Paris Alexander had been in a destructive relationship for over a decade, learning to tolerate the intolerable even as the abuse progressed—first mental and emotional torment, then physical and sexual torture. Like many survivors, Alexander, who is nonbinary, stayed in the relationship hoping that it would improve. “We stick it out,” they said, “because we think that they’re going to change and come to their senses.” 

Then, one day in September 2020, Alexander’s male partner beat them up and dragged them outside their Providence, Rhode Island, home by their hair. Wandering their neighborhood, covered in blood and desperate to flee, Alexander felt haunted by the years of forced isolation: “I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to,” they recall. A Google search on their phone led them to Sojourner House, which runs the state’s only shelter specifically for LGBTQ victims of intimate partner violence. Almost miraculously, there was some space. Finally, Alexander had caught a break. 

At the shelter, known as RISE, Alexander focused on taking “baby steps” toward independence. They got a library card. They started individual therapy. They joined a weekly virtual LGBTQ support group, where they heard terms like “nonbinary,” “gender-queer,” and “gender fluid” for the first time. Back then, Alexander identified as a transgender woman and felt pressured to “look female as much as possible.” The support group taught them, “You don’t have to be [male or female]—you can just simply be who you are, and that’s okay.” 

RISE is one of three shelters operated by Sojourner House, named for the 19th-century slave-turned-abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who was also an ardent advocate for women’s rights. Since its founding in 1976, the organization has served more than 60,000 people—1,800 last year alone. A small but critical part of this past year’s $7.4 million budget comes from the federal Crime Victims Fund, a pot of money created by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA. Across the country, VOCA helps pay for the hotlines survivors call in crisis, the shelters they flee to, and the advocates who accompany them to court and help them heal.

VOCA-supported programs helped almost 8 million people in fiscal year 2022–2023, funding nearly 3 million shelter beds and 2.3 million crisis-hotline calls, according to the Department of Justice. Those services have become more critical since the pandemic, as rates of intimate partner violence have soared, a housing crisis has made it even harder for survivors to flee, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade has given abusers another way to threaten pregnant survivors. But even as the need is growing, VOCA funding has been plummeting—and Congress has failed to act on what many advocates say may be the best hope for a legislative fix.

The current funding crisis is rooted in changes in DOJ policy that date back years. The Crime Victims Fund gets most of its money from financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases, according to the department. Those fees and fines have been falling as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which allow defendants more time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government. As a result, deposits into the pot shrank from a high of $6.6 billion in 2017 to $1.39 billion in fiscal year 2023. (Because of congressional caps, the actual amount of money disbursed is even lower.) These declines have trickled down to state agencies—which receive VOCA funds based on their state’s population size—and then to eligible programs. Rhode Island, which has one of the smallest populations, has seen a 54 percent drop in VOCA funds since 2017, to $2.9 million in the last fiscal year. California, the most populous state, went from receiving $218.9 million in VOCA funds in 2017 to $87 million over the same period.

Most states, including California, have managed to come up with some funding to offset the federal cuts, but the money is mostly temporary—lasting a year or two max. Fourteen states, including Rhode Island, did not appropriate any money in their most recent budgets to offset the VOCA cuts, I found in my reporting. This past spring, Rhode Island lawmakers proposed $2 million in supplemental funding, but the bill died in committee.

I’ve spent four months trying to understand how these extreme VOCA cuts are affecting domestic violence programs across the United States, doing more than two dozen interviews and tracking down budget data from every state. The picture that has emerged is deeply troubling: Lifesaving services for survivors are struggling to stay afloat, and experts fear what might happen if a long-term funding solution isn’t found.

Law enforcement groups are equally worried. “Without Congressional action, victim service providers will be forced to cut critical services, and many will be forced to close,” more than 700 prosecutors wrote in an open letter to lawmakers in February. “Millions of victims, including abused children and battered women, will be left without access to safety, justice and healing.” But with the November elections looming, Congress’ attention has been focused elsewhere.

The VOCA Fix Act, which President Biden signed into law in 2021, diverted revenue from deferred and non-prosecution agreements to the Crime Victims Fund—but this turned out to be inadequate. This term, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have proposed a bill to supplement VOCA with funds collected through the False Claims Act, which penalizes defrauding of the government. The legislation has attracted 170 bipartisan co-sponsors in the House but languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Durbin chairs. A spokesperson for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the committee’s highest-ranking Republican, did not respond to questions about whether the bill will get a hearing. Congress has also punted on Biden’s proposal for a $7.3 billion infusion into the Crime Victims Fund for next year. (The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

“Victims of crime, and specifically, victims of domestic and sexual violence, just are not priorities.”

At a virtual event this week commemorating the 40th anniversary of VOCA, the mood was less than celebratory. “I’m hearing about programs shutting down, positions being cut, victim services being impacted,” Claire Ponder Selib, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Advocacy, told more than 250 attendees. To Vanessa Volz, Sojourner House’s president and CEO, the funding crisis illuminates a harsh reality: “Victims of crime, and specifically, victims of domestic and sexual violence, just are not priorities.” 

Domestic violence hotlines like the one that led Paris Alexander to Sojourner House are among the most critical services that VOCA funds. Because hotlines are the point of entry to a support system that can mean the difference between life and death, slashed budgets can be especially disastrous. Rhode Island’s statewide 24/7 helpline has historically relied almost entirely on VOCA funding—about $118,000 last year, less than half what it received in 2019. More cuts would likely hit the helpline’s overnight shifts hardest. For people who are abused in the dead of night, or who have a small window to seek help while their abusers are sleeping or working, this could be catastrophic.

The Rhode Island helpline routinely gets calls from people in Massachusetts and Connecticut who can’t access services in their own areas—even though both of those states, unlike Rhode Island, have appropriated supplemental funds to offset VOCA cuts. Connecticut’s additional money came from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act, which disappears at the end of this year. Without a new infusion of money, the statewide domestic violence hotline, Safe Connect—which is 100 percent funded by VOCA—will have to drastically cut services, lay off advocates, or even shut down, says Meghan Scanlon, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which staffs the hotline. “The reality is, as much as we are advocates who don’t want to say ‘no,’ at some point, we’re gonna have to,” she laments. “And that doesn’t feel great.” 

Some of the greatest effects are likely to be felt in programs that serve transgender clients and undocumented immigrants, such as Sojourner House’s RISE shelter and THEIA Project, which supports victims of human trafficking. Hot-button politics around LGBTQ+ and immigrant clienteles make such programs especially difficult to fundraise for, Volz says.

Yet as Alexander’s story shows, immigrant survivors are particularly vulnerable to abuse from partners who exploit their status as another form of control. Despite their strong New England accent that makes them sound as if they had been born and raised in Boston, Alexander originally hails from São Miguel, a lush island in the Azores archipelago of Portugal. When they were 5 years old, they arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, with their parents—but without documentation. Their mother secured US citizenship when Alexander was a teenager—a process that automatically made them a citizen, too. But after getting kicked out of the house at 16, and no parental contact over the years, Alexander lacked both identification and proof of their citizenship status. “I became like a ghost,” they recall. In their 20s, they told me, essentially undocumented, they dropped out of cosmetology school and the regular labor force and drifted into sex work.

Sojourner House didn’t just get Alexander out of an abusive relationship. Its VOCA-funded team of immigration advocates helped Alexander secure identification, represented them in immigration proceedings, and prepped them for their citizenship test—a process that took over a year; in March 2022, Alexander was officially sworn in as a US citizen. “We’re really at risk of not being able to continue providing these services at the same level,” Volz notes.

In some places, cuts affecting VOCA-funded legal advocacy services have already been devastating. Judge Shelley Santry, a family court judge in Louisville, Kentucky, used to have advocates in her courtroom every Tuesday, the day she hears domestic violence cases involving people seeking emergency protective orders against their abusers. The advocates—employed by the statewide Center for Women and Families—would bring survivors into a private room after their hearing and explain a new set of risks: “Once the order is entered, it’s really the most dangerous time,” Santry told me. “The perpetrator is losing that control, and that’s when the lethality red flags are elevated.” Recently in Hardin County, 60 miles from Louisville, a man fatally shot his ex-girlfriend and her mother near the courthouse where they had a hearing about an emergency protective order against him. (He also killed himself.)

In Santry’s courtroom, the advocates would help survivors come up with practical strategies to safeguard themselves and their families: keep gas in their cars, charge up their phones, pack emergency bags in case they had to flee. Their in-person presence was essential, says Elizabeth Martin, the center’s president and CEO: “If you aren’t where people are, they’re not necessarily going to reach out to you.”

But over time, the number of advocates in Santry’s courtroom dwindled, and since August 2021, they’ve been completely gone. With VOCA funding for the center plummeting more than 60 percent since 2019, to just over $437,000 last year, Martin was forced to cut her domestic violence staff in half and remove advocates from courtrooms. Now, a court staffer hands out pamphlets and business cards to survivors bearing the center’s name, website, and phone number. Martin only sends an advocate if a survivor asks for one. “They don’t know what they don’t know,” Martin says. “The contact, that personal touch, that involvement has been watered down significantly.”

Lawmakers “need to understand this isn’t a personal problem, this isn’t a family problem—this is all of our problems, and we’ve got to work to eradicate it.” 

Domestic violence groups were grateful when Kentucky legislators allocated $7.1 million in their latest budget to offset VOCA cuts, but say the one-time grant isn’t enough. Without advocates to provide support, “the consequence may be death,” Santry says. In 2020, Kentucky ranked 10th in the nation for domestic violence homicides, according to the Violence Policy Center, with men murdering 46 women across the state. Lawmakers “need to understand this isn’t a personal problem,” Martin says, “this isn’t a family problem—this is all of our problems, and we’ve got to work to eradicate it.” 

California is another state where advocates say lawmakers haven’t done enough to address a steep decline in VOCA funds—down 60 percent since fiscal year 2017. Now domestic violence organizations there are facing a new crisis as they grapple with the repercussions of this summer’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, in which the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority essentially greenlit the criminalization of homelessness.

After a months-long advocacy campaign that drew the support of actress Angelina Jolie, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office scrounged up $103 million in June to supplement the $87 million in federal VOCA funds. That one-year reprieve helped to avert what could have been a catastrophe for VOCA-funded organizations. But then in July, Newsom ordered state agencies to clear out homeless encampments following the Grants Pass ruling. Advocates warned that the decision could be devastating for survivors of intimate partner violence, who struggle to access shelter and housing nationwide—and especially in California, which has the largest population of unhoused people in the United States.

“The reality before [Newsom’s] executive order was that there were not enough DV-specific shelter beds, and just in general, there’s not enough emergency shelter beds,” says Jennifer Willover, housing policy analyst at the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. Since Newsom’s mandate, Willover adds, domestic violence programs across the state have reported increased calls to their hotlines requesting shelter. In some parts of the state, advocates report that they are spending more time visiting encampments and informing unhoused people of domestic violence-specific services they offer, Willover says. (Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services did not respond to requests for comment.)

Experts see the situation there as a harbinger of what’s to come nationwide: As the National Network to End Domestic Violence and other advocacy groups said after the Grants Pass ruling, “Gender-based violence is a cause and consequence of homelessness, and this ruling will further trap people who are homeless, including survivors, in cycles of poverty and housing insecurity.”

In a report about homelessness in the state published in January by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, nearly one-fifth of cisgender women surveyed said they had experienced intimate partner violence in the six months prior to homelessness, and 40 percent said violence was a reason for leaving their last housing. Many were homeless because of the far-reaching effects of domestic abuse: living in isolation from family and friends and unable to work, their financial resources controlled by their abusers, resulted in intractable poor credit and records of eviction. “There’s a lack of awareness, still, of the fact that there is that intersection of domestic violence and homelessness,” says Leticia Campos, chief programs officer at the Marjaree Mason Center, which serves victims of domestic violence in Fresno County, where the population tops 1 million and the poverty rate is well over the national average. 

Marjaree Mason—established in 1979 and named after a 36-year-old woman murdered by her ex-boyfriend, a sheriff’s deputy with the county—offers a case study of the problems facing VOCA-funded organizations in California post–Grants Pass. Fresno County has the highest number of calls to law enforcement for domestic violence per capita in California, and Marjaree Mason is the county’s only 24/7 domestic violence shelter and service provider. The Fresno City Council allocated $300,000 earlier this year to help the organization fend off the impacts of the years-long decline in VOCA funds, but staff members say they still struggle to meet the needs of survivors.

In June, I visited the VOCA-funded emergency shelter, which can accommodate 140 people. The rooms have bunk beds with colorful, patterned bedspreads, and televisions mounted on the walls, and outside there’s a playground shaded by palm trees. But even before the Supreme Court ruling, getting a bed there wasn’t easy. Empty beds are often filled within hours, Campos says; when I visited, the shelter had been at capacity for three weeks. Survivors who are turned away often have no choice but to return to their abusers. A spokesperson told me that last year, 80 percent of the organization’s clients had no income of their own, and of the ones who did, two-thirds made under $15,000. 

After Newsom issued his executive order, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance making “unlawful camping” a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine and up to six months in jail. The city of Fresno passed a ban that was even more aggressive: a $1,000 fine and a year behind bars, which took effect in late September. The mayor has said that arrests will be limited to “habitual offenders” and that people will first be offered supportive services, though it’s unclear whether those include referrals for domestic violence treatment.

Staff at Marjaree Mason saw an impact within days of Newsom’s executive order, when the sheriff’s office dropped off an unhoused woman and two children at the drop-in center in the middle of the night after clearing an encampment, according to Joseph Hickman, the center’s interim crisis response manager. “It was very eye-opening to see that it happened that quickly,” Hickman says. “It definitely kind of lit a fire under us.”

The problem, as Campos says, is this: “What should we do when we’re at capacity? Where should we send victims of domestic violence?” Laura Moreno, program manager at the Fresno County Department of Social Services, says those questions point to a broader, county-wide issue. “We don’t have enough shelter beds, period, for the number of people we have on the streets,” she told me. A federally mandated one-day census in Fresno and neighboring Madera counties in January 2023 found nearly 4,500 unhoused people, up 7 percent from the year before. A county spokesperson said outreach teams provide homeless people with relevant resources, including information about Marjaree Mason’s services.

Helping survivors find assistance elsewhere when the shelter is full is a task left to Diana Hernandez, a former 911 dispatcher who joined Marjaree Mason’s staff in September 2021. In her previous job, she told me, she hated having to hang up on callers who were clearly in need but not in the throes of an emergency. Now, as a client navigator, she can talk to survivors who call the hotline for as long as they want, providing them with emotional support and resources. But she can’t always give them what they need most, which is usually a bed.

While we were chatting in her cubicle in June, she received a hotline call from a woman who said she’d been physically assaulted by her boyfriend. She had been living in a car, and needed a safe place to stay. Marjaree Mason’s shelter was full, so Hernandez offered to call homeless shelters in the area to see if they had room. But she also cautioned that those shelters wouldn’t offer advocacy support and legal services specifically for domestic violence victims. Nor would their locations be confidential, like domestic violence shelters’ are. Add to that, most likely they would require residents to leave during the day; Marjaree Mason lets them stay. 

Hernandez gave the woman phone numbers for other local organizations that could provide services, and suggested that she change her passwords on her email and social media accounts, make sure her phone’s location-sharing feature was turned off, and call back on the hotline at any time if she wanted to talk. In such instances, “I try to exhaust my resources,” Hernandez told me after the call ended, “so I know I did everything I could.”

After seven months at RISE, Sojourner House’s LGBTQ shelter, Paris Alexander might have ended up like so many other survivors of intimate partner violence: homeless and back on the street. But because Alexander had been a victim of sex trafficking, they were eligible for assistance through another Sojourner House program offering transitional housing for survivors of human trafficking. The program paid the rent and utilities on a third-floor apartment where Alexander lived while they were sorting through their citizenship problems and unable to work. Without a Social Security number, they couldn’t apply for food stamps or government assistance. Every few weeks, Alexander recalls, a Sojourner House advocate showed up with some food—bread, peanut butter, canned beans. “And that was pretty much what I had to live off of.” 

Alexander finally secured their citizenship in March 2022 and was able to begin searching for permanent housing. Once more, Sojourner House provided vital support. Robin Greene, an advocate who had once been unhoused, also works with trafficking survivors through the organization’s THEIA Project, which includes a VOCA-funded shelter. Greene helped Alexander find an apartment and even convinced the landlord to renovate the space by replacing the floors and covering up cracks and holes in the walls. 

For Greene, ensuring her clients live in comfort is key to helping them stay on the road to recovery. Greene recalls spending time in homeless shelters that were “gross,” “vermin-ridden,” “humiliating,” and “degrading.” At the shelter for trafficking victims, she painted the walls and floors with pops of green, yellow, and purple and adorned the office space with house plants. She mows the front lawn herself. “I want it to look not like a shelter,” she told me when I visited. “I want it to look like a home.” 

Two years after Alexander moved in, their apartment—the same one that Greene helped secure—has become their “sanctuary,” where they live with their two cats, Bast and Isis. They painted the walls yellow, green, and blue; hung up their own artwork; and put some of the house plants Greene brought to life in front of the bay windows in their living room, a daily reminder of someone who helped transform their life.

According to Greene, Alexander represents “the epitome” of what Sojourner House and domestic violence organizations like it can do, if they have the vision, the people—and the funding to support survivors. “Paris was determined to just sit in their little apartment and never come out with their cats,” Greene told me, “but not now.” 

Today, Alexander volunteers with Sojourner House and spreads word of its services within the community. They also volunteer with a trans youth mentorship program, through which they meet weekly with a younger trans mentee, and they host events—including a recent makeup workshop, drawing on their cosmetology background—for trans and nonbinary young people. In November, they’ll host a virtual Friendsgiving hangout—meant to be “a safe and loving space during Thanksgiving,” they said, adding, “the holidays can be a tough time of the year for queer folks.”

Alexander knows firsthand the negative thoughts that can run rampant through survivors’ minds: “We feel like we’re not worthy. We feel like no one cares. We feel like no one understands. You don’t trust that there’s genuine empathy out there.” Empathy, though, tends to be abundant among people who support survivors of domestic violence; what’s in short supply is cash. This is partly why Alexander was eager to tell their story: They want lawmakers to know that VOCA funds have “the power and the ability” to save lives. “I wouldn’t be here today,” they told me, “if it weren’t for the Sojourner House program.”

If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788 or calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state.

This article was produced with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund.

In early September, Peterson Harter was working the lunchtime rush in his sandwich shop on San Francisco’s Haight Street when in walked prosecutor Ryan Khojasteh, sporting slicked-back hair and circular glasses.

The year before, Harter had been punched in the face by a man who’d been urinating outside his shop. He posted a video of his black eye on Instagram, and it went viral. Khojasteh, a prosecutor who’s challenging San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins for her job in November, wanted to hear about his public safety concerns heading into the election.

“I want to prevent that 18- or 19-year-old from getting to a point where they have a gun in their hand.”

Harter told Khojasteh that the man who assaulted him came back to apologize after getting out of jail; he was later arrested again for assaulting someone else. “This guy actually needs mental health help,” said Harter, leaning against the counter in his apron. They began talking about the benefits of early intervention. If only “we could have helped this person way back when,” Khojasteh said.

The question of how to treat young offenders was on everyone’s mind that week. Days earlier, 49ers receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot by a 17-year-old during an attempted robbery near luxury stores in Union Square, making national news. Jenkins may try to transfer Pearsall’s shooter to adult court but hasn’t decided yet. (She’s also recommended transferring two 16-year-olds to adult court in an unrelated case.) Khojasteh says there are very few circumstances in which he’d do the same. “I want to prevent that 18- or 19-year-old from getting to a point where they have a gun in their hand,” he tells me. “That is the whole passion of this job.”

Khojasteh’s emphasis on early interventions is one of the ways he’s setting himself apart from Jenkins, who has taken a more punitive approach to teens after being appointed following the recall of progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin.

San Francisco’s DA race has not gotten much attention in a presidential election year, but the results will be significant because of what Boudin’s recall represented: Observers nationally described it as evidence that famously liberal San Francisco had rejected criminal justice reforms, and that other progressive prosecutors outside California should beware a similar fate. Jenkins pledged to “restore accountability and consequences” to the city. If she loses, it could signal that voters believe the pendulum swung too far right under her leadership.

Khojasteh has welcomed endorsements from heavyweights in the progressive prosecutor world, including George Gascón in Los Angeles and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and from a slate of local progressive politicians and community leaders. But he is young, turning 31 next month, with less money, name recognition, and establishment support than Jenkins, who is endorsed by Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

And he will be trying to sell voters on his message about helping youthful offenders at a time when fears about violence are intensifying. Though juvenile crime has been falling for decades in San Francisco (and nationwide) to near historic lows, there’s been an uptick recently in kids arrested for serious offenses in the city. Not far from Harter’s sandwich shop, there were at least three other shootings over the past couple of years near Haight Street, a popular tourist destination; some of the gunmen were younger than 25. When Khojasteh spoke with other shopkeepers there, several said they didn’t feel safe. “The cops sadly don’t do anything,” an employee at a cafe told him.

As I tagged along with him on Haight Street, Khojasteh tried to convince people that he would offer a middle path between Boudin, a bold progressive, and Jenkins, a tough-talking moderate. “Anytime anyone commits a crime and I can prove it, I’m going to file charges,” he told a shopkeeper. But “the question is: How do I make sure they don’t come back into the system?” That’s what justice is, he says: figuring out how to keep someone accountable and keep them from coming back.

Khojasteh’s long-game approach to justice was shaped during his childhood. Raised in the Bay Area to Iranian immigrants, he was a toddler in 1996 when his family suffered a death that would cause him to question the root causes of youth violence. His uncle Cyrus Salehi was working the late shift at a Denny’s restaurant in Los Angeles when a 20-year-old walked inside, demanded money, and then aimed a pistol at his chest; two 18-year-olds and a 16-year-old sat outside with the getaway car. As Khojasteh grew older, the loss motivated him. “Why does this happen in the first place?” he wondered. “Why are there kids at that age with guns?” After Salehi’s wife got remarried, to a bureau chief of the Los Angeles DA’s Office, Khojasteh decided he wanted to become a prosecutor too.

He interned at the Santa Clara DA’s office after undergrad, then graduated early from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, in 2018, where he wrote a thesis on ending the school-to-prison pipeline. He also worked up the nerve, at age 24, to run against Nancy Pelosi for her seat in the House. (He lost.)

Next up was a fellowship at the San Francisco public defender’s office, where he met Chesa Boudin, then a deputy public defender. “For someone at his point in his legal career, he had a unique confidence,” Boudin says, describing Khojasteh as “hardworking, compassionate,” and eager to grow. “When I learned he’d run for office against Pelosi, I thought, ‘What a tremendous amount of character that would build, and what a steep learning curve it would be at his age.’”

Working with Boudin would have a deep impact on the way Khojasteh thought about helping teens who committed crimes. After Boudin was elected DA in 2019, Khojasteh was one of his first hires in the juvenile justice unit, as an assistant DA. Change was in the air; the San Francisco Chronicle had just published an investigation showing that youth crime had dropped enormously since the ’90s, but that San Francisco continued spending large sums of money on a juvenile hall that now held fewer and fewer kids. In February 2020, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to close the facility by 2021. “This jail for kids is morally repugnant,” said then-Supervisor Matt Haney. “I thought Ryan’s compassion and energy would be particularly useful” carrying out that mission, says Boudin.

Together, Khojasteh and Boudin tried to do more to connect kids with services rather than locking them up. They expanded the Make It Right initiative, launched by former DA Gascón in 2013 for teens who committed certain felonies. If the young offenders worked with a caseworker, talked with the person they harmed, and took steps to repair the damage, including through community service, they could avoid prosecution. Kids who went through the program were 44 percent less likely to get arrested again compared with those who were prosecuted, according to a study by University of California researchers and the California Policy Lab.

Kids who went through the program were 44 percent less likely to get arrested again compared with those who were prosecuted.

Boudin leaned on these services, diverting more teens than Gascón and pledging to use juvenile hall as a last resort. For more serious cases that required prosecution, he and Khojasteh tailored the punishment. When a 12-year-old robbed an elderly Chinese man, they filed charges but asked the victim what kind of justice he envisioned: The man wanted the boy, who was Black, to research the exploitation of Chinese people in America and think about their shared oppression. The boy also did community service, and the DA’s office checked to make sure he was going to school. Six months later, his mom reported that she’d never seen him behaving so well. “That had much more impact on his life and development than a couple of days in jail,” Khojasteh says.

Another time, Khojasteh prosecuted a 16-year-old who committed a serious property offense and was waiting in juvenile hall for placement at a residential school; the boy’s single mom couldn’t visit him because she was in hospice care with about a month to live. “I remember thinking, ‘If we keep this kid in juvenile hall, that would profoundly traumatize this child, the fact that he would never see his mother again,’” Khojasteh says. He arranged for the boy to leave and be with his mom for her last few days before returning to finish his sentence. “We don’t want to further cause the psychological damage that could ultimately cause him to act out or commit more crimes in the future,” he adds.

Khojasteh thinks some cases involving young people do require a tougher approach, especially if a victim is injured. He has incarcerated kids for offenses like carjacking. Juvenile hall “is a tool to protect the public and to protect the kid,” he says. But the number of children locked up for crimes fell dramatically in San Francisco under Boudin’s leadership—from an average of 33 kids a day in January 2020, when Boudin took office, to 9 kids daily in June 2020 and 16 kids daily in June 2021, according to city data. (Part of the drop can be explained by the pandemic: Social distancing forced detention facilities to downsize, and courts temporarily stopped trials.)

While working in Boudin’s office, Khojasteh also helped create a program for unaccompanied immigrant kids who committed crimes, and another that offered financial assistance to teens so they could pay restitution to their victims. Without the aid, the owed money often turned into debt for the teens’ parents, affecting the family’s credit score and upward mobility by making it harder to apply for housing or student loans.

San Francisco’s juvenile hall never shut down; Mayor Breed did not support its closure, and momentum for the plan dwindled. Then on June 7, 2022, San Francisco voters recalled Boudin, many of them frustrated by his perceived leniency amid heightened drug use and homelessness, as well as community violence against Asian American elders and viral social media footage of car break-ins and store thefts. (Though overall crime fell during Boudin’s tenure, commercial burglaries and homicides increased in San Francisco, as they did nationally around that time.) After the recall, Khojasteh urged Breed to pick a new DA who would continue the work he and Boudin had started on juvenile justice. “San Francisco deserves to see these reforms through,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Chronicle that July.

That’s not exactly what happened. Three days after the op-ed ran, Breed announced that Jenkins, a former assistant DA who’d quit Boudin’s office and then campaigned to recall him, would be the city’s next lead prosecutor. Khojasteh, now working on adult felony cases, tried to extend an olive branch: After Jenkins told staff she wanted to improve morale at the office, he emailed her to share his thoughts on how staffing increases in the felony unit might accomplish that. Days later, while he was at a family wedding, she called and fired him. “It was such an inappropriate way to handle this,” he tells me, frustrated that she didn’t give him time to write transition memos. He contemplated running against Jenkins in the November 2023 election but was not old enough; the law requires candidates to have worked five years as attorneys, and he would be several months shy of that. Instead, he got a job in Oakland at the Alameda DA’s office.          

From afar, Khojasteh watched as Jenkins took a harder turn against San Francisco’s teen offenders.

From afar, Khojasteh watched as Jenkins took a harder turn against San Francisco’s teen offenders. In September 2022, juvenile justice reform groups protested outside her office after she announced that she would consider charging children as adults in certain “heinous” cases, a departure from Boudin’s policy. “We won’t stand by and let our youth be criminalized!” Ally Durante, a youth organizer at the Young Women’s Freedom Center, yelled into a microphone.

Jenkins’ office also referred fewer teens with felony cases to diversion programs like the ones Khojasteh and Boudin had championed, according to Khojasteh, Boudin, and other attorneys who specialize in juvenile justice. It’s “back to the traditional approach,” says Daniel Macallair of San Francisco’s nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “It’s been difficult to work with her,” says Julia Arroyo, executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center, which mentors girls in the justice system. Lucero Herrera, who also works at the center, says Jenkins’ office stopped referrals to their programs without explanation: “She believes in charging young people, overcharging them.” The DA’s office and Jenkins’ campaign did not respond to my request for comment on these claims. In 2023, when the Chronicle reported that Jenkins was referring fewer adults to diversion programs, she said her team was more “thoughtful” than Boudin’s about selecting participants.

Because San Francisco has long been a leader on juvenile justice, says Macallair, kids with good public defenders and community advocates have continued to get connected with services in the city, despite Jenkins’ new policies. But she has also gone tougher on them in other ways. Her office has charged more strikes against teens, something Boudin and many other DAs in California have tried to avoid. Strikes remain on a kid’s record into adulthood and three of them can lead to harsher sentences.

Jenkins also made the unusual move of refusing to try new cases in front of a judge who took a progressive approach to juvenile justice late in his career. “She’s attacked judges in a way that’s unprecedented,” the now-retired judge, Anthony Kline, tells me, adding that her reluctance to refer both kids and adults to treatment-focused programs is “out of sync with the modern standards of criminal justice.” Under Jenkins, the number of kids at juvenile hall increased nearly threefold—from an average of 12 kids per day in June 2022, the month Boudin was recalled, to 31 kids a day in October 2023, a peak, and then 27 kids in July 2024, the last month for which data is publicly available.

In November 2022, San Francisco voters passed a ballot measure that pushed back the next DA election from 2023 to 2024, a change that meant Khojasteh would be experienced enough to run. This summer, he left the Alameda DA’s office to campaign full time.

If he's elected, Khojasteh wants to beef up the general felonies unit as well as the special prosecutions division, which handles public corruption, major financial crimes, and police violence; Jenkins downsized it and dismissed all the charges that Boudin had filed against cops. He wants to hold workshops with residents to teach them what to do if they are victims of crime. And he wants to expand the use of collaborative treatment courts for people who break the law because of drug addiction.

When it comes to teen offenders, he says he would increase referrals to the juvenile diversion programs he helped expand under Boudin, and he’d restart the relationship with the Young Women’s Freedom Center and other community groups. “We want to bring our community-based organizations into the fold when it comes to developing treatment plans and resources for kids,” he says.

Khojasteh has avoided labeling himself a “progressive prosecutor,” wary of the recall movements that other progressives like Boudin and now Oakland’s Pamela Price have faced. In a public conversation with Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi in June, Khojasteh described his top goal as public safety and said he was not seeking Boudin’s endorsement, though he’s still in touch with his former boss: “I’ve certainly had conversations with him on how I can not make some of the mistakes that he made.”

As I shadowed Khojasteh on Haight Street in September, I saw him talk with shopkeepers about accountability and pledge to prosecute whenever a crime is committed. Later, I asked him to elaborate on how he could make these promises while still prioritizing rehabilitation for kids. It was then that I saw how he might be more moderate than Boudin, even while maintaining a similar ethos. Khojasteh explained that Boudin’s office sometimes gave kids charges that were less serious than what the police had alleged. Teen robberies, for instance, were sometimes charged as thefts so that kids didn’t end up with strikes on their records. He believes this left prosecutors at a disadvantage during negotiations with defense, because the DA's starting offer was already so sweet.

“I have that middle path between Chesa and Brooke."

Khojasteh would take a different approach: He would charge whatever crime is supported by the evidence, including robberies, but would later negotiate the charges down—so that kids would still face consequences without getting a strike or record that might keep them from securing a job or financial aid after their punishment. “I have that middle path between Chesa and Brooke,” he told me. “I will still file the charges for serious cases—I'm going to hold you accountable—but I can do so in a way that lets you go on into adulthood with every tool at your disposal.”

Khojasteh diverges from his former boss in other ways. He does not support a blanket ban on trying 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, but says he’d only consider doing so in extreme cases like a mass school shooting. Nor does he support a blanket ban on gang enhancements, stiffer punishments that disproportionately affect people of color, though he views these enhancements with “disdain” and would generally avoid them.

Khojasteh declined to say whether he would charge the 17-year-old who shot 49ers receiver Pearsall as an adult, explaining that he hadn’t seen all the details of the case. But in late September, after Jenkins asked a judge to transfer two 16-year-olds to adult court for an alleged murder, Khojasteh criticized her decision. “This is election-year politics at the expense of justice,” he told me, noting that Jenkins made the transfer request a mere days before the kids were scheduled to go to juvenile trial, which is unusually late in the process, and just over a month before Election Day.

Jenkins told me she made the request because she did not believe the teens could be rehabilitated in the juvenile system, which can hold them until age 25. “I will not allow us to return to the days where blind loyalty to a failed dogma reigned supreme and perpetrators were not held accountable or faced consequences for their crimes,” she said. Khojasteh points out that if the kids were held in juvie until age 25, that would be more than half their current lifetimes incarcerated; if convicted in adult court, they face up to life in prison.

Whether Khojasteh can win enough votes remains to be seen. He’s the only challenger in the election. Jenkins has faced some recent setbacks: A court ruled that she committed misconduct in 2021 by disparaging a defense lawyer. Dozens of attorneys have left her office, some of them citing mismanagement. And a record number of drug overdoses in San Francisco last year fueled allegations that her crackdown on dealers isn’t making the city any safer. “People are frustrated and becoming disillusioned because nothing is changing,” retired San Francisco Judge Ellen Chaitin, who opposed Boudin's recall, told the San Francisco Standard.

There are some signs that Khojasteh’s message, meanwhile, is finding traction. Peterson Harter, the man who went viral for his black eye, agreed to put a campaign sign in his sandwich shop after Khojasteh’s visit. “Accountability and support—can we have those two things?” Harter said, moving his hands up and down like a scale.

Later that day in the Haight, a woman on the street stopped Khojasteh; she wanted to learn more about his juvenile justice stances, because her sister had spent time in a mental health facility and said too many kids there were later locked up. “The way we treat our young people says a lot about our values and our society,” says Celi Tamayo-Lee of the SF Rising Action Fund, a grassroots fund for communities of color.

But Jenkins has backing from San Francisco’s moderate political machine—I’ve heard rumors that her sights are set, eventually, on California’s attorney general office, the same path Kamala Harris took from the San Francisco DA’s office. (She did not reply when I asked her about this.) And she has funding from some of the rich execs who paid for Boudin’s recall: As of this month, campaign filings showed she’d garnered $368,000 for the election, compared with Khojasteh’s $105,000. She has declined to publicly debate him, making it harder for him to get media attention. “The fact that Brooke is an incumbent works to her advantage, and there has been a trend for voters to favor more tough-on-crime policies right now in San Francisco,” says Tamayo-Lee. Voters there recently passed ballot measures that decreased police oversight, increased police surveillance, and required people to get drug-tested in order to receive certain social services.

And then there’s the question of Khojasteh’s youth. Jenkins, 43, is more than a decade senior. Over the summer, Mission Local’s Eskenazi teased him for trying to look older than his years by cutting his long hair short and donning “Clark Kent glasses.” (They’re Garrett Leight.)

Khojasteh doesn't seem fazed. He tells me he did away with his long hair because he wanted to mark the transition into his 30s. He bought glasses because he couldn’t see the board during law school, though he soon realized (and embraced) that fewer people confused him for an intern when he wore them to court.

In fact, Khojasteh sees his youth as a plus. Unlike older politicians with ambitions for higher office, he says he can afford to stick around San Francisco as long as it takes to make the city safer, to balance accountability with the services and compassion that might keep people out of the justice system for good. There’s “value in me being a young candidate,” he told me before looking out onto Haight Street and all the people walking by. “I’m committed to San Francisco—this is my home. And I can be here for a long time.”

In early September, Peterson Harter was working the lunchtime rush in his sandwich shop on San Francisco’s Haight Street when in walked prosecutor Ryan Khojasteh, sporting slicked-back hair and circular glasses.

The year before, Harter had been punched in the face by a man who’d been urinating outside his shop. He posted a video of his black eye on Instagram, and it went viral. Khojasteh, a prosecutor who’s challenging San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins for her job in November, wanted to hear about his public safety concerns heading into the election.

“I want to prevent that 18- or 19-year-old from getting to a point where they have a gun in their hand.”

Harter told Khojasteh that the man who assaulted him came back to apologize after getting out of jail; he was later arrested again for assaulting someone else. “This guy actually needs mental health help,” said Harter, leaning against the counter in his apron. They began talking about the benefits of early intervention. If only “we could have helped this person way back when,” Khojasteh said.

The question of how to treat young offenders was on everyone’s mind that week. Days earlier, 49ers receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot by a 17-year-old during an attempted robbery near luxury stores in Union Square, making national news. Jenkins may try to transfer Pearsall’s shooter to adult court but hasn’t decided yet. (She’s also recommended transferring two 16-year-olds to adult court in an unrelated case.) Khojasteh says there are very few circumstances in which he’d do the same. “I want to prevent that 18- or 19-year-old from getting to a point where they have a gun in their hand,” he tells me. “That is the whole passion of this job.”

Khojasteh’s emphasis on early interventions is one of the ways he’s setting himself apart from Jenkins, who has taken a more punitive approach to teens after being appointed following the recall of progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin.

San Francisco’s DA race has not gotten much attention in a presidential election year, but the results will be significant because of what Boudin’s recall represented: Observers nationally described it as evidence that famously liberal San Francisco had rejected criminal justice reforms, and that other progressive prosecutors outside California should beware a similar fate. Jenkins pledged to “restore accountability and consequences” to the city. If she loses, it could signal that voters believe the pendulum swung too far right under her leadership.

Khojasteh has welcomed endorsements from heavyweights in the progressive prosecutor world, including George Gascón in Los Angeles and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and from a slate of local progressive politicians and community leaders. But he is young, turning 31 next month, with less money, name recognition, and establishment support than Jenkins, who is endorsed by Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

And he will be trying to sell voters on his message about helping youthful offenders at a time when fears about violence are intensifying. Though juvenile crime has been falling for decades in San Francisco (and nationwide) to near historic lows, there’s been an uptick recently in kids arrested for serious offenses in the city. Not far from Harter’s sandwich shop, there were at least three other shootings over the past couple of years near Haight Street, a popular tourist destination; some of the gunmen were younger than 25. When Khojasteh spoke with other shopkeepers there, several said they didn’t feel safe. “The cops sadly don’t do anything,” an employee at a cafe told him.

As I tagged along with him on Haight Street, Khojasteh tried to convince people that he would offer a middle path between Boudin, a bold progressive, and Jenkins, a tough-talking moderate. “Anytime anyone commits a crime and I can prove it, I’m going to file charges,” he told a shopkeeper. But “the question is: How do I make sure they don’t come back into the system?” That’s what justice is, he says: figuring out how to keep someone accountable and keep them from coming back.

Khojasteh’s long-game approach to justice was shaped during his childhood. Raised in the Bay Area to Iranian immigrants, he was a toddler in 1996 when his family suffered a death that would cause him to question the root causes of youth violence. His uncle Cyrus Salehi was working the late shift at a Denny’s restaurant in Los Angeles when a 20-year-old walked inside, demanded money, and then aimed a pistol at his chest; two 18-year-olds and a 16-year-old sat outside with the getaway car. As Khojasteh grew older, the loss motivated him. “Why does this happen in the first place?” he wondered. “Why are there kids at that age with guns?” After Salehi’s wife got remarried, to a bureau chief of the Los Angeles DA’s Office, Khojasteh decided he wanted to become a prosecutor too.

Next up was a fellowship at the San Francisco public defender’s office, where he met Chesa Boudin, then a deputy public defender. “For someone at his point in his legal career, he had a unique confidence,” Boudin says, describing Khojasteh as “hardworking, compassionate,” and eager to grow. “When I learned he’d run for office against Pelosi, I thought, ‘What a tremendous amount of character that would build, and what a steep learning curve it would be at his age.’”

Working with Boudin would have a deep impact on the way Khojasteh thought about helping teens who committed crimes. After Boudin was elected DA in 2019, Khojasteh was one of his first hires in the juvenile justice unit, as an assistant DA. Change was in the air; the San Francisco Chronicle had just published an investigation showing that youth crime had dropped enormously since the ’90s, but that San Francisco continued spending large sums of money on a juvenile hall that now held fewer and fewer kids. In February 2020, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to close the facility by 2021. “This jail for kids is morally repugnant,” said then-Supervisor Matt Haney. “I thought Ryan’s compassion and energy would be particularly useful” carrying out that mission, says Boudin.

Together, Khojasteh and Boudin tried to do more to connect kids with services rather than locking them up. They expanded the Make It Right initiative, launched by former DA Gascón in 2013 for teens who committed certain felonies. If the young offenders worked with a caseworker, talked with the person they harmed, and took steps to repair the damage, including through community service, they could avoid prosecution. Kids who went through the program were 44 percent less likely to get arrested again compared with those who were prosecuted, according to a study by University of California researchers and the California Policy Lab.

Kids who went through the program were 44 percent less likely to get arrested again compared with those who were prosecuted.

Boudin leaned on these services, diverting more teens than Gascón and pledging to use juvenile hall as a last resort. For more serious cases that required prosecution, he and Khojasteh tailored the punishment. When a 12-year-old robbed an elderly Chinese man, they filed charges but asked the victim what kind of justice he envisioned: The man wanted the boy, who was Black, to research the exploitation of Chinese people in America and think about their shared oppression. The boy also did community service, and the DA’s office checked to make sure he was going to school. Six months later, his mom reported that she’d never seen him behaving so well. “That had much more impact on his life and development than a couple of days in jail,” Khojasteh says.

Another time, Khojasteh prosecuted a 16-year-old who committed a serious property offense and was waiting in juvenile hall for placement at a residential school; the boy’s single mom couldn’t visit him because she was in hospice care with about a month to live. “I remember thinking, ‘If we keep this kid in juvenile hall, that would profoundly traumatize this child, the fact that he would never see his mother again,’” Khojasteh says. He arranged for the boy to leave and be with his mom for her last few days before returning to finish his sentence. “We don’t want to further cause the psychological damage that could ultimately cause him to act out or commit more crimes in the future,” he adds.

Khojasteh thinks some cases involving young people do require a tougher approach, especially if a victim is injured. He has incarcerated kids for offenses like carjacking. Juvenile hall “is a tool to protect the public and to protect the kid,” he says. But the number of children locked up for crimes fell dramatically in San Francisco under Boudin’s leadership—from an average of 33 kids a day in January 2020, when Boudin took office, to 9 kids daily in June 2020 and 16 kids daily in June 2021, according to city data. (Part of the drop can be explained by the pandemic: Social distancing forced detention facilities to downsize, and courts temporarily stopped trials.)

While working in Boudin’s office, Khojasteh also helped create a program for unaccompanied immigrant kids who committed crimes, and another that offered financial assistance to teens so they could pay restitution to their victims. Without the aid, the owed money often turned into debt for the teens’ parents, affecting the family’s credit score and upward mobility by making it harder to apply for housing or student loans.

San Francisco’s juvenile hall never shut down; Mayor Breed did not support its closure, and momentum for the plan dwindled. Then on June 7, 2022, San Francisco voters recalled Boudin, many of them frustrated by his perceived leniency amid heightened drug use and homelessness, as well as community violence against Asian American elders and viral social media footage of car break-ins and store thefts. (Though overall crime fell during Boudin’s tenure, commercial burglaries and homicides increased in San Francisco, as they did nationally around that time.) After the recall, Khojasteh urged Breed to pick a new DA who would continue the work he and Boudin had started on juvenile justice. “San Francisco deserves to see these reforms through,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Chronicle that July.

That’s not exactly what happened. Three days after the op-ed ran, Breed announced that Jenkins, a former assistant DA who’d quit Boudin’s office and then campaigned to recall him, would be the city’s next lead prosecutor. Khojasteh, now working on adult felony cases, tried to extend an olive branch: After Jenkins told staff she wanted to improve morale at the office, he emailed her to share his thoughts on how staffing increases in the felony unit might accomplish that. Days later, while he was at a family wedding, she called and fired him. “It was such an inappropriate way to handle this,” he tells me, frustrated that she didn’t give him time to write transition memos. He contemplated running against Jenkins in the November 2023 election but was not old enough; the law requires candidates to have worked five years as attorneys, and he would be several months shy of that. Instead, he got a job in Oakland at the Alameda DA’s office.          

From afar, Khojasteh watched as Jenkins took a harder turn against San Francisco’s teen offenders.

From afar, Khojasteh watched as Jenkins took a harder turn against San Francisco’s teen offenders. In September 2022, juvenile justice reform groups protested outside her office after she announced that she would consider charging children as adults in certain “heinous” cases, a departure from Boudin’s policy. “We won’t stand by and let our youth be criminalized!” Ally Durante, a youth organizer at the Young Women’s Freedom Center, yelled into a microphone.

Jenkins’ office also referred fewer teens with felony cases to diversion programs like the ones Khojasteh and Boudin had championed, according to Khojasteh, Boudin, and other attorneys who specialize in juvenile justice. It’s “back to the traditional approach,” says Daniel Macallair of San Francisco’s nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “It’s been difficult to work with her,” says Julia Arroyo, executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center, which mentors girls in the justice system. Lucero Herrera, who also works at the center, says Jenkins’ office stopped referrals to their programs without explanation: “She believes in charging young people, overcharging them.” The DA’s office and Jenkins’ campaign did not respond to my request for comment on these claims. In 2023, when the Chronicle reported that Jenkins was referring fewer adults to diversion programs, she said her team was more “thoughtful” than Boudin’s about selecting participants.

Because San Francisco has long been a leader on juvenile justice, says Macallair, kids with good public defenders and community advocates have continued to get connected with services in the city, despite Jenkins’ new policies. But she has also gone tougher on them in other ways. Her office has charged more strikes against teens, something Boudin and many other DAs in California have tried to avoid. Strikes remain on a kid’s record into adulthood and three of them can lead to harsher sentences.

Jenkins also made the unusual move of refusing to try new cases in front of a judge who took a progressive approach to juvenile justice late in his career. “She’s attacked judges in a way that’s unprecedented,” the now-retired judge, Anthony Kline, tells me, adding that her reluctance to refer both kids and adults to treatment-focused programs is “out of sync with the modern standards of criminal justice.” Under Jenkins, the number of kids at juvenile hall increased nearly threefold—from an average of 12 kids per day in June 2022, the month Boudin was recalled, to 31 kids a day in October 2023, a peak, and then 27 kids in July 2024, the last month for which data is publicly available.

In November 2022, San Francisco voters passed a ballot measure that pushed back the next DA election from 2023 to 2024, a change that meant Khojasteh would be experienced enough to run. This summer, he left the Alameda DA’s office to campaign full time.

If he's elected, Khojasteh wants to beef up the general felonies unit as well as the special prosecutions division, which handles public corruption, major financial crimes, and police violence; Jenkins downsized it and dismissed all the charges that Boudin had filed against cops. He wants to hold workshops with residents to teach them what to do if they are victims of crime. And he wants to expand the use of collaborative treatment courts for people who break the law because of drug addiction.

When it comes to teen offenders, he says he would increase referrals to the juvenile diversion programs he helped expand under Boudin, and he’d restart the relationship with the Young Women’s Freedom Center and other community groups. “We want to bring our community-based organizations into the fold when it comes to developing treatment plans and resources for kids,” he says.

Khojasteh has avoided labeling himself a “progressive prosecutor,” wary of the recall movements that other progressives like Boudin and now Oakland’s Pamela Price have faced. In a public conversation with Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi in June, Khojasteh described his top goal as public safety and said he was not seeking Boudin’s endorsement, though he’s still in touch with his former boss: “I’ve certainly had conversations with him on how I can not make some of the mistakes that he made.”

As I shadowed Khojasteh on Haight Street in September, I saw him talk with shopkeepers about accountability and pledge to prosecute whenever a crime is committed. Later, I asked him to elaborate on how he could make these promises while still prioritizing rehabilitation for kids. It was then that I saw how he might be more moderate than Boudin, even while maintaining a similar ethos. Khojasteh explained that Boudin’s office sometimes gave kids charges that were less serious than what the police had alleged. Teen robberies, for instance, were sometimes charged as thefts so that kids didn’t end up with strikes on their records. He believes this left prosecutors at a disadvantage during negotiations with defense, because the DA's starting offer was already so sweet.

“I have that middle path between Chesa and Brooke."

Khojasteh would take a different approach: He would charge whatever crime is supported by the evidence, including robberies, but would later negotiate the charges down—so that kids would still face consequences without getting a strike or record that might keep them from securing a job or financial aid after their punishment. “I have that middle path between Chesa and Brooke,” he told me. “I will still file the charges for serious cases—I'm going to hold you accountable—but I can do so in a way that lets you go on into adulthood with every tool at your disposal.”

Khojasteh diverges from his former boss in other ways. He does not support a blanket ban on trying 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, but says he’d only consider doing so in extreme cases like a mass school shooting. Nor does he support a blanket ban on gang enhancements, stiffer punishments that disproportionately affect people of color, though he views these enhancements with “disdain” and would generally avoid them.

Khojasteh declined to say whether he would charge the 17-year-old who shot 49ers receiver Pearsall as an adult, explaining that he hadn’t seen all the details of the case. But in late September, after Jenkins asked a judge to transfer two 16-year-olds to adult court for an alleged murder, Khojasteh criticized her decision. “This is election-year politics at the expense of justice,” he told me, noting that Jenkins made the transfer request a mere days before the kids were scheduled to go to juvenile trial, which is unusually late in the process, and just over a month before Election Day.

Jenkins told me she made the request because she did not believe the teens could be rehabilitated in the juvenile system, which can hold them until age 25. “I will not allow us to return to the days where blind loyalty to a failed dogma reigned supreme and perpetrators were not held accountable or faced consequences for their crimes,” she said. Khojasteh points out that if the kids were held in juvie until age 25, that would be more than half their current lifetimes incarcerated; if convicted in adult court, they face up to life in prison.

He interned at the Santa Clara DA’s office after undergrad, then graduated early from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, in 2018, where he wrote a thesis on ending the school-to-prison pipeline. He also worked up the nerve, at age 24, to run against Nancy Pelosi for her seat in the House. (He lost.)

Whether Khojasteh can win enough votes remains to be seen. He’s the only challenger in the election. Jenkins has faced some recent setbacks: A court ruled that she committed misconduct in 2021 by disparaging a defense lawyer. Dozens of attorneys have left her office, some of them citing mismanagement. And a record number of drug overdoses in San Francisco last year fueled allegations that her crackdown on dealers isn’t making the city any safer. “People are frustrated and becoming disillusioned because nothing is changing,” retired San Francisco Judge Ellen Chaitin, who opposed Boudin's recall, told the San Francisco Standard.

There are some signs that Khojasteh’s message, meanwhile, is finding traction. Peterson Harter, the man who went viral for his black eye, agreed to put a campaign sign in his sandwich shop after Khojasteh’s visit. “Accountability and support—can we have those two things?” Harter said, moving his hands up and down like a scale.

Later that day in the Haight, a woman on the street stopped Khojasteh; she wanted to learn more about his juvenile justice stances, because her sister had spent time in a mental health facility and said too many kids there were later locked up. “The way we treat our young people says a lot about our values and our society,” says Celi Tamayo-Lee of the SF Rising Action Fund, a grassroots fund for communities of color.

But Jenkins has backing from San Francisco’s moderate political machine—I’ve heard rumors that her sights are set, eventually, on California’s attorney general office, the same path Kamala Harris took from the San Francisco DA’s office. (She did not reply when I asked her about this.) And she has funding from some of the rich execs who paid for Boudin’s recall: As of this month, campaign filings showed she’d garnered $368,000 for the election, compared with Khojasteh’s $105,000. She has declined to publicly debate him, making it harder for him to get media attention. “The fact that Brooke is an incumbent works to her advantage, and there has been a trend for voters to favor more tough-on-crime policies right now in San Francisco,” says Tamayo-Lee. Voters there recently passed ballot measures that decreased police oversight, increased police surveillance, and required people to get drug-tested in order to receive certain social services.

And then there’s the question of Khojasteh’s youth. Jenkins, 43, is more than a decade senior. Over the summer, Mission Local’s Eskenazi teased him for trying to look older than his years by cutting his long hair short and donning “Clark Kent glasses.” (They’re Garrett Leight.)

Khojasteh doesn't seem fazed. He tells me he did away with his long hair because he wanted to mark the transition into his 30s. He bought glasses because he couldn’t see the board during law school, though he soon realized (and embraced) that fewer people confused him for an intern when he wore them to court.

In fact, Khojasteh sees his youth as a plus. Unlike older politicians with ambitions for higher office, he says he can afford to stick around San Francisco as long as it takes to make the city safer, to balance accountability with the services and compassion that might keep people out of the justice system for good. There’s “value in me being a young candidate,” he told me before looking out onto Haight Street and all the people walking by. “I’m committed to San Francisco—this is my home. And I can be here for a long time.”

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Ahead of Hurricane Milton’s destructive landfall on Wednesday evening, millions of residents chose to leave. For roughly 1,200 inmates in the Manatee County Jail, which is located in a major evacuation zone near Sarasota, Florida, that wasn’t an option. Local authorities decided not to evacuate the prisoners so they rode out the storm—which brought widespread flooding, property damage, and fierce winds to the area—in the jail.

They weren’t alone. The Manatee County Jail is one of many that chose not to evacuate, according to the New York Times. Pinellas County, and Lee County, two others on the Gulf Coast that were in the storm’s direct trajectory, also did not evacuate their jails, per a Pinellas County news conference and a spokesperson for Lee County Sheriff’s Office. (Manatee County and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The plight of Florida’s inmates is just the latest example to highlight how vulnerable incarcerated people are during natural disasters, when they have no control over their mobility or their exposure to hazardous situations.

Inmates are “often overlooked or deliberately just ignored…when the disaster is looming, and then they’re expected to turn around and clean up the mess ” afterward.

As the Appeal and the Fort Myers News-Press reported, Manatee, Pinellas, and Lee County officials argued that they could move inmates to higher floors in case of flooding and storm surge. Manatee County officials also described the jail as “hurricane-rated,” while Pinellas County officials cited the logistical challenge of moving 3,100 inmates from the facility during the storm as justification for their decision.

The Lee County jail was fully staffed and had water tanks on standby, according to the spokesperson, who noted that all the inmates were safe as of Thursday afternoon. The main facility lost power during the storm, the spokesperson added, but there were no other “notable incidents.”

The Manatee Sheriff’s Office also told the Appeal that the inmates were “storm safe” as of Thursday and that the power was going in and out, but that they did not lose running water. The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office told the publication that it had power and no running water issues.

The Florida Department of Corrections, which oversees state prisons, meanwhile, says that “all staff and inmates in the path of Hurricane Milton have been accounted for,” in an update that it posted on Thursday morning. Per the DOC, it had evacuated 5,950 inmates from 37 facilities across the state as of that time.

The DOC has also said that its public list of evacuated facilities has a lag and may be incomplete since it only updates 24 hours after the inmates have already been transported. It told Vox that it weighs multiple risk factors when considering evacuations, including “the path of the storm…timing, traffic disruption, the risks of evacuating inmates, and the conditions of facilities being evacuated.”

In total, more than 28,000 people are incarcerated in facilities in counties that had either full or partial evacuation orders, and many were not evacuated, the Appeal reported.

Decisions not to evacuate certain facilities stood in stark contrast to dire warnings from regional leaders about the need to leave areas in the storm’s path and the “life or death” risks people faced if they failed to do so. Manatee County Jail, for example, is located in Evacuation Zone A, an area that faced high flooding risk.

“We do not issue evacuation orders lightly,” Manatee County Public Safety Director Jodie Fiske previously said in a news release. “Milton is anticipated to cause more storm surge than Helene. So, if you stayed during Helene and got lucky, I would not press my luck with this particular system.”

Florida’s inmates are not the first forced to shelter in place during a severe hurricane. When Hurricane Helene hit last month, 550 men in North Carolina were left in flooded cells at the Mountain View Correctional Institution without lights or running water for five days, the Intercept reports. Previously, hundreds of prisoners were abandoned during Hurricane Katrina without food or water after staff at the Orleans Parish Prison fled.

Incarcerated people are often neglected when it comes to ensuring their safety during natural disasters, but they’re frequently exploited for labor in the aftermath of those same situations. In Louisiana, incarcerated people performed clean-up and recovery efforts after Hurricane Francine in September and, in California, they’ve been key to fighting wildfires for years. While some of these tasks offer an alternative path to rehabilitation or allow inmates to refine new skills, none come with the same labor protections around safety or wages that other workers generally receive.

“The incarcerated population, they’re doubly vulnerable,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told Vox. “First, they’re often overlooked or deliberately just ignored…when the disaster is looming, and then they’re expected to turn around and clean up the mess in the wake of the disaster.”

During past disasters in Florida, inmates described a dearth of running water, including drinkable water, as well as non-flushing toilets.

Federally, there are no requirements for guaranteeing the safety of incarcerated people during natural disasters, Kendrick told Vox. And while policies vary by state, a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that just six states mentioned safety protocols for incarcerated people in public plans detailing their emergency responses, while 24 mentioned the use of their labor for disaster mitigation.

“That patchwork becomes even more patchy when you go to the local level of jails because there’s significant local control over how jails operate,” Mike Wessler, communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative, told Vox.

And although there’s a Supreme Court decision that establishes a safety standard for inmates, experts note that court cases about mistreatment face an uphill battle following the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in the 1990s, which made it much harder for prisoners to file civil suits. Prisons and jails also have limited oversight at either the federal or state levels, so they often operate with little regard to accountability.

As a result, incarcerated people are especially vulnerable to neglect and other abuses, in general and during natural disasters specifically, which can endanger their health and their lives. During past disasters in Florida, like 2022’s Hurricane Ian, inmates described a dearth of running water, including a lack of drinkable water as well as non-flushing toilets.

Kendrick and Wessler noted that jails and prisons suffer from a failure to prepare for these increasingly common natural disasters as well as a broader lack of concern for inmates’ well-being. To pursue an evacuation, these facilities would need agreements with other facilities where they can transport inmates, transportation for large groups, fuel, and other resources—proposals they need to put in place prior to the emergency itself.

As a baseline, states and counties should have policies that apply mandatory evacuation orders to inmates, the same way that they do to other non-incarcerated people, Kendrick said. (Although the government doesn’t force people to leave, it’s technically illegal to stay in a mandatory evacuation zone during a storm.)

The federal government could also condition disaster aid to states based on their evacuation policies, in an attempt to guarantee that inmates are protected, attorney Maya Habash explained in the University of Maryland Law Journal. Federal laws like the Stafford Act and the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which require that the government provide resources to protect vulnerable populations, could also be amended to include references to prisoners to make clear that they should be recipients of funding as well. And the federal government could establish clear mandates that outline how prisons and jails need to treat inmates during natural disasters.

“I think the federal government should set national standards for prisons and jails and emergency responses, and those should be the floor, not the ceiling, for what places have to do,” Wessler told Vox.

This story was originally published by Vox.com and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Ahead of Hurricane Milton’s destructive landfall on Wednesday evening, millions of residents chose to leave. For roughly 1,200 inmates in the Manatee County Jail, which is located in a major evacuation zone near Sarasota, Florida, that wasn’t an option. Local authorities decided not to evacuate the prisoners so they rode out the storm—which brought widespread flooding, property damage, and fierce winds to the area—in the jail.

They weren’t alone. The Manatee County Jail is one of many that chose not to evacuate, according to the New York Times. Pinellas County, and Lee County, two others on the Gulf Coast that were in the storm’s direct trajectory, also did not evacuate their jails, per a Pinellas County news conference and a spokesperson for Lee County Sheriff’s Office. (Manatee County and Pinellas County Sheriff’s Offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The plight of Florida’s inmates is just the latest example to highlight how vulnerable incarcerated people are during natural disasters, when they have no control over their mobility or their exposure to hazardous situations.

Inmates are “often overlooked or deliberately just ignored…when the disaster is looming, and then they’re expected to turn around and clean up the mess ” afterward.

As the Appeal and the Fort Myers News-Press reported, Manatee, Pinellas, and Lee County officials argued that they could move inmates to higher floors in case of flooding and storm surge. Manatee County officials also described the jail as “hurricane-rated,” while Pinellas County officials cited the logistical challenge of moving 3,100 inmates from the facility during the storm as justification for their decision.

The Lee County jail was fully staffed and had water tanks on standby, according to the spokesperson, who noted that all the inmates were safe as of Thursday afternoon. The main facility lost power during the storm, the spokesperson added, but there were no other “notable incidents.”

The Manatee Sheriff’s Office also told the Appeal that the inmates were “storm safe” as of Thursday and that the power was going in and out, but that they did not lose running water. The Pinellas Sheriff’s Office told the publication that it had power and no running water issues.

The Florida Department of Corrections, which oversees state prisons, meanwhile, says that “all staff and inmates in the path of Hurricane Milton have been accounted for,” in an update that it posted on Thursday morning. Per the DOC, it had evacuated 5,950 inmates from 37 facilities across the state as of that time.

The DOC has also said that its public list of evacuated facilities has a lag and may be incomplete since it only updates 24 hours after the inmates have already been transported. It told Vox that it weighs multiple risk factors when considering evacuations, including “the path of the storm…timing, traffic disruption, the risks of evacuating inmates, and the conditions of facilities being evacuated.”

In total, more than 28,000 people are incarcerated in facilities in counties that had either full or partial evacuation orders, and many were not evacuated, the Appeal reported.

Decisions not to evacuate certain facilities stood in stark contrast to dire warnings from regional leaders about the need to leave areas in the storm’s path and the “life or death” risks people faced if they failed to do so. Manatee County Jail, for example, is located in Evacuation Zone A, an area that faced high flooding risk.

“We do not issue evacuation orders lightly,” Manatee County Public Safety Director Jodie Fiske previously said in a news release. “Milton is anticipated to cause more storm surge than Helene. So, if you stayed during Helene and got lucky, I would not press my luck with this particular system.”

Florida’s inmates are not the first forced to shelter in place during a severe hurricane. When Hurricane Helene hit last month, 550 men in North Carolina were left in flooded cells at the Mountain View Correctional Institution without lights or running water for five days, the Intercept reports. Previously, hundreds of prisoners were abandoned during Hurricane Katrina without food or water after staff at the Orleans Parish Prison fled.

Incarcerated people are often neglected when it comes to ensuring their safety during natural disasters, but they’re frequently exploited for labor in the aftermath of those same situations. In Louisiana, incarcerated people performed clean-up and recovery efforts after Hurricane Francine in September and, in California, they’ve been key to fighting wildfires for years. While some of these tasks offer an alternative path to rehabilitation or allow inmates to refine new skills, none come with the same labor protections around safety or wages that other workers generally receive.

“The incarcerated population, they’re doubly vulnerable,” Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told Vox. “First, they’re often overlooked or deliberately just ignored…when the disaster is looming, and then they’re expected to turn around and clean up the mess in the wake of the disaster.”

During past disasters in Florida, inmates described a dearth of running water, including drinkable water, as well as non-flushing toilets.

Federally, there are no requirements for guaranteeing the safety of incarcerated people during natural disasters, Kendrick told Vox. And while policies vary by state, a 2022 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that just six states mentioned safety protocols for incarcerated people in public plans detailing their emergency responses, while 24 mentioned the use of their labor for disaster mitigation.

“That patchwork becomes even more patchy when you go to the local level of jails because there’s significant local control over how jails operate,” Mike Wessler, communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative, told Vox.

And although there’s a Supreme Court decision that establishes a safety standard for inmates, experts note that court cases about mistreatment face an uphill battle following the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act in the 1990s, which made it much harder for prisoners to file civil suits. Prisons and jails also have limited oversight at either the federal or state levels, so they often operate with little regard to accountability.

As a result, incarcerated people are especially vulnerable to neglect and other abuses, in general and during natural disasters specifically, which can endanger their health and their lives. During past disasters in Florida, like 2022’s Hurricane Ian, inmates described a dearth of running water, including a lack of drinkable water as well as non-flushing toilets.

Kendrick and Wessler noted that jails and prisons suffer from a failure to prepare for these increasingly common natural disasters as well as a broader lack of concern for inmates’ well-being. To pursue an evacuation, these facilities would need agreements with other facilities where they can transport inmates, transportation for large groups, fuel, and other resources—proposals they need to put in place prior to the emergency itself.

As a baseline, states and counties should have policies that apply mandatory evacuation orders to inmates, the same way that they do to other non-incarcerated people, Kendrick said. (Although the government doesn’t force people to leave, it’s technically illegal to stay in a mandatory evacuation zone during a storm.)

The federal government could also condition disaster aid to states based on their evacuation policies, in an attempt to guarantee that inmates are protected, attorney Maya Habash explained in the University of Maryland Law Journal. Federal laws like the Stafford Act and the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which require that the government provide resources to protect vulnerable populations, could also be amended to include references to prisoners to make clear that they should be recipients of funding as well. And the federal government could establish clear mandates that outline how prisons and jails need to treat inmates during natural disasters.

“I think the federal government should set national standards for prisons and jails and emergency responses, and those should be the floor, not the ceiling, for what places have to do,” Wessler told Vox.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, and Arizona Luminaria. 

The first punch to her head knocked Grace Pinson to the floor. She put up her arms to protect her face as Ricki Mahkimetas struck her again. When his fist hit her nose, she felt it crunch.

The cells in the special housing unit at the federal penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona, have solid steel doors, making it almost impossible to see what is going on inside. Each cell is designed with an alarm button that can alert corrections officers down the hall if there’s an emergency. But Pinson’s cell had no button—just a hole in the wall with exposed wires.

Pinson is transgender, a woman with breasts and long curly hair in a prison full of men. She is also a dogged jailhouse lawyer. Over the 17 years she’s spent in federal prison, she’s brought more than 100 lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons and its staff. For refusing to provide her with adequate gender-affirming care. For refusing to move her to a women’s prison. For failing, again and again, to keep her safe. In the years leading up to the July 2019 attack in cell B-140, she had been beaten, stabbed, slashed, and struck in the head with a padlock. Government lawyers, prison officers, and psychologists have kept meticulous records of these assaults and described them in court. “I have been attacked many times,” she told me. “My trauma haunts my very dreams.”

“I have been attacked many times. My trauma haunts my very dreams.”

This beating by her cellmate, who is serving more than 16 years for sexual assault, became the basis of another lawsuit. Neither the Bureau of Prisons nor Mahkimetas disputed that he beat her, but they contested her other allegations. Pinson said that during the attack Mahkimetas tried to yank off her pants. Whenever she reached down to hold up her waistband he would punch her in the face. He denied this to prison investigators, saying there was nothing sexual about the assault. She said she had told a guard earlier in the day that Mahkimetas had been threatening to rape her and asked to be moved to another cell. The guard later said he knew nothing in advance. So much of the case came down to who could be believed about what happened to Pinson that day.

Over several years and hundreds of handwritten pages of filings, Pinson jumped over one legal hurdle after another, all the way to trial. Fewer than 1 percent of federal prisoner civil rights claims reach that stage without an attorney, a luxury almost no one in prison can afford.

The federal Bureau of Prisons declined multiple requests to make officials available for an interview and declined to comment on the assault and the ensuing lawsuit, citing privacy, safety, security, and deference to the court. The bureau “takes seriously the duty to protect individuals entrusted in our care,” spokesperson Randilee Giamusso said in an emailed statement. “When we are made aware of security hazards, such as faulty duress alarms, we take steps to immediately address the issue.”

If Pinson’s legal tenacity makes her unusual, the harm she has suffered in federal prison does not. Life in prison is relentlessly dangerous, and for transgender people especially so. More than 1,300 trans women are locked in federal prisons alongside men. Not only are they at risk for extortion and assault, they are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. A 21-year-old law meant to prevent prison rape created a world of rules and procedures, yet hundreds of people continue to report being violated in federal prison each year. The prison where Pinson was held has and one of the highest rates of sexual abuse allegations in the entire federal system.

The trial in Pinson’s lawsuit offered a window into how difficult it can be to hold prison officials accountable, and in doing so, raised other questions: Why is it so dangerous to be a trans woman in prison? And when you are harmed in a place whose purpose is to punish wrongdoing, why is it so hard to get justice?

Curled up in the fetal position as Mahkimetas beat her, Pinson yelled for help. It felt like the beating went on for a very long time. The floor began to tremble as people in nearby cells started kicking their doors, trying to get the attention of the guards. Pinson said she felt a pang of gratitude that people didn’t want her to die.

Finally, she heard keys jangling as officers made their way toward her cell. Mahkimetas backed away. When officers rolled the steel door open, they found Pinson bruised and bloodied, her nose broken and her eyes beginning to swell shut.

Pinson v. the United States of America convened in November 2023, on a hot Monday in Tucson. Pinson shuffled into a federal courtroom wearing an oversized white T-shirt and prison-issued, gray-green canvas pants, shackles clanking at her ankles. She sat alone at the plaintiff’s table, her left hand padlocked to a chain around her waist. She couldn’t afford an attorney, or even the $350 filing fee for the lawsuit, and so she represented herself. Three lawyers in dark suits sat at the defendant’s table, representing the Bureau of Prisons for the US Attorney’s office.

The courthouse sits about 20 minutes away from the prison, a complex that includes a high-security penitentiary, where Pinson was housed, a medium-security correctional institution, and a low-security camp.

Pinson hoped her case would lead to a sort of #MeToo moment for the federal prison system. Her court filings framed Mahkimetas’ attack as part of a longstanding, pervasive pattern of sexual violence at her facility. And in the months leading up to the trial, she proposed a list of witnesses that included dozens of people who said they saw, or in some cases experienced, sexual assaults in the penitentiary—and the staff’s indifference when they tried to report it.

Pinson argued that the assault represented a failure of Bureau of Prisons employees to enforce the Prison Rape Elimination Act, almost universally referred to by its acronym, PREA. Passed by Congress in 2003, the law’s stated purpose was to “establish a zero-tolerance standard for the incidence of prison rape” in the United States. Its passage created a universe of new procedures and requirements and—as a result—increased awareness among correctional workers of the problem of sexual assault in prisons and jails.

Pinson, who is serving time for writing threatening letters to public officials, tried to argue that the officers guarding her in the Tucson penitentiary should have known that as a transgender woman, she was at high risk for sexual assault. Prison psychologists knew she’d been raped before. And yet officers assigned her to a cell without a working alarm, locking her in with Mahkimetas, who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl. Pinson said she had warned an officer, Miguel Vasquez, earlier that day that Mahkimetas was threatening to rape her, and she needed to be moved. She said that after Mahkimetas attacked her, officers didn’t take what happened to her seriously and gave her a disciplinary infraction for fighting, leaving her to languish in the special housing unit. Mahkimetas did not respond to letters seeking comment on Pinson’s allegations. Vasquez declined to comment through a representative from his union.

In pretrial filings, government lawyers said Vasquez’s handling of PREA was “irrelevant and immaterial.” The case was not about whether Mahkimetas was punished for attacking her, the lawyers told the judge. It was also not about her cell’s missing duress alarm; alarms are provided at the bureau’s discretion, they said, and are not required.

As far as the government was concerned, the only relevant questions were: Did the officer on duty the day of the attack know Pinson’s cellmate had threatened to rape her? And, if so, did he fail to separate them?

Federal District Judge Rosemary Márquez agreed and denied Pinson’s request to call witnesses about the rape elimination law.

On the stand during the trial, Vasquez testified he was “100 percent positive” that Pinson did not warn him in advance that Mahkimetas had threatened to rape her.

Pinson later tried to get Vasquez to admit that he didn’t always act on requests to change cellmates. “If a cellie is telling staff they’re about to be raped, what’s the response?” she asked.

“We would move them immediately,” Vasquez said.

She talked about her gender identity and the Bureau of Prisons’ failure to “recognize me for the woman that I am.”

In an attempt to keep the focus on her suffering, Pinson put her psychologist on the stand and asked him about her experiences of being assaulted, about her anxiety, her self-harm, her PTSD. She talked about her gender identity and the Bureau of Prisons’ failure to “recognize me for the woman that I am.” She asked the officer who investigated Mahkimetas’ assault if he had treated the cell as a crime scene or reviewed video of that night. (He did neither, he testified.)

In closing arguments, one of the government’s lawyers repeated that these issues “have no bearing.” The judge was clear in her pretrial ruling, he reminded her. “Plaintiff focuses on these extraneous issues because she cannot meet her burden to prove that alleged negligence actually occurred in this case.”

Every year since 2016, the penitentiary in Tucson has been among the top 5 percent of federal facilities with the most allegations of sexual abuse or harassment, according to federal data analyzed by The Marshall Project.

Incarcerated people and prison workers alike attribute the high rate of sexual assault at the prison in part to the mix of people housed there. The penitentiary in Tucson is home to a sex offender treatment program, one of 10 throughout the federal system. People convicted of sex offenses are widely despised and often targeted for physical and sexual abuse in prison.

“Those people are more likely to be victimized. But then they also are predators,” said Jill Roth, a psychologist who retired as the bureau’s PREA coordinator in 2021. “In an institution with a sex offender treatment program, you’ll usually have a lot more allegations” of prisoner-on-prisoner sexual assault and harassment.

The program at Tucson is the only one in a high-security penitentiary that holds people with serious or violent convictions or disciplinary problems. Keith Raniere, convicted of sex trafficking as head of the NXIVM sex cult, is incarcerated in Tucson. Larry Nassar, the disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor who molested hundreds of girls in his care, was there for a time too. Roughly 60 percent of the population at the penitentiary is in the sex offender program, according to numbers provided by the Bureau of Prisons.

In a prison full of predatory men, transgender women are a ready target. Trans people in prison are sexually assaulted at a much higher rate than prisoners in general. A federal survey published in 2014 estimated that nearly 40 percent of transgender people in prison were sexually assaulted, compared with 4 percent of all people in prison. According to the bureau’s data, the penitentiary in Tucson houses 120 transgender women, more than any other federal prison.

Under PREA’s rules, prison officials should decide where to house transgender people on a case-by-case basis, with the person’s “views with respect to his or her own safety…given serious consideration.” Yet, in practice, transgender people are almost always housed according to their sex assigned at birth. Last year, of the more than 1,000 transgender women in federal prison, only 10 were held in women’s facilities, according to information that bureau Director Colette Peters provided to Congress.

PREA also requires that staff assess each person’s “risk of sexual victimization,” and in a statement, spokesperson Scott Taylor said the Bureau of Prisons “uses that information to inform housing, bed, work, education, and program assignments.” Taylor said the bureau “works to ensure the best fit for everyone in our care and custody.”

Despite all of its infrastructure, PREA often fails to protect vulnerable people like Pinson, prisoners and correctional experts say. Effective implementation relies on the good faith of prison staff, many of whom share the prejudices against LGBTQ people that make them vulnerable in the first place. To Pinson, because the law includes few repercussions for staff who break it, her lawsuit was an opportunity to prove the devastating consequences of their indifference.

But the dynamics of victimization are complicated. At the Tucson penitentiary, 75 percent of the transgender women—who as a population are so vulnerable to sexual assault—have committed sex crimes, according to data provided by the Bureau of Prisons. For them, lonely men can also be targets, Pinson and others say.

“Some people are doing forever in there. They want companionship,” said Eric Ontiveros, who served time with Pinson at Tucson. Some transgender women exploit that loneliness and “use that to manipulate the situation in their favor, to get money, drugs, whatever they need.”

“Some people are doing forever in there. They want companionship.”

Public health research suggests that LGBTQ people are more likely than others to be convicted of sex offenses, though it’s unclear whether this reflects over-policing, unfair treatment within the system, or other dynamics is difficult to say, says Ilan Meyer, a public health researcher at UCLA law school. Transgender people face significant barriers in housing, education, and employment, and those limited opportunities can force people into sex work and other black market jobs that can lead to legal trouble, research shows.

After an incarcerated person reports a sexual assault, PREA requires that the prison conduct an internal investigation. Federal prison investigators almost never prove, or “substantiate,” that an assault happened. From 2016 through last year, officials corroborated fewer than 6 percent of the 4,100 allegations in federal prisons, according to bureau data analyzed by The Marshall Project. Tucson’s rate was similar to the national rate. At dozens of facilities each year, investigators don’t substantiate any allegations at all.

Experts say prison investigators should confirm far more reports of assault because under PREA they do not have to meet the high bar of “beyond a reasonable doubt” required in a criminal courtroom. Instead, investigators must be more certain than not—at least 51 percent sure—that an assault happened.

“PREA fails in a whole shit-ton of ways,” said Julie Abbate, an attorney who helped implement the law while working at the civil rights division of the Department of Justice in the 2010s and now works for an organization dedicated to ending prison rape.

Bureau of Prisons leadership “say the right things at the headquarters level, and, for the most part, I believe them,” she said. “The disconnect happens between headquarters, regional offices, and individual facilities.”

Several correctional experts noted that investigators too often discount testimony if it comes from incarcerated people. “The only people that say it happened were inmates,” was a common refrain at the penitentiary in Tucson, according to a recently retired bureau official who asked not to be named because they still have family working at the agency. A 2022 report by the inspector general who oversees the bureau said investigators’ practice of not relying on this testimony also makes it harder for the agency to punish staff who break rules in other ways.

Giamusso, the bureau spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that the inspector general’s concerns have been addressed, that investigations are thorough and witnesses’ credibility is “evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and is not based on the individual’s status as an incarcerated individual.” Sexual abuse investigations in prison, she added, “are as complicated, if not more so, than those outside of prison.”

For all its shortcomings, PREA does offer victims and those at risk of sexual assault one protection: Each allegation sets in motion a chain of events—reporting, investigation, response. Other kinds of physical assault are often downplayed or ignored by prison officials. No federal law requires officers to investigate when an incarcerated person is beaten or stabbed. In a place where incarcerated people feel helpless and silenced, PREA can become an avenue to make someone take notice.

“You’re looking at people who have very few options,” said Cathy Thompson, who retired last year as a top psychologist at the Bureau of Prisons. “There’s nothing else they can allege that is given that kind of attention.” Staff, correctional experts and incarcerated people alike report that PREA allegations can be misused for a variety of reasons, like retaliating against an ex-lover, or having an enemy removed from a compound.

“Someone legitimately made me feel so unsafe that I did not feel I could spend another 24 hours with them having access to me without hurting me.”

Pinson herself has been accused of using false allegations of sexual harassment “as a weapon against other inmates,” according to incident reports the government filed in response to one of her lawsuits. She denied this but did concede that sometimes PREA is the only way to get officers to take a scary situation seriously. “Every single person I have filed a PREA complaint against them, I can tell you this much is true: I genuinely feared that person was going to hurt me,” she said. “Whether I feared they were going to rape me is a different story. Someone legitimately made me feel so unsafe that I did not feel I could spend another 24 hours with them having access to me without hurting me.”

She insists that in the case of Mahkimetas, the attempted sexual assault was real, and terrifying. But when it came to PREA, it was her word against his: There were no cameras in their cell and no eyewitnesses. Investigators at the Tucson penitentiary labeled Pinson’s allegation that Mahkimetas tried to rape her as unsubstantiated.

She had little redress beyond going to the courts.

In some of Pinson’s earliest memories, she is rummaging through her mother’s jewelry box, trying on the shiny baubles and makeup. “And my mom would just look at me with amusement and befuddlement,” Pinson recalled in an interview. Debra Pinson didn’t know what to make of this child of hers. When, as a teenager, Pinson told her mother she was a girl, Debra replied, “You’re just gay.” Grace didn’t argue.

Extremely precocious, Pinson was also troubled. She began reading the newspaper before she started kindergarten, her mother recalled. Debra’s father was “so abusive and so tortuously cruel” to Grace, according to a psychologist’s court testimony, once locking her out of the house overnight in the winter. A neighbor began sexually abusing her when she was 7, and she was hospitalized for psychotic symptoms and suicide attempts several times throughout her childhood.

In school, Pinson was bullied by other kids who called her “queer” and “fag.” Whenever she had problems at school, her mother would move them—they moved a lot. Children can be vicious, and so could Pinson. Once, she stabbed a classmate with a pen. She threatened to blow up her school with her Toys R Us chemistry set. Debra Pinson recalls one psychiatrist telling her, “Ma’am, your child is just evil.”

Pinson was diagnosed at different times with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and PTSD. “Pinson had not experienced any significant period of effective psychological functioning since early childhood,” according to a court evaluation.

At some point in her adolescence, her mother gave up and didn’t enroll Pinson in school at all. That meant even fewer checks on her impulsive behavior. While living in North Carolina, she got into trouble with the law, ransacking an office where she worked after she said a coworker made a homophobic comment. She pleaded guilty to several felonies and spent time in a county jail and a psychiatric hospital. They moved again.

In Oklahoma City, she was arrested again. She had gotten a job in a congressman’s district office and was accused of stealing campaign money. In recent interviews, she said she spent money she was told to spend, but in 2003, at age 17, Pinson pleaded guilty to embezzlement and was sentenced to three years in an adult state prison.

While waiting for her case to be resolved, Pinson spent months in the Oklahoma County jail. At that time, the US Department of Justice was investigating conditions at the jail and a report released years later revealed violence, overcrowding, and inadequate access to medical and mental health care, among other problems. It was not a safe place for anyone, let alone a teenage transgender girl. She had been experimenting with female pronouns for years, and it was in jail that she read a book with a chapter called “Grace,” and thought, “That’s me.”

Pinson said her cellmate at the state prison—which Pinson said was even more violent than the jail—told her about the cushy setup in “Club Fed,” a slang term for federal prison. All she needed to escape the oppressive conditions in the Oklahoma system, she was told, was to commit a federal crime. So she dashed off a seven-word letter and mailed it to the White House. “YOU WILL DIE SOON!” she scrawled. “DIE BUSH DIE.”

“I thought I was playing a big prank on the federal government,” she said in a recent interview. “As it turns out, I was playing a prank on myself.”

“I thought I was playing a big prank on the federal government. As it turns out, I was playing a prank on myself.”

The Secret Service descended on the Oklahoma County jail. Sitting in endless interrogation sessions and facing a slew of new charges, it dawned on her that she had traded a three-year state sentence for much more serious trouble. Still, she scrawled more threatening letters, “in impotent anger at a situation that I had created myself,” she told me: one to a Secret Service agent, one to a US Marshal, one to a judge.

Pinson emerged from the letter-writing spree with a new sentence: 21 years. She arrived in a maximum-security federal prison in 2007 and discovered that for a transgender woman, it was hardly “Club Fed” at all.

By the time she was processed into federal prison, Pinson had already suffered stabbings, beatings, and sexual assault in Oklahoma, she said in court papers. She filed more than half a dozen lawsuits, accusing sheriffs and corrections officials there of failing to keep her safe. In each of those instances, the cases were dismissed, or Pinson lost, or gave up and voluntarily dismissed the case when it was clear she was not going to win.

These were her first lessons in the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The 1996 federal law, passed during an era of tough-on-crime legislation, “made cases harder to bring and harder to win,” said Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who studies civil rights litigation. It was meant, she said, to stem what legislators described as a wave of frivolous prisoner lawsuits by throwing up legal hurdles that no one else faces in the courts.

Pinson’s early years in federal prison did not go well, either. She tried to repress her gender identity, wearing a beard and short hair and joining a gang for protection. She fought with other incarcerated people and guards; she set fires and flooded cells.

A psychologist had testified at her sentencing that she would need intensive mental health treatment, so the judge recommended she be sent to a federal medical center for care. Instead, she was sent to some of the system’s most notorious penitentiaries, including one known as “Bloody Beaumont” and the supermax in Florence, Colorado, where she was held in solitary confinement alongside the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The placements meant “extreme violence and trauma,” Pinson wrote in a 2008 legal filing, which “exacerbated and worsened Plaintiff’s mental state.” According to lawsuits she filed later, she was sexually harassed and assaulted.

When PREA went into effect in 2012, it created new procedures to keep people safe from sexual assault, but it did not create a way to sue officials when they failed to follow those rules.

“All transgender inmates interviewed reported that they were asked about their safety but felt staff did not take their concerns seriously.”

The law does require prisons to hire outside auditors to assess their compliance. But audits are often rushed and cursory, according to Abbate. Tucson’s most recent audit, in 2023, said, “All transgender inmates interviewed reported that they were asked about their safety but felt staff did not take their concerns seriously.” Still, the auditor gave the prison high marks and did not require any corrective action.

“Every supposed mandate that is included within the guidelines has weasel language that the government can use to say, ‘Well, we can’t really be held to it, we’re only required to make reasonable efforts,’” said Gregory Sisk, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota who represented a transgender woman who said she was sexually assaulted at the penitentiary in Tucson. She sued the Bureau of Prisons and lost.

Pinson learned all this the hard way. “I learned to litigate through books and I learned to litigate through filing lawsuits, and ultimately losing a lot of them,” she said. “But the thing is, I’m an incredibly stubborn individual.”

In 2012, while at the supermax unit in Colorado, Pinson was a plaintiff in a landmark class action lawsuit that challenged the use of solitary confinement for people with mental illnesses. The case ultimately led to an overhaul of the bureau’s treatment of mentally ill people, updating policies and creating new housing units and treatment programs.

She “has a brain for law,” said Deborah Golden, one of the lead attorneys on that case. Pinson was smart and organized and “by self-training and instinct she was really good at figuring out relevant facts,” she said. “Maybe in a different world, she would have been a law professor.”

In 2014, prison psychologists diagnosed Pinson with gender dysphoria—the distress resulting from her body not matching her gender identity—and she began to receive hormone therapy. Still, housed among men and being harassed and assaulted, hormone therapy alone has not adequately treated her gender dysphoria, she said. Her records include a long list of suicide attempts and self-harm, including trying to castrate herself in her cell.

Pinson has asked the Bureau of Prisons many times to move her to a women’s facility. Each time, the bureau’s Transgender Executive Council—a team of psychologists and administrators who make decisions about trans people in federal prison—have said no, arguing that Pinson needs to stay in maximum security and isn’t on the proper dosage of hormones. A lawsuit Pinson filed requesting a transfer to a women’s prison and gender-affirming medical treatments is ongoing. The judge in that case has issued several rulings in her favor, ordering the government to provide her with female undergarments and toiletries and to make housing decisions about her as they would about any other woman.

In a case brought by another trans woman, Cristina Iglesias, a judge found in 2022 that the Transgender Executive Council offered shifting and contradictory reasons to deny Iglesias’ transfer to a women’s facility and her access to surgery. The judge ultimately ordered the bureau to provide Iglesias with gender-affirming surgery, which it did last year—only the second time the bureau has ever done so.

In 2018, Pinson arrived in Tucson, where she kept landing in the special housing unit after a series of assaults. Special housing in Tucson is structured like solitary confinement with a cellmate: two people locked in a claustrophobic concrete box together around the clock, with little access to programs, work, or recreation.

Still, people build relationships in the most austere circumstances, passing notes under cell doors and talking through cages in the rec yard, and Pinson has made a lot of friends in prison. One of them, Bruce Altenburger, wrote in a recent letter to me that Pinson often spotted errors in people’s convictions or sentences and helped correct them. “There really ain’t too many remarkable individuals with such a big heart like her.”

In 2020, Pinson had been in special housing for most of the year following Mahkimetas’s assault. Officials would not allow her to transfer back into a less restrictive part of the prison, even after she filed numerous complaints. In an act of protest, she said, she used a razor to cut herself 243 times—one for each day she had been held in the special housing unit, by her count. Then, she sued, arguing officers at Tucson should not have provided her a razor blade, given her long history of suicide attempts and a rule that prohibited razors in special housing. After a two-day trial, the judge found her more credible than the officer who denied having given her the razor. That officer was Vasquez, the same man who insisted that Pinson had not warned him about Mahkimetas before she was attacked. The judge awarded her $243 in damages: one dollar for each cut.

In Pinson’s lawsuit about Mahkimetas’ assault, she argued that officials had failed to protect her by not providing a functional duress alarm. In pretrial briefs, she asked the government about procedures for responding to emergencies in a cell, but the bureau’s lawyers told her there were no such documents. In the absence of any rule requiring duress alarms, the government argued, the bureau could decide whether or not to provide one.

Because the judge agreed with the bureau, the only issue at trial was whether Pinson had warned Vasquez that Mahkimetas had threatened her, and, if she did, whether she was seriously harmed by his failure to move her.

In its closing argument, the government’s lawyers laid out other times that Pinson was injured while in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons. “She’s been stricken by a sock with a lock in it. She was attacked in the general population on the prison yard,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Linton told the judge. Then there was “a more recent incident involving an inmate swinging a rope with a sharp object at her.” She couldn’t prove that she had developed PTSD due to Mahkimetas’ assault specifically, the attorney argued—so the judge should not find in her favor.

As the trial was winding down, government attorneys handed Pinson a document. They had told the court months before that there were no documents regarding duress alarms, but after “re-reviewing” their paperwork, they said, they were turning over instructions for officers working in the special housing unit in Tucson. Amid pages of blacked-out language, one paragraph said that each cell in the special housing unit contains a duress button on the wall. The instructions continued, “In the event that the duress alarm is pushed…Staff must immediately respond to the cell.”

Pinson was floored.

She asked the judge for a mistrial. The trial had been shaped by the government’s claim that there were no rules about duress alarms, Pinson said. The judge said she would consider the request, but that closing arguments would continue in the meantime. A few hours later, the trial was over, and Pinson went back to her cell to wait for the judge’s verdict.

Two months later, the Bureau of Prisons transferred Pinson from Tucson to a more restrictive unit in rural Pennsylvania. She was locked in an 8-by-10-foot cell by herself around the clock. The bureau said the unit “is designed to support individuals vulnerable to mental health crises.” Pinson believes that the warden in Tucson was retaliating against her because of her outspokenness. Others she served time with in Tucson thought so too. In requesting the move, the warden had said Pinson was fabricating PREA allegations and recruiting other transgender people to invent complaints about their treatment by the prison’s staff. He said she was a disciplinary problem and needed more intensive supervision. The near-total isolation in her new prison cell led her to constant thoughts of suicide, she said. She also said she was sexually assaulted again, this time by a correctional officer, and filed a complaint with the Bureau of Prisons.

Bureau spokespeople declined to explain why Pinson was transferred, and wouldn’t comment on her allegation of sexual abuse. “Allegations of misconduct are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate action is taken if such allegations are proven true,” said spokesperson Emery Nelson.

Pinson is scheduled to be released from federal prison in 2026 after serving more than two decades. When she gets out, she will be 40 years old, free for the first time in her adult life.

In June, a prison staffer arrived at Pinson’s cell with a slim manila envelope from the court: The judge had ruled in her case.

Márquez did not grant Pinson’s request for a mistrial. She did not find that the government was negligent by placing Pinson in the cell with Mahkimetas. She did not believe that Pinson had asked Vasquez to be moved. But the judge did find the government had violated its own guidelines by not having a functional duress alarm in the cell and that if Pinson had had access to the alarm, she would have had officers there to help her within one minute.

Because it took about five minutes for staff to respond, Pinson was beaten unnecessarily for approximately four minutes, the judge wrote in her decision. With an alarm, Pinson would have still been beaten, but her injuries would have been less severe. The judge ordered the government to pay her $10,000. The bureau declined to comment on the ruling.

Pinson is gratified that the judge found in her favor, but frustrated she was prevented from making a broader point—one that was, in her mind, more important—because of how the judge limited the issues at trial. She has filed paperwork to begin an appeal.

Because she wasn’t allowed to introduce evidence of all the other sexual assaults in Tucson, she said, the judge could only weigh this one incident and Pinson was prevented from showing that her suffering was part of a larger pattern of staff disregarding PREA and not taking sexual assault seriously. In a recent call, Pinson reflected on how the experience continues to weigh on her. “The thing that has driven me crazy in this case, start to finish,” she said, “is that the bureau was never willing to acknowledge, not even at the trial, that it could have done things differently to keep me safe.”

Additional reporting by John Washington. Data analysis by Geoff Hing.

Former President Donald Trump wants you to believe that violence is surging. “All over the world crime is down; all over the world—except here,” he said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. “Crime here is up and through the roof.”

But the latest data seems to suggest the opposite.

In 2023, murders in the United States fell at the fastest pace ever recorded, by about 11 percent, according to figures released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week. And on Monday, the agency shared more good news: The number of killings seemed to keep falling significantly, by an estimated 23 percent, during the first six months of 2024.

“Murder is down at the fastest rate ever recorded, easily eclipsing 2023’s previous record decline.”

“It is an astounding feat that deserves to be studied for decades to come,” crime analyst Jeff Asher, whose reports on homicide trends have been widely cited, wrote on his Substack last week. He noted that the US murder rate is now “at or very possibly below pre-Covid levels,” and that the country hasn’t seen such a big one-year decline in killings since 1996, when murder rates dropped by 9 percent.

Overall violent crime is falling too—by about 3 percent in 2023, and by an estimated 10 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the FBI. This drop is “certainly nowhere near as fast” as the drop in murder, writes Asher. But unlike murder, he adds, overall “violent crime didn’t rise a ton in 2020.” It has “largely returned to the 50-year lows seen a few times over the last decade, and is down more than 50 percent from where it was at peak in the 1990s.”

The 2023 FBI data gives us a pretty good sense of recent crime trends, but it’s important to note that the latest figures from the first six months of 2024 are more preliminary—law enforcement agencies have until the end of the year to correct any mistakes. So take these figures with “a grain of salt,” writes Asher: It’s likely that the numbers won’t be quite as great by the end of the year.

Still, there’s a lot to celebrate right now: “Murder is down at the fastest rate ever recorded, easily eclipsing 2023’s previous record decline,” he summarizes. “Violent crime is down a fair amount…and will likely be the lowest reported violent crime rate since 1969…And property crime is down a ton thanks to the massive decline in motor vehicle theft following several years of huge increases.”

Former President Donald Trump wants you to believe that violence is surging. “All over the world crime is down; all over the world—except here,” he said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. “Crime here is up and through the roof.”

But the latest data seems to suggest the opposite.

In 2023, murders in the United States fell at the fastest pace ever recorded, by about 11 percent, according to figures released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week. And on Monday, the agency shared more good news: The number of killings seemed to keep falling significantly, by an estimated 23 percent, during the first six months of 2024.

“Murder is down at the fastest rate ever recorded, easily eclipsing 2023’s previous record decline.”

“It is an astounding feat that deserves to be studied for decades to come,” crime analyst Jeff Asher, whose reports on homicide trends have been widely cited, wrote on his Substack last week. He noted that the US murder rate is now “at or very possibly below pre-Covid levels,” and that the country hasn’t seen such a big one-year decline in killings since 1996, when murder rates dropped by 9 percent.

Overall violent crime is falling too—by about 3 percent in 2023, and by an estimated 10 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the FBI. This drop is “certainly nowhere near as fast” as the drop in murder, writes Asher. But unlike murder, he adds, overall “violent crime didn’t rise a ton in 2020.” It has “largely returned to the 50-year lows seen a few times over the last decade, and is down more than 50 percent from where it was at peak in the 1990s.”

The 2023 FBI data gives us a pretty good sense of recent crime trends, but it’s important to note that the latest figures from the first six months of 2024 are more preliminary—law enforcement agencies have until the end of the year to correct any mistakes. So take these figures with “a grain of salt,” writes Asher: It’s likely that the numbers won’t be quite as great by the end of the year.

Still, there’s a lot to celebrate right now: “Murder is down at the fastest rate ever recorded, easily eclipsing 2023’s previous record decline,” he summarizes. “Violent crime is down a fair amount…and will likely be the lowest reported violent crime rate since 1969…And property crime is down a ton thanks to the massive decline in motor vehicle theft following several years of huge increases.”

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles was convicted by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court jury Monday evening, the latest fallout from the state’s 2020 “ghost candidates” scandal.

Artiles was convicted on three felony counts related to $44,000 in payments he made to Alex Rodriguez, a no-party candidate whose role was to siphon votes from Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democratic incumbent. The six-member jury deliberated for seven hours before reaching its verdict. Artiles was acquitted on a fourth count of aiding and abetting a false voter registration. Artiles sat stone-faced as the guilty verdicts were read.

“They won. They were successful. They beat JJR,” public corruption prosecutor Tim VanderGiesen said in his opening argument. “They beat the incumbent named Rodriguez.” 

“They stole an election,” he said. 

Artiles’ defense attorney Frank Quintero had reminded jurors that ghost candidates are legal “so long as Florida election law is not violated.”

But that’s precisely what the jury found. 

Florida Power & Light’s then-CEO Eric Silagy had instructed underlings to make Florida state Sen. Jose Rodriguez’s life “a living hell.”

The term “ghost candidate” is used to describe a candidate who has no chance of winning, but runs to harm an actual contender’s chances. Ghost candidate Rodriguez was part of an opaquely funded 501(c)(4)—or “dark money”—effort enabled by consultants working for Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of the NextEra utility conglomerate.

Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy, who was never charged with wrongdoing, had ordered his underlings to “make [Sen. Rodriguez’s] life a living hell.” Silagy retired abruptly in January 2023 in the wake of reporting by Floodlight and its media partners about FPL’s involvement in the ghost candidate scandal.

Artiles was charged with conspiracy, making campaign contributions above the $1,000 limit, and “false swearing” for instructing Alex Rodriguez—who actually lived outside District 37—on how to fill out paperwork to get on the ballot. 

Artiles, who faced up to five years in prison per count, sat quietly throughout the two-week trial. He was flanked by his attorneys, Quintero and Frank Quiñon. Behind him in the Miami courtroom was a revolving cast of friends and family.

The charges stem from efforts to achieve a Republican supermajority in the Florida Senate by running three ghost candidates to take votes away from Democratic candidates in key 2020 races. The spoiler candidates were backed, in part, by a series of nonprofits controlled by Jeff Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix LLC, a consulting company that was working for Florida Power & Light, according to reporting by Floodlight and other news outlets

The nonprofits in question were 501(c)(4)s, which are not required to disclose their donors’ identities, and the prosecution stopped short of tracing the money back to its original source. On September 27, Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon dismissed a shareholder lawsuit accusing FPL’s parent company, NextEra Energy, of issuing misleading statements about its political activities.

From the utility’s perspective, as noted in our earlier, in-depth story on the scandal, expanding GOP dominance—by whatever means—would help fulfill the utility’s legislative priorities:

Those priorities included escaping liability for damages related to power outages in the wake of Hurricane Irma; ousting J.R. Kelly, the state’s long-serving (unsympathetic) consumer utility watchdog; and winning approval from the Senate-confirmed Public Service Commission for Florida’s largest-ever hike in electricity rates. 

The defeat of Sen. Rodriguez had the added benefit of kneecapping one of the state’s most prominent backers of rooftop solar, which reduces carbon emissions and lowers utility bills—and against which FPL had waged a decade-long counterinsurgency campaign.

He was defeated by 32 votes by Ileana Garcia, founder of Latinas for Trump.

Prosecutors said consultants implicated in the scandal had withheld records that had been subpoenaed. Key evidence in the form of hundreds of text messages between Artiles and Rodriguez also went missing, they said.

Much of the trial revolved around the credibility of the state’s star witness, ghost candidate Alex Rodriguez, who admitted under cross examination that he had a difficult relationship with the truth. To buttress his credibility, prosecutors laid out the broader effort to influence the 2020 election. 

Their first witness was a reticent Pat Bainter, a north Florida peanut farmer and powerful operative for the state Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. 

In a pretrial deposition, Bainter, whose company, Data Targeting, did work for GOP candidates, had acknowledged he paid Artiles $15,000 a month for six months for on-the-ground research in the District 37 race, including running a spoiler candidate. Bainter also acknowledged he sent a $100,000 no-strings-attached payment to a 501(c)(4) nonprofit controlled by Artiles. 

Testimony and evidence presented at trial revealed that Bainter held meetings with Artiles and Garcia campaign consultants who had a business relationship with Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix.

“There is no other explanation for why the defendant is giving tens of thousands of dollars to Alex Rodriguez,” the prosecutor said.

Garcia’s campaign manager testified that Bainter held the purse strings for that campaign. Bainter, too, testified that his company worked for Garcia’s campaign.

Rodriguez took the stand late on the fourth day of the trial. Prosecutor VanderGiesen showed him totals from the 2020 race, in which he got 6,000 votes.

“Did you come about getting those votes honestly?”

“No,” Rodriguez responded. 

Rodriguez, who had pleaded guilty to election-related charges and served six months of home detention and three years of probation, also testified that Artiles offered him $50,000 to run as a spoiler: $25,000 before the election and $25,000 after.

But he was afraid Artiles would never come through on his promise to pay, so he “fabricated” a series of business deals involving construction equipment, diesel engines and COVID masks to extract money from Artiles. He also asked Artiles to help cover his rent and his daughter’s private school tuition, Rodriguez testified. 

At one point, he admitted, he invented a story about a Range Rover he was going to buy at auction for Artiles, asking the former state senator for a $10,900 payment.

His reason for all the scams? “I was concerned I wasn’t going to get the $50,000.”

The defense grilled Rodriguez, working to establish reasonable doubt about the nature of his transactions with Artiles. They portrayed the former senator as the victim in a series of fraudulent business deals and requests for financial help from Rodriguez. “The evidence is going to show that Rodriguez is a con artist, a professional con artist, a pathological liar,” Quintero told the jurors.

On the stand, Rodriguez didn’t defend himself, replying to Quintero’s increasingly forceful questions in a quiet monotone. 

The key question posed by the defense was: Could the state prove—incontrovertibly—that the payments at the heart of the case were illegal campaign contributions? 

“There is no other explanation,” VanderGiesen posited, “for why the defendant is giving tens of thousands of dollars to Alex Rodriguez.”

When approached by a reporter from Floodlight, Rodriguez declined to speak on the record until the end of the trial. He took the reporter’s phone number and said he would call. As he walked down the escalator, he shot the reporter a wink. 

The reporter also spoke to Artiles shortly before the verdict was handed down. Artiles called the trial “a colossal waste of time.”

“The press won’t report what’s really happening,” he said. 

The reporter replied that he’d be happy to write the whole story—if he could ever find out precisely what it was. 

This story was reported by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

Former Florida state Sen. Frank Artiles was convicted by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court jury Monday evening, the latest fallout from the state’s 2020 “ghost candidates” scandal.

Artiles was convicted on three felony counts related to $44,000 in payments he made to Alex Rodriguez, a no-party candidate whose role was to siphon votes from Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, the Democratic incumbent. The six-member jury deliberated for seven hours before reaching its verdict. Artiles was acquitted on a fourth count of aiding and abetting a false voter registration. Artiles sat stone-faced as the guilty verdicts were read.

“They won. They were successful. They beat JJR,” public corruption prosecutor Tim VanderGiesen said in his opening argument. “They beat the incumbent named Rodriguez.” 

“They stole an election,” he said. 

Artiles’ defense attorney Frank Quintero had reminded jurors that ghost candidates are legal “so long as Florida election law is not violated.”

But that’s precisely what the jury found. 

Florida Power & Light’s then-CEO Eric Silagy had instructed underlings to make Florida state Sen. Jose Rodriguez’s life “a living hell.”

The term “ghost candidate” is used to describe a candidate who has no chance of winning, but runs to harm an actual contender’s chances. Ghost candidate Rodriguez was part of an opaquely funded 501(c)(4)—or “dark money”—effort enabled by consultants working for Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of the NextEra utility conglomerate.

Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy, who was never charged with wrongdoing, had ordered his underlings to “make [Sen. Rodriguez’s] life a living hell.” Silagy retired abruptly in January 2023 in the wake of reporting by Floodlight and its media partners about FPL’s involvement in the ghost candidate scandal.

Artiles was charged with conspiracy, making campaign contributions above the $1,000 limit, and “false swearing” for instructing Alex Rodriguez—who actually lived outside District 37—on how to fill out paperwork to get on the ballot. 

Artiles, who faced up to five years in prison per count, sat quietly throughout the two-week trial. He was flanked by his attorneys, Quintero and Frank Quiñon. Behind him in the Miami courtroom was a revolving cast of friends and family.

The charges stem from efforts to achieve a Republican supermajority in the Florida Senate by running three ghost candidates to take votes away from Democratic candidates in key 2020 races. The spoiler candidates were backed, in part, by a series of nonprofits controlled by Jeff Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix LLC, a consulting company that was working for Florida Power & Light, according to reporting by Floodlight and other news outlets

The nonprofits in question were 501(c)(4)s, which are not required to disclose their donors’ identities, and the prosecution stopped short of tracing the money back to its original source. On September 27, Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon dismissed a shareholder lawsuit accusing FPL’s parent company, NextEra Energy, of issuing misleading statements about its political activities.

From the utility’s perspective, as noted in our earlier, in-depth story on the scandal, expanding GOP dominance—by whatever means—would help fulfill the utility’s legislative priorities:

Those priorities included escaping liability for damages related to power outages in the wake of Hurricane Irma; ousting J.R. Kelly, the state’s long-serving (unsympathetic) consumer utility watchdog; and winning approval from the Senate-confirmed Public Service Commission for Florida’s largest-ever hike in electricity rates. 

The defeat of Sen. Rodriguez had the added benefit of kneecapping one of the state’s most prominent backers of rooftop solar, which reduces carbon emissions and lowers utility bills—and against which FPL had waged a decade-long counterinsurgency campaign.

He was defeated by 32 votes by Ileana Garcia, founder of Latinas for Trump.

Prosecutors said consultants implicated in the scandal had withheld records that had been subpoenaed. Key evidence in the form of hundreds of text messages between Artiles and Rodriguez also went missing, they said.

Much of the trial revolved around the credibility of the state’s star witness, ghost candidate Alex Rodriguez, who admitted under cross examination that he had a difficult relationship with the truth. To buttress his credibility, prosecutors laid out the broader effort to influence the 2020 election. 

Their first witness was a reticent Pat Bainter, a north Florida peanut farmer and powerful operative for the state Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. 

In a pretrial deposition, Bainter, whose company, Data Targeting, did work for GOP candidates, had acknowledged he paid Artiles $15,000 a month for six months for on-the-ground research in the District 37 race, including running a spoiler candidate. Bainter also acknowledged he sent a $100,000 no-strings-attached payment to a 501(c)(4) nonprofit controlled by Artiles. 

Testimony and evidence presented at trial revealed that Bainter held meetings with Artiles and Garcia campaign consultants who had a business relationship with Pitts, then-CEO of Matrix.

“There is no other explanation for why the defendant is giving tens of thousands of dollars to Alex Rodriguez,” the prosecutor said.

Garcia’s campaign manager testified that Bainter held the purse strings for that campaign. Bainter, too, testified that his company worked for Garcia’s campaign.

Rodriguez took the stand late on the fourth day of the trial. Prosecutor VanderGiesen showed him totals from the 2020 race, in which he got 6,000 votes.

“Did you come about getting those votes honestly?”

“No,” Rodriguez responded. 

Rodriguez, who had pleaded guilty to election-related charges and served six months of home detention and three years of probation, also testified that Artiles offered him $50,000 to run as a spoiler: $25,000 before the election and $25,000 after.

But he was afraid Artiles would never come through on his promise to pay, so he “fabricated” a series of business deals involving construction equipment, diesel engines and COVID masks to extract money from Artiles. He also asked Artiles to help cover his rent and his daughter’s private school tuition, Rodriguez testified. 

At one point, he admitted, he invented a story about a Range Rover he was going to buy at auction for Artiles, asking the former state senator for a $10,900 payment.

His reason for all the scams? “I was concerned I wasn’t going to get the $50,000.”

The defense grilled Rodriguez, working to establish reasonable doubt about the nature of his transactions with Artiles. They portrayed the former senator as the victim in a series of fraudulent business deals and requests for financial help from Rodriguez. “The evidence is going to show that Rodriguez is a con artist, a professional con artist, a pathological liar,” Quintero told the jurors.

On the stand, Rodriguez didn’t defend himself, replying to Quintero’s increasingly forceful questions in a quiet monotone. 

The key question posed by the defense was: Could the state prove—incontrovertibly—that the payments at the heart of the case were illegal campaign contributions? 

“There is no other explanation,” VanderGiesen posited, “for why the defendant is giving tens of thousands of dollars to Alex Rodriguez.”

When approached by a reporter from Floodlight, Rodriguez declined to speak on the record until the end of the trial. He took the reporter’s phone number and said he would call. As he walked down the escalator, he shot the reporter a wink. 

The reporter also spoke to Artiles shortly before the verdict was handed down. Artiles called the trial “a colossal waste of time.”

“The press won’t report what’s really happening,” he said. 

The reporter replied that he’d be happy to write the whole story—if he could ever find out precisely what it was. 

Freddie “Khalil” Owens. Marcellus “Khaliifah”  Williams. Emmanuel Littlejohn. Travis Mullis. Alan Eugene Miller.

All five men were executed within one week in five different states, a period political scientist Austin Sarat condemned as “the worst execution spree in three decades.”

The most high-profile execution took place on Tuesday when Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, who had maintained his innocence for decades. The execution was carried out despite the prosecutor’s office in the 1998 murder trial acknowledging that evidence had been mishandled and therefore urged for the conviction to be vacated. The execution of Miller in Alabama also received intense media attention this week over the state’s use of nitrogen gas, a method many have likened to torture.

The five executions once again thrust the issue of capital punishment, long criticized as unjust and unconstitutional, back into the public discourse, with advocates against the death penalty calling for a national reckoning. Many recalled studies that have repeatedly shown that people of color, and primarily those with intellectual disabilities, are far more likely to be given death sentences—despite little evidence that the punishment works to deter crime.

“It’s the growing perception that the death penalty system in the United States is broken in its operation.”

“The United States is in the midst of a national reconsideration of capital punishment in a way that was completely unforeseeable,” Sarat told me during a phone call this week. 

“What is driving this national reconsideration? It isn’t sudden moral conversions of people who are supporters of the death penalty. It’s the growing perception that the death penalty system in the United States is broken in its operation.”

But amid the extraordinary string of executions this week, Vice President Kamala Harris has remained curiously silent on the issue of state-sanctioned violence and the death penalty. For some, the apparent silence is out of step with Harris’ deep history of opposing the death penalty, which includes her promise as San Francisco’s district attorney never to charge someone with the death penalty. She also campaigned on the promise to establish a federal ban when she first ran for president in 2019.

Yet, with the 2024 presidential election in a virtual tie—and familiar Republican attacks that she is soft on crime—Harris’ platform appears to have wiped out any mention of her stance regarding capital punishment. When reached for comment by Mother Jones, Harris’ press team did not respond.

Sarat said that any reluctance on behalf of Harris to weigh in on the issue, even with the extraordinarily high number of executions that took place this week, could reflect a change in the political climate from four years ago.

“The political landscape was different in 2020,” says Sarat. “That campaign unfolded in anticipation of and after the murder of George Floyd and the recognition of the need to address grave racial inequities.” 

He added: “Abolitionists surely want Kamala Harris to speak out against the death penalty, but they want something more. They wanted her to be elected president United States so she can actually do something about the death penalty.”

Correction, September 27: This post has been updated to reflect more precisely Austin Sarat’s historical observation about execution sprees.

Freddie “Khalil” Owens. Marcellus “Khaliifah”  Williams. Emmanuel Littlejohn. Travis Mullis. Alan Eugene Miller.

All five men were executed within one week in five different states, a period political scientist Austin Sarat condemned as “the worst execution spree in three decades.”

The most high-profile execution took place on Tuesday when Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, who had maintained his innocence for decades. The execution was carried out despite the prosecutor’s office in the 1998 murder trial acknowledging that evidence had been mishandled and therefore urged for the conviction to be vacated. The execution of Miller in Alabama also received intense media attention this week over the state’s use of nitrogen gas, a method many have likened to torture.

The five executions once again thrust the issue of capital punishment, long criticized as unjust and unconstitutional, back into the public discourse, with advocates against the death penalty calling for a national reckoning. Many recalled studies that have repeatedly shown that people of color, and primarily those with intellectual disabilities, are far more likely to be given death sentences—despite little evidence that the punishment works to deter crime.

“It’s the growing perception that the death penalty system in the United States is broken in its operation.”

“The United States is in the midst of a national reconsideration of capital punishment in a way that was completely unforeseeable,” Sarat told me during a phone call this week. 

“What is driving this national reconsideration? It isn’t sudden moral conversions of people who are supporters of the death penalty. It’s the growing perception that the death penalty system in the United States is broken in its operation.”

But amid the extraordinary string of executions this week, Vice President Kamala Harris has remained curiously silent on the issue of state-sanctioned violence and the death penalty. For some, the apparent silence is out of step with Harris’ deep history of opposing the death penalty, which includes her promise as San Francisco’s district attorney never to charge someone with the death penalty. She also campaigned on the promise to establish a federal ban when she first ran for president in 2019.

Yet, with the 2024 presidential election in a virtual tie—and familiar Republican attacks that she is soft on crime—Harris’ platform appears to have wiped out any mention of her stance regarding capital punishment. When reached for comment by Mother Jones, Harris’ press team did not respond.

Sarat said that any reluctance on behalf of Harris to weigh in on the issue, even with the extraordinarily high number of executions that took place this week, could reflect a change in the political climate from four years ago.

“The political landscape was different in 2020,” says Sarat. “That campaign unfolded in anticipation of and after the murder of George Floyd and the recognition of the need to address grave racial inequities.” 

He added: “Abolitionists surely want Kamala Harris to speak out against the death penalty, but they want something more. They wanted her to be elected president United States so she can actually do something about the death penalty.”

Correction, September 27: This post has been updated to reflect more precisely Austin Sarat’s historical observation about execution sprees.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins is trying to transfer two children, both 16 years old, to adult court. The case comes just over a month before voters will decide whether to keep Jenkins in office, and marks the first time in at least several years that the city’s prosecutors have attempted to move a kid out of the juvenile system, which is supposed to be more rehabilitative than the adult one.

Jenkins may also be considering moving a third child to adult court—the 17-year-old who shot 49ers receiver Ricky Pearsall near Union Square in August. The shooting attracted national media attention. In early September, Jenkins said at a press conference that her team had not made a decision about whether to request that transfer.

For every white child prosecuted in adult court in California from 2010 to 2016, there were about 12 Black kids prosecuted there.

The teens Jenkins’ office sought to transfer today, who I am not naming because they are minors, are accused of murder. At least one of them has a history of being abused and neglected. On Thursday at a hearing in juvenile court, Judge Roger Chan said he received the prosecutors’ motion for the transfer but did not yet make a decision. One of the teens, who is Black and wore a green T-shirt, appeared in the courtroom with his attorney, Brian Ford.

“My client does not meet the factors required to transfer to adult jurisdiction under the law,” Ford told me before the hearing. “Brooke Jenkins’ decision to seek adult treatment is emblematic of her ongoing inclination to attack the most vulnerable persons in society,” he added, alluding to her pledge to crack down on drugs, her support of homeless encampment sweeps, and her prosecution of undocumented migrants. “First she went after the addicts, then it was the homeless, then the immigrants. And now she is going after the kids.”

The other teen appeared for the hearing over Zoom. The case had been scheduled to go to trial in juvenile court next week; it is fairly unusual that prosecutors are requesting a transfer to adult court at this late stage.

“I decided to file this transfer motion because I do not believe the Juvenile Court can ensure that the minors will be rehabilitated by the time they are released from custody in no more than a few short years,” Jenkins told me in a statement.  She said she believes juvenile court is appropriate “in many cases” for kids. “Nevertheless, when I believe that the Juvenile Court is not suitable, it is my duty to seek a transfer to ensure public safety is protected and that justice is done for the victims.”

Jenkins said the teens are charged in connection to a shooting that left a 17-year-old dead outside the Powell Street Bart Station. “I will not allow us to return to the days where blind loyalty to a failed dogma reigned supreme and perpetrators were not held accountable or faced consequences for their crimes,” she told me of the case, taking a dig at her predecessor, Chesa Boudin, who campaigned on a platform of trying to reduce mass incarceration. “My office will always be a champion for justice and stand with victims of crime.”

Jenkins was appointed DA in July 2022 after the recall of Boudin, promising to take a tougher approach to crime in San Francisco. In September 2022, she announced that her office might seek to charge children as adults in certain “heinous” cases that shocked the community’s conscience, like a mass school shooting or a violent sexual assault. This announcement was a departure from Boudin’s policy, which banned the practice. Jenkins drew criticism from justice reform advocates for the change. “Putting them into adult prisons all but guarantees they will lose the opportunity to get the care that kids need,” Anne Irwin, executive director of Smart Justice California, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time.

Advocates have pointed out that Black and Latino teens are the most likely to be charged as adults; for every white child prosecuted in adult court in California from 2010 to 2016, there were about 12 Black kids prosecuted there. Emily Goldman, who leads the juvenile unit at the public defender’s office, described Jenkins’ policy as “a step backwards that ignores scientific research” about how children’s brains are still developing until their mid-20s. “Youth accused of serious crimes often are the victims of trauma, violence, and abuse themselves, and are among those needing the most support and intervention,” she added in a statement, noting that kids serving time in adult prisons have worse mental health outcomes and are significantly more likely to face sexual or physical abuse by other prisoners or correctional staff.

San Francisco prosecutors have not tried a kid in adult court in at least several years. From 2010 to 2016, 11 youths were transferred out of San Francisco’s juvenile system to adult court: Six of them were Black, three were Latino, and none were white, according to the ACLU of Northern California.

Under California law, children ages 15 and younger cannot be transferred to adult court. In 2016, voters passed a statewide proposition that also made it harder for DAs to move 16- and 17-year-olds out of the juvenile system: Instead of directly charging them as adults, prosecutors must file a petition requesting the transfer; a judge has the final say, basing the decision on whether the kid seems capable of rehabilitation in the juvenile system, which can have custody over someone until age 25. Children convicted in adult court can be transferred from juvenile hall to an adult prison after they turn 18.

Jenkins is up for reelection in November. Her challenger, Ryan Khojasteh, is a prosecutor who specialized in juvenile cases under Boudin. He helped Boudin divert more children away from incarceration toward a restorative justice program called Make It Right, which requires kids to work with a caseworker and talk with their victims about how to make amends, often through community service. Kids who went through the program were 44 percent less likely to get arrested again compared with those who were prosecuted in a traditional way, according to a 2021 study by the nonprofit California Policy Lab.

At the hearing regarding the fate of the two teens on Thursday, Judge Chan ordered the juvenile probation department to prepare a report about the kids and their history and make a recommendation about whether to proceed with the transfer to adult court. That report will be one piece of information that Chan considers when making a decision. If the transfer is ultimately approved, defense lawyers will likely appeal, so this case could be one to watch for months.

If convicted of all counts in adult court, the kids face a possible sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

On Sunday, two New York City police officers fired into a crowded Brooklyn subway station, shooting and injuring four people, including two bystanders, one of whom is a hospital employee now in critical condition after police shot him in the head during his commute. 

The catalyst for this bloody confrontation: an alleged fare evasion. In other words, $2.90.

According to the NYPD, officers suspected that 37-year-old Derell Mickles had skipped a turnstile at the Sutter Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. The officers followed Mickles, resulting in a chase that ended with officers shooting him, two bystanders, and another officer on duty. While police initially claimed that they had recovered a knife Mickles had used to threaten officers, officials later contradicted their own claim, prompting questions over what exactly had happened.

Asked about body camera footage on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams deflected, telling a reporter to “speak with the police commissioner,” before praising the officers involved in Sunday’s shooting for demonstrating a “great level of restraint.” The NYPD has since firmly defended the officers, with the police departments chief of patrol stating, “We are not perfect.”

The violent incident, inside one of the world’s busiest subway systems, has sparked outrage among New Yorkers as well as a victim’s family members, who condemned the officers’ actions as “reckless.”

And they’re far from alone. Criminal justice reform advocates are slamming what they see as an outsized response by the NYPD to something as minor and trivial as alleged fare evasion. It comes amid New York Mayor Eric Adams’ aggressive crackdown on fare evaders, a policy Adams has claimed would also help with violence that occurs on trains. Protests have since broken out across the city, calling for the officers involved in Sunday’s shooting to be held accountable.

I spoke with Michael Sisitzky, assistant policy director at the New York City Civil Liberties Union, to learn more about Adams’ crackdown on fare evasion, overpolicing, and lack of police transparency surrounding Sunday’s violent encounter. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

This is an ongoing investigation. But there are already significant concerns over how the police handled this situation and how the mayor has responded.

This disturbing incident is sadly not surprising, given what we’ve seen from this administration. The Adams administration and NYPD have been dramatically ramping up enforcement activity, increasing their presence in the subways, increasing stops, increasing frisks, and increasing all of the hallmarks of broken windows policing.  This is a predictable and inevitable consequence of this administration’s approach to a very aggressive enforcement mindset. There are so many questions about what we’ve heard from the mayor’s office from the NYPD about what exactly unfolded. 

We have heard officer accounts of what happened. We’ve heard some witness accounts. The NYPD and the mayor’s office have been reviewing body camera footage. But, we have not been able to see this. We’re not getting a transparent accounting of what took place. It’s absolutely critical that we see the evidence that they’re relying on to make these assertions. 

We’re being asked to take the word of a mayor whose initial tweet in response to this incident had to get community noted because it was leaving out the important context of the officer he was talking about having been shot was shot by a fellow officer. We can’t really trust their version of events when they’re not showing us the evidence of what took place in that incident.

This is a predictable and inevitable consequence of this administration’s approach to a very aggressive enforcement mindset.

Are complaints over transparency from the NYPD common?

It’s a hallmark of the NYPD. We know that they can be transparent when they choose to be and when they think it serves their interest. Folks may remember back in January of 2024 the NYPD released body camera footage within hours, within a day of the traffic stop of a city council member when they sought to use that footage to highlight their version of what took place. But they treat incidents like this very differently.

How common—or rare—are shootings like this in New York?

I don’t know that we have the full stats on how common this type of shooting is in the subway from an officer.  It’s not something that I’ve seen a full accounting of, but what we have seen are increased reports of police misconduct and abuse of New Yorkers that have upticked with this administration. Civilian complaints going into the Civilian Complaint Review Board have reached alarmingly high levels. At the same time, there have also been real concerns about what the department is actually doing with complaints that are moving through the NYPD disciplinary system, where they’re just not taking those reports seriously. 

When you respond to everything with an officer, you are increasing the likelihood that we’re going to see more cases where someone is subject to use of force.

Can overpolicing backfire? How do outsize police presences affect communities, particularly communities of color?

The approach that this administration has taken since day one is overpolicing. 

They’ve identified police officers as the be-all, end-all, sole solution to every societal ill. Fare evasion? Send a cop after it. Homelessness? Send police to conduct sweeps. Mental health crises? Instead of sending peers and EMTs, send a cop instead.

It’s a formula that this administration seems wedded to, but it’s not improving community safety for New Yorkers. Police are primarily concerned with enforcing criminal laws, making arrests, and issuing summonses. They have an enforcement mindset, not a delivery of services or addressing root causes mindset.

So when you respond to everything with an officer, you are increasing the likelihood that we’re going to see more and more cases where someone is subject to use of force, someone is tased, someone is shot, someone is killed when they did not need to be, because you are responding to a situation with tools that are just fundamentally not a good fit for that scenario.

We see this play out largely in communities that need more investments to address the root causes of crime, poverty, homelessness, the need for increased mental health and healthcare services. Rather than making those investments, which are harder and will take more thought to accomplish, we instead default to a reliance on police officers.

In March, the NYPD announced they would send 800 officers into subways to combat fare evasion. In the same month, Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard in response to several violent incidents that occurred a few weeks prior. Realistically, how effective are methods like this in preventing crime, and what are some of the pitfalls?

It’s brought up time and time again that if you focus on low-level crime and low-level signs of disorder, you’re mitigating the potential for it to escalate into more serious criminal activity and driving down overall crime rates as a result. 

That’s been studied and debunked numerous times. New York City hit historically low crime rates as stop and frisk plummeted to historic lows and was reined in as enforcement fell, as summonses and arrest activity went down. The data is just not there to justify the approach to broken windows or quality-of-life policing.

Instead, it’s very effective at funneling more and more people into the criminal legal system, saddling people with fines that they cannot afford, making them attend court dates that they cannot afford, and giving people the potentially lifelong consequence of acquiring a criminal record which can extend to every aspect of their life. What it’s not doing is meeting community needs and making New Yorkers safer.

Eric Adams has pushed for a crackdown on fare evasion. Last month, the MTA announced that they’ll be sending summons of up to $50 to $100 to fare evaders. Did a “tough on crime” approach play into what happened over the weekend?

What happened over the weekend is an inevitable outcome of that kind of tough-on-crime approach, where the only tool that we seem to have to offer is police officers, who are going to focus on enforcement and if they’re given an aggressive mandate to enforce, are going to enforce that aggressively.

We haven’t seen the actual footage yet. We’re relying on accounts of what happened. But it’s very easy to see how a police officer pursuing someone, chasing them, is a tactic that is escalatory, as opposed to thinking of ways we can tackle issues like fare evasion without the threat of violence.

That is such a mismatch we don’t need to be constrained thinking about responding to fare evasion with just a police law enforcement tool.

We should be thinking more broadly about getting people access to the support they need to enroll in programs for New Yorkers who can’t afford to pay for fares to get to work, pay for child care, or get access to medical care. We can think about other ways that we are addressing those causes without putting armed officers in and telling them you need to make sure that you are aggressively cracking down on everyone within the system.

As this case has gained traction on social media, one of the most disturbing responses I’ve seen is how so many people justify using this level of force because Mickles was suspected of evading a $2.90 fare. It’s a narrative that oftentimes rears its head after a high-profile case of police brutality. We saw this with George Floyd, Eric Garner. 

The level of force used here is so disproportionate to the alleged infraction. No one should be subject to having their life put in jeopardy because of an alleged evasion of a $2.90 cent fare, to say nothing of the fact that officers pursued him into a crowded station and onto a train.

That response is not only out of proportion to the individual’s alleged offense, but it is putting so many other people needlessly in harm’s way.

It’s deeply disturbing that the NYPD and the administration could view that level of a response as an appropriate reaction when we’re talking about something as trivial as the evasion of a $2.90 cent fare.

Since the shooting occurred, plenty of New Yorkers have started to protest the NYPD’s crackdown on fare evasion. What are your thoughts on some of these demonstrations?

People are recognizing an uptick in the targeting of their communities and an uptick in stop activity racial disparities as bad or even worse than they were at its height. There is a real sense that the NYPD is not providing a service to New Yorkers but is causing active harm In communities.

And I think that an expression that also finds a voice in the number of complaints of police misconduct going in, being on the rise, and is evident in the types of protests that we’re seeing against this incident and against other instances of police brutality and violence.

It’s important that New Yorkers be able to express their to raise their voice and express their views in protesting against policies that are causing harm in their communities rather than actually helping deliver real safety for them.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system, Reveal, and USA Today. Sign up for The Marshall Project’s newsletters, and follow them on Instagram,  TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook.

Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now—pregnant with her fifth child—she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.

Then she ate a salad from Costco. 

It was her final meal before going to Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, in Northern California, to give birth in August 2022. It had been an exhausting pregnancy. Her family had just moved houses, and Horton was still breastfeeding her toddler. Because of her teenage son’s heart condition, she remained wary of Covid-19 and avoided crowded places, even doctor’s offices. Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate. 

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results.

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The morning after Horton delivered her daughter, a nurse told her she had tested positive for opiates. Horton was shocked. She hadn’t requested an epidural or any narcotic pain medication during labor—she didn’t even like taking Advil. “You’re sure it was mine?” she asked the nurse.

If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result. 

But as a mother giving birth, Horton had no such protections. The hospital quickly reported her to child welfare, and the next day, a social worker arrived to take baby Halle into protective custody.  

Kaiser Permanente declined to comment on Horton’s care. A spokesperson said the Santa Rosa hospital typically gets consent to drug-test patients for medical reasons, and as a mandated reporter under state law, it refers potential exposures of newborns to illicit drugs to child welfare authorities. 

The Sonoma County Human Services Department said, in a statement, that it evaluates all referrals using “evidence- and research-based” methods, and if a report is deemed valid, it has a duty under state law to investigate.

Horton said the experience made her feel powerless and terrified.

“They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something,” she said, “and it was wrong.” 

For decades, state and federal laws have required hospitals across the country to identify newborns affected by drugs in the womb and to refer such cases to child protective services for possible investigation. To comply, hospitals often use urine drug screens that are inexpensive (as little as $10 per test), simple to administer (the patient pees in a cup), and provide results within minutes. 

But urine drug screens are easily misinterpreted and often wrong, with false positive rates as high as 50 percent, according to some studies. Without confirmation testing and additional review, false positive results can lead hospitals to wrongly accuse parents of illicit drug use and report babies to child welfare agencies—which may separate newborns from their families, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found.

It’s unclear how many of the nation’s 3.6 million births every year involve drug testing, but health care experts said urine screening is ubiquitous. Tens of thousands of infants are reported annually to authorities for in utero drug exposure, with no guarantee that the underlying tests are accurate, our analysis of federal data shows.

“They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something, and it was wrong.”

To report this story, The Marshall Project interviewed dozens of patients, medical providers, toxicologists, and other experts, and collected information on more than 50 mothers in 22 states who faced reports and investigations over positive drug tests that were likely wrong. We also pored over thousands of pages of policy documents from every state child welfare agency in the country. 

Problems with drug screens are well known, especially in workplace testing. But there’s been little investigation of how easily false positives can occur inside labor and delivery units, and how quickly families can get trapped inside a system of surveillance and punishment.

Hospitals reported women for positive drug tests after they ate everything bagels and lemon poppy seed muffins, or used medications including the acid reducer Zantac, the antidepressant Zoloft, and labetalol, one of the most commonly prescribed blood pressure treatments for pregnant women. 

After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care. 

Federal officials have known for decades that urine screens are not reliable. Poppy seeds—which come from the same plant used to make heroin—are so notorious for causing positives for opiates that last year the Department of Defense directed service members to stop eating them. At hospitals, test results often come with warnings about false positives and direct clinicians to confirm the findings with more definitive tests. 

Yet state policies and many hospitals tend to treat drug screens as unassailable evidence of illicit use, The Marshall Project found. Hospitals across the country routinely report cases to authorities without ordering confirmation tests or waiting to receive the results. 

At least 27 states explicitly require hospitals to alert child welfare agencies after a positive screen or potential exposure, according to a review of state laws and policies by The Marshall Project. But, not a single state requires hospitals to confirm test results before reporting them. At least 25 states do not require child welfare workers to confirm positive test results, either. 

While parents often lack protections, most of the caseworkers who investigate them are entitled to confirmation testing and a review if they test positive for drugs on the job, our analysis found. 

Health care providers say there are medical reasons to test labor and delivery patients for drugs, including alerting doctors to watch a newborn for withdrawal symptoms. They also cite concerns about criminal and legal liability if they fail to report positive test results. 

Even when a doctor refutes a positive result and vouches for their patient, hospitals may report the incorrect data anyway to child welfare agencies.

“It’s almost like a gut punch. You come to the hospital and you see a social work note on your patient’s chart,” said Dr. Yashica Robinson, an OB/GYN in Huntsville, Alabama, who has tried and failed several times to halt child welfare reports and investigations of patients with false positive results. “Once that ball is rolling, it’s hard to stop it,” Robinson said.

No government agency collects comprehensive data on false positive results or on how many pregnant patients are tested. And confidentiality laws that shield medical and child welfare records make it difficult for the public to understand how many families are affected. 

In 2016, Congress mandated states to submit the number of “substance-affected” infants to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Not all states track every case, but from fiscal years 2018 through 2022, medical professionals reported at least 170,000 infants to child welfare agencies for exposure to substances, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project. In 2022 alone, more than 35,000 such cases were reported, and authorities removed more than 6,000 infants from their families, our analysis found. 

The harms of drug testing fall disproportionately on low-income, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women, who studies have found are more likely to be tested when they give birth, more likely to be investigated, and less likely to reunite with their children after they’ve been removed. 

But the false positive cases The Marshall Project identified include parents of all socioeconomic classes and occupations—from a lawyer to a school librarian to a nurse who drug-tests other people for a living. 

“People should be concerned,” said Dr. Stephen Patrick, a leading neonatal researcher who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “This could happen to any one of us.”

“People should be concerned. This could happen to any one of us.”

Drug screens are more guesswork than exact science. Chemicals in the tests quickly cross-react with urine, flagging anything that looks like it could be an illicit substance. The tests are like fishing nets that are cast wide and pick up anything and everything that fits, said Dr. Gwen McMillin, a professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine and medical director of a drug-testing lab. The problem is that nets also ensnare fish that aren’t being targeted: compounds that are closely related to illicit substances or merely look similar. 

“Drug testing results need to be confirmed before they go to CPS,” McMillin said. “Actions should not be taken based on a single drug testing result. Period.” 

But sometimes, even confirmation tests can be misinterpreted, as Susan Horton found. At first, Horton was puzzled by her positive test result. She wondered if her urine might have been mixed up with another patient’s. Then—“ding ding ding!”—her last meal popped into her head. She told a nurse about the poppy seeds in her salad, sure that this would resolve her doctors’ concerns. 

Horton’s records show Kaiser ran her urine sample through a second test, and this time it came back positive for one opiate in particular: codeine. That shouldn’t have been surprising—poppy seeds, like the ones in Horton’s salad, are derived from the opium poppy plant and contain codeine. 

To differentiate between salad dressing or bagels and illicit drugs, toxicologists have long recommended testing urine for the presence of a compound called thebaine, which is found in poppy seeds but not in heroin. There’s no indication that the hospital performed or even knew about the thebaine test, leaving providers with no way to prove or disprove Horton’s claims.

“Mom and dad insistent that a Costco salad with poppyseed dressing is responsible,” a doctor wrote in her notes. Another doctor wrote: “We are unable to verify whether this could result in a positive test.”

Soon, multiple doctors and nurses filed into Horton’s room. They said hospital policy dictated that Halle remain there for five days to be monitored for possible drug withdrawal symptoms—“for baby’s safety,” a doctor told Horton.

Unlike most other states that require hospitals to report positive drug tests, California law says a positive test alone “is not in and of itself a sufficient basis for reporting child abuse or neglect.” But because of Covid-19 and her son’s heart condition, Horton had also missed some prenatal appointments, which many providers see as a red flag for drug use. A hospital social worker noted the missed appointments and decided to file a report.

In a statement about its practices in general, Kaiser said it always conducts a “multi-faceted assessment” prior to filing a report to CPS, which is responsible for reviewing the information and investigating. 

Horton insisted that keeping her baby at the hospital was unnecessary. “I’m not a drug addict,” she said she pleaded. Desperate for help, her husband called the police, who declined to oppose hospital directives, records show. 

When the caseworker arrived, the couple refused to sign a safety plan or allow the person to interview their children and inspect their home. So the caseworker immediately obtained a judge’s order and placed baby Halle into temporary custody in the hospital, before discharging her to her grandparents, who were ordered to supervise Horton with her child. 

A few days later, Horton stood silently in court, dressed in pants that clung uncomfortably to her still-healing body, feeling as if her motherhood was on trial. A caseworker told the judge it would be dangerous to release Halle to her parents, and Horton agreed to another drug test. A worker followed her to the bathroom and watched her urinate in a cup.

By then, caseworkers and doctors had privately acknowledged that poppy seeds could have caused Horton’s positive test result. But in court the caseworker didn’t mention that. Instead, she argued that Horton’s purported drug use had “caused serious physical harm” to her child. 

The agency said under state law it can’t comment on individual cases. Speaking generally, it said a single positive drug test, false or otherwise, doesn’t warrant an investigation, and that there needs to be “a reported observation of impact to the child.”

When workplace drug testing was introduced in the 1980s, unions and civil rights groups decried the error rates of drug screens and how companies were firing workers over false positive results. In response, federal authorities mandated safeguards for employees, including requiring confirmation tests and a review from a specially trained doctor to determine whether a food or medication could have caused a positive result. 

A federal medical advisory committee in 1993 urged health care providers who drug-test pregnant patients to adopt the same rigorous standards. But amid the “crack baby” panic, the idea of protecting mothers did not catch on. 

Hospital drug testing policies vary widely. Many facilities, such as Kaiser in Santa Rosa, test every labor-and-delivery patient. Other hospitals flag only certain people, such as those with limited prenatal care, high blood pressure, even bad teeth, experts say. At many hospitals, the decision is up to doctors and nurses, who may view a mother’s tattoos, disheveled clothing, or stressed demeanor with suspicion. Studies have found that the decision to test is rife with class and race bias.

“Those who look like they have less resources, people might say, ‘Well, they look more likely to use drugs,’” said Dr. Cresta Jones, an associate professor and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Hospitals often have full discretion over whether to screen for drugs, but once a positive result is in hand, the decision to report becomes more complicated. Laws and policies in at least 12 states explicitly require hospitals to send screen results to child welfare agencies, even if they are not confirmed, according to The Marshall Project’s review. 

For hospitals, cost is also an issue. While urine screens are cheap, the equipment needed to run a confirmation test costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to the cost of expert personnel and lab certification. Some hospitals contract out confirmation testing—a lower-cost alternative—but getting results can take days, long after many families are ready to go home.

Doctors, nurses, and hospital social workers face an uncomfortable predicament: Do they send the baby home to what they believe could be an unsafe environment, or do they call authorities?

“God forbid the baby goes home, withdraws and dies, we’re going to be held liable for that,” said Dr. Adi Davidov, an obstetrician at Staten Island University Hospital, which drug-tests every birthing patient.

State mandatory reporting laws add to the pressure on doctors and nurses. These laws impose criminal liability on providers who fail to report, while also protecting physicians who report “in good faith”—insulating hospitals from lawsuits if test results are wrong. 

Even when doctors have the ability to order a confirmation test, they don’t always do so. Many misinterpret positive screens as definitive evidence of drug use.

“We were guilty until proven innocent.”

When Grace Smith had her fourth child in 2021 at St. Luke’s University Hospital, an hour north of Philadelphia, she was taking prescribed marijuana and Vyvanse, a medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The medicine contains amphetamine, but the hospital’s drug screen results did not differentiate between meth and amphetamine, according to medical records. The day after Smith delivered her son, a doctor told her that she and her baby had tested positive for meth and that the hospital had notified child protective services.

Smith’s husband, Michael, asked the doctor to review his wife’s medical records to confirm her prescription, according to the doctor’s notes. The doctor argued that wasn’t her role. “I explained that our responsibility as healthcare workers was to report the case” to child welfare authorities, she wrote, adding that the agency “would conduct any investigation that was necessary.”

When Michael Smith told the doctor they were leaving with their baby, the hospital called the police. An officer escorted the parents out, without their newborn, a police report shows. The Smiths said the police told them they would be arrested if they returned.

A spokesperson for St. Luke’s University Health Network declined to answer questions from The Marshall Project, saying in an email that the hospital “complies with all rules and regulations regarding drug testing and reporting” and that the newborn’s welfare “is always our primary concern.”

Four days after the Smiths’ son was born, Monroe County Children and Youth Services told the hospital it was okay to release the baby to his parents. But the investigation remained open. It wasn’t until the Smiths paid more than $3,500 for a lawyer—and nearly $300 for a confirmation drug test that came back negative—that the agency closed their case. The agency declined to comment.

The Smiths filed a lawsuit in 2022 against St. Luke’s. In its response, the hospital acknowledged that it had not given Grace a confirmation test, but denied violating the Smiths’ privacy or civil rights. A judge dismissed the suit in 2023, saying in part that the Smiths did not sufficiently argue their claims.

Many providers erroneously assume that child welfare agencies verify a parent’s drug use. But government caseworkers typically lack the expertise to accurately interpret drug test results. State policy manuals seldom mention the possibility of false positives. It often falls on parents to prove their own innocence.

As a nurse in South Carolina, Ashley Riley said she regularly drug-tested patients in an addiction treatment program, flagged faulty tests, and sent out positive screens for confirmation. But when she herself screened positive for opiates after delivering her son in 2023, Riley said the hospital declined to order a confirmation test, then reported her to authorities.

Riley and her husband, Jeffrey, insisted the positive result was from lemon poppy seed muffins that she had eaten throughout her pregnancy. As proof, Jeffrey Riley texted the investigator a receipt for the muffins, studies on false positives caused by poppy seeds, and the 2023 memo from the Department of Defense urging service members to avoid poppy seeds.

“At no point in time was there anybody in there that was even trying to advocate for my wife, except for me,” he recalled.

At first, he thought his efforts were working. The caseworker acknowledged in his notes having seen the poppy seeds and noted that the report “could be falsified.” 

But the caseworker still insisted the couple sign a safety plan, advising them that their two children would be placed in foster care unless they assigned a “protector”—a responsible adult who would supervise them with their children at all times. This continued for 45 days before the case was closed as unfounded. 

“We were guilty until proven innocent,” Ashley Riley said. 

The hospital even charged $424 for the problematic urine test. Hospital officials did not respond to multiple interview requests.

Will Batchelor, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Social Services, wrote in a statement that the agency has a duty to investigate once a hospital has filed a report and that it “exercised appropriate restraint” by not removing the child from the home.

“Because the safety of a child is at stake, DSS has to continue its investigation beyond seeing a receipt for poppy seed muffins,” Batchelor wrote.

Even when a parent has a confirmation test and her own doctor’s word attesting to a false positive result, authorities may keep investigating.

When Melissa Robinson, an elementary school librarian in Huntsville, Alabama, screened pos​​itive for cocaine in early 2024, the news shocked her and her doctors. Robinson had avoided anything during her pregnancy that could be risky, even cold cuts—which may carry bacteria—and had no history of drug use. Because of the positive test, staff told Robinson she was not allowed to breastfeed her daughter, hospital records show, and they reported her to Alabama’s child welfare agency, the Department of Human Resources. Robinson said a caseworker told her that she probably wouldn’t be allowed to be alone with her baby—her husband would have to supervise.

A few days later, a confirmation test came back negative for any substances. With proof that she had not used cocaine, Robinson assumed the case would be closed. Instead, the agency continued to investigate, inspecting her home and even requiring her husband to take a drug test, she said.

A spokesperson for Alabama’s child welfare agency said they are required to respond immediately to a hospital report and “make safety decisions relying on current and most accessible information.”

When the baby was two weeks old, the agency closed the case, citing insufficient evidence. But the allegations will remain on Robinson’s record for at least five years.

“To have such a beautiful experience tainted by something like that, it’s difficult,” Robinson recalled. “Truthfully, it’s turned me into somebody different.” 

“To have such a beautiful experience tainted by something like that, it’s difficult. Truthfully, it’s turned me into somebody different.” 

Some medical groups and providers have taken steps to reduce unnecessary child welfare reports. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises hospitals to use a screening questionnaire rather than drug tests to identify people who may have substance abuse problems. The organization also recommends that hospitals obtain consent from patients, explaining the potential consequences of a positive result—including if the hospital is required to report it to authorities. A number of large hospitals have adopted some version of those recommendations. 

After a study at Staten Island University Hospital in New York found a high rate of false positives, administrators brought the confirmation testing in-house. They said results come back within a day or two, rather than the week that is typical for outside tests, which allows providers to wait before contacting child welfare.

“Any time you act on a test that’s not 100 percent, you run the risk of causing more harm than good,” said the hospital’s Dr. Davidov. “If you are going to get CPS involved with a mother who did nothing wrong and is a good citizen, that’s harming her. It’s harming her experience, it’s harming her ability to take care of her newborn.”

In recent years, advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against hospitals for testing without explicit consent, which has led some state officials and lawmakers to speak out against the testing. But in most of the United States, it remains common practice to report families based on unconfirmed positive screens. Most of the women interviewed by The Marshall Project signed general consent forms at the hospital but said they were never informed explicitly they would be drug-tested, nor that a positive result could be reported to authorities.

For Susan Horton, her family’s ordeal has created an undercurrent of fear that courses through her daily life. 

After the court hearing in August 2022, child welfare workers took the baby to Horton’s elderly in-laws and barred Horton and her husband from being alone with their newborn while the agency investigated. Finally, almost two weeks after their daughter was born, the agency withdrew its petition and a judge dismissed the case, allowing the Hortons to bring baby Halle home.

One afternoon last spring, Horton took her daughter, now a toddler, outside. Halle giggled as her mother chased her around the front yard, her little feet splashing in a small mud hole. This was the life Horton had envisioned years ago—a quiet place in the California countryside where her children could delight in the world around them. And yet, Horton couldn’t help but remember the investigation that destroyed her family’s peace of mind—and her self-esteem.

“I had a lot of confidence in how I mother and how I parent,” she said. “Now in my head, I’m always questioning my choices.” She wondered aloud what neighbors would say if they saw her daughter playing in the mud, if someone might accuse her of being a bad parent.

“I just always have that looming feeling that at any moment CPS could come knocking and take my children away.” 

Marshall Project reporters Weihua Li, Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, Nakylah Carter, and Catherine Odom contributed to this story.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system, Reveal, and USA Today. Sign up for The Marshall Project’s newsletters, and follow them on Instagram,  TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook.

Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now—pregnant with her fifth child—she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.

Then she ate a salad from Costco. 

It was her final meal before going to Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, in Northern California, to give birth in August 2022. It had been an exhausting pregnancy. Her family had just moved houses, and Horton was still breastfeeding her toddler. Because of her teenage son’s heart condition, she remained wary of Covid-19 and avoided crowded places, even doctor’s offices. Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate. 

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug-tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a positive result on a urine drug screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications—from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines—can prompt erroneous results.

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The morning after Horton delivered her daughter, a nurse told her she had tested positive for opiates. Horton was shocked. She hadn’t requested an epidural or any narcotic pain medication during labor—she didn’t even like taking Advil. “You’re sure it was mine?” she asked the nurse.

If Horton had been tested under different circumstances—for example, if she was a government employee and required to be tested as part of her job—she would have been entitled to a more advanced test and to a review from a specially trained doctor to confirm the initial result. 

But as a mother giving birth, Horton had no such protections. The hospital quickly reported her to child welfare, and the next day, a social worker arrived to take baby Halle into protective custody.  

Kaiser Permanente declined to comment on Horton’s care. A spokesperson said the Santa Rosa hospital typically gets consent to drug-test patients for medical reasons, and as a mandated reporter under state law, it refers potential exposures of newborns to illicit drugs to child welfare authorities. 

The Sonoma County Human Services Department said, in a statement, that it evaluates all referrals using “evidence- and research-based” methods, and if a report is deemed valid, it has a duty under state law to investigate.

Horton said the experience made her feel powerless and terrified.

“They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something,” she said, “and it was wrong.” 

For decades, state and federal laws have required hospitals across the country to identify newborns affected by drugs in the womb and to refer such cases to child protective services for possible investigation. To comply, hospitals often use urine drug screens that are inexpensive (as little as $10 per test), simple to administer (the patient pees in a cup), and provide results within minutes. 

But urine drug screens are easily misinterpreted and often wrong, with false positive rates as high as 50 percent, according to some studies. Without confirmation testing and additional review, false positive results can lead hospitals to wrongly accuse parents of illicit drug use and report babies to child welfare agencies—which may separate newborns from their families, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found.

It’s unclear how many of the nation’s 3.6 million births every year involve drug testing, but health care experts said urine screening is ubiquitous. Tens of thousands of infants are reported annually to authorities for in utero drug exposure, with no guarantee that the underlying tests are accurate, our analysis of federal data shows.

“They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something, and it was wrong.”

To report this story, The Marshall Project interviewed dozens of patients, medical providers, toxicologists, and other experts, and collected information on more than 50 mothers in 22 states who faced reports and investigations over positive drug tests that were likely wrong. We also pored over thousands of pages of policy documents from every state child welfare agency in the country. 

Problems with drug screens are well known, especially in workplace testing. But there’s been little investigation of how easily false positives can occur inside labor and delivery units, and how quickly families can get trapped inside a system of surveillance and punishment.

Hospitals reported women for positive drug tests after they ate everything bagels and lemon poppy seed muffins, or used medications including the acid reducer Zantac, the antidepressant Zoloft, and labetalol, one of the most commonly prescribed blood pressure treatments for pregnant women. 

After a California mother had a false positive for meth and PCP, authorities took her newborn, then dispatched two sheriff’s deputies to also remove her toddler from her custody, court records show. In New York, hospital administrators refused to retract a child welfare report based on a false positive result, and instead offered the mother counseling for her trauma, according to a recording of the conversation. And when a Pennsylvania woman tested positive for opioids after eating pasta salad, the hearing officer in her case yelled at her to “buck up, get a backbone, and stop crying,” court records show. It took three months to get her newborn back from foster care. 

Federal officials have known for decades that urine screens are not reliable. Poppy seeds—which come from the same plant used to make heroin—are so notorious for causing positives for opiates that last year the Department of Defense directed service members to stop eating them. At hospitals, test results often come with warnings about false positives and direct clinicians to confirm the findings with more definitive tests. 

Yet state policies and many hospitals tend to treat drug screens as unassailable evidence of illicit use, The Marshall Project found. Hospitals across the country routinely report cases to authorities without ordering confirmation tests or waiting to receive the results. 

At least 27 states explicitly require hospitals to alert child welfare agencies after a positive screen or potential exposure, according to a review of state laws and policies by The Marshall Project. But, not a single state requires hospitals to confirm test results before reporting them. At least 25 states do not require child welfare workers to confirm positive test results, either. 

While parents often lack protections, most of the caseworkers who investigate them are entitled to confirmation testing and a review if they test positive for drugs on the job, our analysis found. 

Health care providers say there are medical reasons to test labor and delivery patients for drugs, including alerting doctors to watch a newborn for withdrawal symptoms. They also cite concerns about criminal and legal liability if they fail to report positive test results. 

Even when a doctor refutes a positive result and vouches for their patient, hospitals may report the incorrect data anyway to child welfare agencies.

“It’s almost like a gut punch. You come to the hospital and you see a social work note on your patient’s chart,” said Dr. Yashica Robinson, an OB/GYN in Huntsville, Alabama, who has tried and failed several times to halt child welfare reports and investigations of patients with false positive results. “Once that ball is rolling, it’s hard to stop it,” Robinson said.

No government agency collects comprehensive data on false positive results or on how many pregnant patients are tested. And confidentiality laws that shield medical and child welfare records make it difficult for the public to understand how many families are affected. 

In 2016, Congress mandated states to submit the number of “substance-affected” infants to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Not all states track every case, but from fiscal years 2018 through 2022, medical professionals reported at least 170,000 infants to child welfare agencies for exposure to substances, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project. In 2022 alone, more than 35,000 such cases were reported, and authorities removed more than 6,000 infants from their families, our analysis found. 

The harms of drug testing fall disproportionately on low-income, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women, who studies have found are more likely to be tested when they give birth, more likely to be investigated, and less likely to reunite with their children after they’ve been removed. 

But the false positive cases The Marshall Project identified include parents of all socioeconomic classes and occupations—from a lawyer to a school librarian to a nurse who drug-tests other people for a living. 

“People should be concerned,” said Dr. Stephen Patrick, a leading neonatal researcher who chairs the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “This could happen to any one of us.”

“People should be concerned. This could happen to any one of us.”

Drug screens are more guesswork than exact science. Chemicals in the tests quickly cross-react with urine, flagging anything that looks like it could be an illicit substance. The tests are like fishing nets that are cast wide and pick up anything and everything that fits, said Dr. Gwen McMillin, a professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine and medical director of a drug-testing lab. The problem is that nets also ensnare fish that aren’t being targeted: compounds that are closely related to illicit substances or merely look similar. 

“Drug testing results need to be confirmed before they go to CPS,” McMillin said. “Actions should not be taken based on a single drug testing result. Period.” 

But sometimes, even confirmation tests can be misinterpreted, as Susan Horton found. At first, Horton was puzzled by her positive test result. She wondered if her urine might have been mixed up with another patient’s. Then—“ding ding ding!”—her last meal popped into her head. She told a nurse about the poppy seeds in her salad, sure that this would resolve her doctors’ concerns. 

Horton’s records show Kaiser ran her urine sample through a second test, and this time it came back positive for one opiate in particular: codeine. That shouldn’t have been surprising—poppy seeds, like the ones in Horton’s salad, are derived from the opium poppy plant and contain codeine. 

To differentiate between salad dressing or bagels and illicit drugs, toxicologists have long recommended testing urine for the presence of a compound called thebaine, which is found in poppy seeds but not in heroin. There’s no indication that the hospital performed or even knew about the thebaine test, leaving providers with no way to prove or disprove Horton’s claims.

“Mom and dad insistent that a Costco salad with poppyseed dressing is responsible,” a doctor wrote in her notes. Another doctor wrote: “We are unable to verify whether this could result in a positive test.”

Soon, multiple doctors and nurses filed into Horton’s room. They said hospital policy dictated that Halle remain there for five days to be monitored for possible drug withdrawal symptoms—“for baby’s safety,” a doctor told Horton.

Unlike most other states that require hospitals to report positive drug tests, California law says a positive test alone “is not in and of itself a sufficient basis for reporting child abuse or neglect.” But because of Covid-19 and her son’s heart condition, Horton had also missed some prenatal appointments, which many providers see as a red flag for drug use. A hospital social worker noted the missed appointments and decided to file a report.

In a statement about its practices in general, Kaiser said it always conducts a “multi-faceted assessment” prior to filing a report to CPS, which is responsible for reviewing the information and investigating. 

Horton insisted that keeping her baby at the hospital was unnecessary. “I’m not a drug addict,” she said she pleaded. Desperate for help, her husband called the police, who declined to oppose hospital directives, records show. 

When the caseworker arrived, the couple refused to sign a safety plan or allow the person to interview their children and inspect their home. So the caseworker immediately obtained a judge’s order and placed baby Halle into temporary custody in the hospital, before discharging her to her grandparents, who were ordered to supervise Horton with her child. 

A few days later, Horton stood silently in court, dressed in pants that clung uncomfortably to her still-healing body, feeling as if her motherhood was on trial. A caseworker told the judge it would be dangerous to release Halle to her parents, and Horton agreed to another drug test. A worker followed her to the bathroom and watched her urinate in a cup.

By then, caseworkers and doctors had privately acknowledged that poppy seeds could have caused Horton’s positive test result. But in court the caseworker didn’t mention that. Instead, she argued that Horton’s purported drug use had “caused serious physical harm” to her child. 

The agency said under state law it can’t comment on individual cases. Speaking generally, it said a single positive drug test, false or otherwise, doesn’t warrant an investigation, and that there needs to be “a reported observation of impact to the child.”

When workplace drug testing was introduced in the 1980s, unions and civil rights groups decried the error rates of drug screens and how companies were firing workers over false positive results. In response, federal authorities mandated safeguards for employees, including requiring confirmation tests and a review from a specially trained doctor to determine whether a food or medication could have caused a positive result. 

A federal medical advisory committee in 1993 urged health care providers who drug-test pregnant patients to adopt the same rigorous standards. But amid the “crack baby” panic, the idea of protecting mothers did not catch on. 

Hospital drug testing policies vary widely. Many facilities, such as Kaiser in Santa Rosa, test every labor-and-delivery patient. Other hospitals flag only certain people, such as those with limited prenatal care, high blood pressure, even bad teeth, experts say. At many hospitals, the decision is up to doctors and nurses, who may view a mother’s tattoos, disheveled clothing, or stressed demeanor with suspicion. Studies have found that the decision to test is rife with class and race bias.

“Those who look like they have less resources, people might say, ‘Well, they look more likely to use drugs,’” said Dr. Cresta Jones, an associate professor and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Hospitals often have full discretion over whether to screen for drugs, but once a positive result is in hand, the decision to report becomes more complicated. Laws and policies in at least 12 states explicitly require hospitals to send screen results to child welfare agencies, even if they are not confirmed, according to The Marshall Project’s review. 

For hospitals, cost is also an issue. While urine screens are cheap, the equipment needed to run a confirmation test costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to the cost of expert personnel and lab certification. Some hospitals contract out confirmation testing—a lower-cost alternative—but getting results can take days, long after many families are ready to go home.

Doctors, nurses, and hospital social workers face an uncomfortable predicament: Do they send the baby home to what they believe could be an unsafe environment, or do they call authorities?

“God forbid the baby goes home, withdraws and dies, we’re going to be held liable for that,” said Dr. Adi Davidov, an obstetrician at Staten Island University Hospital, which drug-tests every birthing patient.

State mandatory reporting laws add to the pressure on doctors and nurses. These laws impose criminal liability on providers who fail to report, while also protecting physicians who report “in good faith”—insulating hospitals from lawsuits if test results are wrong. 

Even when doctors have the ability to order a confirmation test, they don’t always do so. Many misinterpret positive screens as definitive evidence of drug use.

“We were guilty until proven innocent.”

When Grace Smith had her fourth child in 2021 at St. Luke’s University Hospital, an hour north of Philadelphia, she was taking prescribed marijuana and Vyvanse, a medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The medicine contains amphetamine, but the hospital’s drug screen results did not differentiate between meth and amphetamine, according to medical records. The day after Smith delivered her son, a doctor told her that she and her baby had tested positive for meth and that the hospital had notified child protective services.

Smith’s husband, Michael, asked the doctor to review his wife’s medical records to confirm her prescription, according to the doctor’s notes. The doctor argued that wasn’t her role. “I explained that our responsibility as healthcare workers was to report the case” to child welfare authorities, she wrote, adding that the agency “would conduct any investigation that was necessary.”

When Michael Smith told the doctor they were leaving with their baby, the hospital called the police. An officer escorted the parents out, without their newborn, a police report shows. The Smiths said the police told them they would be arrested if they returned.

A spokesperson for St. Luke’s University Health Network declined to answer questions from The Marshall Project, saying in an email that the hospital “complies with all rules and regulations regarding drug testing and reporting” and that the newborn’s welfare “is always our primary concern.”

Four days after the Smiths’ son was born, Monroe County Children and Youth Services told the hospital it was okay to release the baby to his parents. But the investigation remained open. It wasn’t until the Smiths paid more than $3,500 for a lawyer—and nearly $300 for a confirmation drug test that came back negative—that the agency closed their case. The agency declined to comment.

The Smiths filed a lawsuit in 2022 against St. Luke’s. In its response, the hospital acknowledged that it had not given Grace a confirmation test, but denied violating the Smiths’ privacy or civil rights. A judge dismissed the suit in 2023, saying in part that the Smiths did not sufficiently argue their claims.

Many providers erroneously assume that child welfare agencies verify a parent’s drug use. But government caseworkers typically lack the expertise to accurately interpret drug test results. State policy manuals seldom mention the possibility of false positives. It often falls on parents to prove their own innocence.

As a nurse in South Carolina, Ashley Riley said she regularly drug-tested patients in an addiction treatment program, flagged faulty tests, and sent out positive screens for confirmation. But when she herself screened positive for opiates after delivering her son in 2023, Riley said the hospital declined to order a confirmation test, then reported her to authorities.

Riley and her husband, Jeffrey, insisted the positive result was from lemon poppy seed muffins that she had eaten throughout her pregnancy. As proof, Jeffrey Riley texted the investigator a receipt for the muffins, studies on false positives caused by poppy seeds, and the 2023 memo from the Department of Defense urging service members to avoid poppy seeds.

“At no point in time was there anybody in there that was even trying to advocate for my wife, except for me,” he recalled.

At first, he thought his efforts were working. The caseworker acknowledged in his notes having seen the poppy seeds and noted that the report “could be falsified.” 

But the caseworker still insisted the couple sign a safety plan, advising them that their two children would be placed in foster care unless they assigned a “protector”—a responsible adult who would supervise them with their children at all times. This continued for 45 days before the case was closed as unfounded. 

“We were guilty until proven innocent,” Ashley Riley said. 

The hospital even charged $424 for the problematic urine test. Hospital officials did not respond to multiple interview requests.

Will Batchelor, a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Social Services, wrote in a statement that the agency has a duty to investigate once a hospital has filed a report and that it “exercised appropriate restraint” by not removing the child from the home.

“Because the safety of a child is at stake, DSS has to continue its investigation beyond seeing a receipt for poppy seed muffins,” Batchelor wrote.

Even when a parent has a confirmation test and her own doctor’s word attesting to a false positive result, authorities may keep investigating.

When Melissa Robinson, an elementary school librarian in Huntsville, Alabama, screened pos​​itive for cocaine in early 2024, the news shocked her and her doctors. Robinson had avoided anything during her pregnancy that could be risky, even cold cuts—which may carry bacteria—and had no history of drug use. Because of the positive test, staff told Robinson she was not allowed to breastfeed her daughter, hospital records show, and they reported her to Alabama’s child welfare agency, the Department of Human Resources. Robinson said a caseworker told her that she probably wouldn’t be allowed to be alone with her baby—her husband would have to supervise.

A few days later, a confirmation test came back negative for any substances. With proof that she had not used cocaine, Robinson assumed the case would be closed. Instead, the agency continued to investigate, inspecting her home and even requiring her husband to take a drug test, she said.

A spokesperson for Alabama’s child welfare agency said they are required to respond immediately to a hospital report and “make safety decisions relying on current and most accessible information.”

When the baby was two weeks old, the agency closed the case, citing insufficient evidence. But the allegations will remain on Robinson’s record for at least five years.

“To have such a beautiful experience tainted by something like that, it’s difficult,” Robinson recalled. “Truthfully, it’s turned me into somebody different.” 

“To have such a beautiful experience tainted by something like that, it’s difficult. Truthfully, it’s turned me into somebody different.” 

Some medical groups and providers have taken steps to reduce unnecessary child welfare reports. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises hospitals to use a screening questionnaire rather than drug tests to identify people who may have substance abuse problems. The organization also recommends that hospitals obtain consent from patients, explaining the potential consequences of a positive result—including if the hospital is required to report it to authorities. A number of large hospitals have adopted some version of those recommendations. 

After a study at Staten Island University Hospital in New York found a high rate of false positives, administrators brought the confirmation testing in-house. They said results come back within a day or two, rather than the week that is typical for outside tests, which allows providers to wait before contacting child welfare.

“Any time you act on a test that’s not 100 percent, you run the risk of causing more harm than good,” said the hospital’s Dr. Davidov. “If you are going to get CPS involved with a mother who did nothing wrong and is a good citizen, that’s harming her. It’s harming her experience, it’s harming her ability to take care of her newborn.”

In recent years, advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against hospitals for testing without explicit consent, which has led some state officials and lawmakers to speak out against the testing. But in most of the United States, it remains common practice to report families based on unconfirmed positive screens. Most of the women interviewed by The Marshall Project signed general consent forms at the hospital but said they were never informed explicitly they would be drug-tested, nor that a positive result could be reported to authorities.

For Susan Horton, her family’s ordeal has created an undercurrent of fear that courses through her daily life. 

After the court hearing in August 2022, child welfare workers took the baby to Horton’s elderly in-laws and barred Horton and her husband from being alone with their newborn while the agency investigated. Finally, almost two weeks after their daughter was born, the agency withdrew its petition and a judge dismissed the case, allowing the Hortons to bring baby Halle home.

One afternoon last spring, Horton took her daughter, now a toddler, outside. Halle giggled as her mother chased her around the front yard, her little feet splashing in a small mud hole. This was the life Horton had envisioned years ago—a quiet place in the California countryside where her children could delight in the world around them. And yet, Horton couldn’t help but remember the investigation that destroyed her family’s peace of mind—and her self-esteem.

“I had a lot of confidence in how I mother and how I parent,” she said. “Now in my head, I’m always questioning my choices.” She wondered aloud what neighbors would say if they saw her daughter playing in the mud, if someone might accuse her of being a bad parent.

“I just always have that looming feeling that at any moment CPS could come knocking and take my children away.” 

Marshall Project reporters Weihua Li, Andrew Rodriguez Calderón, Nakylah Carter, and Catherine Odom contributed to this story.

In the aftermath of the bloodshed on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, state authorities arrested Colin Gray, whose 14-year-old son, Colt Gray, allegedly shot four people to death and injured nine others before surrendering to police. The father is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, eight counts of cruelty to children—and, most significantly, two counts of second-degree murder.

The murder charges are unprecedented, the most severe ever filed against the parent of a school shooter. Late Thursday, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference that the charges against Colin Gray are “directly connected with the actions of his son” and that the father “knowingly allowed him to possess the weapon.”

Authorities have not provided further details about evidence they may have, but according to news reports, Colin Gray owned the type of AR-15 that his son allegedly used in the attack. And Colt Gray had been “begging for months” for mental health help but had received none, according to an aunt of his who spoke to the Washington Post. (Colt Gray has been charged with four counts of murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said.)

For more than a decade, I’ve studied and reported on the American epidemic of mass shootings. Over the past several years, and particularly since early 2024, a dramatic shift has taken shape: a reckoning for the parents of school shooters. Today, with more than 400 million guns and a lack of political will to regulate them more effectively nationwide, it may be that America has begun to find another route—a legal end-run of sorts—to bring accountability for these events of catastrophic gun violence.

The arrest of the school shooter’s father in Georgia comes just seven months after James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a 15-year-old school shooter in Michigan, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter—also a first. What is publicly alleged so far about the role of Colin Gray appears to echo the case of the Crumbleys, who were found to have ignored their son’s mental health crisis and supplied him with the gun he used to commit his attack at Oxford High School, where four died and seven were injured.

The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds.

It is a near certainty that in the days and weeks ahead, more details will emerge about warning signs given off by the school shooter in Georgia, one of 20 states now requiring plans for violence prevention in public schools. School shootings are almost always preceded by such warning signs. Significant questions also loom about what may have been done regarding concerns about Colt Gray by law enforcement or the school district, after anonymous tips about threats posted online put him on the radar of the FBI and local authorities in 2023.

Another parental role—starkly different—came into public view this spring, when we published my two-year investigation, “Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother,” in Mother Jones and aired a companion audio investigation on our radio show Reveal. These chronicle the experience of Chin Rodger, whose son Elliot Rodger committed mass murder in the California college town of Isla Vista in 2014. Chin Rodger hadn’t been able to recognize her deeply troubled son’s suicidal and homicidal warning behaviors, but she had gone to great lengths to get him help and care before his attack. Years later she began working with violence prevention experts at the FBI and beyond, sharing myriad details about her son’s life with them—and eventually with the public—in hopes of raising awareness about warning signs and helping avert future violence.

As I wrote in the story: “The public rarely hears from parents of mass shooters apart from brief statements of sorrow in the aftermath. The prevailing theme has long been that no one can see the violence coming, the parents included. But that theme no longer holds, especially in light of a recent tragedy that could remake the legal landscape.”

There I was referring to the new criminal precedent established with the Crumbleys—one with the potential to expand, it now appears, with the case in Georgia. The recurring mass murder of school kids and their teachers drives intense public calls for finding culpability among parents (and others), which may well be warranted in some cases. But this nascent trend of criminalizing parents is not without possible pitfalls, including, legal experts have said, for mothers and fathers of minority children exposed disproportionately to gun violence.

Another notable development in the past several years has been a trend of civil liability for gun manufacturers who market their AR-15s and other firearms aggressively to America’s youth. In early 2022, Remington, the company that made the AR-15 used in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, agreed to a landmark $73 million civil settlement with victims’ families. In late 2022, the family of a 10-year-old victim in Uvalde, Texas, filed suit against Daniel Defense, the maker of the AR-15 used in the massacre at Robb Elementary School, accusing the company of using militaristic marketing appeals to target “young male consumers.”

The devastation in Georgia this week is far from the first to involve a shockingly young perpetrator. The shooter at Oxford High School in 2021 was only one year older, just 15 at the time. Other cases going back in time, documented in our mass shootings database and in my book on prevention, Trigger Points, have involved shooters as young as 13 and 11 years old.

In January 2023, a 6-year-old child brought a pistol to school in Virginia and shot his first grade teacher—a case in which the mother was later imprisoned for gun-related federal crimes. (The child used the mother’s unsecured firearm; her prosecution involved drug use and lying related to the gun purchase.)

What happened in Georgia this week serves as a particularly stark reminder: In America, a teenager can easily get his hands on a military-grade rifle and use it to gun down his classmates and teachers. Why we have this problem—and tens of millions of AR-15s in civilian hands—is complicated and arises from a recent history that many Americans know relatively little about.

Another reminder about this problem worth repeating is that, despite popular opinion, it is not an unsolvable one. Now, deterrence for gun-owning parents may be a growing part of a broader solution.

When New York’s Nassau County signed the first county-level mask ban into law in August, its deputy police commissioner, Kevin Smith, told local news that training was “being conducted [in] the department, which means across ranks.”

But that has not happened, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. Through an information request reviewed by Mother Jones, NYCLU, a state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, requested policies and training materials used to instruct the county’s police on enforcing the ban. In return, the group received a three-page legal bulletin on the “Mask Transparency Act,” and a six-slide presentation, including a title page, briefly going over the new law. The presentation reiterates the bulletin’s explanation of the law, as well as saying police officers still need to follow Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure—but there is little else.

“There’s none of the sort of type of training and guardrails you would expect to see in a police procedure or in a training module around how you interact with members of the public,” said Beth Haroules, a senior staff attorney at NYCLU.

The very brief materials also do not address people’s rights in protecting their health information from police, which also underscores why police officers cannot independently determine whether someone is wearing a mask for health reasons. “You’re not allowed to interrogate somebody about their private health information, or family member’s or loved one’s health information,” Haroules continued, “including whether or not you’re just Covid cautious,” something county law enforcement seems to have overlooked altogether.

The Nassau County Police Department did not respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment on the extent of its training.

The law allows Nassau County police four reasons to question people about their mask-wearing—among them, when they are gathered in a public space with other people who are wearing masks. Haroules notes that this seems to clearly target people at protests, especially recent waves of pro-Palestinian protests, some of whom may be wearing masks for health reasons—but the implications for who the ban could suddenly impact would be much wider.

“You could be waiting at a bus stop at Nassau County with a mask on, and then, suddenly, three or four more people show up,” Haroules said. “You’re all subject to arrest or interrogation as to whether or not you have a right to wear that mask.”

As Mother Jones previously reported, fear of being interrogated by police over masking has led Disability Rights New York to sue Nassau County in federal court on behalf of two disabled residents.

Since the mask ban law was enacted, two people have been charged with misdemeanors for violating it, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. In both cases, Haroules says, “there probably wasn’t probable cause to arrest either gentleman.”

Haroules agrees with concerns that people of color will be disproportionately targeted for wearing masks. The Nassau County Police Department, Haroules says, “has a documented history of inappropriate interactions with people of color.” (It also has a troubled record on other fronts, including around residents’ civil rights.)

Choosing to wear masks, as Haroules told Mother Jones she herself continues to do on public transportation, is an individual decision which mask bans threaten. Having other community members “enforcing the mask ban by threatening to call police,” Haroules says, “really suggests that there’s a societal problem.”

Jade Dass was taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant—which scientific studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend. But after Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

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Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate parents from their newborns. Why are women like Dass being investigated for using addiction-treatment medications during pregnancy?

To understand the scope of the dragnet, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Shoshana Walter and Melissa Lewis, with a team of researchers and lawyers, filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy. 

This week on Reveal, in an episode first aired in July 2023, follow Dass as she grapples with losing custody of her baby—and makes one last desperate attempt to keep her family together.

For more about Dass and other mothers facing investigation for taking medication-assisted treatment, read Shoshana Walter’s investigation in collaboration with the New York Times Magazine.