Thursday, September 10 2026:

• In the Name of Security: An investigation into the everyday violence of prison strip searches, Khawla Nakua. September, 2026. "Of the 8,344 strip searches in women's prisons in Washington from 2022 to 2024, just 28 resulted in the discovery of contraband items. In Arizona, which provided data from both men's and women's facilities, just one search out of 28,045 did."
• "The system will choose security over humanity every time": Understanding security and privacy for U.S. incarcerated users, Yael Eiger et al. April, 2026. "Participants describe pervasive surveillance, censorship, and usability problems with the technology available to them, including shifting and seemingly arbitrary usage policies."
• The solitary confinement crisis in immigration detention, Sabrineh Ardalan, Arevik Avedian, & Philip L. Torrey. 2025. "Placements involving a detainee with a serious mental illness lasted 22 percent longer on average compared to placements with no reported mental illness"
• Spatiotemporal facility-level patterns of summer heat exposure, vulnerability, and risk in U.S. prison landscapes, Ufuoma Ovienmhada et al. September, 2024. "Across the US, the prisons with the top 10 heat exposures had 8.6% higher proportions of nonwhite, non-Hispanic incarcerated populations than the lowest 10 prisons [in 2019]."
• Borough contrast: Prosecution and court outcomes across New York City, 2021-2024, Data Collaborative for Justice. April, 2026. "From 2021 to 2024, the rate at which judges set bail or remand in nonviolent felony cases significantly increased in Queens (17% to 25%). Bronx judges...had the lowest rate of setting bail or remand in 2024 (at 12%)."
• Does unauthorized immigration drive community crime rates? Evidence from 11,500 U.S. neighborhoods, Charis E. Kubrin et al. August, 2026. "We find that neighborhoods that experienced greater increases in the share of undocumented residents saw greater reductions in property crime and no detectable change in violent crime."
• What 911 data says about community needs in New York City, Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2026. "In 2025, 911 call-takers assigned almost 3.7 million calls to receive an NYPD response... call dispatchers identified nearly 42% of these calls as relating to crime. The vast majority of these crime related calls (91%) did not involve violent crimes."
• Characterizing rural substance use treatment experiences among individuals under community correctional supervision, Paywall :( Tawandra L. Rowell-Cunsolo et al. August, 2026. "More than 55% [of the 978 participants under community supervision] had engaged in some type of treatment for substance use in the past 6 months; among those, nearly half (46%) had enrolled in inpatient or residential treatment."
• Surveying correctional health staff on medication for opioid use disorder diversion: Barriers and mitigation strategies, Laura Lutgen-Nieves et al. April, 2026. "88% percent of jail and 87% of prison [correctional health care professionals] respondents believed that a long-acting injectable buprenorphine formulation could help reduce MOUD diversion within their facilities."
• "You can't incarcerate yourself out of the drug problem in America:" A qualitative examination of Colorado's 2022 Fentanyl criminalization law, Katherine LeMasters et al. April, 2025. "Analysis revealed that participants [including peer support, policymakers, program staff, and law enforcement] found increasing criminal penalties for fentanyl possession to be misguided."
• Hear our voices: Women inside MCI-Framingham speak on prison construction, Boston College Law School Civil Rights Clinic. February, 2026. "Only five women, or 16%, ranked new construction and renovation in their top three priorities. Instead, the most commonly chosen priorities were"
• An opportunity to 'be someone else': The perceptions and experiences of male and female peer support workers in two US state prisons, Paywall :( Warren Stewart et al. August, 2026. "While male peer caregivers in the sample appeared to be motivated by issues related to identity, masculinity and religious beliefs, female peer caregivers cited the value of meaningful relationships."
• Medications-in-hand: Early learnings from Medicaid Reentry Waiver implementation in California, Justice System Partners. July, 2026. "Counties repeatedly described the tension between the CalAIM goal of providing medications at release and the jail reality that many releases - more than 75% - are unplanned, court-driven, or occur outside normal business hours."
• Links of previous incarceration with geriatric syndromes and chronic health conditions among older adults in the United, Alexander Testa et al. March, 2024. "Respondents with previous incarceration had significantly higher odds of reporting difficulty walking, activities of daily living difficulty, cancer diagnosis, depression diagnosis, and chronic lung disease [than those without previous incarcerations]."
• Factors associated with all-cause mortality in a western state prison system, 1999-2020, Paywall :( Jillian J. Turanovic, Nancy Rodriguez, & Julie L. Kuper. January, 2026. "Self-harm incidents and sentences of over 20 years were most strongly associated with mortality...Mortality risk increased substantially with age, with [those] aged 55 or old at admission having over 11 times the risk of death compared [to those under 25]"
• Almost half of all incarcerated people are in rural jails and prisons and at risk of losing access to hospitals, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2025. "Nearly a million incarcerated people depend on rural hospitals... Almost 60% of people in prisons and 25% of those in local jails are confined in rural counties, which are home to 3,000 of the nation's correctional facilities."
• Independent evaluation of New York State Assisted Outpatient Treatment, Human Services Research Institute & University of Pittsburgh. June, 2026. "13% entered through a criminal-legal pathway--such as probation, jail, or court referral--where they reported that AOT was an alternative to further confinement."
• Contact cards in Cincinnati A review of racial bias in police stops, 2009-2025, Campaign Zero. May, 2026. "In 2025, Cincinnati Police officers stopped Black people 3.4x more often than White people, Black pedestrians were stopped 5.4x more often than White pedestrians, [and] Black people were stopped in vehicles 3.2x more often than White people."
• Policing homelessness: Neighborhood predictors of clearing encampments and vehicle residences, Paywall :( Brandon Morande. June, 2026. "Increases in neighborhood property value predict more encampment sweeps and vehicle impoundments."
• Private food, public harm: Privatized food service in prisons and jails, Center for Science in the Public Interest. 2025. "At the state level, 18 states' departments of corrections (more than a third of states) contract out some or all food service management functions, with Aramark holding statewide contracts for 17 states."
• Health, housing, and household circumstances among women on parole Findings from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2021-2023, Council on Criminal Justice. August, 2026. "About 24% of women on parole met the threshold for a severe mental health disorder, compared to 7% of women not on parole and 10% of men on parole."
• Inevitable yet ignored: Prison policies disregard the realities of menopause behind bars, Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2026. "We reviewed state and federal prison system policies in search of clues regarding health or educational services that specifically address menopause...we found an alarming lack of institutional policies about [this] major and unavoidable life stage."
• Mental health of adolescents in juvenile correctional facilities across axes of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity: Minnesota Student Survey, 2019, Charu Balamurugan, Julie A. Ward, & Kristy A. Clark. 2025. "Sexual and gender minority and racial and ethnical minority adolescents had the highest prevalence of past-year suicidal ideation (44.4%), suicide attempts (50.0%), self-harm (61.1%), and recent depressive symptoms (33.3%)."
• New study finds confined neurodivergent youth of color are particularly vulnerable to physical assault by staff, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2025. "[A review of a study finding] that children of color and neurodivergent children are disproportionately confined in juvenile facilities, and that neurodivergent children of color in particular are more likely to report being physically assaulted by staff."