Wednesday, January 14 2026:

• New research: More evidence that county jail incarceration harms health, raising death rates, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2025. "The researchers estimate that a local jail incarceration rate 10% higher than the national county average leads to a 0.45% increased risk of death across the board."
• America's Incarceration Crossroads: Reversing Progress Amid Record-Low Crime Rates, Sentencing Project. November, 2025. "2024's violent crime rate was 53% lower than its peak-1991 level and the property crime rate was 66% lower...While crime rates are at historic lows, Americans deserve greater levels of community safety."
• Correcting the Record: Fentanyl Myths & Misinformation, Fair and Just Prosecution. November, 2025. "Black Americans remain less likely to receive addiction treatment and harm reduction services, and more likely to face arrest and incarceration for drug-related conduct than their white counterparts (despite similar usage rates)."
• The Impact of Witnessing Parental Arrest on Children: A Scoping Review, Miaomiao He, Catherine Flynn, and Susan Baidawi. November, 2025. "Emotional distress was commonly reported among children, even where there was no force in the arrest process...However, when the arrest itself was violent, children's responses were heightened."
• Can they do that? A primer on the powers -- and limits -- of the president and federal government to shape the criminal legal system, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2025. "The federal government's influence and power to shape state and local criminal legal system policy is not inherently good or bad. This power has been used to both shrink and grow the carceral footprint in America."
• The Forgotten History of Prison Law: Judicial Oversight of Detention Facilities in the Nation's Early Years, Wynne Muscatine Graham. May, 2025. "[This account] provides a model of prison oversight from which reform advocates can learn...early prison theorists viewed judicial oversight as essential to ensuring humane carceral institutions and empowered courts accordingly."
• Deaths in Custody: New Jersey State Prisons, 2018-2024, New Jersey Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson. December, 2025. "Starting with available data about who died, where they died, and what they died from, allows the public as well as policymakers and correctional administrators to have an initial understanding of the big picture, ask questions, flag concerning trends..."
• Key characteristics of medical parole applications in Massachusetts in 2022-2023, Michelle Suh et al. November, 2025. "A supportive superintendent recommendation and prison-contracted clinician assessment that an applicant could not perform [activities of daily living] independently were statistically significant factors in approval of medical parole."
• Birth behind bars: Ten years of U.S. jail births covered in the news highlight horrific experiences and minimal data collection, Prison Policy Initiative and Bianca Schindeler. July, 2025. "Cases surfaced by the Birth in Jails Media Project suggest pregnant people going into labor behind bars experience great distress and maltreatment, often facing no choice but to give birth without medical assistance, support, or basic safety protocols."
• Children Are Not Inmates, Jessica Den Houter. August, 2025. "By categorizing children as inmates, federal law prohibits Medicaid funds from reaching youth in secure detention centers...While increased access to Medicaid alone will not fix a very broken juvenile legal system, it is an achievable and important step."

Wednesday, December 31 2025:

• Hepatitis C Virus Is Associated With Increased Mortality Among Incarcerated Hospitalized Persons in Massachusetts, Alysse G. Wurcel, Rubeen Guardado, and Curt G. Beckwith. December, 2021. "[Hepatitis C virus] was associated with a 61% increased risk of 2-year mortality even after controlling for severity of disease...Black race was associated with decreased risk of death in both the univariate and multivariate analyses."
• The Jail-to-Deportation Pipeline in Wisconsin, ACLU Wisconsin. July, 2025. "Our 2022 report noted that eight Wisconsin sheriffs had signed formal 287(g) agreements. As of July 2025, according to ICE, the number of Wisconsin law enforcement agencies with active 287(g) agreements has increased to 13."
• Coming Home? Assessing the Housing Needs of People Nearing Release from Illinois Prisons, Loyola Chicago Center for Criminal Justice. December, 2025. "A total of 28% of the men and 42% of the women...said they were unsheltered or unhoused at least part of the time during the 3 years before prison."