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Buzz Feed
15-05-2025
- Buzz Feed
Inside Women's Prisons: Former Inmates Tell All
According to the World Prison Brief, there are currently over 733,000 women and girls imprisoned globally. This number continues to rise, increasing at a rate that surpasses the male prison population. That being said, women constitute only around 2 - 9% of the total prison population in various countries. The United States holds the record for the highest number of incarcerated women, with an estimated 190,600. So, when Reddit user u/Justin_Butts asked women to share what their prison experience was like, here is what was said: "The best way I can describe it is like a boarding school full of every type of female you can imagine. I spent about two months at a facility with around 400 women, whose charges ranged from small petty crimes, to rape and murder. Everyone had their own cliches that they kept to, but there was a lot of dumb drama. Try to think of the most troubled girls from high school, and then imagine 400 of them stuck together, in a place that is miserable, where they are isolated from their family and the rest of society. That's basically the jist of it..." "Not me, but an ex's older sister got 3 DUIs, and the last one meant she did a few weeks in jail. One of the first things she said she learned was how to make a prison dildo out of a toilet paper roll, Saran Wrap, napkins, and a rubber band. She's a fine member of society now, but just had a bit of a reckless stage. Still makes me chuckle thinking about that prison dildo." "In prison, the fights are really the worst part. I remember one time when I first got there, a woman attacked another lady at my table where we were eating. It happened so fast, I was still sitting there when another girl had to pull me up and away from the fight. I saw why soon after because a different girl who had nothing to do with it (like me) caught a fist right to the face, and it broke her eye socket. She was rolling on the ground, screaming and crying. I never saw her or the instigator of the fight again in my time there. No one ever tried to fight or start anything with me, but I never gave them reason to. I stayed in my cell a lot of the time and just read, drew, and wrote really long letters, even when we were allowed out. I didn't talk about anyone in there, good or bad. I just tried to stay positive and listen more than I talked. I actually got the nickname 'Smiles' even though I was probably the most depressed and anxious person there." "My mom went to prison when I was a junior in high school. She was innocent, the other people had more money and our lawyer was complete shit. Long story short, she was in there for about one and a half years. There are a lot of girls who are, or are while in there, lesbian. My mom said they are horny all the time. I remember being 18 and visiting my mom and a few of the younger inmates would do the blowjob gesture with their tounge against their cheek at me. Another thing is cleanliness. Inmates pretty much do most of the work around the prison, and my mom said one day the people in the kitchen opened the meat grinder because it hadn't been cleaned for a while. When they opened it, they found about a million maggots inside it. Basically, the whole prison had been eating maggot meat." "My friend said they threaded their eyebrows with tampon strings." "I got locked up in a women's prison when I was 21. When you first get there, they ask if you're addicted to anything. If you said benzos or alcohol, they dosed you up with Klonopin. Anyone who's been there before knows this, so for the first two weeks when I was in the drug treatment area, things were very chill..." "My mom's friend is doing time right now. Her letters basically say there's a ton of sex in the showers, and you hear sounds of sex at night." "Mom was a corrections officer for a long time. So she worked in a jail, not a prison. She said there was a ton of drama and sex in the women's unit compared to the men's. So, as someone who's spent time in jail, I can tell you drama in the men's unit is usually at a zero or a ten. The women's unit is probably more of a constant six." "I've worked in various prisons. Men will act aggressively to assert dominance. It may escalate to violence, but a lot of the time, it is just a matter of one guy wanting the other to submit, and the level of violence may stay mild if someone backs off. Women aren't as prone to that sort of physical domination. When a woman decides to fight another, she wants to HURT her. The escalation to severe violence can be quite sudden, and less likely to end just because someone backs down." "There's a lot of drugs, people offering prescription pills immediately upon entry, a dearth of good books, and asshole guards. My ex was in for drugs, and she didn't get undergarments for the first week she was there for literally no reason other than that someone forgot to give her, and they didn't want to admit to it. They wouldn't give her veggie meals (even though they're supposed to). She ended up having to eat only bread and apples the entire time she was there, lost a ton of weight, and still has digestive problems to this day. She was a scared white girl from a middle class family who made straight A's in school and she still got treated like shit. I can only imagine what it must be like for the troublemakers." "Pretty much every inmate does or deals drugs. They make weapons out of every object available, from toothbrushes to plastic spoons. Fights and stabbed women are pretty common, and the vast majority of guards are corrupt." "I spent a week in a cell by myself. No one to talk to and no way to leave — it was just me in a room with a slot in the door for food. I didn't ask for anything or attempt to communicate with officers because I ultimately just wanted to be as inoffensive as possible and not cause any trouble. It was freezing cold, and there was no way to tell time. I counted breakfast and read, reread, reread again my paperwork stating how phone calls worked and when I'd get out. All in all, I found it very draining. It is mentally exhausting just trying to keep occupied while having zero stimulus. Jail food is not as bad as elementary school food was." "My mom went to prison for about three years. I got to visit her a couple of times a month. She told me that girls she knew had died or killed others. She was once locked in solitary confinement just for witnessing a brawl. Sunlight is scarce and usually treasured. The guards would frequently screw up count, so everyone would have to stand around for a long time until they figured it out." "The overcrowding thing can be real af. The cells held two bunkbeds each, and the entire hallway was lined with extra bunkbeds because it was overfull." "I spent 30 days in jail after drinking underage at 19 years of age. It was horrible. The girls were beyond mean, and hygiene in general was lacking. Ironically, my skin got really clear because I had no makeup and I bathed as much as possible. The food was lukewarm garbage. We usually had cold grits and warm milk for breakfast, bologna sandwiches on hard bread for lunch. I once traded a roll of toilet paper for a twin package of Dunkin Sticks. Some guards were nice and others had it out for me. They would drag their flashlights along my cell bars to keep me up at night. I made a face mask out of a pad so I could sleep. We used newspapers as rollers for our hair to get ready for church. Overall, it was hell. I was only in there for 30 days, but it felt like an eternity, and it was shocking how quickly I acclimated to jail life. I wouldn't wish jail on my worst enemy." Let us know if you have anything to add in the comments! And if you've been to prison and have something you would like to share, but want to remain unknown, let us know in the anonymous comments form below. Your response may be shared in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post!
CBS News
07-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Photojournalist witnesses Venezuelan migrants' arrival in El Salvador: "They had no idea what was coming"
Three weeks ago, photojournalist Philip Holsinger stood on a tarmac in El Salvador waiting for three planes to arrive, cameras slung across his body. He was told the planes were carrying Venezuelan migrants from the United States who would become inmates at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a notorious prison in El Salvador also known as CECOT. As the Venezuelans emerged from the door to make their way down the gangplank, their faces dropped. "They're greeted by this scene, a sea of black-clad, masked police in riot gear," Holsinger told 60 Minutes Overtime. "I've looked through my lens at many types of faces, laughing, crying, terrified, angry… they had no idea what was coming." A 60 Minutes report this week found that a majority of the Venezuelans who arrived in El Salvador that day have no apparent criminal record. In response to these findings, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman told 60 Minutes that many of those without criminal records "are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters, and more. They just don't have a rap sheet in the U.S." Holsinger has spent over a year in El Salvador, documenting the government's controversial crackdown on violent gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18. In March 2022, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele declared a "state of emergency" to address gang violence in the country. Then, a "state of exception" was approved by the Salvadoran legislature that suspended certain constitutional freedoms, allowing law enforcement to arrest and prosecute tens of thousands of people with alleged, or even suspected, gang ties. It's been renewed every month since. The Salvadoran government claims over 85,000 arrests have been made under the state of exception. The country, once known as the "murder capital of the world," closed 2024 with a record low of 114 homicides, according to their government statistics. Human rights groups have heavily criticized the government's approach to gang violence, saying arrests are often made with little evidence, and without a fair and speedy trial. Since 2022, the prison population in El Salvador has exploded. The current occupancy rate is nearly 163%, according to World Prison Brief. Holsinger has photographed and interviewed inmates, including members of MS-13, in Salvadoran prisons, like Izalco Prison. But the most notorious prison he's visited by far is CECOT. Designed to house a population of over 40,000 people, it is known for its strict rules and spartan living conditions. "Life in the cell, in CECOT, is the definition of austerity," Holsinger told Overtime. "There are no books. There's no television… zero outside communication. Nothing goes out. Nothing comes in. There's 24-hour surveillance." Inmates sleep on metal slabs, with no pillows or blankets. Unsolicited talking and eye contact with guards is generally prohibited, Holsinger said. "When we walked into the cell block, I was shocked by the silence… it's like a church," Holsinger said. "It got under my skin," Holsinger said. "Because it means something… Does it mean people are being treated bad, and they're quiet, or does it mean they just got order?" When the Venezuelans deported from the U.S. arrived in El Salvador, officers used a standard procedure for CECOT inmates, grabbing them by the neck and pushing their bodies downward, as they walked them briskly toward the bus. "They move them fast and hard. And they intentionally want them to feel that they're powerless," Holsinger told Overtime. A Venezuelan man seated in one of the buses looked over at Holsinger's camera for a moment. "When the guard noticed it, the guard grabs him by his hair and shoves his head back down," Holsinger told Overtime. "That's the beginning of their lesson… which is total powerlessness." After leaving the buses at the prison's entrance, the Venezuelans were brought into a room where teams of men buzzed their hair off. Guards shouted commands to speed up the process, and slapped some of the Venezuelans who spoke up. "The guards are [saying] 'Fast! Fast! Fast!'" Holsinger said. Staring at a black-and-white photograph of a man with far-away eyes having his head shaved, Holsinger recalled what he was thinking when he took his picture. "He may be a criminal. He may be innocent. He may be a father. I don't know his story at all. But I know his eyes," he said. "He didn't fight… like, hopelessness. [He] just gave in." Another man who caught Holsinger's attention shouted "I'm innocent" and "I'm gay," and was crying as his head was shaved. 60 Minutes has now identified that man as Andry Hernandez Romero. He and the other Venezuelans were deported from the U.S. after President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, claiming the men were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. Romero's lawyers told 60 Minutes that he is a 31-year-old gay makeup artist with no criminal record in the United States or Venezuela. "He was being slapped every time he would speak up… he started praying and calling out, literally crying for his mother," Holsinger told Overtime. "His crying out for his mother really, really touched me." Romero and the other Venezuelans were ordered to strip naked and put on the CECOT uniform: a white shirt, white shorts and white rubber slippers. Then they were forced to kneel in a line with their hands cuffed behind their backs, their bodies stacked against each other. "This is a standard body posture that anybody in CECOT… will be trained in," Holsinger explained. Finally, the men were pushed to the ground, their faces pressed to the concrete floor. As Holsinger snapped the last few photographs, he felt that he had just watched the Venezuelan men become "ghosts." "They've been stripped of their hair and their clothes… It's like your life just ceased to exist. You're just a person in white clothes now," Holsinger said. "And it was a sense of watching people disappear." The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer.
Al Arabiya
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
UK to use police stations as prisons under emergency measure
Police cells will temporarily be used to hold prisoners in a stop-gap measure to cope with overcrowding in jails, the British government said on Tuesday. The emergency action, dubbed 'Operation Safeguard', allows inmates to be held in police cells when prisons are full, and was previously used from February 2023 to October last year. The prison population in England and Wales has doubled in the last 30 years, according to official data, leading to overcrowding as new places have failed to keep pace with demand. Justice systems in Scotland and Northern Ireland are run separately. In a statement to parliament, Shabana Mahmood said the prison system was operating at more than 99 percent occupancy. January saw the highest average monthly prison population growth in almost two years, as part of a rising trend in the last three months that 'has only just begun to slow', she added. 'Given the recent increase in demand, it is necessary, and prudent, for me to temporarily reactivate Operation Safeguard to better manage the flow of offenders into the prison estate,' Mahmood said. According to the World Prison Brief database, imprisonment rates in England and Wales are higher than in other major European countries, with 141 detainees per 100,000 population, against 120 in France, 117 in Spain, 105 in Italy and 68 in Germany.
Asharq Al-Awsat
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
UK to Use Police Stations as Prisons under Emergency Measure
Police cells will temporarily be used to hold prisoners in a stop-gap measure to cope with overcrowding in jails, the British government said on Tuesday. The emergency action, dubbed "Operation Safeguard", allows inmates to be held in police cells when prisons are full, and was previously used from February 2023 to October last year, Reuters said. The prison population in England and Wales has doubled in the last 30 years, according to official data, leading to overcrowding as new places have failed to keep pace with demand. Justice systems in Scotland and Northern Ireland are run separately. In a statement to parliament, Shabana Mahmood said the prison system was operating at more than 99% occupancy. January saw the highest average monthly prison population growth in almost two years, as part of a rising trend in the last three months that "has only just begun to slow", she added. "Given the recent increase in demand, it is necessary, and prudent, for me to temporarily reactivate Operation Safeguard to better manage the flow of offenders into the prison estate," Mahmood said. According to the World Prison Brief database, imprisonment rates in England and Wales are higher than in other major European countries, with 141 detainees per 100,000 population, against 120 in France, 117 in Spain, 105 in Italy and 68 in Germany.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
UK to use police stations as prisons under emergency measure
LONDON (Reuters) - Police cells will temporarily be used to hold prisoners in a stop-gap measure to cope with overcrowding in jails, the British government said on Tuesday. The emergency action, dubbed "Operation Safeguard", allows inmates to be held in police cells when prisons are full, and was previously used from February 2023 to October last year. The prison population in England and Wales has doubled in the last 30 years, according to official data, leading to overcrowding as new places have failed to keep pace with demand. Justice systems in Scotland and Northern Ireland are run separately. In a statement to parliament, Shabana Mahmood said the prison system was operating at more than 99% occupancy. January saw the highest average monthly prison population growth in almost two years, as part of a rising trend in the last three months that "has only just begun to slow", she added. "Given the recent increase in demand, it is necessary, and prudent, for me to temporarily reactivate Operation Safeguard to better manage the flow of offenders into the prison estate," Mahmood said. According to the World Prison Brief database, imprisonment rates in England and Wales are higher than in other major European countries, with 141 detainees per 100,000 population, against 120 in France, 117 in Spain, 105 in Italy and 68 in Germany.
