What’s New
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Force multipliers: How the criminal legal and child welfare systems cooperate to punish families Child protective service agencies position themselves as providers of welfare, but their relationship to the criminal legal system demonstrates their shared role in punishing families and exacerbating the conditions that lead to system involvement in the first place.
January 8: Briefings
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12 of our most important reports, briefings, and tools in 2023 New data on the overuse of probation and parole, insights into the racial disparities in prisons and jails, and much more. Here are the highlights of our work in 2023.
December 21: Prison Policy Initiative Blog
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Decision-Making for Hospitalized Incarcerated Patients Lacking Decisional Capacity by Sarah Batbold et al
December 21: Research Library: Health impact
Featured report
Executive Inaction: States and the federal government fail to use commutations as a release mechanism
Mass incarceration, state by state
Learn about the national prison crisis and how we can begin to turn the tide on mass incarceration. Then, drill down to your state. Be sure to also check out our pages focused on D.C., and the incarceration of Native people.
If our work is new to you, you might want to check out our 2022-2023 annual report.
Recommended Reading:
50 state incarceration profiles
All of our recent reports about prison/jail growth, racial disparities, and more, re-organized by state.
The rapid & unregulated growth of e-messaging in prisons
It can strengthen connections, but instead has been used to sap money from incarcerated people.
Incarceration and supervision by states
Probation and parole are the leading forms of mass punishment in America.
Prison Gerrymandering Project
We are leading the movement to protect our democracy from the Census Bureau's prison miscount.