Girls are being put behind bars more and more. Will Congress do anything to help?

by Joshua Aiken, September 30, 2016

While comprehensive criminal justice reform for adults has failed to pass in Congress, a bill lingering in the Senate could still overhaul how our juvenile justice system works. The bipartisan legislation, which passed the House by an overwhelming 382-29 vote, would create several new policies that juvenile justice advocates have been requesting for years.

The proposed reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act would withhold funding from states that put youth in adult prisons, require states to collect data on racial disparities in the juvenile justice system, ban the practice of shackling pregnant girls, and prohibit states from locking up youth for “status offenses.”

These reforms are desperately needed. In our 2016 report, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie we highlighted one of the most disturbing facets of our juvenile justice system: that we lock young people up for behaviors that are not law violations for adults—like running away or skipping school.

Talking about “status offenses” is important because status offenses aren’t even crimes. These offenses relate to a person’s age: skipping school, breaking curfew, or even talking back can land a young person behind bars. Increasingly, those young people are girls.

In an incredible piece for Mother Jones last week, Hannah Levintova details how bias and over-criminalization are ensnaring more and more girls into the criminal justice system. Levintova explains:

Between 1995 and 2009, cases of breaking curfew rose by 23 percent for girls—and just 1 percent for boys. In 2011, girls made up 53 percent of runaway cases brought before a judge. Between 1996 and 2005, arrests for “simple assault”—which could be as minor as a daughter throwing a toy at her mom—went up 24 percent for girls and down 4 percent for boys. By 2013, girls were almost twice as likely as boys to be in detention for simple assault and certain other nonviolent offenses.

Girls, argues Professor Andrew Spivak, are faced with types of “judicial paternalism” where “courts think that they need to protect girls and give them guidance.” Professor Stacy Mallicoat, in a 2007 study, showed that probation officers often attribute girls’ offending behaviors to their sexual behavior, drug use, and negative family relationships. Girls, and especially girls of color, get blamed. Meanwhile, when describing boys, probation officers were less likely to see their criminal behaviors as coming from these sources. As Levintova puts it, the justice system sees boy’s behaviors as “lifestyle choices” while the morals of girls are punished.

The disparate prosecution of status offenses sheds light on the deeply gendered ways our criminal justice works. And these offenses end up having a disastrous and long-lasting impact on girls:

Even a brief period in detention can lead to mental and
physical health issues, higher unemployment rates, lower lifetime
earnings, and substance abuse. The moral judgment that underlies the charges girls face can also change how they see themselves. “Once they internalize that they are ‘bad girls,'” says [Jeannette] Pai-Espinosa, “it almost creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The bill’s sponsors in the House are hopeful that the legislation can reach President Obama’s desk, but some legislators are strongly opposed.

Protecting visitation and mail in Massachusetts prisons

The Massachusetts prisons system wants to make it harder to visit and harder to mail materials to incarcerated people. We tell them that's a bad idea.

by Joshua Aiken, September 28, 2016

Incarcerated people and their families are more likely to succeed if they are allowed and encouraged to remain in touch.

Unfortunately, the Massachusetts Department of Corrections is proposing new regulations that will make it harder for families to stay in touch. The proposed amendments would restrict the number of people allowed on a pre-approved visitation list, subject private attorneys’ correspondence with their incarcerated clients to unconstitutional review, and limit incarcerated peoples’ ability to receive more than five pages a day of photocopied material.

Tomorrow, at a public hearing, the Department will be taking comments on these and other proposed amendments to the Code of Massachusetts Regulations. Today, I submitted two letters on behalf of the Prison Policy Initiative addressing these counterproductive proposals.

My letters make the case that:

1. The Department of Corrections should encourage, not discourage, written communication from loved ones.
2. Forcing incarcerated people to choose which members of their families and which of their friends can visit them isn’t just unnecessary. It’s wrong.

Why do we lock juveniles up for life and throw away the key? Race plays a big part.

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences people under 18 to die behind bars. Which states do it, and why?

by Joshua Aiken, September 15, 2016

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences people under 18 to die behind bars. The Supreme Court has twice declared many of these sentences to be unconstitutional, but some states are resisting the Court’s required reforms. (In 2012, the Court struck down mandatory juvenile life without parole sentences. Earlier this year, the Court made that decision retroactive.)

While a number of states continue to use life without parole sentences for juveniles, new research shows that those juveniles are largely and increasingly people of color. A recent study by researchers from the Phillips Black Project found that people of color are overrepresented in the juvenile life without parole population “in ways perhaps unseen in any other aspect of our criminal justice system.”

Young black people are hit hardest by prosecutors’ punitive approach. This is unsurprising. Black children are more likely to be punished by their teachers for the same behaviors, are 2.3x more likely to be referred to law enforcement by school officials, and 3x more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers.

Being sentenced to die behind bars, however, is especially egregious. The Phillips Black Project found that black youth are twice as likely to receive a juvenile life without parole sentence compared to their white peers for committing the same crime.

Significantly, the researchers found that racial bias exists in the prosecutorial and judicial phases of the criminal justice system. Controlling for the fact that black youth have more encounters with the police, this study compared the number of black and white juveniles life without parole sentences against the number of relevant arrests.

By focusing only on the disparate outcomes that occur after the moment of arrest, the Philips Black Project researchers call attention to how prosecutors and courts fail to fairly determine guilt, innocence and punishment.

The Philips Black Project data controls for differences in policing practices to identify increasingly racially disparate outcomes that originate with prosecutors and the courts.

This finding gives new urgency to the 2014 findings of psychologists in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that black youth are generally less likely to be seen as innocent and more likely to be perceived as adults. This result was particularly strong when black youth were accused of a serious crime.

The good news is that juvenile life without parole sentences are falling out of favor; at least eighteen states have abolished the sentence altogether. Sadly, there are a handful of states that have steadfastly held onto the punishment. Just nine states account for four out of every five cases.

Legislators in these states have been remarkably resistant to reform. Take Louisiana for instance. This June, after passing the House with a resounding 83-2 vote, a Senator filibustered the bill with just ten minutes left in the legislative session. For the thousands serving these sentences, the next legislative session, and a chance at a second chance, can’t come soon enough.

Juvenile life without parole sentences are not only irredeemably harsh but are also indicative of the racial biases ingrained in our criminal justice system. Below I’ve put together graphs showing just how overrepresented people of color are in eight of the nine states responsible for the vast majority of juvenile life without parole cases. (California does not provide data on the race and gender of its juvenile life without parole population.)

Note: In order to calculate the national and state-level people of color population, I used 2015 U.S. Census data as to match the data collection period of the Mills, Dorn, Hritz study. Additionally, my use of people of color is based on analyzing Census data for all respondents who do not identify as ‘Non-Hispanic White.’

We’re hiring! Join the Prison Policy Initiative team

Prison Policy Initiative is looking for a new Policy & Communications Associate!

by Alison Walsh, September 9, 2016

Are you interested in joining our dedicated team to produce cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization? Do you want to shape innovative advocacy campaigns and spark critical discourse to create a more just society?

If so, consider our Policy & Communications Associate (link no longer available) position.

Please spread the word!

Making a mountain out of a molehill: murder rate analysis

More and more people are talking about an uptick in murder and crime. Is there cause for alarm? No.

by Wendy Sawyer, September 8, 2016

More and more people are talking about an uptick in murder and crime. Is there cause for alarm?

No.

While murder is up in some cities, and in cities like Chicago significantly, there isn’t a crime wave and it’s certainly not being caused by the proliferation of citizens recording the police.

Looked at historically, murder is much less common than it used to be; and the small increase from 2014 to 2015 resembles the usual annual fluctuations. This minor change does not justify FBI Director James Comey’s declaration, “Holy cow do we have a problem” or Donald Trump’s tweet that “inner city crime is reaching record levels.”

The following chart shows that after a rapid drop in the 1990s, the number of murders in the U.S.’s ten largest cities have remained at or near record lows:

For most cities, murder is much lower now than during the 1980s or 1990s. The data for 1985-2014 comes from the FBI. The FBI has not published the 2015 full year data yet, so I relied on data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which historically is very similar if slightly higher than the FBI’s figures. For that reason, this graph may overstate the increase in murder in 2015 in these cities.

While there is a notable rise in murder in Chicago (15% higher in 2015, and on track to exceed that in 2016), any discussion of the number of murders in Chicago needs to start with the fact that there have been half as many murders each year in the last decade than during the early 1990s.

It’s certainly true that a lot of major cities had increases in murder in 2015; but these were mostly small increases. In the historical view, murder remains at a record low.

Data sources: I compiled the totals for murder and non-negligent manslaughter from all agencies serving populations over 1,000,000 for 1985-2014 from the FBI UCR data. Data for 1985-2012 were available using the Data Tool, and totals for the same agencies for 2013 and 2014 were compiled from Crime in the United States 2013 and Crime in the United States 2014. Because the UCR full year report for 2015 has not yet been released, I used the totals published by the Major Cities Chiefs Association for 2015.

Prison Policy Initiative is growing!

Prison Policy Initiative is excited to welcome two new staff members!

by Alison Walsh, September 2, 2016

Please welcome our new Policy Fellow, Joshua Aiken, and our new Policy Analyst, Wendy Sawyer!

Joshua recently graduated with a Master’s in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and a Master’s in U.S. History from the University of Oxford, and he holds a Bachelor’s in American Culture Studies and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis. Joshua also studied solitary confinement and mandatory minimum policies as an advocacy intern for Human Rights Watch, and he worked as an oral history intern for the Missouri History Museum.

Wendy earned a Master’s in Criminal Justice from Northeastern University and a Bachelor’s in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts. She has worked as an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York and as a research associate for the Institute on Race and Justice in Massachusetts.

Joshua and Wendy will be taking the lead on exciting new reports and explainers for our National Incarceration Briefing Series, so stay tuned for updates!

Welcome, Joshua and Wendy!

Meeting new board members: Nora Demleitner

Professor of Law Nora Demleitner explains why she joined the Prison Policy Initiative board.

by Alison Walsh, August 23, 2016

We are excited to welcome Nora Demleitner to the Prison Policy Initiative board! Nora is a Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. We asked her a few questions about her work on sentencing and comparative criminal law, as well as what motivated her to become involved with the Prison Policy Initiative.

Why did you decide to join the Prison Policy Initiative board?

Nora Demleitner: Peter’s courage and vision impressed me when he started the Prison Policy Initiative. He is the model of a law graduate on a mission, willing to do what it takes to make a goal become reality. He has built the Prison Policy Initiative from a fledgling single-issue one-man operation into a multi-faceted research and advocacy organization with great impact. How could I not want to be working with a smart and insightful group of people on issues of enormous importance to the country?

What does your work focus on? And what’s the connection between that work and the Prison Policy Initiative?

Nora Demleitner: My research focuses on sentencing and collateral sanctions, often with a comparative angle. I have worked on sentencing issues for over two decades, after a law school sentencing seminar and the prison project there inspired me to learn more and to help bring a different attitude to our criminal justice system. I joined the Federal Sentencing Reporter as an editor, and later became the lead author on a casebook on sentencing, Sentencing Law and Policy.

On my collateral sanctions work, I initially focused on felon disenfranchisement and then turned to restrictions on sex offenders. I also looked at the panoply of collateral sanctions that make it virtually impossible for someone with a criminal record to be ever again recognized as a full member of our society. That perpetual exclusion carries a host of negative consequences for the individual, their families and communities, and ultimately for all of us.

Frequently I compare our practices to those of other countries, especially in Western Europe. Our punitiveness and our unwillingness to accept someone who made a mistake back into society stand out. We are our own worst enemy, and I want to support the Prison Policy Initiative in helping bring about necessary change. We need to learn from best practices here and abroad and infuse our criminal justice system again with humanity. Change is necessary as the current approaches too frequently penalize the poor and disadvantaged, minority and other diverse communities. Our criminal justice system cannot and should not be expected to remedy other social ills, ranging from failing schools to an ineffective mental health system.

What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?

Nora Demleitner: The Prison Policy Initiative is the mouse that roars. How can such a small organization, located outside the typical locations for successful not-for-profits makes such a difference? I credit Peter’s vision, the team he has built, tenacity and grit, an intuitive sense of how to proceed to make the most difference, and a drive for results. The Prison Policy Initiative has taken on topics of great import – the Census count of inmates or the actions of the prison phone industry, for example – and worked on changing unfair practices. That success breeds recognition and further success. It also focuses attention on exploitative and unfair practices in novel ways. The Prison Policy Initiative’s attention is as often focused on improving the lot of the individual offender and their families as it is on protecting core values of our society, such as equal representation.

It is exciting to see an organization that is constantly keeping an eye out for topics that fit its mission. In addition, the Prison Policy Initiative has been spreading its wings in other ways. The relatively recent addition of the Research Clearinghouse, a database of empirical criminal justice reports, is one such example. I love the e-mails that assure that I won’t miss leading reports and relevant information on a host of criminal justice topics.

What’s something that you wish more people knew about the Prison Policy Initiative?

Nora Demleitner: For the Prison Policy Initiative it is not about garnering accolades and acclaim. It is about results, about being a catalyst for positive change in the criminal justice area, and about distributing knowledge and insight.

Two things stand out for me: First, it has been invigorating to see how a single person with the drive to tackle injustice and abuse can do so successfully. What a role model Peter is! I wished more law students and young lawyers knew about him and his story.

Second, even those who may ideologically disagree or be uncertain about their position on some of the issues for which the Prison Policy Initiative advocates, should know about the Research Clearinghouse. It is an amazing resource, and I encourage everyone to sign up – today.

Supporting the Prison Policy Initiative makes you feel good because they get results on issues that matter.

The criminal justice system is riddled with racial disparities

These 5 graphs break down just how riddled the U.S. criminal justice system is with racial disparities.

by Alison Walsh, August 15, 2016

Race is a defining characteristic of the criminal justice system.

It is common knowledge that Blacks are disproportionately represented in prison. Looking at different types of incarceration sentences shows us how pervasive these disparities really are. This slideshow scrolls through the various incarceration sentences one may receive compared to the U.S. population, broken down by race.

Once a person is sentenced to jail, we see that Blacks are overrepresented and Whites are underrepresented, compared to the U.S. population as a whole. This disparity endures in state and federal prison sentences, life sentences, life without parole sentences, and in the death row population.

Data sources:

• U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts (Using July 1, 2014 estimates)
• Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates at Midyear 2014
• Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2014
• The Sentencing Project, No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America (2008)
• NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., Death Row U.S.A. (2016)

The data:

Meeting new board members: Dan Kopf

Learn more about Dan Kopf, the newest member of Prison Policy Initiative's board.

by Alison Walsh, July 25, 2016

We are pleased to welcome Dan Kopf to the Prison Policy Initiative board. Dan is a data scientist in California and a writer at Priceonomics who has been a member of our Young Professionals Network since February 2015. He is the co-author of several Prison Policy Initiative reports, including The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration, Separation by Bars and Miles: Visitation in state prisons, Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the pre-incarceration incomes of the imprisoned, and Detaining the Poor: How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time.

Why did you decide to join the Prison Policy Initiative board?

Dan Kopf: The Prison Policy Initiative does incredible work advocating for the end of mass incarceration and the humane treatment of those who are incarcerated – and they do it on a shoestring. I joined the board because I wanted to support, in whatever way possible, an organization I admire.

What does your work focus on? And what’s the connection between that work and the Prison Policy Initiative?

Dan Kopf: I am a data journalist focused on reporting statistical trends in society. Just like the Prison Policy Initiative, my work entails communicating complex topics clearly and in a manner that excites the public.

What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?

Dan Kopf: I have been most impressed by the dedication and combination of skills of the staff. This is a group of people that have the rare combination of communication skills, facility with technology and data, and passion.

Maryland proposes – and promptly withdraws – plan to ban letters to people incarcerated in the state’s prisons

A now-withdrawn proposal would have made Maryland the first state to ban letters to people in state facilities.

by Alison Walsh, July 20, 2016

You may have missed it, but for a short time in Maryland, an alarming policy was on the table. The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services proposed the first total ban on letters to incarcerated people in state facilities. Claiming that the prison system needed to stop the spread of drugs hidden in envelopes, prison officials recommended restricting all correspondence to postcards. Previously, only county jails had ever introduced such a shortsighted and counterproductive policy.

We documented the many reasons why postcards are not an acceptable substitute for letters from home in our 2013 report, Return to Sender: Postcard-only mail policies in jail. Families limited to postcards have no way to shield confidential information or attach drawings and photographs. Plus, regular correspondence by postcard is much less cost-effective. We calculated that each word written on a postcard is about 34 times more expensive to send than a word written on letter-sized paper.

Fortunately, the ACLU of Maryland responded swiftly. The civil liberties organization pointed out that a letter ban would have consequences far beyond the state’s prison walls.

The implications of such a sweeping regulation cannot be overstated. The policy you propose would affect not only the 21,000-plus people in your custody, but also the tens of thousands of Marylanders who are connected with them. The scheme would forbid a pastor from writing to a parishioner who is now incarcerated—indeed, it would forbid letters from organizations that provide all kinds of supportive services to those who are inside. The proposal would rob families of one of the most profoundly significant forms of communication in our society. Under the new scheme, an ailing mother could not send her son a letter for him to hold onto after she is gone. A teen could not write her mom to tell her the things she can’t say in a visit.

The negative publicity worked. Shortly after the ACLU of Maryland issued their response, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services withdrew the request.

The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services is withdrawing its request for limiting mail to postcards for offenders in our facilities.

Secretary Stephen Moyer will form a focus group to determine the best options for eliminating contraband coming into our facilities through the mail.

The group will also research the most effective procedures to ensure the safety of our staff and those in our custody.

The withdrawal is a positive development, but, as the ACLU of Maryland points out, the proposal never should have been under serious consideration.

We are glad that the Department of Public Safety and Corrections is dropping an extreme proposal to ban incoming personal letters. But this should never have come up in the first place. The proposed ban comes on top of other changes that have harmed families’ ability to be in touch, like visitation rules. We are urging the Department to ensure that it is working in ongoing and meaningful partnership with families who can best advise the Department about how to ensure efforts to address security concerns do the least damage possible to families. The Department’s proposed workgroup is an excellent place to start.

For more on the now-defunct proposal, including the perspectives of formerly incarcerated people and their families, see the ACLU of Maryland’s full press release.