What’s New
-
Philadelphia Inquirer exposes Pennsylvania’s complicity in cutting off incarcerated people’s access to books The Pennsylvania DOC introduces a telecom company to a large, captive market for e-books.
September 21: Prison Policy Initiative Blog
-
Decarceration Strategies: How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions by The Sentencing Project
September 19: Research Library: Incarceration Rates Growth Causes
-
Welcome Alexi Jones! Welcome Alexi Jones, our new Policy Analyst!
September 4: Prison Policy Initiative Blog
-
Progress: With reforms in Iowa and Utah, 12,000 fewer people will be denied driver’s licenses every year Two more states have opted to help safe drivers get their lives back on track after drug convictions.
August 29: Prison Policy Initiative Blog
-
New York State Parole Board: Failures in Staffing and Performance by The Parole Preparation Project and The Release Aging People in Prison Campaign
August 27: Research Library: Probation and parole
-
Full Human Beings: An argument for incarcerated voter enfranchisement by Peoples Policy Project
August 27: Research Library: Felon Disenfranchisement
-
Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation by Jonathan Mummolo
August 27: Research Library: Police and Policing
-
Breaking open the “black box”: How risk assessments undermine judges’ perceptions of young people It’s complicated enough for judges to weigh the influence of youth in their decisions. A new paper argues that algorithmic risk assessments may further muddy the waters.
August 22: Prison Policy Initiative Blog
-
How does unaffordable money bail affect families? Using a national data set, we find that over half of the people held in jail pretrial because they can’t afford bail are parents of minor children.
August 15: Prison Policy Initiative Blog
Featured report
Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people
In a first-of-its-kind report, we find that formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. People returning from prison are widely excluded from housing, despite needing stable homes to overcome the difficulties of reentry.
This report is the second in a series about the struggles of formerly incarcerated people to access basic needs. In the first report, we calculated the first national unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people.
Unpacking mass incarceration
Learn about the national prison crisis and how we can begin to turn the tide on mass incarceration. Then, drill down to your state.
If our work is new to you, you might want to check out our 2016-2017 annual report.
Recommended Reading:
Prison Gerrymandering Project
We are leading the movement to protect our democracy from the Census Bureau's prison miscount.
Research Library
We curate a searchable database of 2,800+ original research reports, organizing each entry by topic and adding brief summaries.
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie
Our report that shows the number of people who are locked up in all of the different types of facilities and why they are there.
Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census:
State-by-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity
Events
Nothing scheduled right now. Invite us to to your city, college or organization.