President Trump said, “home-growns are next.” Here’s our response.

President Trump’s recent comments about sending Americans to a Salvadoran prison mark a new, dark turn in the fight to end mass incarceration.

by Prison Policy Initiative, April 17, 2025

Standing in the Oval Office on Monday, just before members of the media were ushered into the room, President Trump said to President Bukele of El Salvador, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.”

Those “home-growns” he’s talking about, they’re United States citizens. They’re you and me.

Those “five more places” he asked the Salvadoran dictator to build, they’re “prisons”¹ like the one where the Trump Administration has already sent hundreds of immigrants, many of whom were snatched off the streets and shipped off without due process. This includes Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has refused to bring back to the United States, defying a unanimous order from the Supreme Court.

The actions of the Trump administration against immigrants in this country, many of whom were here legally, are an unconstitutional human rights violation. At Prison Policy Initiative, we know that we are not experts in the immigration system in the United States, and as such, have so far deferred to the amazing organizations, experts, and advocates leading the fight against these policies. Trump’s words make clear that a different approach is needed from us.

Our mission at Prison Policy Initiative is to provide facts, research, and data about the ways mass incarceration harms residents of the U.S. — and not just those behind bars.

After these comments, we’ve been asked by countless people to weigh in on the steadily increasing signs that Trump is working to deport and incarcerate U.S. citizens to El Salvador. However, the truth is that there are no facts or data to provide context for this situation.

American presidents have done some really heinous things, and while these injustices provide clues about what we can expect next, they are not exact parallels to the threat that every resident of the U.S. currently faces.

American and Salvadoran prisons have more in common than you think. They’re large, brutal, costly, and don’t make communities safer. They destroy the lives of the people ensnared in them and the lives of their families. Both countries incarcerate similar numbers of people per-capita and both of their prisons serve as a death sentence for many inside. It is important to note, though, that the American system has at least the guise of due process and legal standards for facilities — such as prison conditions, oversight, and transparency — while this Salvadoran facility does not. Sending U.S. residents to far-flung prisons without due process would be a dramatic escalation of our country’s already misguided policies.

Those three words — “home-growns are next’ — should send a chill down the spine of every person in the country.

We don’t know exactly what Trump and his subordinates are planning. He’s made clear that Attorney General Pam Bondi is exploring the legality of incarcerating American citizens in another country. All credible legal experts agree that doing so would be unconstitutional.

But as we’ve already seen, the Trump administration doesn’t see the Constitution as an impediment to its actions. So there is little doubt that once the administration recognizes it can’t find a legal rationale for deporting U.S. citizens, it will surely make one up out of thin air.

In his remarks, he indicated that he was talking about deporting “violent people.” Perhaps this is an attempt to assure people that his unconstitutional plan to deport American citizens won’t go too far. But the truth is, many so-called “violent” crimes don’t actually involve physical harm. In some states, even drug offenses are deemed a violent crime.

The simple fact is that law enforcement can spin nearly any criminal accusation to be a “violent” offense in the U.S. criminal legal system. There is little doubt that if given the chance, the administration would warp the definition of “violent crime” beyond its already sagging bounds.

Of course, some apologists will attempt to assure the American people that as long as they don’t commit a crime, they have nothing to be afraid of. But does anyone really doubt that Trump is planning to use the full force of law enforcement to go after those who displease or oppose him? For months, he has said he wants do just that. This would make it so any act he doesn’t like would put you at risk of deportation to a Salvadoran prison, without due process and the opportunity to defend yourself in a court of law.

You would think that a president convicted of multiple felony offenses, which he insists are politically motivated, would be more attuned to the risks of such political prosecutions. But you’d be wrong.

Those three chilling words — “home-growns are next” — signal a dark pivot for our country and a dramatic expansion of the already devastating criminal legal system.

For an organization that prides itself on its ability to use visualizations and clear language to make sense of the goings-on in the criminal legal system, we are, for perhaps the first time ever, left at a loss for what to say.

But just because we’re at a loss today, doesn’t mean we’re sitting on the sidelines. Over the coming weeks, months, and maybe even years, as this crisis unfolds, we’ll be here:

• When we can provide data and analysis, we’ll share them with you.
• When we can elevate the voices and actions of experts and organizations in areas that are outside of our expertise, we’ll point you to them.
• And when there are opportunities to take action, we’ll tell you about them and be by your side.

We don’t know what comes next, but we’re in this fight with you.

Seven facts about mass incarceration that sound like April Fools’ Day hoaxes, but aren’t

Fines for suicide attempts, prisons built near toxic wastelands, the overwhelming number of people in the system…it's hard to believe, but it's true.

by Wanda Bertram, April 1, 2025

We at the Prison Policy Initiative are in the business of making America’s draconian, exploitative, sprawling incarceration system more obvious to everyone. The basic facts of mass incarceration are easy to grasp when laid out in, say, a pie chart. But there are other elements of the criminal legal system that never stop boggling the mind — even for us.

For April Fools’ Day, here are seven facts about incarceration and supervision that are as hard to believe as they are hard on people in the system:

Prisons and jails maintain “welfare funds” that are supposed to benefit incarcerated people, but often use the money to shore up their budgets or spend it on treats for themselves.

When incarcerated people and their loved ones pay for phone calls or commissary goods, it creates revenue for companies, which kick back some of the money to the facilities themselves. This money is funneled into “inmate welfare funds.” But what happens to it then? In our report Shadow Budgets, we revealed that prisons and jails often use the funds not for special purchases on behalf of incarcerated people, but to shore up their own operating budgets — or even to pay for perks for themselves.

In one county — Dauphin County, Pennsylvania — the local paper exposed the jail using its welfare fund for purchases as inappropriate as fitness trackers and gun range memberships for staff.

For more, see the original story from PennLive.

One-third of state and federal prisons sit within three miles of federal Superfund sites.

Research warns against living, working, or going to school near Superfund sites — the most toxic places in the country — as this proximity is linked to lower life expectancy and a litany of terrible illnesses. But many incarcerated people have no choice. With many prisons located near toxic wastelands, people in prison all too often develop health problems: For instance, in western Pennsylvania, a state prison located on top of a coal waste deposit has led to skin rashes, sores, cysts, gastrointestinal problems, and cancer.

The average yearly income of someone in jail pretrial is less than $20,000.

Nearly half a million people are sitting in a local jail awaiting trial. Their average yearly income hovers just under $20,000, meaning that it’s easy to keep them locked up by imposing cash bail (the median bail amount for people detained on bail who are accused of felonies is $25,000). Women and Black people in jail have even lower incomes on average, making them even more vulnerable to being stuck in pretrial detention, which can very quickly lead to losing one’s job, losing custody of children, forgoing medical appointments, and so on. And pretrial detention doesn’t just throw someone’s life into chaos — it makes it more likely that they will plead guilty just to get out of jail.

Felony convictions may not disqualify someone from being president, but they still block people from jobs like bartending, car sales, and pest control.

19 million people in America have felony records. And occupational licensing requirements, the standards and rules that govern who can work in certain professions, often explicitly exclude anyone with any felony conviction. These rules thus lock millions of people out of jobs like nursing, sales, bartending, and firefighting, no matter the details of their conviction — making it much more likely that formerly incarcerated people will end up in low-paying, itinerant jobs rather than stable employment.

You can’t help but ask: If someone with a felony conviction isn’t barred from becoming president, why should they be barred from all of these positions that have far less power and responsibility?

Many of the 2.9 million people on probation have to take regular drug tests — which they often must pay for — even those whose convictions have nothing to do with drugs.

In our report One Size Fits None, we combed through probation rules in 76 jurisdictions and found that 62% of those places require all people on probation to submit to regular drug tests. Not only is drug testing dubiously effective in advancing any public safety goals; the rules mean that even if someone’s conviction had nothing to do with drugs, they have to get tested anyway. Worse, many of these jurisdictions make people on probation pay for their own tests, at a cost of between $15 and $20 per test (often multiple times a week).

Several state prison systems slap financial sanctions on people who attempt suicide or harm themselves.

Not only do most prisons coerce incarcerated people to pay copays to see a doctor; some actually make people pay the prison back for costs incurred through acts of self-harm. Iowa, Georgia, Nevada, and New Mexico’s policies on disciplinary fines state that incarcerated people can be made to reimburse the state if they attempt suicide or hurt themselves in prison, an environment known to aggravate mental illness. In Virginia, corrections staff recently discussed financially penalizing people who self-immolated in protest last year.

Nearly half of all Americans have an immediate family member who has been incarcerated.

FWD.us reports that 113 million adults, or 45% of all adults in America, have had an immediate family member locked up for at least one night. These figures underscore that while having a criminal record — or even having an incarcerated loved one — carries heavy stigma in this country, it is an incredibly common experience. Making the criminal legal system fair and just is not something that impacts a select few; it’s directly relevant to our friends and neighbors.

And 10 things you shouldn’t believe

While these facts about incarceration are hard to believe but unfortunately true, there are also a number of myths floating around about the criminal legal system. Head over to our recent report Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025 where we bust 10 common myths about incarceration the far too many people do believe. We cover the exaggerated impact of private prisons, phantom “factories behind fences,” the crime waves that weren’t, and more.

Resource spotlight: UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project leads the way in prison mortality statistics

There is less transparency about prison deaths than ever before. A new central resource aims to bring carceral mortality data out of the shadows.

by Leah Wang, March 24, 2025

For almost 20 years, from about 2000 until 2019, the federal government offered at least some idea of how many people across the U.S. die in prisons and jails each year, thanks to the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA). But for the past six years, policy changes have left researchers, journalists, and advocates on their own when it comes to learning of deaths in custody.¹ Prison and jail mortality data — now irregularly published by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) — are now far less detailed, and consistently underreport deaths.²

Fortunately, a passionate team of data-wranglers at UCLA Law — an extension of the invaluable UCLA Law Covid Behind Bars Data Project — has shifted their focus to report on all-cause mortality in state and federal prisons, filling the void left by the DCRA implementation turmoil.

Given the current administration’s values and priorities, it’s reasonable to expect less criminal legal system data transparency from federal agencies over the next few years, not more. At a time when the public is paying increasing attention to what happens behind bars, we highly recommend checking out academic and grassroots resources like the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project (we’ve curated a list of others at the end of this post).

Tracking prison deaths

Led by two of the country’s leading scholars on prison and jail conditions, UCLA Law professors Sharon Dolovich and Aaron Littman, the Behind Bars Data Project is “the country’s most comprehensive public resource tracking prison deaths nationwide.” Project team members tirelessly submit public records requests, compile and web-scrape publicly-available mortality data, and work with partner organizations to pull together data by state. The website allows users to examine deaths in each state’s prisons, with helpful context like the total prison population and a calculated crude mortality rate for recent years.

This screenshot from the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project website shows how users can compare prison death counts and rates across states.

Even with all the hard work of the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project team, not all jurisdictions are forthcoming with all aspects of mortality data, such as the name, race, or sex of those who have died, where they died (i.e., inside a cell, a medical unit, or an outside hospital), or the circumstances of their deaths. Helpfully, each state’s Data Reporting Summary indicates what details each state has made available.

The team is also analyzing the mortality data, examining possible drivers and correlates of prison deaths such as restrictive housing (also known as solitary confinement), racial disparities, length of incarceration, and other factors. They anticipate completing more research, blog posts, and peer-reviewed publications in the near future.

Prison deaths in context: Using the data to demand transparency and change

A wide swath of academics, journalists, and advocates have been utilizing UCLA’s mortality datasets for a few years at this point. (We, for example, wrote extensively about the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging prisons and jails using the team’s data). Data users are urging lawmakers and correctional officials to implement common-sense reforms, like releasing medically vulnerable and/or elderly people from prisons, overhauling bail practices to reduce jail time, and improving access to medical care and basic life-sustaining measures like air conditioning and adequate food in prisons. Meanwhile, some of the mortality data being published by states are heavily redacted and limited, so some advocates are simply asking for more transparency and stronger reporting systems.

As the Behind Bars Data Project team continues to collect and analyze prison mortality data, they also have plans to look more broadly at measures of the health of people in carceral institutions using creative sources of information on healthcare access, expanding our collective understanding of how incarcerated people contend with illness and death in “death-making institutions.” As we at the Prison Policy Initiative are among those working to shed more light on correctional health issues and the inadequate healthcare in prisons and jails, we are excited for what’s to come from the Behind Bars Data Project.

For further reading, check out some other valuable resources on justice-involved deaths:

• Reuters’ investigation of jail deaths in 2020, which led to the largest and most comprehensive database of jail deaths to date;
• The Washington Post’s database of police shootings, covering over 10,000 fatal police shootings from 2015 to 2024;
• A front-page article from The New York Times on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on prison deaths, which prominently featured the work of the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project;
• Ongoing investigations by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on scores of deaths and tight-lipped corrections officials in the Georgia prison system;
• A multi-year data collection effort of facility-level prison deaths in Louisiana led by law professor and leading expert on prison conditions Andrea Armstrong;
• Finally, Ida B. Wells, who courageously tracked extrajudicial lynchings in the late 19th century, leading to her statistical bombshell, A Red Record.

Danger in the water: Report exposes widespread water contamination in Texas prisons

Thousands incarcerated in Texas’ prisons may have been exposed to lead, arsenic, and other dangerous contaminants.

by Emmett Sanders, March 14, 2025

An organization in Texas has sparked concerns with a new report finding that the water in many of the state’s prisons is likely dangerous to drink. Texas Prisons Community Advocates (TPCA) is a grassroots advocacy organization whose work (like their 85 to Stay Alive campaign) focuses on exposing dangerous and inhumane prison conditions. Their new report examines the results of water samples taken from the state’s prisons by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state’s agency for environmental oversight. TPCA examined publicly available records of samples that were taken across 16 Texas prison water systems between 2019 and 2023. Overall, dangerous metallic and bacterial contaminants including lead, arsenic, e. coli, and more were detected in more than 90 samples. Thanks to this report, a bill (SB 1929) has already been introduced in the Texas legislature that would require more frequent and thorough water testing in Texas prisons.

The study was spurred by dozens of letters TPCA have received from incarcerated people detailing unaddressed concerns and suspicious illnesses. The major findings of the report include that:

• 38% of TDCJ water systems sampled tested positive for lead.
• Arsenic, which can cause skin, bladder, and lung cancer, as well as Copper, Coliform, and E. Coli were also found in multiple TDCJ water systems across the state.
• Of the 16 TDCJ water systems sampled, 15 received notes of violations from the TCEQ between 2019 and 2023.
• Overall, the study estimates more than 30,000 incarcerated people may have been affected by contaminated water in the 16 TDCJ water systems sampled alone.

The findings here echo those of other studies and reinforce what advocacy groups like Fight Toxic Prisons have long been saying: Prisons are built in ways that prioritize confinement over environmental safety for the people they confine. Water contamination in prisons is particularly problematic as incarcerated people rarely have the means to follow boil orders and are often given insufficient amounts of water during crises. Bottled water can be unavailable or cost-prohibitive. This can leave many with no choice but to drink, prepare food with, and bathe in water with contaminants that can cause cancer, kidney and liver failure, and death. Last year, in recognition of the right of people in prisons to be free from environmentally hazardous conditions, members of Congress introduced the Environmental Health in Prisons Act, a bill that would offer greater protections, increase oversight, and improve conditions for federal prisoners.

No prison sentence should include being forced to drink contaminated water, and neither incarcerated people nor their families should be forced to deal with long-lasting consequences that can not only undermine their physical and mental health, but can economically devastate families and communities as well. Access to clean water is a human right that must be honored for people behind bars.

Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy department is proud to have supported TPCA in their efforts to expose the prevalence of contaminated water in Texas prisons by helping to locate data, navigate data sources, review drafts, and provide graphics and other support like one-page fact sheets of the report’s findings. If you are a community-based advocate or legislator and would like to speak to the Advocacy department about helping with a criminal legal system reform project, please use our contact form and select the topic “Organizations and elected officials looking for advocacy assistance.”

For further information on environmental hazards in prisons, consider the following resources:

• Heat, floods, pests, disease, and death: What climate change means for people in prison
• Prisons are a daily environmental injustice

A New Billion Dollar Jail Will Leave Hawai’i Worse Off

At the request of the Hawai’i-based Reimagining Safety Coalition, the Prison Policy Initiative examined the state’s plans for a new jail and found serious issues.

by Regan Huston, February 27, 2025

On Thursday, the Hawai’i-based Reimagining Public Safety Coalition released a new analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative that closely examined plans to build a new correctional facility to replace the current O’ahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC). The memo found serious flaws with the proposed construction that would undermine public safety, exacerbate racial disparities, and worsen existing staffing problems.

The 17-page memo argues three key points:

1. Pretrial incarceration is overused in Hawai’i, causing harm to the public. A growing body of research shows that using jails to incarcerate people pretrial not only undermines the presumption of innocence, but also causes lasting harm to public safety and public health.
2. Jail expansion would exacerbate existing racial disparities in Hawaii’s criminal legal system. Hawaii’s criminal legal system disproportionately affects Native Hawaiians and other non-white minority groups. Building a new, nearly billion-dollar jail not only risks entrenching existing harmful criminal legal system practices, but also uses money that is desperately needed to improve the lives of Native Hawaiians and others in the community.
3. Building a new jail is unlikely to decrease the harms caused by pretrial incarceration, and is likely to make existing staffing problems worse.When new facilities are built without a change in the personnel delivering services inside, existing harms persist. Moreover, many of the harms caused by jailing are a result of the very fact of being removed from family and community, regardless of the conditions inside.

The memo also points out that the current plan for the jail ignores straightforward measures that could be used to reduce Hawaii’s jail population, many of which are actually cited in the Forecast Report, including:

• Changing how it deals with technical violations of probation. In January 2025, 21% of OCCC’s population were there for technical violations, such as missing appointments or not notifying a probation officer of a change of address — things that are not crimes in any other context. This is a huge percentage in comparison to other municipalities.
• Decreasing the pretrial population of its jails by implementing bail reform. As of July 2024, 61.7% of the people detained at OCCC were pretrial detainees who have not been convicted of a crime. Many of these people are there simply because they’re too poor to pay their bail.

The memo explains that with ample opportunities to lower its jail population, Hawai’i is in a strong position to decrease the number of jail beds it needs. Decarceration is the solution that is most likely to promote public health and well-being, manage staffing problems, and provide a better justice system for Hawai’i residents.

Is your community seeking to build a new jail or expand the capacity of its existing facility? We’re happy to help you push back on their arguments (drop us a line to tell us about your fight). There is no need to wait, though. We have created a how-to-guide with tips for pushing back on “jail needs assessments” that local leaders put together to justify the construction and provide strategies for pushing back on false or misleading arguments they’re making.

Federal prison rules push for “financial responsibility” while impoverishing people

Proposed changes to the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program by the Bureau of Prisons risk pushing incarcerated people and their families further into poverty

by Danielle Squillante, February 20, 2025

This week, along with the National Consumer Law Center and expert Stephen Raher, we submitted comments on the federal Bureau of Prisons’ updated proposed rules for its Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (IFRP). These rules, which we first wrote about when they were proposed in 2023, are purported to be aimed at ultra-wealthy people in federal prisons who amassed unusually large amounts of money in their commissary accounts while failing to pay legal fees and restitution. However, they’re written so broadly that they’d make the lives of the vast majority of incarcerated people and their loved ones, who are generally poorer and from disadvantaged backgrounds, much more difficult and threaten their success after their release from prison.

The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has adjusted the rules since they were first introduced to make them slightly less punishing, but they still would have a devastating effect on incarcerated people and their families. Under these rules, the BOP would:

• Garnish 10% of wages earned by incarcerated people, which can be as low as $0.12 per hour.
• Take half of the money in an incarcerated person’s commissary account that is in excess of $250 as a one-time seizure of funds at their initial classification meeting.
• Through a series of complex and legally dubious formulas, seize a portion of the money that incarcerated people receive from their families and friends, making it even more difficult for incarcerated people to meet their basic needs behind bars.

Although the Bureau addressed some of the more egregious elements of the rules as initially drafted, the proposed changes to the IFRP are a misguided response to the false concerns that incarcerated people are hoarding money in their commissary accounts while refusing to pay legal debts. The Bureau reviewed data on commissary accounts and found that as of December 2024, only 2% of commissary accounts had balances greater than $5,000 while approximately 77% of commissary account balances were $249.99 or less. The overwhelming majority of people incarcerated in federal prisons are struggling to afford basic necessities — not living a life of luxury behind bars.

Proposed changes to the IFRP further burden incarcerated people and their families

People incarcerated in state and federal prisons were, before they went to prison, some of the poorest people in the country — and incarceration only pushes them further into poverty. In federal prisons, incarcerated people who are working earn between $0.12-$1.15 per hour. These meager wages don’t begin to cover the range of costs associated with being incarcerated, which include commissary, communication costs, and medical co-pays, to name a few. Most people, whether they have a work assignment or not, rely on outside support to meet their basic needs.

The rules ignore how frequently incarcerated people rely on items purchased from commissary to meet a range of needs throughout the entirety of their sentence. Almost everything in prison has a price tag, even for people who are considered indigent, and products are often marked up to prices far above what someone outside of the prison walls pays. Additionally, because prison meals are typically poorly portioned and of low quality, incarcerated people often rely on commissary to supplement their diet. They also rely on it for basic writing materials, basic hygiene items, clothing and shoes, religious items, and electronic devices such as fans. These additional expenses were not factored into the Bureau’s thinking on these rules but constitute a considerable cost to incarcerated people.

The proposed changes to the IFRP are particularly concerning now that the Bureau of Prisons has ended its pandemic-related phone policy of providing 500 minutes of free phone calls to incarcerated people. As of January, phone calls cost $0.06 per minute, while video calls usually cost $0.16 per minute. Although some people are eligible for free phone calls up to 300 minutes if participating in First Step Act-related programming, other families of incarcerated people will have to manage this added expense to remain connected to their loved ones.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 57% of people incarcerated in federal prisons have one or more dependent children. The incarceration of a parent or caregiver results in the potential loss of family income while creating additional costs for the family to manage — often making it difficult for families to meet their basic needs. Numerous family members of incarcerated people submitted public comments stating how difficult it would be for them to shoulder additional costs as they are already struggling financially. The proposed rules will further burden incarcerated people and their families — but they don’t have to.

An alternative approach that meets the Bureau’s goals

Rather than adopting these new rules, in our letter, we recommend an alternative approach that accomplishes the goals of the program without further burdening incarcerated people and their families. Key provisions of our recommendations include:

• Protect incarcerated people who have commissary account balances that are less than the federal poverty level from having their money seized.
• Shield incarcerated workers from having their wages garnished unless and until they earn at least the federal minimum wage.
• Exempt incarcerated people from IFRP participation for at least two years prior to reentry, given the numerous costs associated with transitioning back into the community.

The overwhelming majority of people in federal prisons and their support systems on the outside are struggling to meet their basic needs. The updated proposed changes to the IFRP are less severe than the slash-and-burn approach to debt collection they initially took, but they would still push incarcerated people and their families deeper into poverty. We urge the Bureau of Prisons to consider our alternatives to their proposal.

New guide and webinar: Challenging myths about recidivism

by Wanda Bertram, February 13, 2025

Decision-makers often cite worries about recidivism as a primary reason to oppose criminal legal system reforms. These worries are caused by both the concept of the “revolving door” of incarceration and by politicians’ fears that a single violent recidivism event will hurt them politically. The realities of recidivism, though, are complex, and the more advocates know about the facts of how many people return to prison and what those numbers mean, the better equipped they can be to help politicians make informed decisions about policy.

Earlier this month, we released a new guide to recidivism statistics and their history, and how advocates for decarceration can challenge the way these flawed statistics are used to undermine their efforts. The new guide covers:

• The history of the “Willie Horton Effect,” why the power of political backlash against reform is overhyped, and how advocates should respond when lawmakers are swayed by isolated stories of recidivism.
• The different types of recidivism metrics and what they mean, how and why to be cautious about commonly-cited statistics, and the role of “technical” probation and parole violations and minor offenses in driving recidivism.
• Recidivism statistics related to people convicted of violent/sexual offenses, in the context of common arguments for “carving out” these individuals from criminal legal reforms.
• How advocates can push lawmakers to consider other metrics of post-release success besides recidivism, focusing on a person’s quality of life and contributions to their community.

This guide is part of our ever-expanding Advocacy Toolkit, a series of resources for criminal legal reform advocates based on our own research and advocacy.

On March 19, 2025, we hosted a webinar where our policy and advocacy team, Sarah Staudt and Emmett Sanders, discussed pushing back against unproductive and inaccurate uses of recidivism stories and statistics.

Prison Policy Initiative testifies in support of creating a right to visitation for people in Colorado’s prisons

by Sarah Staudt, February 6, 2025

Yesterday, Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Director, Sarah Staudt, testified in the House Judiciary Committee in the Colorado Legislature to support a bill that would guarantee visitation rights to people in Colorado prisons.

HB25-1013, sponsored by Representatives Regina English and Jennifer Bacon, would make visitation a right, not a privilege, for people in Colorado prisons. While the Department of Corrections would maintain the ability to restrict visitation for safety reasons, visitation would no longer be able to be taken away for disciplinary reasons, like as punishment for refusing work within the prison.

At the request of Together Colorado, we provided testimony about the wealth of research that shows that visitation is vital for helping incarcerated people maintain their mental health, reintegrate into society, and avoid returning to the criminal legal system.

Visitation has numerous benefits for incarcerated people, including decreasing recidivism; people who experience visitation were 25% less likely to be rearrested within two years of release from prison. Visitation also improves the likelihood of employment after release. Incarcerated people who had family visitation had odds of finding employment almost 2 times higher than those who were not visited by family. Lastly, visitation helps incarcerated people cope with the inherent stressors of incarceration, decreasing mental health issues.

Visitation is also a key tool in decreasing the harm that incarceration causes to children and families beyond prison walls. Nationwide, half of people in prison are parents to minor children, including 80% of all incarcerated women. Incarceration of a parent is a stressor for children that affects overall wellbeing, family dynamics, poor school performance, and a heightened risk of eventual involvement in the criminal legal system. Visitation with family has been shown to lessen these negative outcomes.

Prison Policy Initiative is proud to support HB25-1013, and hopes that it can serve as a model for legislatures around the country to improve access to visitation for incarcerated people.

Resource spotlight: Handbook on health and punishment tackles carceral health, featuring original analysis from Prison Policy Initiative

by Leah Wang, December 20, 2024

At the Prison Policy Initiative, we are often cited in academic articles and advocacy materials, but for the first time, we’ve published our own standalone chapter in an academic collection of critical essays and original research. The American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Division on Corrections and Sentencing, one of several professional groups within ASC, has just published the ninth volume of its Handbook, with a theme of contemporary issues in health and punishment.¹ This 800-page behemoth is a goldmine for people interested in how the criminal legal system intersects and interacts with physical, mental, and public health. Our own chapter offers “An Overview of Health and Access to Healthcare for People in State Prisons.”

Many other divisions of ASC publish an academic journal as a contribution to the field, but this division’s Handbook is a unique product that curates the very best in recent scholarship — including critical policy recommendations. The editors of this particular volume also sought insights from people with lived experience, practitioners, policy advocates, and scientists, in addition to the impressive lineup of academic researchers.

Our contribution to this edition of the Handbook is based on our original analysis of a national survey of people in state prisons, summarized in our 2022 report Chronic Punishment: The unmet health needs of people in state prisons. But the chapter goes further than that, explaining how people in prison access healthcare and the barriers they face, and providing an overview of our work on the flawed Medicaid and Medicare policies that exclude and punish system-impacted people. (We are pleased to report that since we wrote the chapter, there have been a few wins for system-impacted people regarding Medicaid and Medicare.)² We conclude with recommendations to drastically increase access to healthcare services, acknowledge specific areas of need, and above all, move people out of prisons and jails permanently.

The interdisciplinary topics of health and punishment allowed the Handbook’s other authors to showcase their expertise on gender, aging, public health policy, social determinants of health, environmental justice, and more. As a result, the Handbook is an invaluable resource for readers from a wide range of fields, from criminal justice to public health, sociology, medicine, ethics, law, and policy. In the words of Dr. Homer Venters, who wrote one of the Handbook’s closing chapters, this volume offers “a sober understanding of the deep and systemic failures in our national system of mass incarceration.”

We’re delighted to be in the literary company of professors, practitioners, and advocates whose work we admire and rely on as we examine the far-reaching impacts of mass incarceration. You can learn more about the Division or the Handbook here.

Here’s what’s on our data wishlist for 2025

Criminal legal system data is important to understanding how the system operates, but it’s highly limited, inaccessible, outdated, and fractured across thousands of jurisdictions. We spotlight some of the most persistent data gaps we came across in 2024.

by Brian Nam-Sonenstein and Wendy Sawyer, December 19, 2024

At the Prison Policy Initiative, we often hear from journalists, advocates, and others looking for basic information about the criminal legal system. Unfortunately, too often we find ourselves unable to help because rudimentary facts about the system are hard to come by: a lot of things are simply not tracked, and the data that do exist are often limited, inaccessibly formatted, fractured across thousands of jurisdictions, and/or severely outdated.

Data toolboxSee our data about the criminal legal system

So, this year, we began collecting some of the data gaps we’ve encountered in the course of our work, which we’ve compiled into a Data Wishlist. We’re publishing the wishlist for two reasons: 1) to highlight just how much basic information is missing in the criminal legal space, and 2) to encourage agencies, researchers, and others to compile and publish these data sets and fill these gaps, chipping away at the information black box around so many aspects of mass incarceration. As you will see, many of the gaps identified in our list would answer exceedingly simple questions about the system, how it functions, and who does (and does not) get punished. This list is by no means a comprehensive survey of criminal legal system data gaps, but we hope it helps people understand just how poor the data environment is and encourages people to chase down this information.

Do you have research, or are you planning to do research, that answers any of these questions? Reach out and let us know through our contact page.

Community supervision

Technical violation data

Data we’re looking for: What percentage of all annual arrests are for supervision violations?

Why it matters: We’ve written on several occasions about how technical violations contribute to unnecessary jailing.¹ These violations contribute to crowding in jails and prisons, forcing people into traumatizing, burdensome interactions with the criminal legal system for acts that are not technically crimes at all. We know that, at the most recent count, at least 128,000 people were incarcerated for technical violations of probation and parole. While the FBI tracks arrests across many types of crimes, arrests for supervision violations are notably absent. “What proportion of arrests each year are for supervision violations” is an exceedingly basic question that we are sadly unable to answer without these data.

Pretrial supervision data

Data we’re looking for: How many people are under pretrial supervision of any kind?

Why it matters: Pretrial supervision has gained popularity as an ‘alternative to incarceration,’ but we’ve repeatedly covered how it functions as a pipeline to incarceration. This includes pretrial electronic monitoring — a faulty technology that further embeds systemic injustices in communities of color, creates new avenues of harm, and does remarkably little to increase court compliance or public safety. As pretrial supervision spreads across jurisdictions and takes many forms, it’s important that we have a better picture of how many people are being monitored under those various forms and, over time, to see which forms of supervision are becoming more (or less) common, or result in better (or worse) individual outcomes.

Conviction-based public registries and community supervision

Data we’re looking for: How many people are exclusively on registries as a form of supervision?

Why it matters: We’ve previously pointed out how the available data do not allow us to break apart those on registries from those still serving a sentence, making it difficult to get an accurate picture of how many people are being monitored outside of formal community supervision like probation and parole. Given the well-documented harms of registration, the variety of crimes that require registration, and the failures of registration to increase safety, it’s essential that we improve our understanding of the size and scope of this population.

Offense, sentencing, and conviction data

Conviction status for people on electronic monitoring

Data we’re looking for: What are the conviction statuses (e.g., pretrial vs. sentenced) for people on electronic monitoring?

Why it matters: As mentioned above, we’ve covered the problems with looking to electronic monitoring as an “alternative” to incarceration. According to the Vera Institute for Justice, approximately 254,700 adults were under some form of electronic monitoring in 2021, but we don’t know how many people were on electronic monitoring for pretrial supervision or how many were sentenced to it after being convicted of a crime. Currently, these data are spotty and strewn across local and state jurisdictions, which makes it hard to see the full picture of how many people are under surveillance, by whom, and where – and to hold officials accountable.

Offense data, by conviction status and demographics, for people in local jails

Data we’re looking for: What charges are people in local jails being held on? How do they vary by conviction status and demographic characteristics like state of residence, sex, race, and age?

Why it matters: Most people in local jails have not been convicted, but are detained on bail while awaiting trial. Knowing the charges for which they’re being held helps us evaluate how local jurisdictions are using jails, as well as how many people could be safely released. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) last collected these data at the national level in 2002, which we have had to rely on for the past two decades. The next iteration of that survey is currently underway, but it will likely be at least 2026 before BJS publishes the results. The Jail Data Initiative offers an alternative source for this data, but because jails include different information on their rosters, there are limitations to what we can do with it. The BJS is uniquely positioned to collect this information and should do so more than once every two decades.

Women’s offenses related to intimate partner violence

Data we’re looking for: How many women convicted of homicides committed offenses in the context of intimate partner violence?

Why it matters: We’ve tried to illuminate women’s unique pathways to, and experiences of, incarceration. Some research suggests that significant portions of the population of incarcerated women have been incarcerated for defending themselves against or in response to living with abusive partners. Further research into this area would help us get a handle on how many women convicted of homicides were living in the context of intimate partner violence.

Felony and misdemeanor sentencing by state (and nationally)

Data we’re looking for: What are the mean and/or median felony prison or jail sentences in each state (or nationally)? And what do misdemeanor sentences look like on the state or national level?

Why it matters: National felony sentencing data hasn’t been compiled since at least 2009, and more recent data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics are based only on people who have been released. Ideally, data on felony sentencing that aren’t limited to carceral sentences (i.e., include probation, fines, or other requirements) would help us get a better sense of trends in felony sentencing. Simply put: we don’t really know, on an aggregate level, how judges are responding to felony convictions. Meanwhile, we know practically nothing about misdemeanor sentencing but would like answers to basic questions, such as how many people are released with “time served” from pretrial detention, how many are incarcerated (and for how long), how many receive intermediate sanctions such as community service or fines, and how many receive community supervision (and for how long)?

Updated sentencing outcomes for convictions internationally

Data we’re looking for: What do sentencing outcomes for convictions look like globally, and how do they compare to those in the United States?

Why it matters: Through our States of Incarceration series, we’ve tried contextualizing the U.S.’s reliance on mass incarceration by comparing it to that of other nations, but data are limited. We could improve this picture if we had up-to-date information on sentencing outcomes in other nations. New data haven’t been released since the early 2000’s.

Good time credit application

Data we’re looking for: At the state level, how have “good time” or earned time sentence credits been applied and how often are they applied incorrectly, leading people to spend more time locked up than they should?

Why it matters: We’ve noted that good time credits are a potentially powerful tool for decarceration and an important mechanism for shortening prison sentences. Misapplied good time is therefore a serious obstacle to release. In this 2023 article from Kentucky, Jason Riley reports that people with good time credits have been held long after their release dates because the credits were misapplied. The underlying data here are from a state audit. This information should be publicly available, and we should have it for every state, but we don’t.

U.S. Marshals conviction and sex data

Data we’re looking for: How many people in U.S. Marshals custody have been convicted, and how does that data break down by sex?

Why it matters: We know tragically little about people in custody of the U.S. Marshals. Currently, we only have the percentage of people in jail who were female and held for the Marshals at the time of the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2002 publication of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails. These data are not just old – they’re also self-reported and therefore not consistent with the more recent administrative data available about people in Marshals’ custody. Additionally, it’s unclear how many people in Marshals’ custody have even been convicted or not. Their website says they house over 63,000 “pre-sentenced” people in various jurisdictions, but the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2019 Census of Jails shows a conviction rate of 35% for those held in local jails. We’d like answers to these very simple questions.

Family policing and youth detention data

Referrals by race and ethnicity for the child welfare system

Data we’re looking for: How do referrals to the child welfare system (often referred to by advocates as the family policing system) break down by race/ethnicity?

Why it matters: We’ve written about how the family policing system operates as an extension of the carceral state, but a glaring omission in the available data pertains to the race and ethnicity of children referred to the system. As with all criminal legal system data, this information is crucial to understanding patterns of practice in enforcement — who gets targeted for family policing and who does not?

Youth who are parents in detention

Data we’re looking for: How many youth in juvenile detention are pregnant or have children?

Why it matters: We’ve covered the traumatic consequences of mass incarceration on children and incarcerated parents, and while there’s information on parents in the adult system, we haven’t seen as much on parents in youth confinement. There’s data from the 2003 Survey of Youth in Residential Placement, but it’s extremely outdated. This 2018 article mentions that “approximately one third of female juvenile offenders have ever been pregnant,” and “male adolescents involved with the juvenile justice and foster care systems are also at high risk for getting someone pregnant, with 18% to 31% reporting that they have fathered a child.” But for the most part, we don’t really have any idea of how many kids in youth confinement are also struggling with parenthood while incarcerated.

The flow of youth through confinement facilities

Data we’re looking for: How many youth exit residential placement facilities each year, and how many of them receive aftercare or reentry services?

Why it matters: We’ve written before about how many of the problems plaguing the adult criminal legal system are mirrored in the juvenile justice system. And we know that in the adult context, there aren’t enough reentry services to meet the need – but is the same true for youth? The most recent data we know of were collected in 1999, but much has changed since then. Without the relevant data, it’s difficult to tell how many youth today who are at risk of further criminal legal system involvement are getting the support they need.

Incarceration experience and conditions

Healthcare quality

Data we’re looking for: What is the quality of healthcare in jails and prisons?

Why it matters: While we know that criminalized populations tend to be sicker and have more serious healthcare needs than the general population, we know practically nothing about the quality of healthcare in jails and prisons, other than that it’s bad. Additionally, much of the data we do have lacks the perspectives and experience of the patients: incarcerated people. A basic evaluation of the state of healthcare delivery in jails and prisons is an entry-level need in the corrections space.

Healthcare outcomes in corrections compared to the community

Data we’re looking for: How do healthcare outcomes in prisons and jails compare to the rest of their state?

Why it matters: Similarly, there’s little research available attempting to compare healthcare outcomes in community versus carceral settings. It’s difficult to gauge the extent to which poor healthcare outcomes have to do with the provision of care in punitive settings compared to in the community.

Mortality among states with privatized healthcare

Data we’re looking for: How do mortality rates compare between states with different kinds of healthcare delivery?

Why it matters: While most jails and prisons in the U.S. have privatized medical services, there’s very little research available comparing mortality outcomes between different healthcare delivery models. Having this data could help improve our understanding of whether there’s a distinction between public and private healthcare delivery. This information would be a tiny step forward in evaluating basic outcomes of different correctional healthcare delivery models.

Perspectives of incarcerated people on understaffing

Data we’re looking for: How do incarcerated people experience understaffing? Where do they feel it most acutely, and what do they think should be done about it?

Why it matters: “Understaffing” is the scapegoat for virtually all crises in corrections today, but notoriously absent from analyses are the perspectives of incarcerated people on the subject as well as calls for decarceration as a solution. There have been some efforts to incorporate their perspectives in examining understaffing, but we think there should be much more research and reporting to this end.

Strip search data, broken down by geography and including historical data

Data we’re looking for: How many strip searches are happening in state prisons, and which states do not require tracking this information?

Why it matters: Strip searches are used routinely in jails and prisons, including around visitation, as a general contraband and drug interdiction strategy. These searches have profoundly harmful and counterproductive effects, and create opportunities for acts of sexual violence by corrections officers. Without basic data on strip searches, it’s impossible to know the frequency with which they’re practiced and whether they’re more common in the U.S. compared to other countries.

Economics and financial exploitation

Relative costs for jail, prison, work release, house arrest, probation, and treatment/counseling

Data we’re looking for: What are the costs for incarcerating someone in a jail or prison compared to placement in work release, house arrest, probation, and treatment/counseling, and how do these vary across states or regions?

Why it matters: We have very little sense of how the costs of incarceration compare to things like work release, house arrest, and probation, let alone responses like treatment/counseling or other non-punitive measures. Having this comparative economic data could help shed light on how our society spends money – and what it does (or doesn’t) get in return on that investment.

Jail-level inmate welfare fund data

Data we’re looking for: How many jail jurisdictions have “Inmate Welfare Funds,” and what are their cash balances?

Why it matters: Earlier this year, we published a detailed report on Inmate Welfare Funds (IWFs) – special prison and jail accounts that are funded with money from phone calls, commissary purchases, and other fees. IWFs are intended to benefit the incarcerated population but are often used as slush funds for corrections departments. While we were able to collect IWF policies for all 50 state prison systems, a much heavier lift is to collect and organize these policies for jail systems. Additionally, it would be helpful to have a sense of IWF balances and cash flows in state prison and local jail systems. Having these data would help greatly expand our window into IWFs, how they are designed, how they function, and their exploitative power over incarcerated people and their families.

Pre- and post-incarceration data

Labor force participation for formerly incarcerated people

Data we’re looking for: What percentage of the U.S. labor force is formerly incarcerated?

Why it matters: This past Labor Day, we chronicled ten ways in which mass incarceration is an engine of economic inequality, including using criminalization as a means to discipline and contain labor movements. While we have some data on the experience of trying to obtain work and working after incarceration, we don’t know what proportion of the labor force is made up of formerly incarcerated people. (We would also love to be able to update our research on the unemployment rate of formerly incarcerated individuals, but to our knowledge, no comparable national data have been collected since 2008.)

Updated pre-incarceration incomes of people in prison and jail

Data we’re looking for: How much did incarcerated people earn before they went to prison or jail?

Why it matters: Evidence that incarcerated people are typically much poorer than non-incarcerated people — even before they are arrested — helps show the injustice of a criminal legal system that treats people differently based on their wealth. For example, many people in local jails are there simply because they can’t afford money bail, and people who can’t afford private attorneys may be assigned public defenders with unmanageable caseloads who can’t spend the same time on their cases. Yet the Bureau of Justice Statistics has not published income data since its surveys in 2002 (for jails) and 2004 (for prisons).² We have had some success using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health to get income data about people recently arrested and booked into jails, as well as people recently on probation and parole, but a more targeted sample of people with current criminal legal system involvement would be better.