.

🗳️ Midterms are around the corner, and mass incarceration is on the ballot

Here's what you should know about some of the most common offices that you might be asked to vote on this November:
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