Bowing to pressure from jails and companies, FCC raises phone rate caps

The agency has voted to raise rate caps to accommodate complaints made by companies and facilities, saddling low-income families with higher costs.

by Wanda Bertram, October 30, 2025

This post was updated on November 7, 2025 to include a link to the FCC’s order, and updating the table of rate caps, which changed slightly between the FCC’s proposed order and the final order.

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to increase phone and video calling rate caps for incarcerated people, changing the rules that it adopted last July and then suspended earlier this year. The new rate caps hike prices by as much as 83% compared to the rates announced last year.

The FCC issued rules last year — as required by the Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Just Communications Act — bringing unprecedented relief to families who, all too often, were forced to choose between the cost of communicating with their loved ones behind bars and meeting basic everyday needs. After issuing the rules, the FCC received complaints from phone companies, sheriffs, and state attorneys general. Bowing to this pressure, the agency suspended its 2024 ruling and calculated new rate caps, which inflate the rates and impose new costs on families.

Phone companies and sheriffs challenged the 2024 rules, claiming that they made it unprofitable for companies to serve certain very small jails, as well as to offer call monitoring technology — previously given to jails as a kickback. Neither the companies nor the FCC have ever published any data to back up these claims.¹ Nevertheless, the FCC adjusted its calculations to:

• Incorporate all “safety and security” costs (such as call monitoring and surveillance services) into rate caps;
• Add a 2¢ “facility fee” to all rate caps;
• Create a new tier of “extremely small jails” with fewer than 50 people, where rate caps will be higher.

The FCC also added, at the eleventh hour, a 6.7% “inflation factor,” which increased most of the rates in its proposed order from October by one or two cents per minute.

The final rate caps are much higher than those passed in 2024. However, in a rare piece of good news, the FCC will reinstate two parts of its 2024 ruling: the ban on site commissions (kickbacks that companies give to facilities) and on ancillary fees, both of which had had the effect of inflating the final costs families paid.

Ultimately, these higher rate caps further burden incarcerated people and their families, while lining the pockets of companies and facilities.

Facilities still have a choice

The new rate caps are set to go into effect as soon as the order is published in the Federal Register, although facilities will have 120 days to come into compliance.

It’s worth noting that the rate caps instituted by the FCC represent the legal maximum that prisons and jails can charge for phone service. The new rate caps are higher than what many facilities were charging even before the 2024 rules, and in the few months when those rules were in effect, thousands of facilities across the country implemented them successfully.

It is up to each individual jail and department of corrections to decide whether it will keep these lower rates — which guarantee more family contact and thus reduced recidivism — or choose to raise them, imposing the cost of call monitoring technology and other perks from companies onto families struggling to stay connected.

Highlights from a busy year at Prison Policy Initiative

In our new annual report, we share examples of how we are building on the foundations of our research and visualizations to meet the challenges of this moment

by Danielle Squillante, October 23, 2025

We wrapped up another productive year at the Prison Policy Initiative, and are thrilled to share our 2024-2025 Annual Report with you. We released 5 major reports, 24 research briefings, 2 new resources as part of our Advocacy Toolkit, and several briefings related to our campaign to end prison gerrymandering. We also provided technical support to advocates at the state and local levels working on issues such as fighting jail expansion, making prison visitation a right, and water contamination in prisons.

Here are a handful of accomplishments we’re particularly proud of:

• We published an update to our flagship Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie report detailing the scale of mass incarceration in the U.S.
• We released reports tackling two of the most consequential issues for incarcerated people — prison disciplinary systems and prison health care. Using a combination of deep analysis and first-hand accounts of these systems, we peeled back the curtain to show how these systems traumatize incarcerated people both physically and mentally.
• As part of our campaign to end prison gerrymandering, we produced 5 reports that highlight the scale and impact of prison gerrymandering in Oklahoma, North Carolina, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Kansas.
• Through our partnership with the Jail Data Initiative, we published 3 briefings utilizing present-day data from roughly 900 jails to provide a better understanding of those who are criminalized and locked up. Our briefings focused on the criminalization of unhoused people, the demographics of people booked into jails multiple times, and offense data for people in local jails.
• We expanded our focus on federal criminal legal system policy and launched our new federal tracker that connects the dots of the Trump administration’s actions to show its larger strategy of doubling down on the failed policies that created the nation’s mass incarceration crisis in the first place.
• Our Policy & Advocacy team hosted 3 webinars on organizing legislative testimony from incarcerated people, pushing back against unproductive and inaccurate uses of recidivism stories and statistics, and fighting back against jail expansion.

This is only a snapshot of what we produced this past year. We are proud of our accomplishments and look forward to sharing new projects with you in the year to come.

WEBINAR: Taking the Lede: How advocates can shape news coverage of the criminal legal system

How small organizations can make the most of their resources to build relationships with the media.

by Wanda Bertram, August 18, 2025

With every sheriff’s office, department of corrections, district attorney, and police department armed with its own media relations team, the news cycle is all too often stacked toward the status quo when it comes to criminal legal system issues. How can advocates for system reform have their voices amplified — and their priority issues covered — without overworking themselves to get the media’s attention? And how can advocates frame issues in ways that resonate with journalists?

On September 18th, the Prison Policy Initiative and the Center for Just Journalism hosted a webinar to help advocacy organizations home their media strategies and get attention on critical issues. Panelists Wanda Bertram of the Prison Policy Initiative and Hannah Riley of the Center for Just Journalism provided guidance on how small organizations can make the most of their limited resources and staff capacity. They covered:

• The lay of the contemporary news media landscape and basic tips for interacting with journalists;
• The strategic benefits of building relationships with reporters, and how advocates should select reporters to reach out to;
• How to have informal conversations with the media that can influence the news cycle, as well as write formal pitches that can lead to news clippings.

Watch the full webinar:

Additional resources:

• Webinar slides
• Freedom of the Press Foundation’s guide to interviewing incarcerated people
• Institute for Nonprofit News’ publications directory
• Ad Fontes’ media bias chart

Trump’s executive order targeting unhoused people will leave everyone worse off

The harsh reality is that this order will criminalize already-vulnerable people who are in need of care, putting our communities in danger.

by Regan Huston, August 5, 2025

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at forcibly locking unhoused people experiencing mental health crises or substance use disorder in involuntary commitment in state psychiatric hospitals.¹ Here’s the issue with that measure: it is nothing more than an attempt to disguise criminalization as care.

As the number of people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. soars and social supports are stripped away, this move will undoubtedly expand the criminal legal system.

The truth about involuntary commitment

The order directs the federal government to find ways to encourage and empower states to force unhoused people experiencing mental health or substance use issues into involuntary commitment facilities.

Jails & homelessness The moral & fiscal costs of failed policies

These state psychiatric hospitals aren’t typically run by departments of correction, but they are in reality much like prisons. At least 38 states also allow involuntary commitment for substance use disorder treatment, and evidence suggests that these supposed “treatment facilities” are not effective. Notably, it can be extremely difficult for these “forensic patients” to be released as they may remain hospitalized for decades or for life.

Involuntary commitment is not only legally and ethically dubious, but it also fails to deliver on the very objectives that justified its creation.

Contradicting cuts

Notably, in the first five months of his second term, Trump has gutted social programs that have been proven to reduce crime and keep people off the street.

First, the administration slashed $11 billion from addiction and mental health programs, a move that will lead to increasing prison and jail populations. Then, it targeted Housing First programs, a method that has been proven effective at getting and keeping people off the street, by giving them access to housing without conditions. And, last month, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” came with an ugly reality: Steep cuts to Medicaid that will leave 10 million people uninsured, making it nearly impossible for them to access mental health care or substance abuse treatment.

At the same time, it has tried to end harm-reduction strategies that aim to reduce overdoses and the negative health effects of drug use. The administration’s actions are contrary to public health research that shows that harm-reduction work.

With the safety net shredded, what will happen to the people who desperately need care? In many cases, they’ll be put straight into actual prisons and jails, which are never appropriate places for treatment.

Shuffled into the system

The administration has made it clear that it would rather shift money away from care and turn toward expanded criminalization.

Prisons and jails are often viewed as de facto mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Rates of mental illness are exceptionally high among incarcerated people, and these facilities fail to meet the demand for help. More than half of the people in state prison reported having a mental health problem, yet only 26% received professional help since entering prison.

Based on 2019 data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) from SAMHSA, approximately 8% of people over the age of 12 met the criteria for a substance use disorder, and 41% of people who had been arrested in the last year met the criteria for a substance use disorder. In 2016 (the most recent year for which the Bureau of Justice Statistics published national prison data), 47% of people in state and federal prisons met the criteria for a substance use disorder in the 12 months prior to their most recent prison admission.

Not only are prisons and jails unable to treat mental health problems, but they can also create them. Incarceration itself is traumatizing and can inflict serious mental damage on people. Violence behind bars is inescapable and can result in post-traumatic stress symptoms, like anxiety, depression, avoidance, hypersensitivity, hypervigilance, suicidality, flashbacks, and difficulty with emotional regulation.

Prisons and jails are not treatment centers for substance use disorders, either. In fact, these facilities punish drug use far more than they treat it. People who have been arrested or incarcerated have higher rates of substance use disorder than the general population. And, disturbingly, only 1 in 10 people in state prisons with substance use disorders received treatment.

Jails, which tend to have even fewer resources, are also not suited to offer care. The most effective treatment options are the least accessible for people with opioid use disorder: Just 19% of jails initiate medication-assisted treatment for people with opioid use disorder.

Behind bars, people don’t have access to the care they need – and upon release, they’re often left worse off than before incarceration. Formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. And, being homeless makes formerly incarcerated people more likely to be arrested and incarcerated again, creating a revolving door.

Attacks on people experiencing homelessness

The reality is that there is an inextricable link between housing, mental illness, drug use, and criminalization. Yes, people experiencing these vulnerable situations often need care — but forcibly hospitalizing them is not the solution.

Instead, the U.S. must embrace Housing First. This method offers housing with no strings attached. It recognizes housing as the first step in responding to homelessness, rather than something to work toward. It also does more than simply put a roof over people’s heads; it gives people the space and stability necessary to receive care, escape crises, and improve their quality of life. Research shows that this approach keeps people housed and improves attitudes and outlook on life.

Conclusion

In the last year, there have been rampant attacks on people experiencing homelessness – and this executive order is the latest example. It’s a bad move that will result in far more people locked up simply because they’re experiencing homelessness, mental health crises, or substance use issues. Gutting proven solutions that make communities safer — like community-based care, Housing First, and harm-reduction efforts — seems to be a pattern with the administration.

The good news is that state and local governments don’t have to help this misguided effort. The federal government will certainly dangle funding to entice them to implement these policies, but they have the ability to say no. If the money comes with these types of strings attached, it isn’t worth the cost.

Prison Policy Initiative and MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project release new guiding principles for parole reform

Organizations working to reform parole systems in their states are encouraged to sign on to these 16 principles.

by Emmett Sanders, July 10, 2025

Parole systems in America are failing. They’re inaccessible, they’re hard to navigate, they grant parole for far too few people, and those who are paroled are often set up to fail.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Prison Policy Initiative has partnered with the MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project to produce Principles for Parole Reform. This document features 16 guiding principles for advocates to consider when pushing for parole reform in their jurisdictions. Drawing from our own extensive research and advocacy experience, and created with guidance from advocacy organizations across the country, this document reflects dozens of conversations with those most impacted by unjust parole policies: currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families.

The principles cover key areas of parole such as access and eligibility, preparation and process, criteria considerations, parole board composition, revocation hearings, and more. Each principle includes an explanation of why these reforms are necessary, as well as concrete examples of common-sense policies that advocates can draw from when working to implement change.

The problems with parole

Discretionary parole allows states to periodically review incarcerated people’s circumstances with the goal of releasing people who can safely return to their communities. Parole is a vital tool for decarceration, but in its current form, it usually does not achieve its goals.

At its core, discretionary parole is a recognition of the fundamental humanity of those in prison: a promise that, in our society, people are more than their worst moments. However, the distance between the promise of parole and its reality is vast. Parole processes are a minefield of racial disparities, opaque processes, over-politicization, and little representation or assistance for those hoping to make it to the other side of decades of incarceration. Access to parole is limited in some states and nonexistent in others. Where it exists, the process is so complicated and restrictive that only a fraction of those who apply are granted release. Others apply over and over again only to be denied, often for subjective reasons or for things they cannot change. The result of this flawed system is the same throughout the country: Broken promises and prisons bursting at the seams with people who could be safely released.

To learn more about the need for parole reform in the US, please read:

• When parole doesn’t mean release: The senseless “program requirements” keeping people behind bars during a pandemic
• Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences
• Grading the parole release systems of all 50 states
• No Release: Parole grant rates have plummeted in most states since the pandemic started

Making reform a reality

These 16 principles aim to make parole fairer, more accessible, and more transparent for everyone.

We know that varied political realities mean different reforms are possible in different states. Nevertheless, we hope that the principles we offer in this document will serve as a useful guide for advocates across the country looking to close the distance between the promise of discretionary parole and the reality. The 16 principles are listed below, and are explained in more detail on MacArthur Justice Center’s website.

16 guiding principles for parole reform

1. Every incarcerated person should have access to parole release systems.
2. When someone is eligible for parole, there should be an enforceable presumption of release, and parole boards should be required to use forward-looking, objective criteria to justify why release is inappropriate, rather than requiring incarcerated people to justify their fitness for parole.
3. Parole boards should be required to adhere to consistent, clear guidelines about how to make parole release decisions. People denied parole should have the opportunity to challenge the basis on which their denial decision was made.
4. Parole should be granted or denied based on forward-looking, objective factors within the control of the incarcerated person, and should focus exclusively on how a person has grown, changed, or been productive since being incarcerated, rather than the underlying crime of conviction.
5. When a person is denied parole, they should be given specific, actionable changes that they can make to increase their chances of parole in a future hearing. Parole boards should then honor these efforts and grant parole when people have satisfied previously stated requirements.
6. When a person is denied parole, they should be able to appear before the board again for reconsideration within a reasonable amount of time.
7. People who are up for parole and their loved ones and supporters should have the ability to attend parole hearings and speak to the parole board on their behalf.
8. People should have access to counsel at parole hearings and be provided competent, effective, and free counsel that adheres to best practices for indigent defense if they cannot afford it. People should be provided with resources and support to prepare for their parole hearings.
9. Parole Boards should be diverse in their backgrounds, and should include community-based practitioners trained in psychology and rehabilitation, trauma experts, people who are formerly incarcerated, and other experts with the ability to fairly and objectively evaluate candidates for parole. People with backgrounds in law enforcement and corrections should not be the majority of parole board members.
10. Parole Boards should be required to release information publicly about their decisions, including grant rates, the reasons for denial of parole, length of setbacks, and demographic and charge information of people who appear before the parole board.
11. Imposition of conditions, including supervision fees, should be an individualized process that begins with the presumption of no conditions and allows for the removal of conditions that are no longer serving a purpose.
12. People on supervision should have a variety of options for how to check in that allow for minimal disruptions to the re-entry process.
13. Supervision should not be indefinite; no person should be on supervision for the rest of their life after parole release.
14. Parole boards must ensure the due process rights of people facing revocation are protected, including the right to counsel and other safeguards to ensure fair hearings.
15. People on supervision should not be returned to prison solely for non-criminal conduct.
16. The amount of time that can be revoked should be capped and proportionate to the seriousness of the violation.

Join the effort

If your organization works on parole reform and would like to sign on to these principles, you can do so through MacArthur Justice Center’s National Parole Transformation Project’s website.

The Court Agrees: In prison, a $15 fine means so much more

The Fourth Circuit has revived an incarcerated person’s lawsuit challenging a $15 fine taken from his account as punishment.

by Regan Huston, July 3, 2025

In August of 2020, Demmerick Brown, a man incarcerated in Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, went to the prison barbershop to get a haircut and a shave. This was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and naturally the barber asked Mr. Brown to remove his protective mask so he could shave his face. The next day, Mr. Brown received a disciplinary ticket fining him $15 for failing to wear a mask.

After a perfunctory disciplinary hearing, Mr. Brown had the money deducted from his trust account. Then, he sued, alleging that he had not been afforded appropriate due process before having his money taken. But the District Court found that he wasn’t entitled to due process. The court said that this was because $15 was too small an amount of money to trigger constitutional protections.

What the court failed to understand is that $15, while just being the cost of a sandwich outside prison walls, represents dozens or hundreds of hours of labor inside, and people rely on the money they make behind bars to fill their basic needs and contact their families.

In 2024, the Prison Policy Initiative filed an Amicus Curae brief in a suit filed by Rights Behind Bars, who represent Demmerick Brown. In our brief, we drew on our years of work studying the economics of life behind bars to help the Fourth Circuit understand that $15 inside doesn’t mean the same thing as $15 does on the outside.

On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit rightfully reaffirmed that incarcerated people deserve due process rights when their money is taken away from them. The opinion cites our brief, concluding that, “Fifteen dollars may be a sum of small consequence outside prison walls, but it is of great significance within them: the amount is more than a week’s worth of wages at Red Onion State Prison where Brown is incarcerated.”

This is one important step in recognizing the lived experiences of people behind bars, and their constitutional rights.

From providing testimony to completing custom research projects, the Prison Policy Initiative is available to help work on projects across all stages of the criminal legal system. Learn more about the work our advocacy department does here, and drop us a line if we can help.

Welcome, Jacob Kang-Brown!

Please welcome our new Senior Researcher, Jacob Kang-Brown!

by Danielle Squillante, May 27, 2025

We’re excited to announce that Jacob Kang-Brown has joined our team as a Senior Researcher. In this role, he’ll research and write briefings and reports, help develop new projects, and provide additional support for the research team’s use of large datasets and quantitative analysis.

Before joining Prison Policy Initiative, Jacob was a Senior Researcher at the Vera Institute of Justice where he specialized in analyzing incarceration trends. His work has appeared in The Lancet Public Health, The New York Review of Books, Contexts, SSM-Population Health, The Atlantic, Dissent, USA Today, and American Jail Magazine, in addition to the Vera Institute of Justice. He holds a PhD in Criminology, Law & Society from the University of California, Irvine and bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College (Ill). Jacob has also worked for Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations.

Welcome to the team, Jacob!

WEBINAR: Fighting Jail Expansion: Lessons from the Front Lines

Learn how advocates are responding to shifting arguments for new jail construction.

by Emmett Sanders, May 14, 2025

For decades, calls for new jail construction were largely accompanied by “Tough on Crime” rhetoric that ignored the fact that jails often house the most precariously situated members of our society. While these dehumanizing narratives persist, in many places jail construction has taken a carceral humanist turn that depicts cages as places of care and compassion and the jail as a service provider for those with mental health or substance use support needs.

This is just one of the ways in which arguments for new jail construction have evolved over time, leading communities to spend millions and sometimes even billions of dollars on new jail construction, even as public safety initiatives are being viciously defunded. Fortunately, those on the frontlines who oppose new jail construction have evolved their own arguments and have developed new strategies to push back.

On June 11, 2025, Prison Policy Initiative brought together a panel of activists who have pushed back against jail expansion in communities from Atlanta, Georgia, to Sacramento, California, all the way to Oahu, Hawai’i. We discussed how arguments for new jail construction have shifted over time, went over some useful strategies and tools for responding to these arguments, and talked about how our advocacy department can help support efforts to challenge new jail construction in your area.

Panelists included:

• Carrie Ann Shirota: Policy Director, ACLU-HI with the Reimagining Public Safety in Hawai’i Coalition
• Liz Blum-Gutierrez: Co-founder Decarcerate Sacramento
• Michael Collins: Senior Director of Government Affairs, Color of Change with the Communities Over Cages Coalition

Watch the full webinar:

Webinar Resources

• Webinar Slides

Additional Resources

• Does our county really need a bigger jail? – contains important questions to ask when jail construction is being discussed in your area
• Jail expansion toolkit – offers useful tips for opposing jail construction, including advice on reading jail needs assessments
• If They Build It: Organizing lessons and strategies against carceral infrastructure – lessons learned and recommendations for opposing carceral infrastructure from Community Justice Exchange

Gov. Abbott’s bail proposals would make communities less safe, drain taxpayer dollars, and worsen racial disparities

The proposals before the Texas legislature would dramatically increase the state's already bloated jail populations.

by Sarah Staudt, May 14, 2025

This week in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott and conservative lawmakers are trying to change the state constitution to enshrine the worst features of the current bail system. These proposals, if passed and then approved by voters, would cause a rise in Texas’ already bloated jail populations. As a result, more people will be detained in private prisons out of state, taxpayers will be saddled with huge expenditures, and public safety and public health will get worse.

Disturbingly, proponents of these measures are calling them “bail reform” when in fact they are the exact opposite. “Bail reform” generally refers to the effective policies enacted around the country to make bail processes fairer and to reduce pretrial jail populations. A system of wealth-based detention that determines who should be in jail based on how much money they have in their bank accounts is an illogical and ineffective policy. Efforts to change or eliminate these money bail systems in Illinois, New Jersey, and elsewhere have been highly successful, have not led to rises in crime, and have saved communities countless millions of dollars in bail payments.

Texas conservatives are proposing to do the opposite. The proposals would make it mandatory in many cases for judges to hold people until their trials without bail, and in other cases would require the use of monetary bail in situations where people are currently being released without needing to pay any money. It is vital that Texas legislators and voters oppose these regressive policies, and that activists around the country understand the negative impacts of these kinds of changes to bail systems.

Overusing pretrial jailing undermines fairness and harms public safety and public health

Decades of research shows that growing the pretrial jail population is a mistake that will harm the justice system, public safety, and public health. There is ample evidence that lower jail populations do not harm public safety. Moreover, the overuse of pretrial jailing destabilizes both the individuals who are incarcerated and their communities, stoking the root causes of crime and harming public safety in the long run.

Individuals in custody are affected in a variety of negative ways by pretrial jailing. People incarcerated pretrial are more likely to:

• lose their jobs and experience housing instability;
• commit suicide, and are more likely to overdose after release;
• become re-involved in the criminal legal system in the future, as measured by long-term re-arrest rates;
• fail to appear in court;
• be convicted and be sentenced to longer jail and prison terms, worsening prison overcrowding and mass incarceration as a whole.

Overuse of pretrial jailing also harms the fairness of the criminal legal system as a whole by worsening racial disparities and disproportionately impacting women. People in poverty and Black and brown people are less likely to be able to afford bail, and bails are set at higher rates for Black and Latino people. Women are also less likely to be able to afford monetary bail when it is set (even though bail is set at lower amounts for them). Black people are less likely to be released on their own recognizance and more likely to be detained without bail. Texas already imprisons Black people in jails at disproportionate rates, and expanding pretrial jailing is likely to worsen that problem.

A deeper dive into the regressive bail package

The package of regressive measures being pushed in the Texas legislature consists of three parts (known as SJR 5, SB 9 and HB 75, and SJR 1). The exact language of these measures has been changing daily, but the core problems of each provision remain the same.

SJR 5 expands no-bail jailing without due process

SJR 5 would change the Texas constitution to allow detention without monetary bail for a wide variety of charges. The United States Supreme Court has been clear for decades that detention before trial, particularly without bail, should be a “carefully limited exception.” The federal government and states that have reduced or eliminated monetary bail, like Illinois and New Jersey, have tried to ensure that no-bail detention is “carefully limited” by restricting the charges for which it can be used and enshrining important due process protections in the law. However, Texas’ recent proposals would expand jailing without these careful limitations.

Although the exact provisions of SJR 5 are changing almost daily, many of the drafts have lacked key due process protections. It is vital that any version of SJR 5 that advances includes basic provisions that ensure that detention decisions are fairly made and that jail is only used as a last resort. Some of those key provisions would include:

• Limiting the availability of no-bail detention only to serious, violent cases, rather than allowing it in broader categories of charges;
• Ensuring that everyone who may be jailed without bail has access to counsel.
• Ensuring that prosecutors be held to a high standard of proof that a person will pose a danger to others — “clear and convincing” evidence, rather than simply a “preponderance” of evidence.
• Requiring that detention based solely on risk of fleeing the jurisdiction hinges on whether someone is likely to willfully flee prosecution. If no-bail detention is allowed based solely on whether someone is likely not to appear in court through no fault of their own, it will increase the unnecessary detention of poor and unhoused people, who sometimes struggle to find transportation and other resources necessary to appear for their court dates.
• Requiring that jail only be used if there is no less restrictive set of conditions that could protect the public. No-bail jailing should always be a last resort, and should only be used if there are no other alternatives.

Without these key due process protections, increasing no-bail detention is likely to lead to more people being held in jail longer, increasing jail populations without improving public safety.

SB 9 and HB 75 entrench the use of monetary bail

While SJR 5 seeks to increase the number of people held without bail, SB 9 and HB 75 seek to use monetary bail even more often than it’s currently being used. These bills would undo progress that has been made in reducing the use of monetary bail in Texas localities like Harris County.

SB 9 and HB 75 would require the use of money bail in many cases, including misdemeanors. Currently, people are often released on these charges without having to pay money. A particularly disturbing set of cases included in SB 9 and HB 75 are so-called “terroristic threat” cases. Although these charges sound very serious, they actually include any threat to people or property that causes an official or volunteer emergency agency to respond. This can include misdemeanors that often are charged against school-aged children because of social media posts. Including these non-violent charges in the set of charges where money bail will be required will do nothing to improve public safety — but it will ensure that poorer accused people are stuck in jail more often.

These bills also create procedural barriers that will prevent people from being released pretrial in a timely fashion. As we have noted, even one day in jail can lead to a range of negative outcomes. First, the proposals restrict the ability of magistrates and law hearing officers to set bail, and these kinds of decision makers play a key role in how large municipalities make bail decisions quickly. Second, it allows prosecutors to unilaterally prolong detention even when a judge intended to set an affordable bail. Prosecutors would be allowed to appeal these decisions, claiming that bail was set too low, and strand people in custody while the appeal is pending.

SJR 1 targets immigrants with mandatory jailing

The last provision in this regressive bail package combines the harms of the immigration system with the harms of the criminal legal system, requiring no bail detention for a group of people the proposal refers to as “illegal aliens.” The definition of “illegal aliens” has changed in various drafts of the proposal, but includes DACA recipients (so-called “dreamers” who entered the United States as children) and asylum seekers. Because criminal legal system statistics are not broken up by immigration status, it is impossible to estimate how many people this will affect, but it will certainly have a disproportionate impact on Texas’ Latino residents.

Because the proposal requires detention even in non-violent cases, judges will be barred from considering individual facts and circumstances. As a result, they will end up detaining people who do not pose a threat to anyone or who are charged with weak cases that are unlikely to lead to a conviction. Even when a judge decides that a person can be safely released to await trial in the community, the law will overrule that judgment and require them to send the accused person to jail. In other words, the measure ties the hands of the very people who are entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that the criminal legal system is administered fairly. Judges hearing individual cases — not legislators in Austin — should make these decisions.

SJR 1 would also unnecessarily burden Texas taxpayers and local governments with the cost of incarcerating undocumented people who, under current law, would instead be detained by the federal government. Under federal law, many undocumented people charged with a wide variety of crimes are already required to be held in immigration detention. By requiring no-bail detention in their criminal cases as well, SJR 1 shifts the burdens and costs of incarcerating those people from the federal government to local jails — all without providing any additional funding to localities to absorb these costs.

Regressive bail policies will worsen Texas’ already out-of-control pretrial jailing crisis

Texas cannot afford to adopt these regressive policies. The state is already well above the national average for incarceration rates overall, and its pretrial jail population has been rising steadily for decades. This creates a serious overcrowding problem in Texas jails; 41% of Texas counties already send incarcerated people to other counties or states while awaiting trial. Harris County alone spends more than $50 million per year on out-of-state jail contracts. These expensive arrangements are often made with private prison companies, costing Texas taxpayers more money while enriching private corporations. To be clear, this problem cannot be solved by building bigger jail facilities — in most cases, it is a lack of staff, not a lack of bed space, that leads counties to outsource pretrial incarceration.

Expanding pretrial jailing will also cost lives. Deaths in jails are on the rise across Texas, and the situation is worsened when people are sent out of state, since those facilities do not have to follow standards set by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, nor do they have to follow death reporting and investigation rules.

Lawmakers are voting on these proposals in the next few days, and there are real opportunities to stop them from moving forward, or to push for important revisions that strengthen due process protections. There will also be an opportunity for Texans to voice their opposition to SJR 5 and SJR 1 at the polls if they do advance past the legislature. Texas deserves true reform measures that seek to reduce harmful pretrial jailing, rather than so-called “tough-on-crime,” anti-immigrant measures masquerading as “bail reform”.

100 days of the Trump administration rolling back progress in the criminal legal system

Today, we released a new tracking tool that shows the full scale of the crisis unfolding in communities and behind bars, and a new resource page for folks looking to learn more about the repression and detention of undocumented immigrants.

by Mike Wessler, April 30, 2025

With the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term complete, today, we released a new tracker on our website that highlights the ways the administration is making the criminal legal system larger, harsher, and less effective. The new tool, which will be updated regularly, highlights the ways that the administration is eviscerating the rule of law, undermining solutions that reduce incarceration and improve community safety, encouraging the use of extreme sentences and harsh law enforcement tactics, making prisons and jails worse, and reducing transparency in the carceral system.

Actions from the administration have come so fast that it has been nearly impossible to keep track of them all. This new tool connects the dots on these actions to show that they’re not individual policy choices but instead part of a larger strategy that doubles down on the failed policies that created the nation’s mass incarceration crisis in the first place.

The tracker also explains that, while the federal government directly controls only a relatively small slice of the American carceral system, the administration is using its bully pulpit and control over federal spending to coerce state and local governments into expanding their criminal legal systems and making them even more brutal.

Additionally, today we released a new resource page on our website that focuses on the intersection of criminal and immigration law, often referred to as “crimmigration.” While we include immigration detention in our broad view of mass incarceration, it is not our primary area of expertise. For those looking to learn more about the crimmigration crisis, we have compiled resources from experts and organizations directly focused on immigration on this new page.

The new federal policy tracker is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/federaltracker.html

The new crimmigration resource page is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2025/04/30/crimmigration_resource_roundup/

This new tracker and resource page are just the first steps in our organization’s commitment to create tools, data, and resources for advocates, lawmakers, and journalists as they work to push back on this new crisis in America’s criminal legal system.