Research Library:

Our mission is to empower activists, journalists, and policymakers to shape effective criminal justice policy, so we go beyond our original reports and analyses to curate a database of virtually all the empirical criminal justice research available online.

Tips: If you know what you are looking for, you may also search the database. We also have an email newsletter (at right)(at bottom) for new research library updates.


Enter one word from the title, author or topic to search the library:

Advanced search options or view entire database by the date added.


Some of the most recently added reports are:

Wednesday, March 6 2024:

  • Hazardous heat exposure among incarcerated people in the United States Cascade Tuholske, Victoria D. Lynch, Raenita Spriggs, Yoonjung Ahn, Colin Raymond, Anne E. Nigra, & Robbie M. Parks. March, 2024. "The number of hot days per year increased during 1982-2020 for 1,739 carceral facilities. State-run carceral facilities in TX and FL accounted for 52% of total exposure to potentially hazardous heat, despite holding 12% of all incarcerated people."
  • Overcharged: Coerced labor, low pay, and high costs in Washington's prisons Columbia Legal Services. January, 2024. "People in Washington prisons are paid as little as 6% of the state minimum wage...Their wages are then deducted from between 5 to 100% for mandatory fees such as "the cost of incarceration," while basic goods...can cost a day's worth of earnings."
  • The Business Case for Criminal Justice Reform: Second Chance Hiring U.S. Chamber of Commerce. January, 2021. "At the national level, economists estimate that the Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.) is reduced between $78 billion and $87 billion due to excluding formerly incarcerated job seekers from the workforce."
  • Incarceration Status Among Individuals Obtaining Abortion in the United States, 2020 Marielle Kirstein, Liza Fuentes, and Carolyn Sufrin. November, 2023. "Sixty-seven clinics across 25 states and the District of Columbia provided more than 300 abortions to incarcerated patients in 2020. Eleven of these clinics are in states that now have total or near-total abortion bans."
  • Electronic Monitoring of Migrants: Punitive not Prudent American Bar Association Commission on Immigration. February, 2024. "Electronic monitoring programs are not true alternatives to detention. They are an expansion of detention that imposes a significant financial cost on taxpayers and a considerable human toll on the participants and their family members."
  • Carceral Carousel Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Detention Watch Network. May, 2023. "States have sought to reduce prison populations and close some jails. However, those closures have rarely, if ever, meant that the prison facilities would no longer operate as cages...these closures have paved the way for new expansions of ICE detention."
  • Advancing Transgender Justice: Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars, Vera Institute of Justice and Black and Pink National. February, 2024. "Nearly 90 percent of the [transgender] survey respondents had experienced extended solitary confinement at some point during their incarceration. More than half reported non-consensual sexual contact while incarcerated."
  • Resetting the Record: The Facts on Hiring People with Criminal Histories RAND Corporation. January, 2024. "More than 25% of workers in the active workforce have at least one prior conviction. The evidence is overwhelming: People with conviction records can be (and are) successful employees."
  • A Decade of Lives Lost: A report of in-custody deaths in California between 2011-2022 Care First California. February, 2024. "Of the 2,312 deaths that occurred in Sheriff's custody across California, the majority of people died after they were taken to jail but before the resolution of their case...Nearly a quarter of deaths occurred before individuals entered the jail."
  • Evaluating the Impact of Desk Appearance Ticket Reform in New York State Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. February, 2024. "Desk Appearance Tickets (DATs) in New York State led more people charged with low-level offenses to avoid pre-arraignment detention, but varied by region. Statewide DAT issuance increased from 38% in 2019 to 58% in 2021, then declined to 50% in 2022."
  • Indigent Criminal Defense and Commonwealth's Attorneys Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. November, 2023. (The number of attorneys serving as court-appointed defense attorneys in Virginia has declined since FY13, especially during the last few years. Participation has declined by more than half, from nearly 4,000 attorneys in FY13 to about 1,900 in FY23.)
  • Under-resourced and Ignored: Indigent Defense in Schuylkill County, The Wren Collective. January, 2024. "We found an underfunded indigent defense system that lacks the support for enough lawyers to represent clients, including at bail hearings, for immigration consultations, and adequate technology for attorneys to properly do their jobs."
  • Racial disparities in youth pretrial detention: a retrospective cohort study grounded in critical race theory Andy Wen, Noah R. Gubner, Michelle M. Garrison, & Sarah Cusworth Walker. March, 2023. "After factoring in gender, age, crime severity, previous offenses, and variation between counties, our analyses show that Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and American Indian/Alaskan Native youth are more likely to experience pretrial detention than white youth."


Stay Informed


Get the latest updates:



Share on 𝕏 Donate