If someone has a broken leg how much time should they be offered? How about if someone is diagnosed cancer, what should their sentence be? Sounds ridiculous, but that is exactly what the criminal justice system has been doing since the 70’s.  Criminalizing what should be a heath care issue and locking people up for

Pregnant for the first time at 33, Alice* was seeing a doctor and committed to a healthy pregnancy. Although she had longstanding mental health problems and substance use, she was prioritizing the health of her baby during pregnancy. But when she was arrested and held in the Nacogdoches County Jail for seven weeks pretrial, she was denied prenatal care for weeks and had repeated problems obtaining her life-sustaining medicine. Emotionally distraught, she was placed in solitary and treated as a problem prisoner. Both Alice and her mother Sally, a schoolteacher, were threatened with retaliation for making complaints.