Our colleagues helped build momentum for criminal justice reform by providing key research and proposing reforms that could help our nation reduce its overuse of incarceration. Our favorites from 2015.
2015 was another year of growing momentum for ending mass incarceration. Our colleagues helped build that momentum by providing key research and proposing reforms that could help our nation reduce its overuse of incarceration. These are some of our favorite reports produced by our colleagues in 2015:
What Caused the Crime Decline? by Dr. Oliver Roeder, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, and Julia Bowling, Brennan Center for Justice February 2015 This groundbreaking 50-state report finds that we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns when it comes to incarceration as a crime-control strategy: at today’s levels, further incarceration will have a negligible effect on crime.
Incarceration’s Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America by Ram Subramanian, Ruth Delaney, Stephen Roberts, Nancy Fishman, and Peggy McGarry, Vera Institute of Justice February 2015 This report highlights some of the key points about jails, incarceration’s front door and the second largest slice of the criminal justice system. Also check out Vera’s recent interactive map allowing you to see jail population growth or decline in your county.
In Jail & In Debt: Ohio’s Pay-to-Stay Fees ACLU of Ohio Fall 2015 This ACLU of Ohio report finds that a majority of Ohio jails are charging people for their incarceration.
Electronic Monitoring Is Not the Answer: Critical Reflections on a Flawed Alternative, by James Kilgore, Center for Media Justice, October 2015. This is the most comprehensive review of the electronic monitoring industry in the context of mass incarceration and the expanding surveillance state.
And don’t forget to check out our reports page for this year’s original Prison Policy Initiative research.
Earlier today, we published our list of the best investigative criminal justice journalism of 2015. Here at the Prison Policy Initiative we enjoy seeing journalists, artists, advocates, the public, etc. use our research in new, clever ways. Today, we share some of our favorite stories of 2015 featuring our work and staff:
Editorial: F.C.C. Makes Telephone Calls for Inmates Cheaper by The New York Times Editorial Board The New York Times, October 26, 2015 Recognizing the FCC for its important step capping the rates of all calls home from prisons and jails, The New York Times Editorial Board calls for the FCC to do more to prevent future abuses:
There’s one big task left: to apply similar rules to newer technologies — like email, voice mail and person-to-person video — which are subject to the same kinds of abuses found in the telephone industry.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our January 2015 report on video visitation in prisons and jails, which was referenced in the editorial.
Screening visitors The Economist, January 24, 2015 Spurred by our report on video visitation, The Economist explains why the growth in video visitation isn’t necessarily a happy development for families:
Most jails let relatives make a few free video calls if these are conducted within the prison itself. But travelling a long way, only to sit behind a computer screen, is time-consuming and frustrating.
An offense that should come off the books by The Boston Globe Editorial Board The Boston Globe, September 21, 2015 Referring to our 2014 report, Suspending Common Sense in Massachusetts, The Boston Globe calls for the immediate repeal of automatic driver’s license suspensions for drug offenses unrelated to driving, an outdated law from the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Persuasiveness of a Chart Depends on the Reader, Not Just the Chart by Scott Berinato Harvard Business Review, May 27, 2015 Berinato highlights our chart comparing the incarceration rate of the U.S. to those of other founding NATO members as a good example of a chart that creates an “immediate, visceral reaction.”
Video: Who profits from the billion-dollar prison phone business? Al Jazeera, September 30, 2015 In this 5-minute video, hear from loved ones of incarcerated people and Executive Director Peter Wagner about how $1 per minute phone calls home from prisons and jails keep families apart.
Prison Vendors See Continued Signs of a Captive Market by David Segal The New York Times, August 29, 2015 Columnist David Segal travels to the American Correctional Association conference to meet the companies who provide products and services to prisons to inquire whether the companies are worried about how “prison reform” might impact their bottom lines. (Spoiler: They aren’t scared, but for why, you’ll need to read the article.)
Abandoned row houses and vacant lots dot this area, which is marked by high unemployment and low-performing schools — yet Maryland’s state budget allocates $17 million each year just to this single neighborhood. That money goes not to job training, family services or education, but solely to incarceration.
Part of the visitation problem is also caused by mass incarceration itself. As states have struggled with overcrowding in their facilities, they’ve been more likely to turn to remote or out-of-state prisons to house inmates. But these far-off locations make it much more difficult for friends and family to reach inmates.
Lopez then goes on to explain that making prison visits difficult for families of the incarcerated is shortsighted:
The point of the criminal justice system is to keep us safe, and taking research-backed steps to prevent inmates from reoffending achieves that goal.
As 2015 winds to a close, the Prison Policy Initiative wanted to recognize eight investigative news stories that brought public attention to key issues in criminal justice reform.
As 2015 winds to a close, the Prison Policy Initiative wanted to recognize eight investigative news stories that brought public attention to key issues in criminal justice reform. In no particular order:
Hundreds of South Carolina Inmates Sent to Solitary Confinement Over Facebook by Dave Maass Electronic Frontier Foundation An exposé finding that in some states incarcerated people are sent to solitary confinement for years for having Facebook accounts, even if family members on the outside are the ones accessing the accounts. In response to the original exposé, Facebook has taken steps to reform its policy of taking down incarcerated people’s Facebook accounts for state Departments of Corrections.
Prison Born by Sarah Yager The Atlantic Shining light on the rarely talked about experience of women in prison, this article focuses on the 1 in 25 women who are pregnant behind bars.
Chain Gang 2.0: If You Can’t Afford This GPS Ankle Bracelet, You Get Thrown in Jail by Eric Markowitz International Business Times Electronic monitoring is often seen as an “alternative to incarceration,” but Markowitz’s special report finds that for-profit GPS tracking ends up being a perfect recipe for sending people back to jail.
Amid Backlash Against Isolating Inmates, New Mexico Moves Toward Change by Natasha Haverty NPR The second in a three-part series on solitary confinement in the U.S., this 6-minute story covers growing interest in curbing the use of isolation in prisons and the challenges that come with implementing reforms.
For Men in Prison, Child Support Becomes a Crushing Debt by Eli Hager The Marshall Project Is it reasonable to expect men in prison to pay child support? Is exempting incarcerated fathers fair? This Marshall Project feature finds that many incarcerated fathers are racking up hundreds of dollars in child support debt each month.
Should Prison Sentences Be Based on Crimes That Haven’t Been Committed Yet? by Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Ben Casselman and Dana Goldstein FiveThirtyEight It’s becoming increasingly common to hear talk of “risk assessments” and “evidence-based” tools in criminal justice. This story and interactive tool unpack how risk assessments work and describe what makes Pennsylvania’s plans different: it would be the first to use risk assessment in sentencing rather than, for example, at the pretrial phase.
An Inmate Dies, and No One is Punished by Michael Winerip and Michael Schwirtz The New York Times This article chronicles the brutal death of Leonard Strickland, one in a larger trend of troubling beatings by corrections officers in New York State prisons. This recent New York Timesarticle details the steps New York State prisons are now taking to better track complaints about corrections officers.
Note: The purpose of this list is to highlight journalists who filled critical gaps in the public’s knowledge about criminal justice issues. To keep things fair, we excluded from consideration any articles that we are quoted in and articles that we consulted on in any way.
In August, I gave the keynote address at the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP’s Iowa Summit on Justice & Disparities and a major topic was the need for prison phone justice. At that meeting, Governor Brandstad announced a Governor’s Working Group On Justice Policy to address several problems, including the need for phone justice.
In September, I testified by phone to the Working Group about steps Iowa could take.
In November, Governor Brandstad announced the Working Group’s recommendations (summary | details ) which he wanted introduced in the next legislative session. The proposed phone reforms include:
Renegotiate contracts with the Iowa Communications Network and seek bids from other vendors with the goal of reducing rates paid by prison inmates and their families.
Transition to a per minute calculation for call costs rather than a flat fee.
Enable and encourage counties to partner with one another or the Department of Corrections to negotiate more favorable rates with phone vendors.
The list is published as a briefing with links to more information and model bills, and it was recently sent to reform-minded state legislators across the country. The reform topics we think are ripe for legislative victory are:
Ending prison gerrymandering
Lowering the cost of calls home from prison or jail
Repealing or reforming ineffective and harmful sentencing enhancement zones
Protecting in-person family visits from the video visitation industry
Stopping automatic driver’s license suspensions for drug offenses unrelated to driving
Protecting letters from home in local jails
Requiring racial impact statements for criminal justice bills
Repealing “Truth in Sentencing”
Creating a safety valve for mandatory minimum sentences
Immediately eliminating “pay only” probation and regulating privatized probation services
Reducing pretrial detention
Let us know what you think of this year’s list. We look forward to working together to make 2016 a year of great progress for justice reform!
On Friday, the FCC’s latest order was published in the federal register.
The new fee limits and rate cap of 11¢ per minute for prepaid calls from prison is effective March 17, 2016 and the fee limits and tiered rates (14¢-22¢) for calls from jail go into effect on June 20, 2016.
The FCC also published a call for comments on “ways to promote competition for Inmate Calling Services (ICS), video visitation, rates for international calls, and considers an array of solutions to further address areas of concern in the (ICS) industry.”
Comments can be submitted online for docket number 12-375; comments are due January 19, 2016, followed by reply comments two weeks later.
U.S. locks up more than 2.3 million people in prisons, jails, and other facilities on any given day. New report provides foundation for long overdue conversation about criminal justice reform.
Easthampton, MA — With 2.3 million people locked up in more than 7,000 correctional facilities operated by thousands of agencies, getting the big picture is anything but easy. Today, with the publication of Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2015, the Prison Policy Initiative provides the answer to how many people are locked up in the U.S., where, and why. Building upon our groundbreaking 2014 report that, for the first time, aggregated the disparate systems of confinement, this updated version contains further detail on why people are locked up:
As we discuss in our report, looking at the “whole pie” allows us to cut through the fog to answer key questions such as:
After state prisons, what is the next biggest slice of confinement?
How does the number of people that cycle through correctional facilities in a year differ from the number of people locked up on a particular day?
How important is it to ending mass incarceration that we reform the policies that increasingly detain people pretrial?
How many people nationwide are imprisoned because their most serious offense was a drug offense?
How does the number of people in correctional facilities compare to the even larger number of people on probation and parole?
Jail churn and pre-trial detention are even more important than a quick look at the data suggests. Here, we correct for the fact that a sizable number of people are housed in jails for other agencies.
In August, I wrote a piece called Jails Matter. But Who is Listening? about the importance of focusing on jails, given their locus as the place where most of the people who go to prison or jail in a year are initially locked up.
In that piece, I talked about the tremendous churn of people through our jail system (11 million people a year) and about how 99% of the growth in the jail population in the last 15 years has been in the “unconvicted” or pretrial population. Only a minority of people in jails have been convicted and are serving a typically short misdemeanor sentence. Of the larger, unconvicted group, I wrote:
These people are legally considered innocent until proven otherwise in court. But if they don’t have the money to post bail, the principle that they are legally innocent is not enough to keep them from being locked up until trial.
And:
getting to the bottom of this country’s jail problem is going to depend on both reducing the number of people we send to jail each year and making it far easier for those who have been arrested to resume their lives while the judicial process proceeds.
Holding people in jail for even a few days has been demonstrated to do permanent harm, so this should be an obvious priority. If you are, at this point, fully convinced of that point, you can stop reading now. If you needed to know that more than 99% of the jail population growth is pretrial detainees, or if you are really interested in jail data calculations, keep reading.
We just connected the dots on an interesting quirk in how the data for convicted/unconvicted is calculated for jails that makes focusing on the flawed policies that send people to jails and keep them there even more important.
Jails, as we know, house people for other agencies, with the two largest groups being for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at about 2% of their population, and also for state and federal prisons.
As the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows in Prisoners in 2014, 81,738 people were held in jails on behalf of federal or state prisons. The numbers of people held for federal authorities is small, but the number held for state authorities constitutes 6% of the total state prison population. Some states don’t do this at all, but in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee, more than a quarter of the state prison population is in local jails, and in Louisiana more than half of the state prison population is in the local jails.
So what’s important here is that there are a lot of people reported as convicted in jails who aren’t serving short misdemeanor sentences after being convicted in local courts but are serving state or federal prison sentences and just housed in local jails.
Of course, this isn’t the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s fault. They are asking a very useful question and getting useful data that answers their question. It just so happens that their data needs some adjustment to answer the slightly different question of: How important is it for local officials to focus on pretrial/unconvicted populations?
The answer: It’s very important that we get local officials to focus on the policies that impact the size of their pretrial populations because that’s the overwhelming majority of the people in jail on a given day. Excluding people confined under contract with ICE from the unconvicted population and excluding people confined under contract with state or federal prisons from the convicted population leaves us with this breakdown:
Here at the Prison Policy Initiative, we know that in order to keep winning victories for fairness and justice, the movement to end mass incarceration needs compelling and up-to-date information about the U.S. incarceration crisis. This year, we’ve continued to fill critical gaps in the movement’s knowledge with exciting reports that:
Show that each state’s rate of incarcerating women is far out of step with the rest of the world. Compared to other countries, most U.S. states lock up proportionally more women than any other country in the world.
Uncover the data to show that even before their incarceration, the people in prison are much poorer than Americans of similar ages, race/ethnicity and gender. This report was also the first to provide the pre-incarceration incomes of women in prison.
Reframe the entire debate about visitation and reentry with new data that demonstrates that incarcerating people far from home actively discourages family visits.
Provide critical new data to demonstrate the degree to which mass incarceration transfers people of color to predominantly white communities.
Demonstrate that jails, not just prisons, matter in policy discussions because 11 million people cycle through jails, and the dramatic growth in the jail population is the direct result of policies that increasingly detain people awaiting trial.
These reports were made possible by the generosity of a small group of individual donors. Can you make a gift today so we can both advance specific campaigns for justice and produce critical research?
To encourage you to give generously, some of our existing donors will match the first $19,000 that we receive in this appeal.
We thank you for standing by our side in the fight for fairer and safer communities for everyone.
The Voice of OC has revealed that $85,000 in campaign contributions to two Orange County, California county supervisors by Global Tel*Link flipped the two supervisors from being opponents of charging families high phone rates into supporters.
The Voice of OC articles are a must-read (first article, second article), and they have a video showing the dramatic change in positions:
We’re thrilled to see more investigation of the phone companies using campaign contributions to purchase influence. We broke the first story of this type in August, with our exposé that found that Securus was one of the largest contributors to the sheriff’s reelection campaign in Sacramento, California. Notably, this is a county where Securus did not have the contract, but clearly wanted to be the winning bidder when the contract was next put out for bid.
How big is $85,000 in campaign contributions, exactly? To be sure, it pales in comparison to the $4 million/year in kickbacks that the contract would give to the Orange County slush fund called the “Inmate Welfare Fund”. (Despite the name, the funds can be used for almost anything, and as the Voice of OC article says, most of it is spent on staff salaries.)
On the other hand, $85,000 was apparently enough to change these two votes in this one county. And it’s a massive sum when you compare it to the outrage that was aimed at Hillary Clinton after The Interceptreported that bundlers associated with the private prison industry were supporting her presidential campaign with similar amounts of money. (ColorOfChange says that the total received by the Clinton campaign from the industry was $133,000.)
It’s stories like this that illustrate two points we’ve been making a lot lately:
Jails matter. Their policies might be set by 3,000 local governments, which can make them hard to follow and understand. But we need to look at jails, which are literally mass incarceration’s front door.
Private prisons get all the attention, but other kinds of prison profiteers like the prison phone industry and the California guard union are just as successful — if not more so — at buying the outcomes they want.
