After completing a trade, but before the merchants departed, the mayor gave a new mandate to not export copper. Shortly thereafter, my Legendary Organizer/Manager is arrested for violating an export order, and assigned to 180 days in prison. Now, my four prison cells were set up as a rehabilitation center, with a bed, table and chair, and food and drink stockpiles within reach of a silver chain. So I just assigned the desk and chair to her and figured this would actually be an improvement -- she would have nothing to do but approve work orders, and couldn't take off to attend parties or haul stuff.
However, she was also a mother, with a baby. Who was of course dropped in the apartment complex when mom was dragged off to prison, and began to slowly wander the hallways. Then mom starts spamming "urist mcprisoner cancels manage production orders: seeking infant" messages... continuously. I would have just let her die, except that she was one of the original seven, a Legendary organizer and it was really the mayor who was responsible.
I tried to assign the baby to a burrow in the mother's cell, which didn't work since the baby wouldn't move. I tried deconstructing the chain to let her go fetch the kid, but the palace guard grabbed her and dragged her back into a new cell. She wouldn't sleep or eat or drink because of her maternal instincts, so soon she was drowsy, hungry and thirsty, while standing on a food stockpile and adjacent to a bed (and wearing the deconstructed chain around her neck still).
Probably because of the stress being put on her, with about 30 days left in her sentence, she had a miscarriage. This added to her unhappiness, and she still wouldn't eat the food or drink she was standing on, so she was Starving, Dehydrated, Very Drowsy and Very Unhappy, all while chained within easy reach of food, drink and a bed. I don't know why nobody would bring her water, probably because she was Seeking Infant. Of course, I'm getting spammed with cancellation messages, and nobody else had any Organiser skill, so I couldn't get any manager orders confirmed either.
I finally decomissioning the last jail cell and deconstructed her chain again. This time, there were no new cells to move her into, so even thought the guard had been decommisioned, one of the dwarves issued her a beating and her sentence was finally over. To keep her from snapping, I reassigned the mayor's house to her (it was the poshest dwelling I had) and she did manage to avoid having a tantrum -- somehow.
The most poignant part? The other dwarves who would walk blithely past the wandering infant and past the jail cell without helping. Some even would come into into her cell, to eat the food and drink out of the prison stockpile, while standing next to this poor distraught starving dehydrated mother.