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Frustratingly little data exists about discretionary parole systems in the U.S. — a gap that hinders policymakers, incarcerated people, advocates, and journalists attempting to navigate the system, assess its effectiveness, and champion meaningful reforms.
To fill the gap, the Prison Policy Initiative released a new report, Parole in Perspective, designed to pull back the curtain on how discretionary parole works in 35 states (the states that still use it to release people serving a wide range of sentences). Part one of this report explores the makeup of parole boards and how they conduct hearings. Part two dives into the data on parole hearings and grant rates in these states, and the criteria that boards use in determining whether someone will be released.
If you are a journalist reporting on parole, our report can help — whether you’re just looking for an introduction to these systems or trying to investigate them in depth.
Parole in Perspective answers basic questions like:
How many people are granted parole in your state every year? How has this changed over time?
Howmuch data does your state publish about parole release, compared to other states?
Our report can also serve as a starting point for answering more complicated questions about parole, such as:
How are parole boards making decisions?Our appendix table breaks down which criteria boards are required to take into account in each state. For instance, some boards are required to consider a person’s age — a relevant factor as prison populations get older and as a growing number of states recognize youth under 25 as less culpable for their actions. Importantly, most boards place a lot of weight on factors that the applicant has no control over, such as the original crime for which they are locked up.
Are punitive sentencing reforms forcing people to wait longer for parole hearings? While our report does not discuss such reforms directly, we show that in almost every state, parole boards are holding significantly fewer hearings today than they did several years ago — suggesting that various factors, including “Truth in Sentencing”-style reforms, are having an impact.
How much time is the board likely spending on each individual case? Our report shows how many people have parole hearings in an average year, by state; as well as how many members each state’s parole board has. States vary widely in the size of their parole boards and how many members are required to hold a hearing.
Is the availability of housing and programs shaping parole grants? For example, our report shows which parole boards take someone’s reentry plan into account, which depends on housing and other services. The availability of in-prison programming also influences grant rates in states that consider someone’s accomplishments behind bars.
How is the format of parole hearings affecting decisions? As we explain in the report, a growing number of states are transitioning to virtual hearings — and a handful do not allow applicants to be present at their hearing at all.
Questions about discretionary parole can come up on a wide range of stories: It is a key aspect of timely issues such as the aging prison population and the “tough-on-crime” creep among elected officials. We hope this report serves as a useful tool for reporters seeking to shine much-needed light on these systems. And for any questions about parole systems that the report does not answer, we’re here to help. Reporters can reach out to us through our contact page for quick assistance exploring these and other issues.
Despite their differences, all discretionary parole systems have serious design flaws and most are steadily releasing fewer people, a new report shows.
October 7, 2025
A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative pulls back the curtain on parole release systems, providing the most accessible and comprehensive source to date for comparing how these essential — and often dysfunctional — release mechanisms are set up in 35 states. The report, Parole in Perspective, reveals that parole releases are on the decline in nearly every state that uses discretionary parole, highlighting elements of the process that contribute to this urgent problem.
Parole in Perspective comprises two parts, each honing in on different elements of parole release. The first explores the makeup of boards and how they conduct hearings. The second dives into new data on hearings and grants, and the factors that boards consider — including their discretion — in determining whether someone will be released.
The report contains four essential data tables showing:
Parole in Perspective coincides with the Prison Policy Initiative and MacArthur Justice Center’s release of their Principles for Parole Reform, a guiding “North Star” document designed to help activists and policymakers identify priorities for reform in their states.
Both the new report and the Principles for Parole Reform identify crucial flaws in parole systems today, including:
Relying too heavily on factors outside of applicants’ control — such as “the severity of the offense” or a perception that release would “diminish the seriousness of the crime”;
Making irrational parole decisions in favor of keeping applicants locked up, often flying in the face of what risk assessment tools recommend;
Stacking boards with law enforcement professionals, while ignoring the perspective of people with experiences of incarceration;
Increasingly holding virtual rather than face-to-face hearings, or worse, not affording parole applicants a hearing at all.
“Despite their differences, all discretionary parole systems have serious design flaws that lead to an unfair preparation and hearing process for incarcerated people,” said report author Leah Wang. “By shining a light on boards and their practices, we hope to lay a path toward making these systems real tools for decarceration.”
The number of imprisoned women globally has grown 60% since 2000. The United States remains a major driver of this population, a new report shows.
September 23, 2025
Every U.S. state incarcerates more women per capita than most independent nations of the world, a new report from the Prison Policy Initiative shows. Collectively, the United States accounts for 4 percent of the world’s women, but holds one-quarter of women who are incarcerated worldwide.
States of Women’s Incarceration: The Global Context 2025 provides a comprehensive women’s incarceration rate for every U.S. state — including prisons and jails, youth confinement facilities, tribal jails, immigrant detention centers, and other types of incarceration — comparing states to each other and to countries of the world. The report offers a crucial lens through which to view the criminalization of women, who are a small minority of all incarcerated people in the U.S., but whose incarceration rates today are at near-historic highs.
The Prison Policy Initiative’s report allows viewers to observe that, for example:
South Dakota — with the highest incarceration rate in the U.S. — as well as Montana and Idaho have higher women’s incarceration rates than any country in the world.
Women in Kentucky face almost the same incarceration rate as women in El Salvador, a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.
New Jersey — which has one of the lowest women’s incarceration rates in the U.S. — is on par with the United Arab Emirates, a nation where nonmarital sex can result in a prison sentence of six months for women.
States of Women’s Incarceration homes in on some of this country’s closest international allies to show just how starkly the U.S. stands out globally. Most states, the report shows, incarcerate women at more than double the rates of these “peer” countries.
“Women’s mass incarceration is a global concern — the number of imprisoned women has grown nearly 60% since the year 2000,” said report author Emily Widra. “With this country’s war on drugs, our treatment of mental illness as a problem for police to deal with, and our criminalization of poverty, it is no wonder that the U.S. continues to drive this problem and to account for a quarter of the world’s incarcerated women.”
New report explains how many system-involved youth are confined, where they are held, under what conditions, and for what offenses.
August 25, 2025
A new Prison Policy Initiative report provides the most up-to-date picture of how many youth are detained and committed in the U.S., highlighting the persistent overincarceration of Black and Indigenous youth in a system that, in recent decades, has made great strides in reducing youth confinement overall. Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2025 explores the conditions facing 31,900 kids today — most of whom are held in youth prisons and jails — and offers data on youth confinement by offense type in all 50 states.
Over the past 25 years, the number of youth in confinement in the U.S. has fallen by more than 70 percent — impressive progress compared to the adult criminal legal system, whose populations have changed very little overall in that same period. Nevertheless, the U.S. still confines youth at a rate more than twice the global average, and its juvenile legal system mirrors the adult system in many alarming ways:
Severe racial disparities. 47% of boys and 39% of girls in juvenile facilities are Black — a level of disparity that has actually worsened in recent years. And even excluding youth held in Indian country facilities, Indigenous children make up 3% of girls and 2% of boys in juvenile facilities, despite comprising less than 1% of all youth nationally.
Large numbers of youth held pretrial or for minor offenses. Nearly 9,000 youth today are locked up before they’ve had a trial, and thousands are in detention for minor, low-level offenses. Select states — such as Indiana, which accounts for almost one-quarter of kids locked up for running away; and Texas and California, which hold 26% of kids confined for technical violations of parole — contribute heavily to this problem.
Prison-like conditions. While the number of kids in large facilities (holding 100 youth or more) has fallen steeply in the last few years, nearly 4 out of every 5 confined kids are held in youth or adult prisons and jails — an increase since 2017, when 65% of confined youth were held in such places.
“States have made astonishing progress in the last 25 years in reducing youth incarceration, but the fact remains that prisons and jails are not places for kids,” said report author Brian Nam-Sonenstein. “Confinement is still a traumatizing experience for youth — most of whom already have histories of trauma — and one that leaves them worse off than before their incarceration.”
Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2025 includes a first-of-its-kind, 50-state table showing the number of youth confined for various types of offenses, shining particular light on “status offenses” (behaviors that are not law violations for adults). Other key features of the report include:
Sidebars breaking down the different types of youth confinement facilities, and terminology around youth incarceration that differs from the adult system;
Infographics “zooming in” on certain slices of the pie, such as youth held for low-level offenses and youth in highly restrictive facilities;
A section highlighting some of the reforms that have led to a more than 70% drop in confined youth populations, and noting how these same reforms could be applied to the adult criminal legal system.
“Disturbingly, some states today are threatening to double down on failed policies that created the youth confinement crisis in the first place,” Nam-Sonenstein said. “Seeing the full picture of this system should remove any doubt that it casts far too wide a net, one that disproportionately ensnares Black and brown youth. State policymakers would do well to emulate the reforms that have shrunk this system and apply these lessons to adult prisons and jails.”
A new study analyzing a national survey of youth in custody reveals stark disparities in rates of staff physical assault among Black and neurodivergent youth.
Even though the rate of youth incarceration is more than three times lower than it was twenty years ago, youth of color and youth with disabilities are still overrepresented in custody — and these disparities are getting worse.1
These children were already among the most vulnerable to involvement in the juvenile legal system, but as the system decarcerates, their vulnerability is compounded by the fact that they are also among the most likely to suffer abuse while confined, including being violently victimized by adults.
New research underscores the extent to which staff violence against incarcerated neurodivergent youth of color is substantially worse than it is for white neurotypical youth.2 Brianna Suslovic and her colleagues at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, identified significant disparities in the likelihood of staff physical assault between confined youth of different racial identities, and between neurodivergent and neurotypical incarcerated youth. They found that the odds of Black youth reporting staff physical assault are 79% higher than the odds of white youth reporting assault, and the odds of neurodivergent youth reporting staff assault are 59% higher than the odds of neurotypical youth reporting assault. Even more alarmingly, for neurodivergent youth of color, the odds of reporting staff physical assault are more than twice the odds of their white, neurotypical peers.
These findings, forthcoming in the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, are based on data collected by the federal government in the 2018 National Survey of Youth in Custody. Suslovic and her co-authors have made a useful contribution to existing research because they use self-reported data to examine how structural forces and marginalization — in this case, racism and ableism — shape experiences of youth confinement. The evidence they present underscores the need to keep those at the highest risk of abuse at the forefront of decarceration efforts, and to ensure they don’t enter youth jails and prisons in the first place.
Methodology
The underlying data in the study are from the 2018 National Survey of Youth in Custody, a nationally representative survey of 6,910 youth in 332 publicly- and privately-operated facilities that house adjudicated3 youth across the country.4 The survey is intended to gather data on the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault in juvenile facilities under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA). Data are self-reported by youth participants, and the survey collects information on the racial identity, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, and diagnoses of several mental health and developmental disorders.
The researchers used survey data to identify respondents who reported any diagnosis by a doctor, counselor, or other professional of ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, a learning disability, Autism, or Asperger’s Syndrome, which the researchers used to categorize participants as “neurodivergent.”5 Suslovic and her colleagues estimated the prevalence of staff physical assault of neurodivergent and neurotypical — or non-neurodivergent — youth across racial categories based on the response to the survey question that asked youth to report if they had ever been “kicked, punched, hit, and otherwise physically assaulted” by facility staff. Given the limited information on physical assault by facility staff in juvenile facilities,6 the researchers rely on youth reporting assault as a proxy for the frequency of assaults in youth confinement. This requires an assumption that the likelihood of confidentially reporting an assault is generally consistent across demographic categories in the survey. The researchers also controlled for a number of variables that may be associated with increased risk of victimization including history of prior physical abuse, assignment of a caseworker or social worker, age, education level, gender identity, and sexual orientation.7
There are some inherent limitations to this study. First, the National Survey of Youth in Custody relies on self-reported data, which is susceptible to over- and under-reporting, but is generally found to provide accurate estimates.8 Second, the researchers’ definition of “neurodivergence” may differ from other definitions, as there is no general consensus in the literature about the specific diagnoses and conditions of neurodivergence. Third, the racial, ethnic, and gender identities of youth were limited to the categories presented in the administered survey, which therefore limits responses to a set number of possibilities of identity categories for race, ethnicity, and gender.9
Confined youth of color and neurodivergent youth disproportionately experience violence at the hands of facility staff
The study finds that children of color and neurodivergent children are disproportionately confined in juvenile facilities, and that neurodivergent children of color in particular are more likely to report being physically assaulted by staff than white, neurotypical children.
Among white, Black, and Hispanic confined youth, those identified as neurodivergent — meaning they’ve ever been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, a learning disability, Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome — are more likely to have been physically assaulted by staff, based on self-reporting in the 2018 National Survey of Youth in Custody. Source: Suslovic, B., Shankar, S., & Gottlieb, A. (2025). Race/Ethnicity, Neurodivergence, and Odds of Staff Physical Assault in Youth Carceral Settings. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. https://doi.org/10.1086/734616.
Overall, more than 1 in 10 incarcerated youth report being assaulted by staff. However, among neurodivergent confined youth, a greater proportion (15%) reported being assaulted by staff. In fact, the odds of neurodivergent youth reporting violent victimization by staff were 59% higher than the odds of their neurotypical peers. In the analysis across race, the researchers found that Black youth have odds of reporting staff physical assault that are 79% higher than white youth, with almost 1 in every 6 Black youth reporting assault, compared to 1 in 9 white youth.
The researchers also found that across almost all racial categories, staff physical assault is more prevalent among neurodivergent youth.10Neurodivergent youth of color experience a distressing 120% higher odds of reporting being assaulted by staff than their white, neurotypical peers. This is particularly alarming, as it indicates the extent to which the children most vulnerable to involvement in the juvenile system are made additionally vulnerable to violence at the hands of adults in power.
Despite great strides in youth decarceration, longstanding disparities in confinement are getting worse
The great strides made in youth decarceration over the past twenty years have not been evenly distributed. People of color and those with disabilities, who have often been primary targets for surveillance, policing, and incarceration,11 still represent a greater portion of the dwindling confined youth population than their white and neurotypical peers. In fact, their overrepresentation in the system is growing, and they continue to face the very kinds of abuses that have motivated decarceration of youth jails and prisons in the first place.
The conditions in youth jails and prisons — which can include solitary confinement, physical abuse, sexual abuse, a lack of programming and services, and excessive use of force — make juvenile confinement particularly dangerous for youth with disabilities, and can exacerbate mental and behavioral health concerns.12 Overall, confined youth face exceptional risk of victimization by facility staff: systemic maltreatment — including physical abuse and excessive use of force by staff — has been reported in juvenile facilities in 29 states since 2000, and a 2010 survey found 22% of confined youth reported that they were afraid that a staff member will physically attack them.13
The data from this newest study support these concerning trends, further quantifying the overrepresentation of youth of color and neurodivergent youth in confinement, and characterizing their mistreatment in a shrinking system.
Youth with disabilities are disproportionately locked up
More than two-thirds of confined youth met the study’s criteria for neurodivergence, which the researchers defined as any diagnosis by a doctor, counselor, or other professional of ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, a learning disability, Autism, or Asperger’s Syndrome. The prevalence of many of these diagnoses is much higher among children in custody than in the national youth population:14
In addition, more than half (55%) of neurodivergent confined youth were Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.
While youth with disabilities represent 17% of national K-12 enrollment, they represent almost one quarter (24%) of confined youth.15 Children with disabilities face some of the highest rates of arrest in schools, in part because police are often called to respond to youth who have challenges with processing emotions and information, communication, and disability-related behaviors. Youth of color with disabilities are arrested at even higher rates in schools, with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander boys and Black boys with disabilities facing rates four to six times the average arrest rate.16
Racial disparities are increasing in youth confinement
Racial disparities have long been a feature of youth incarceration, and they’re only getting worse. In 2003, Black youth accounted for 38% of youth detained or committed, and in 2023, this increased to over 46%. In addition, youth of more than one race accounted for only 1% of confined youth in 2006 (the first year juvenile data included that race category), and that proportion has more than doubled as of 2023.
Some of these disparities can be traced back to differences in the policing of kids of different races and ethnicities. As is the case with Black adults, Black children are particularly targeted with overcharging and harsher treatment, making them far more likely to be incarcerated than white children. Black children, and especially Black girls, are also subject to an added burden of adultification: when a child is perceived as older, more culpable, and more responsible than their peers. Similar to the racist “super predator” myth that was used to rationalize harsh punishments in the 1990s by portraying Black youth as more violent and unruly than their white peers, adultification leads to harsher consequences within the juvenile legal system.
Conclusion
The findings from Brianna Suslovic and her colleagues represent important contributions to the existing research, highlighting how some of the most vulnerable children are funneled into the juvenile legal system, where they face a number of dangers, including physical assault by staff.
Violent victimization is the product of several factors in youth confinement. Almost one-third of the study sample reported physical abuse by an adult prior to confinement, and we know that prior victimization is a strong indicator of subsequent victimization while in custody. Research also shows that the quality of relationships with facility staff can influence the likelihood of victimization — and other positive and negative outcomes for incarcerated youth and adults — and the vast majority (89%) of confined youth reported that they were assigned a case manager or counselor. Educational access and engagement have been identified as protective factors against maltreatment for children as well. Despite evidence that people who achieve higher levels of education while incarcerated are more likely to experience positive outcomes after release, less than one-third of confined youth have completed high school, even though more than 60% of confined youth are over 17 years old.17 Many of the same factors that make children more vulnerable to criminal legal system involvement also make them more vulnerable to suffering abuse while confined, and this study calls particular attention to some of the youth most disproportionately at risk of violent victimization by adults.
While the number of confined youth has been declining for years, the confined population still reflects the racist and ableist trends of the nation’s criminal legal system: children with histories of abuse, lower education levels, learning disabilities, cognitive disorders, disabilities, and children of color are disproportionately locked up. Those are the children who remain in juvenile facilities where they are at heightened risk of physical assault at the hands of the people charged with their safety and wellbeing. Given the pronounced failure of youth incarceration to significantly reduce “delinquent” behaviors and the dangers they experience behind bars, the findings from this recent study signal a need to reevaluate our nation’s use of incarceration for children.
As explained in detail in the Methodology section of this briefing, the study authors define “neurodivergent” as any diagnosis by a doctor, counselor, or other professional of ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, a learning disability, Autism, or Asperger’s Syndrome. “Neurotypical” youth are youth who report no history of any of those diagnoses. The study authors also analyzed the findings by race and ethnicity: white, Black, Hispanic, other races (including Asian American and Indigenous), and two or more races. For some findings, they report the differences between white youth and youth of color (defined as all non-white race and ethnicity categories). ↩
Because this survey focuses on facilities holding adjudicated youth (or youth whom the juvenile court has determined have committed the act with which they are charged) it does not necessarily reflect the experience of youth awaiting adjudication, such as those in pretrial juvenile detention. ↩
The researchers were only able to use the survey results from 5,718 youth (83%) that responded to the necessary questions for their analysis. ↩
Prior to the administration of the National Survey of Youth in Custody, the newest iteration of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-5, was published in 2013. The DSM-5 is the main guide for mental health and brain-related conditions and disorders. In that iteration of the reference book, “Autism” and “Asperger’s Syndrome” were consolidated into “Autism spectrum disorder” to encompass the wide range of symptoms and the severity of those symptoms. ↩
Unlike the reports about sexual victimization of youth in confinement that come from the same dataset (the National Survey of Youth in Custody) there are no reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reporting on the prevalence of substantiated vs. reported incidents of physical assault by staff. ↩
Sexual and gender minority youth are at elevated risk for staff sexual victimization while in custody, although there is little evidence regarding the prevalence of staff physical assault across any demographic. ↩
The survey may not capture all trans or gender nonconforming youth, as they may have identified as “male” or “female,” leaving the researchers no ability to delineate cisgender and transgender youth. ↩
Rates of reporting staff physical assault are higher among neurotypical youth for only one racial category: youth of more than one race. ↩
While the study included diagnoses of dyslexia in the definition of neurodivergent, there is little consensus on the national prevalence of dyslexia to compare the findings to outside of the confinement setting. ↩
The 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection from the U.S. Department of Education defines disability based on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and includes autism, hearing and visual impairments, intellectual disability, severe orthopedic impairment, specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairment, and traumatic brain injuries.
This estimate of 24% is likely an underestimate of the actual proportion of confined children with disabilities: somesourcesreport that up to 70% of confined youth have disabilities (the definitions of disabilities frequently vary between studies). ↩
While Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and Black girls face the highest arrest rates among girls with disabilities, arrest rates across all races are highest for boys and nearly 85% of confined youth are boys. ↩
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.
One out of every three people behind bars is being held in a local jail, yet the 3,000+ sheriffs that control them operate with little to no oversight — and the consequences are deadly. Hundreds of people, many of whom are held pretrial and have not been convicted of a crime, die each year in local jails from suicide, overdoses, violence, and neglect.
Safety Bound, an organization that works to reimagine the role of sheriffs, has created a policy platform with seven demands that advocates can use to curb the unchecked power of sheriffs, reduce jail populations, and improve conditions inside these facilities. We helped to support this effort by providing insights and research on the health harms of incarceration and ways communities can avoid costly and ineffective jail construction projects.
The seven demands are listed below, and are explained in more depth on Safety Bound’s website.
Towards Accountability — Sheriffs should improve jail operations and conditions to prevent injuries and deaths.
People in jails have high rates of mental illness, chronic health conditions, and substance use, which jails are not equipped to provide care for.
Towards Freedom — Sheriffs should reduce jail populations and oppose jail expansions
Investing in jail construction is not a solution to social problems but rather doubles down on old policies that caused these problems to begin with.
Towards Immigrant Justice — Sheriffs should end all voluntary cooperation with any and all immigration enforcement.
Local jails play an important role in enabling federal agencies like ICE and the U.S. Marshals to detain people for immigration reasons.
Traffic stops are not only the most common type of police-initiated contact, but are common sites of police violence, impacting Black drivers more than any other racial group.
Towards Health — Sheriffs should advocate for alternative emergency response for mental health and substance use crises.
Despite how sheriffs repackage incarceration as care to justify jail expansion or budget increases, jails are not a substitute for treatment. A better solution is community-based support systems that address challenges before they become crises that result in incarceration.
Towards Democracy — Sheriffs should not take campaign donations from jail contractors.
Nationwide, sheriffs have received countless dollars in campaign donations from security and investigative companies, construction firms, medical services providers, telecom and tech companies, bail bonding companies, and even apparel and uniform manufacturers.
Towards Election Integrity — Sheriffs should act to protect election officials and voters from threats and violence that undermine the right to vote.
Elected officials, particularly at the local and state level, significantly shape the criminal legal system and elections are an important tool in the fight against mass incarceration.
The organization is also hosting a webinar on Thursday, August 14th, to explore each demand in depth. The organization’s partners — including our Policy & Advocacy team — will discuss how we can build a movement rooted in care and accountability.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Footnotes
Pres. Trump’s executive order uses the term “civil commitment.” However, for many the term “civil commitment” refers to the involuntary commitment of people convicted of sex-related crimes after completing their prison sentences. For clarity, in this piece we will be using the term “involuntary commitment” to refer to the President’s proposed actions. ↩
The new report explains how the Trump administration is using a longstanding loophole to circumvent sanctuary policies and obscure the full scale of its immigration actions.
July 30, 2025
This morning, the Prison Policy Initiative released Hiding in Plain Sight, a report revealing the crucial role that locally-run jails are playing in President Trump’s program of mass deportation — and why states and counties must do more to end cooperation. Building on the organization’s work explaining how county jails enable state and federal incarceration, this report breaks down the complicated overlap between local criminal justice and immigration, and offers detailed data tables showing the level of involvement in every state and in specific jails.
Key findings include:
The Trump administration is circumventing city and county sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It accomplishes this through a longstanding loophole: ICE and other federal agencies can refer people for federal prosecution on immigration-related “crimes” and thus use local jails’ contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service in sanctuary cities, counties, and states. In doing so, the Trump administration is transforming what are normally civil immigration matters into more serious federal crimes.
ICE data doesn’t show the full scale of immigrant detention in the U.S. While ICE detention data recorded 57,200 people on average in June 2025, the true count of people detained shows the overall crimmigration system is 45% larger, at around 83,400 people. That’s because ICE data does not account for people facing criminal immigration charges (as explained above), nor does it account for people held on ICE detainers, in some state detention facilities, or in overnight hold rooms.
Jails and police departments play a key role in criminalizing immigration by detaining people until ICE agents can make an arrest. ICE has capitalized on local detention of immigrants — often on minor charges or charges that would not lead to jail time for U.S. citizens (such as driving without a license) — to not only make more arrests, but to enhance the appearance of targeting “criminals.” Arrests in jails comprise 45% of ICE arrests since Trump’s inauguration in January.
“Many cities and states have tried to offer sanctuary for immigrants by refusing to rent jail space to ICE and opting out of the 287(g) program, but it is not enough,” said report author Jacob Kang-Brown. “The Trump administration is leveraging jails at a new scale, using local contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and existing policing practices in order to expand detention.”
For reporters who want to dig deeper into these trends in their own counties and states, the report includes data tables showing:
How many people are being held for ICE and the U.S. Marshals in over 600 local jails (and over 150 other facilities), the change in these populations from January to April 2025, and the share of all detained immigrants in every state being held by jails.
The rate of ICE arrests happening in jails, compared to other locations, in every state.
The number of immigrants arrested by the U.S. Marshals on various charge types over time — showing that a quickly-growing share of these people are being booked on charges related to their immigration status.
The per-diem payments by the U.S. Marshals to hundreds of local jails in exchange for housing immigrants and other federal pretrial detainees.
The report concludes by urging counties to end all of their collaborations with federal immigration detention agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, which has contracts with nearly 1,000 jails nationwide. Via their jails, local governments are — intentionally or not — providing the infrastructure for a massive attack on immigrants. But by resisting cooperation with President Trump’s racist deportation machine, counties and states also have the power to contain it.
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:
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
Every incarcerated person should have access to parole release systems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When a person is denied parole, they should be able to appear before the board again for reconsideration within a reasonable amount of time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People on supervision should have a variety of options for how to check in that allow for minimal disruptions to the re-entry process.
Supervision should not be indefinite; no person should be on supervision for the rest of their life after parole release.
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.
People on supervision should not be returned to prison solely for non-criminal conduct.
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.
