HELP US END MASS INCARCERATION
The Prison Policy Initiative uses research, advocacy, and organizing to dismantle mass incarceration. We’ve been in this movement for 23 years, thanks to individual donors like you.
Can you help us sustain this work?
Thank you,
Peter Wagner, Executive Director Donate
Can you help us sustain this work?
Thank you,
Peter Wagner, Executive Director Donate
Articles by Emmett Sanders
- Why jails and prisons can’t recruit their way out of the understaffing crisis
Jails and prisons across the country have record-high vacancies, creating bad working conditions for corrections staff and nightmarish living conditions for incarcerated people. Why haven’t pay raises, benefits, and new facilities turned recruitment around, and what does that tell us about the state of mass incarceration?
Dec 9, 2024 - Advocacy Spotlight: The Humanization Project
Advocates in Virginia are leveraging their own lived experience and the voices of thousands of other systems-impacted people and their families to make sweeping changes to the state’s prisons. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Dec 2, 2024 - An Act of Regression: Louisiana takes a giant step backward in parole and sentencing reform
Louisiana lawmakers are eliminating discretionary parole and implementing regressive truth-in-sentencing laws. These billion-dollar “zombie policies” are set to double the prison population in a state that is already a world leader in incarceration and will harm public safety.
Aug 21, 2024 - Advocacy Spotlight: Texas Jail Project
How one small organization in Texas is fighting to get answers for families of people who die in jails and forcing accountability from the jails they die in.
Aug 6, 2024 - Prison Policy Initiative endorses the Environmental Health in Prisons Act
Act recognizes the right to live in a healthy environment and offers much-needed environmental protections for people in prisons.
Jul 18, 2024 - Webinar: In their own words: Organizing legislative testimony from incarcerated people
Learn strategies advocates around the country are using to help incarcerated people be heard at legislative committee hearings.
Jul 1, 2024 - Cautionary jails: Deconstructing the three “C”s of jail construction arguments
Communities across the country have been told that investing in new jail construction is the only way to solve old policy problems, but arguments for new jails can leave them with a billion-dollar case of buyer’s remorse.
Feb 20, 2024 - Watching the Watchers: Vera releases national census on electronic monitoring
A new report from the Vera Institute of Justice finds that the number of people subjected to electronic monitoring in the U.S. increased fivefold between 2005 and 2021 and nearly tenfold by 2022.
Feb 8, 2024 - Going back to Cali: Revisiting California’s parole release system
More than 9,000 people were eligible for hearings in California last year, though the state abolished discretionary parole in 1977. With grant rates among the lowest in the nation and people forced to wait up to 15 years between hearings, the Golden State's parole system is far from glittering.
Dec 19, 2023 - Not an alternative: The myths, harms, and expansion of pretrial electronic monitoring
The expansion of pretrial electronic monitoring across 70 counties threatens to undermine Illinois’ groundbreaking Pretrial Fairness Act, despite both the lack of evidence of EM's efficacy and its well-documented flaws and harms.
Oct 30, 2023 - No Release: Parole grant rates have plummeted in most states since the pandemic started
Among the 27 states we surveyed, only 7 saw an increase in parole approval rate, and almost every state held substantially fewer hearings than in years past.
Oct 16, 2023
Recommended Reading:
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We look at the progress in the fight for phone justice and what comes next.
Research Library
We curate a searchable database of 4,000+ original research reports, organizing each entry by topic and adding brief summaries.
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie
The U.S. incarcerates over 1.9 million people, more than any other country. Where are they locked up and why? Read our report.
Jails and bail: Our research
One out of three people behind bars is in a local jail. Our research drives jail reform.