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On this page, the Prison Policy Initiative has curated all of the research about sentencing policy that we know of. For research on other criminal justice topics, see our Research Library homepage.
Still Cruel and Unusual: Extreme Sentences for Youth and Emerging Adults Sentencing Project, August, 2024“Many of the 8,600 individuals [who were under 18 at offense serving life and virtual life sentences] have already served decades...beyond their risk to public safety.”
Failure to Appear Across New York RegionsData Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, June, 2024“In 2022, NY's failure to appear (FTA) rate for released cases was 17%. There was little variation by region (16% in NYC, 18% in NYC suburbs, 20% in Upstate). However, among individual counties... FTA rates ranged from 7% to 30%.”
(New)The Second Look Movement: A Review of the Nation's Sentence Review Laws Sentencing Project, May, 2024“This report provides an overview of the second look laws passed by 12 state legislatures [as well as DC and the federal government] that provide judicial sentence review hearings beyond opportunities provided to those with JLWOP sentences.”
The Second Look Movement: A Review of the Nation's Sentence Review Laws Sentencing Project, May, 2024“In addition to California, four states - Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington - have enacted prosecutor-initiated resentencing laws that allow prosecutors to request the court to reconsider a sentence.”
Justice Reinvestment Initiative: Challenges and Impact Louisiana Legislative Auditor, February, 2024“[Those] released based on Justice Reinvestment Initiative good time changes do not appear to return to custody at a higher rate than the overall return rate.”
Zombie politics: The return of failed criminal legal system policies in 2023 - and how to fight back Prison Policy Initiative, January, 2024“Many lawmakers believe that jails and prisons will provide treatment for opioid users - in fact, incarceration increases overdose risk, and few people receive treatment inside.”
One in Five: Racial Disparity in Imprisonment -- Causes and Remedies (Part 3) Sentencing Project, December, 2023“Extreme sentences for violent crimes and reliance on criminal histories as a basis for determining prison sentences are drivers of racial disparities in imprisonment.”
Risk Averse and Disinclined: What COVID Prison Releases Demonstrate About the Ability of the United States To Reduce Mass Incarceration Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, April, 2023“All people released to house arrest [in Kansas]--15 in a prison system of 10,000--had 5 months or less left on their sentence, indicating that the releases did not significantly reduce the prison population or address social-distancing concerns.”
The Poor Reform Prosecutor: So Far From the State Capital, So Close to the Suburbs John F. Pfaff, March, 2023“In many ways, the county is a distinctly awkward jurisdiction for those who hope reform-minded prosecutors can play a significant role in reversing our decades-long investment in mass punishment and mass incarceration.”
Condemned: The habitual felony offender act in Alabama Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, March, 2023“At a minimum, Alabama should provide a mechanism for judges to review the sentences of people serving life without parole under the Habitual Federal Offender Act.”
A New Paradigm for Sentencing in the United StatesVera Institute of Justice, February, 2023“[This] report suggests a "North Star" for sentencing policy with a legal presumption toward community-based sentences except in limited circumstances.”
Weighing the Impact of Simple Possession of Marijuana: Trends and Sentencing in the Federal System United States Sentencing Commission, January, 2023“As of January 2022, no offenders sentenced solely for simple possession of marijuana remained in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.”
Final Report of the Illinois Resentencing Task ForceIllinois Resentencing Task Force, December, 2022“A resentencing system that allows both prospective and retroactive application will have the greatest impact on the prison population and address the disparate impact of mass incarceration.”
How Long is Long Enough? Task Force on Long Sentences Final Report Council on Criminal Justice, November, 2022“While drug crimes account for a minority of the nation's long sentences, the Task Force believes that long prison terms are especially ineffective in addressing substance use disorders and related or co-occurring mental health disorders.”
The First Step Act's Prison ReformsBrennan Center for Justice, September, 2022“The Act excludes those convicted of many crimes [from receiving Earned Time Credits]. These exclusions prevent nearly half of the federal prison population from benefiting from credits...[and] appear to serve no policy purpose.”
Three Strikes in CaliforniaMia Bird et al., California Policy Lab, August, 2022“Nearly 65% of admissions to prison with a doubled-sentence enhancement [under the Three-Strikes law] are for a non-violent, non-serious offense.”
Older Offenders in the Federal SystemUnited States Sentencing Commission, July, 2022“The proportion of older offenders in the federal system has been relatively steady across the past five fiscal years, accounting for no more than 14 percent of all federal offenders sentenced in any given year.”
Justice for Emerging Adults after Jones: The Rapidly Developing Use of Neuroscience to Extend Eighth Amendment Miller Protections to Defendants Ages 18 and Older Francis X. Shen et al, June, 2022“This Essay provides the first empirical analysis of how courts are receiving the argument to raise the age for constitutional protections and introduces a publicly accessible, searchable database containing 494 such cases.”
Kids Are Not So Different: The Path from Juvenile Exceptionalism to Prison Abolition Paywall :(Emily Buss, June, 2022“We should abandon, not extend, the separate juvenile-exceptionalist system and instead incorporate our understanding of youth into a single system that takes account of human development over the life course.”
Nothing But Time: Elderly Americans Serving Life Without Parole Sentencing Project, June, 2022“More than 55,000 Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons with no chance of parole, reflecting a 66% rise in people serving LWOP since 2003.”
Addressing Florida's Parole SystemRight on Crime, June, 2022“A moderate reintroduction of parole is long overdue, and modifying Florida's truth in sentencing thresholds, even gradually, will provide incentive for productive behavior and supervision.”
Federal Justice Statistics, 2020Bureau of Justice Statistics, May, 2022“Of the 346,681 persons under federal correctional control at fiscal year-end 2020, about 56% were in secure confinement and 44% were on community supervision.”
American Prison-Release Systems: Indeterminacy in Sentencing and the Control of Prison Population Size Robina Institute, April, 2022“The operational features of American prison-release systems, and their foreseeable results, could hardly be more dissonant. Sometimes the differences are so extreme as to be inexplicable.”
Felony Murder: An On-Ramp for Extreme SentencingSentencing Project, March, 2022“[Felony murder laws] violate the principle of proportional sentencing, which is supposed to punish crimes based on their severity. This report evaluates the legal and empirical foundation, and failings, of the felony murder rule.”
Reflections on Long Prison Sentences: A Conversation with Crime Survivors, Formerly Incarcerated People, and Family Members Susan Howley, Council on Criminal Justice, January, 2022“Most participants across the two groups said they did not equate long sentences with accountability.”
Reimagining JudgingNancy Gertner and the Square One Project, January, 2022“Judges are not alone in resisting reform-- some prosecutors, police, politicians, and even the media share responsibility. But in many ways judicial resistance to change is more difficult to address, clothed as it is in citations to precedent...”
Youth in Adult Courts, Jails, and PrisonsSentencing Project, December, 2021“In 2019, on any given night, there were 3,500 children sleeping in adult jails and prisons.”
Time for Justice: The Urgent Need for Second Chances In Pennsylvania's Sentencing System Families Against Mandatory Minimums, November, 2021“Based on average incarceration costs, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) is spending $220 million per year to incarcerate 3,892 people who have already served at least 20 years. The true cost is undoubtedly higher.”
A New Approach: A Prosecutor's Guide to Advancing a Public Health Response to Drug Use Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College, September, 2021“With robust enforcement powers and political influence, prosecutors have a unique opportunity to improve our society's response to drug use while minimizing the harms of the legal system.”
In the Extreme: Women Serving Life Without Parole and Death Sentences in the United States Sentencing Project, September, 2021“One third of the women serving life without parole are Black. Among women in our sample of over 1,000 women across 16 states we find that Black women were on average 4.5 years younger at sentencing compared to white women.”
Voices for Reform in DC: Recommendations for improving reentry following long prison terms Justice Policy Institute, July, 2021“This report's observations and recommendations reflect the realities faced by individuals three years after the passage of Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA) legislation.”
The Challenge of Imposing Just Sentences Under Mandatory Minimum Statutes: A Qualitative Study of Judicial Perceptions Paywall :(Esther Nir and Siyu Liu, July, 2021“[Judges] perceive that mandatory minimums often strip away the flexibility they need to craft appropriate sentences in individual cases, leading to punishments that are unduly harsh.”
Sentence Length and Recidivism: A Review of the Research Elizabeth Berger and Kent Scheidegger, June, 2021“While some findings suggest that longer sentences may provide additional deterrent benefit in the aggregate, this effect is not always consistent or strong.”
A New Lease on LifeSentencing Project, June, 2021“People convicted of homicide and other crimes of violence rarely commit new crimes of violence after release from long-term imprisonment.”
Bringing More Teens Home: Raising the Age Without Expanding Secure Confinement in the Youth Justice System Sentencing Project, June, 2021“Despite claims to the contrary, bringing these youth back under juvenile jurisdiction did not significantly increase costs, confinement, or crime.”
Juvenile Life Without Parole: An Overview Sentencing Project, May, 2021“The United States stands alone as the only nation that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before turning 18.”
A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice: A Report by the Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform The Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, April, 2021“The essays in this volume are intended to provide...research-grounded guidance and insight on core issues and strategies that can sustain bipartisan support for critically needed criminal justice reforms.”
The Declining Significance of Race in Criminal Sentencing: Evidence from US Federal Courts Paywall :(Michael T Light, March, 2021“Sentences [for white and Black people] became more equal almost entirely due to changes in observable case characteristics and not due to changes in the treatment of offenders.”
The Legacy of Slavery and Mass Incarceration: Evidence from Felony Case Outcomes Aaron Gottlieb and Kalen Flynn, March, 2021“We find that a criminal charge in a county with high levels of slavery in 1860 increases the likelihood of pretrial detention, the probability of a sentence of incarceration, and the length of incarceration sentences.”
Who Controls Criminal Law? Racial Threat and the Adoption of State Sentencing Law, 1975 to 2012 Scott W. Duxbury, February, 2021“Results illustrate that states adopted sentencing laws in direct and indirect response to white public punitive policy support and the size of the black population.”
No End In Sight: America's Enduring Reliance on Life Imprisonment Sentencing Project, February, 2021“In the United States, more than 200,000 people are serving life sentences - one out of every seven in prison.”
Life Without Parole Sentencing in North CarolinaBrandon L. Garrett et al, October, 2020“We find that fewer LWOP sentences are predicted to occur as the number of black victim homicides increase in a county, but no such relationship is found when considering the number of white victim homicides.”
Woke Retailers -- This You? Corporations That Embraced Criminal Justice Reform Rhetoric Have Been Fueling Mass Incarceration Public Citizen, October, 2020“In recent years, the retail industry has advocated against criminal justice reforms that reduce shoplifting sentences and/or supported harsher antishoplifting laws in 18 states. Most of the time - in 11 states - the retail industry prevailed.”
Second Look for Justice, Safety and Savings: A Plan to Address Rehabilitated Youth Serving Extreme Sentences in Adult Prisons Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, May, 2020“Texas' 40-year requirement before parole can be considered a harsh outlier, rendering its ban on juvenile LWOP virtually meaningless because the "remedy" is equally punitive and extreme.”
Reforms without Results: Why states should stop excluding violent offenses from criminal justice reforms Prison Policy Initiative, April, 2020“Almost all of the major criminal justice reforms passed in the last two decades explicitly exclude people accused and convicted of violent offenses.”
We All Pay: Mississippi's Harmful Habitual Laws FWD.us, November, 2019“Despite making up 13 percent of the state's population,75 percent of the people with 20+ year habitual sentences are Black men.”
Prosecutors and Responses to ViolenceInstitute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College, November, 2019“The current approach to violent crime contributes nothing to falling crime rates, imprisons people far longer than necessary, diverts resources from more productive strategies, and subjects people to a brutality that should make any prosecutor shudder.”
Sentencing Enhancements and Incarceration: San Francisco, 2005-2017 Stanford Computational Policy Lab, October, 2019“One could substantially reduce incarceration by focusing on a relatively small number of enhancements: Prop. 8 priors, Three Strikes, and the 10-20-life gun enhancement.”
U.S. Prison Population Trends: Massive Buildup and Modest Decline The Sentencing Project, September, 2019“By yearend 2017, 1.4 million people were imprisoned in the United States, a decline of 7% since the prison population reached its peak level in 2009. This follows a nearly 700% growth in the prison population between 1972 and 2009.”
The Effect of Scaling Back Punishment on Racial Disparities in Criminal Case OutcomesJohn MacDonald and Steven Raphael, September, 2019“The findings from this study suggest that policy reforms that scale back the severity of punishment for criminal history and active criminal justice status for less serious felony offenses may help narrow racial inequalities in criminal court dispositions”
Sentences of Incarceration Decline Sharply, Public Safety Improves During Kim Foxx's Second Year in Office New data portal demonstrates benefit of criminal justice reform, transparency The People's Lobby, Reclaim Chicago, and Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, July, 2019“We find that the use of prosecutorial discretion in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office has led to a decrease in incarceration sentences. At the same time, public safety has improved.”
The Immediate Consequences of Federal Pretrial DetentionStephanie Holmes Didwania, June, 2019“Using data spanning 71 federal district courts, I find that pretrial release reduces a defendant's sentence length by around 67 percent and increases the probability that a defendant will receive a sentence below the recommended sentencing range.”
Second Looks & Second ChancesShon Hopwood, June, 2019“It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine who, after having been convicted of a serious crime, has the capacity to become rehabilitated and redeemed. Character is not static, people change, and the law must recognize this reality.”
Expungement of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study J.J. Prescott and Sonja B. Starr, March, 2019(Among those legally eligible for expungement in Michigan, just 6.5% obtain it within five years of eligibility.)
Intra-City Differences in Federal Sentencing Practices Federal District Judges in 30 Cities, 2005 - 2017 United States Sentencing Commission, January, 2019“In most cities, the length of a defendant's sentence increasingly depends on which judge in the courthouse is assigned to his or her case.”
Diversion in the Criminal Justice SystemMichael Mueller-Smith and Kevin T. Schnepel, January, 2019“We find robust evidence across both experiments that diversion cuts reoffending rates in half (-32 p.p.) and grows quarterly employment rates by 53 percent (+18 p.p.) over 10 years.”
Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences Prison Policy Initiative, November, 2018(This report provides state leaders with eight strategies to shorten overly long prison sentences.)
The Ungers, 5 Years and Counting: A Case Study in Safely Reducing Long Prison Terms and Saving Taxpayer Dollars Justice Policy Institute, November, 2018“The experience of the Unger group, with 188 people who were incarcerated for decades for serious violent crimes having been safely released to the community, demonstrates that this country locks up too many people for too long.”
A Way Out: Abolishing Death by Incarceration in Pennsylvania Abolitionist Law Center, September, 2018(This report articulates a multi-strategy, movement-building framework for abolishing death by incarceration in Pennsylvania.)
Diversion from Justice: A Rights-Based Analysis of Local "Prostitution Diversion Programs" Global Health Justice Partnership of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health, September, 2018“While progressive at face value, prostitution diversion programs lack the evidence base and public accountability mechanisms to support their claims of doing good in the lives of people selling sex.”
Un-Meetable Promises: Rhetoric and Reality in New York City's Human Trafficking Intervention Courts Global Health Justice Partnership of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health, September, 2018(Embedding social services in a criminal justice context enables an overreach by the courts as gatekeepers and managers of service; mitigating immediate harms to sex workers requires shrinking (not expanding) the authority of the courts over defendant.)
The Trial Penalty: The Sixth Amendment Right to Trial on the Verge of Extinction and How to Save It National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, July, 2018“The 'trial penalty' (the difference between the sentence offered in a plea offer prior to trial vs the sentence a defendant receives after trial) is now so severe & pervasive that it has virtually eliminated the constitutional right to a trial.”
Unequal Treatment: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Miami-Dade Criminal Justice ACLU Florida Greater Miami, July, 2018(This report finds that from arrest to sentencing, racial disparities exist at each decision point in the Miami-Dade County's criminal justice system.)
Everywhere and Nowhere: Compassionate Release in the States Families Against Mandatory Minimums, June, 2018“While compassionate release is nearly universal, it is underused. We believe that is due, in part, to poor design.”
50-State Comparison Characteristics of Pardon AuthoritiesCollateral Consequences Resource Center, June, 2018(This report provides a 50 state comparison of pardons, including: type of administration, type of process, eligibility requirements, effect, frequency of grants, and alternative restoration.)
Orleans Criminal District Court, Magistrate Court, & Municipal Court: 2017 Review Court Watch NOLA, May, 2018“This report explores the topics of constitutional rights and the experience of both victims and the public at large in the Orleans Parish criminal courts and the larger criminal justice system during 2017.”
Life imprisonment: A Policy Briefing Penal Reform International and University of Nottingham, May, 2018(The number of people serving formal life sentences has risen by nearly 84 percent in 14 years.)
The High Costs of Low Risk: The Crisis of America's Aging Prison Population The Osborne Association, May, 2018
2017 Federal Sentencing StatisticsUnited States Sentencing Commission, April, 2018“These reports examine federal sentencing statistics from each judicial district, the districts within each judicial circuit, and the districts within each state.”
Criminalizing Race: Racial Disparities in Plea-Bargaining Carlos Berdejo, April, 2018“Efforts to mitigate racial disparities in sentencing and incarceration rates should consider disparities in the plea-bargaining process and initial charging decisions.”
Cuyahoga County Bail Task Force: Report and Recommendations Cuyahoga County Bail Task Force, March, 2018(Money bail should not be used to simply detain defendants. Rather than relying on bond schedules, courts should assess each defendant's risk of non-appearance and danger to the community using a uniform risk assessment tool.)
Plea Bargaining: From Patent Unfairness to Transparent Justice Mirko Bagaric, Julie N. Clarke, and William Rininger, March, 2018(This article proposes reforms to the plea bargaining process (by shifting discretion and power from prosecutors into the hands of - impartial - sentencing judges) that will demonstrably and profoundly reshape the framework for plea negotiations.)
Keeping Kids and Parents Together: A Healthier Approach to Sentencing in Louisiana Human Impact Partners, March, 2018“In this report, we evaluate the health and equity impacts of Primary Caretaker legislation in the state of Louisiana. If passed, this legislation would expand the ability to set community-based sentences for parents.”
Presumed Innocent for a Price: The Impact of Cash Bail Across Eight New York Counties New York Civil Liberties Union, March, 2018(This report shows that over a five year period, tens of thousands of New Yorkers were jailed without having had their day in court simply because they could not pay bail.)
Parents as Partners: Family Connection and Youth Incarceration Children and Family Justice Center, February, 2018(This report shows that family and community-based responses to youth offending result in better public safety outcomes than more punitive measures such as incarceration.)
Keeping Kids and Parents Together A Healthier Approach to Sentencing in Tennessee Human Impact Partner & Free Hearts, February, 2018“This report finds that House Bill 825 and Senate Bill 919 would have a positive health impact on children, parents, and communities, especially those that are the hardest hit by incarceration.”
"Set up to Fail": The Impact of Offender-Funded Private Probation on the Poor Human Rights Watch, February, 2018“This report examines the use and impact of privatized probation services for misdemeanor offenses in four US states, and provides recommendations to protect against the abuses of criminal justice debt.”
One War. Two Races. Bias Reigns in Florida's War on Drugs Herald Tribune, January, 2018“Blacks represent 17 percent of Florida’s population but have accounted for 46 percent of the state’s felony drug convictions since 2004.”
Civil Asset Forfeiture: Forfeiting Your Rights Southern Poverty Law Center, January, 2018(This report finds that civil asset forfeiture snares mostly low-level offenders and many individuals who are never charged with a crime in the first place into an unequal system that undercuts due process and property rights.)
The Mercy Lottery: A Review of the Obama Administration's Clemency Initiative NYU Law School, January, 2018(This report analyzes President Obama's clemency initiative and tells the stories of individual petitioners who were either denied clemency or whose petitions were never granted, despite being ideal candidates by the Initiative's own terms.)
Aging Out: Using Compassionate Release to Address the Growth of Aging and Infirm Prison Populations Vera Institute of Justice, December, 2017“This report examines the challenges states face in using compassionate release mechanisms to reduce these populations and related costs.”
The Death Penalty in 2017: Year End Report Death Penalty Information Center, December, 2017“Executions and death sentences remained near historically low levels in 2017, as public support for the death penalty fell to its lowest level in 45 years.”
An Overdose Death Is Not Murder: Why Drug-Induced Homicide Laws Are Counterproductive and Inhumane Drug Policy Alliance, November, 2017(This report argues that drug-induced homicide laws exacerbate the very problem they seek to remediate by discouraging people who use drugs from seeking help and assistance.)
Disrupting the Cycle: Reimagining the Prosecutor's Role in Reentry NYU Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, November, 2017(Prosecutors have traditionally focused on their "front-end" role, but by defining their role as ending at case disposition, prosecutors miss an important opportunity to have a greater impact on public safety.)
The State of Pretrial Justice in AmericaPretrial Justice Institute, November, 2017(This report uses basic indicators to document and grade current pretrial practice in all fifty states.)
Raising the Bar: State Trends in Keeping Youth Out of Adult Courts (2015-2017) Campaign for Youth Justice, October, 2017(Between 2015 & 2017, nine states and the District of Columbia have passed laws to limit or remove youth from adult facilities. In Oregon and New York, lawmakers passed bills in 2017 to categorically ban incarcerating youth with adults in the coming year.)
The impacts of incarceration on crimeOpen Philanthropy Project, September, 2017“The best estimate of the impact of additional incarceration on crime in the United States today is zero. And, while that estimate is not certain, there is as much reason overall to believe that incarceration increases crime as decreases it.”
Against the Odds: Experimenting with Alternative Forms of Bail in New York City's Criminal Courts Vera Institute of Justice, September, 2017“If New York City courts opted more frequently for alternative forms of bail, they could potentially reduce the use of pretrial detention without compromising other important considerations of compliance with court appearances and public safety.”
An Analysis of the Implementation of the 2014 Clemency InitiativeUnited States Sentencing Commission, September, 2017“President Obama made 1,928 grants of clemency during his presidency. Of them, 1,716 were commutations of sentence, more commutations than any other President has granted.”
Compassionate Release Policy Reform: Physicians as Advocates for Human Dignity Andreas Mitchell and Brie Williams, September, 2017“Physicians can help generate political momentum toward policy analysis and change, contribute medical expertise toward the structuring of scientifically sound compassionate release policies, and advocate directly for their incarcerated patients.”
Juvenile Life Without Parole: An Overview The Sentencing Project, August, 2017“The United States stands alone as the only nation that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before turning 18. This briefing paper reviews the Supreme Court precedents that limited the use of JLWOP and the challenges that remain.”
California Probation in the Era of ReformPublic Policy Institute of California, August, 2017(California's public safety realignment shifted the management of lower-level offenders from state prison and parole to county jail and probation. This report discusses how these changes affected local corrections systems.)
A Matter of Time: The Causes and Consequences of Rising Time Served in America's Prisons Urban Institute, July, 2017(• A growing share of the U.S. prison population has been incarcerated for 10 or more years â€" and in at least 11 states the number of people in prison for a decade or longer has more than doubled since 2000.)
Assessing the Impact of Georgia's Sentencing ReformsUrban Institute, July, 2017(This brief examines the impact of H.B. 1176 on commitments to prison, sentence lengths, and time served in the state of Georgia.)
Designed to Fail: The President's Deference to the Department of Justice in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform Rachel E. Barkow and Mark Osler, June, 2017“This Article offers institutional changes that would help future presidents make the system less punitive and reduce prison populations.”
Model Penal Code: Sentencing, Proposed Final Draft The American Law Institute, June, 2017(The Model Penal Code provides guidance on some of the most important issues that courts, corrections systems, and policymakers are facing today.)
The Lack of a Relationship between Drug Imprisonment and Drug ProblemsThe Pew Charitable Trusts, June, 2017“There is no statistically significant relationship between state drug offender imprisonment rates and three measures of state drug problems: rates of illicit drug use, drug overdose deaths, and drug arrests.”
Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences The Sentencing Project, May, 2017“Nearly half (48.3%) of life and virtual life-sentenced individuals are African American, equal to one in five black prisoners overall. As of 2016, 1 in every 9 people in prison was serving a life sentence.”
Capital Punishment, 2014-2015Bureau of Justice Statistics, May, 2017“Two states accounted for 80% of the executions [in 2016]: Georgia executed nine inmates, and Texas executed seven.”
Examining Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes among Indigent Defendants in San Francisco The Quattrone Center & The University of Pennsylvania Law School, May, 2017“Our analysis revealed that Black, White and Latinx indigent defendants in San Francisco have substantially different experiences during the criminal adjudication process.”
When did prisons become acceptable mental healthcare facilities?Stanford Law School Three Strikes Project, May, 2017“While the overall state prison population has decreased dramatically, the number of prisoners with mental illness continues to climb and is expected grow in the years ahead.”
Exonerations in 2016: The National Registry of Exonerations The National Registry of Exonerations, University of Michigan Law School, March, 2017“A record 94 exonerations in 2016 were cases in which no crime actually occurred.”
A Survey of Prosecutorial Diversion in IllinoisCenter for Health and Justice at TASC, March, 2017“As a growing field, there are many opportunities for improvement in diversion practices--in how programs are designed, implemented, and evaluated; in how data are collected and shared; and in ensuring that community services are available and accessible.”
Ohio's Statehouse-to-Prison Pipeline: 131st General Assembly (2015-2016) ACLU of Ohio, March, 2017“These laws often use incarceration to address public health issues like addiction, mental health, and poverty, which only serves to exacerbate those problems.”(The ACLU of Ohio reviewed all 1,004 bills introduced during the 2015-2016 legislative session and found nearly one in 10 included language to lock more people up longer.)
Raising The Age: Shifting to a Safer and More Effective Juvenile Justice System [Executive Summary] Justice Policy Institute, March, 2017“Over the past ten years, half of the states that had previously excluded all 16- and/or 17-year-olds from juvenile court based solely on their age have changed their laws.”
Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United StatesNational Registry of Exonerations, University of Michigan Law School, March, 2017“Innocent black murder suspects, especially those who are falsely convicted...are additional victims of murders committed by others. Those who have been exonerated spent on average more than 14 years in prison before they were released.”
Sentencing Outcomes in U.S. District Courts: Can Offenders' Educational Attainment Guard Against Prevalent Criminal Stereotypes? Travis W. Franklin, Sam Houston State University, February, 2017“[C]ourt actors may be less concerned (or not at all concerned) with factors typically linked to perceptions of dangerousness (e.g., race, ethnicity, age, sex, detention status) when dealing with offenders of higher educational status.”
Juvenile InJustice: Charging Youth as Adults is Ineffective, Biased, and Harmful Human Impact Partners, February, 2017“This practice undermines the purpose of the juvenile court system, pursues punishment rather than rehabilitation, and conflicts with what we know from developmental science[...]and reinforce the racial inequities that characterize the justice system.”
Delaying a Second Chance: The Declining Prospects for Parole on Life Sentences The Sentencing Project, January, 2017“By placing upward pressure on prison sentences for people with less serious convictions, excessive prison terms for lifers have contributed to a major cause of mass incarceration.”
How Many Americans Are Unnecessarily Incarcerated?Brennan Center for Justice, December, 2016“Nearly 40 percent of the U.S. prison population — 576,000 people — are behind bars with no compelling public safety reason.”
How Tough on Crime Became Tough on Kids: Prosecuting Teenage Drug Charges in Adult Courts The Sentencing Project, December, 2016“The ability of states to send teenagers into the adult system on nonviolent offenses, a relic of the war on drugs, threatens the futures of those teenagers who are arrested on drug charges, regardless of whether or not they are convicted.”
False Hope: How Parole Systems Fail Youth Serving Extreme Sentences ACLU, November, 2016“Parole boards today are both ill-equipped to provide mean- ingful individualized review and resistant to releasing people who, even if they were children at the time, committed a serious offense.”
The Continuing Leverage of Releasing Authorities: Findings from a National Survey: Executive Summary Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, October, 2016“Releasing authorities continue to retain significant and unrecognized clout in their decision-making. Their practices and policies impact the achievement of the criminal justice system's fundamental goals: fairness, offender rehabilitation, and safety.”
Evaluating the Role of Race in Criminal Justice Adjudications in DelawareJohn M. MacDonald and Ellen A. Donnelly, University of Pennsylvania, September, 2016“African American-White disparities in incarceration sentences are largely explained by differences in most serious of arrest charge, type of arrest charge, detention between arrest and final disposition, and county location.”
Righting Wrongs: The Five-Year Groundswell of State Bans on Life Without Parole For Children The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, September, 2016“In just five years--from 2011 to 2016--the number of states that ban death-in-prison sentences for children has more than tripled.”
Profit-Driven Prosecution and the Competitive Bidding ProcessJ. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, August, 2016“This Article sheds light on the problems caused by introducing an overtly economic calculation (how cheaply and how profitably the prosecutorial function may be fulfilled) into the criminal adjudicative process.”
Report to the Congress: Career Offender Sentencing Enhancements United States Sentencing Commission, August, 2016“The career offender directive should be amended to differentiate between career offenders with different types of criminal records, and is best focused on those offenders who have committed at least one 'crime of violence.'”
Defining Violence: Reducing Incarceration and Rethinking America's Approach to Violence Justice Policy Institute, August, 2016“[This report] explores how something is defined as a violent or nonviolent crime, how that classification affects how the justice system treats a person, and how all that relates to the use of incarceration.”
The Downstream Consequences of Misdemeanor Pretrial DetentionUniversity of Pennsylvania Law School, July, 2016“We find that detained defendants are 25% more likely than similarly situated releasees to plead guilty, 43% more likely to be sentenced to jail, and receive jail sentences that are more than twice as long on average.”
Juvenile Life Without Parole in Wayne County: Time to Join the National Consensus Fair Punishment Project, July, 2016“Wayne County makes up only 18% of the state's population, yet it accounts for at least 40% of the individuals serving these [juvenile life without parole] sentences in Michigan.”
The Prosecution of Youth as Adults: A county-level analysis of prosecutorial direct file in California and its disparate impact on youth of color Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, W. Haywood Burn's Institute, National Center for Youth Law, June, 2016“This report...presents county rates of direct file compared to the youth population and rates of youth arrests, and highlights racial and ethnic disparities.”
Justice by Geography: Do politics influence the prosecution of youth as adults? Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, June, 2016“Granting prosecutors the sole discretion to determine whether a youth is tried in adult court contributes to a system of extreme disparities.”
America's Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive the Death Penalty The Fair Punishment Project, June, 2016“There are more than 3,100 counties, 2,400 head prosecutors, and thousands of line prosecutors in America -- yet only a tiny handful of prosecutors are responsible for a vastly disproportionate number of death sentences.”
Distortion of Justice: How the Inability to Pay Bail Affects Case Outcomes University of Pennsylvania Law School, May, 2016“While previous research has shown correlations between pretrial detention and unfavorable case outcomes, this paper is the first to use a quasi-experimental research design to show that the relationship is causal.”
Stemming The Rising Tide: Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Youth Incarceration & Strategies for Change W. Haywood Burns Institute, May, 2016“Youth are being incarcerated for longer periods of time, with Black and Latino youth having the longest stays out of home.”
Justice in Review: New Trends in State Sentencing and Corrections 2014-2015 Vera Institute of Justice, May, 2016“In 2014 and 2015, 46 states enacted at least 201 bills, executive orders and ballot initiatives to reform at least one aspect of their sentencing and corrections systems.”
Assessing the Impact of South Dakota's Sentencing ReformsUrban Institute, May, 2016“South Dakota’s presumptive probation policy and felony reclassifications played a significant role in averting South Dakota’s prison population growth.”
Roadblocks to Reform: District Attorneys, Elections, and the Criminal Justice System Status Quo ACLU of Oregon, April, 2016“DAs are arguably the most powerful people in the criminal justice system, but voters don’t seem to know who DAs are or all that they do[.]”
By the Numbers: Parole Release and Revocation Across 50 States Robina Institute, April, 2016“The Data Profiles in this report are designed to provide a statistical snapshot of the relationships and movements between prison and parole supervision populations in each state.”
How Has Proposition 47 Affected California's Jail PopulationPublic Policy Institute of California, March, 2016“Taken together, we find significant changes in the level and composition of those incarcerated in jails following the passage of Prop 47.”
Prosecutorial Oversight: A National Dialogue in the Wake of Connick v. ThompsonInnocence Project, March, 2016“There are almost no adequate systems in place to keep prosecutorial error and misconduct in check and, in fact, prosecutors are rarely held accountable even for intentional misconduct.”
The Effects of Changing State Theft PenaltiesThe Pew Charitable Trusts, February, 2016“The Pew Charitable Trusts examined crime trends in the 23 states that raised their felony theft thresholds between 2001 and 2011[.]”
The Use of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35(b)United States Sentencing Commission, February, 2016“This report examines sentence reductions for offenders who cooperate with the government in its efforts to investigate or prosecute others.”
National Survey Key Findings - Federal Sentencing & PrisonsThe Pew Charitable Trusts, February, 2016“Voters are ready and willing to reform the criminal justice system in ways that reduce the size and cost of the federal prison system, while improving outcomes.”
Roadblock to Economic Independence: How Driver's License Suspension Policies in Indiana Impede Self-Sufficiency, Burden State Government... Health and Human Rights Clinic, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, February, 2016“Beside the cost to individuals, driver’s license suspensions significantly impact employers, government resources, and public safety.”
The State of Sentencing 2015 Developments in Policy and Practice The Sentencing Project, February, 2016“The policy reforms outlined in this document highlight changes in sentencing, community supervision, collateral consequences, and juvenile justice policies.”
Transforming Prisons, Restoring Lives: Final Recommendations of the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections, January, 2016“Sentencing reform and other policy changes will reduce our reliance on prison and cut costs as we reconsider which people truly need to be behind bars and for how long.”
Charging the Poor: Criminal Justice Debt & Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons Texas A&M University - School of Law, December, 2015“[M]y Article proposes eliminating egregious sanctions, providing courts flexibility to base fines on earning levels, and establishing procedures to enforce restrictions against incarcerating those who are truly unable to pay their criminal justice debt.”
Sentencing in California: Moving Toward a Smarter, More Cost-Effective Approach California Budget & Policy Center, December, 2015“Despite these positive steps, California's sentencing laws continue to overly rely on incarceration as the consequence for committing a felony or a misdemeanor, rather than promoting community-based interventions.”
Probation in CaliforniaPublic Policy Institute of California, December, 2015“Probation is the most widely used form of correctional supervision in California.”
Who Gets Time for Federal Drug Offenses? Data Trends and Opportunities for Reform Urban Institute, November, 2015(This brief finds that many people in federal prison for drug crimes have minimal or no criminal histories, and most were not convicted of violent or leading roles.)
Prison Time Surges for Federal InmatesThe Pew Charitable Trusts Public Safety Performance Project, November, 2015“The average length of time served by federal inmates more than doubled from 1988 to 2012, rising from 17.9 to 37.5 months.”
Changing Gears: California's Shift to Smart Justice ACLU of California, November, 2015“By June 2015, almost 160,000 petitions had been filed to reduce a felony to a misdemeanor.”
Proposition 47 Progress Report: Year One Implementation Stanford Law School Stanford Justice Advocacy Project, October, 2015“Since the enactment of Proposition 47 on November 14, 2014, the number of people incarcerated in California's prisons and jails has decreased by approximately 13,000 inmates, helping alleviate crowding conditions in those institutions.”
Federal Sentencing Disparity: 2005-2012 Bureau of Justice Statistics, October, 2015“Federal Sentencing Disparity, 2005-2012, examines patterns of federal sentencing disparity among white and black offenders, by sentence received, and looks at judicial variation in sentencing since Booker vs. United States, regardless of race.”
Adult Sex Offender ManagementOffice of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking, July, 2015“This brief has focused on the effectiveness of a number of prominent sex offender management strategies, including specialized supervision, COSA, polygraph, GPS, civil commitment, SORN, and residence restrictions.”
Juvenile Court Statistics 2013National Center for Juvenile Justice, July, 2015“Juvenile Court Statistics 2013 describes delinquency cases handled between 1985 and 2013 and petitioned status offense cases handled between 1995 and 2013 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction.”
Making Sense of Sentencing State Systems and Policies National Conference of State Legislatures, June, 2015(This report summarizes states' criminal codes and sentencing systems.)
The State of Sentencing 2014: Developments in Policy and Practice Sentencing Project, February, 2015“Sentencing: At least 16 states and the District of Columbia authorized legislation to address sentencing policy, including statutory penalties that limit lengths of confinement.”
Federal Justice Statistics, 2012 - Statistical TablesBureau of Justice Statistics, January, 2015“Tables and text describe arrests and investigations by law enforcement agency and growth rates by type of offense and federal judicial district.”
Defendant Remorse, Need for Affect, and Juror Sentencing DecisionsEmily Corwin, Louisiana State Univeristy; Professor Robert Cramer, Sam Houston State University; Desiree Griffin, Southern Virginia Mental Health Institute; Professor Stanley Brodsky, University of Alabama, 2015“Incongruent verbal and nonverbal behavior, as well as mock juror willingness to approach emotional situations (i.e., high need for affect resulted in more lenient sentences for defendants.”
Realignment and Recidivism in CaliforniaPublic Policy Institute of California, 2015“California’s historic public safety realignment has had a modest effect on the state’s persistently high recidivism rates, varying across groups of offenders and counties.”
The Prosecution of Youth As Adults in California: A 2015 Update Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, National Center for Youth Law, W. Haywood Burns Institute, 2015“The race and location of youth—rather than the seriousness of the offense—impacted the likelihood they were direct filed in adult criminal court and subjected to the adult system.”
Seattle's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD): Program Effects on Recidivism Outcomes Susan E. Collins, Heather S. Lonczak, Seema L. Clifasefi, 2015(Findings indicated positive effects of the Seattle's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program on criminal recidivism over shorter six-month and longer evaluation-wide timeframes.)
Demographic Differences in Sentencing: An Update to the 2012 Booker Report United States Sentencing Commission, 2015(Black male offenders continue to receive longer federal sentences than similarly situated White male offenders.)
Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission: 2014 Annual Report Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission, December, 2014“During FY2014, judges continued to agree with the sentencing guidelines recommendations in approximately 78% of the cases.”
Paroling people who committed serious crimes: What is the actual risk? Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, December, 2014(People who commit homicides or sex offenses have extremely low re-offense rates. This report argues that parole decisions should take into account this reality & aim to better repare people for release, not incarcerate them needlessly.)
Proposition 47: Estimating Local Savings and Jail Population Reductions Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, September, 2014“Every year, Los Angeles County could save between $99.9 million and $174.8 million, San Diego County between $28.4 million and $49.7 million, and San Joaquin County between $6.8 million and $12.0 million due to the implementation of Proposition 47.”
The Health Impacts of Prop 47: A Case Story Human Impact Partners, September, 2014(A health impact analysis study of the public health and equity benefits of reclassifying six low-level crimes of drug possession and petty theft from felonies to misdemeanors in California.)
Florida's Aging Prisoner ProblemFlorida Tax Watch, September, 2014“Between 2000 and 2014, the elderly prison population grew from 5,605 to 21,002, at an average increase of 9.9 percent per year, a rate more than three times higher than the general prison population.”
Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies Sentencing Project, September, 2014“Studies have shown that whites who associate crime with blacks and Latinos are more likely to support punitive policies - including capital punishment and mandatory minimum sentencing - than whites with weaker racial associations of crime.”
Rehabilitating Corrections in California: The Health Impacts of Proposition 47 Human Impact Partners, September, 2014“The key to achieving the full benefits of sentencing reform is funding and implementation of the treatment, prevention, and recovery services called for in the initiative.”
Explaining Dimensions of State-Level Punitiveness in the United States: The Roles of Social, Economic, and Cultural Factors Baker Institute of Public Policy, August, 2014(For incarceration, citizen engagement and property crime have a statistically significant and negative impact on state punitiveness, while the percent of population that is black has a significant and positive effect.)
Fewer Prisoners, Less Crime: A Tale of Three States The Sentencing Project, July, 2014“Studies consistently find that expediting prisoners' release from prison has no or minimal impact on recidivism rates.”
Recalibrating Justice A Review of 2013 State Sentencing and Corrections Trends Vera Institute of Justice, July, 2014“In 2013, at least six states authorized the creation or expansion of diversion programs or strengthened the infrastructure support- ing existing programs.”
Slow to Act: State Responses to 2012 Supreme Court Mandate on Life Without Parole Sentencing Project, June, 2014(While the Court struck down laws in 28 states that mandated life without parole, only 13 of those states have passed new sentencing laws.)
The contagious nature of imprisonment an agent-based model to explain racial disparities in incarceration rates The Royal Society, June, 2014“Our model suggests that increased sentencing for an individual has negative effects that spread through social networks to affect families and whole communities.”
Nation Behind Bars a human rights solution Human Rights Watch, May, 2014“The momentum for sentencing reform is welcome for all who care about the fair use of government's power to determine what conduct to criminalize and what sanctions to impose on those who break the law.”
Female Realignment Report: An Examination of Female Offenders Released from State Prison in the First Year of Public Safety Realignment California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, May, 2014“...data shows that there is very little difference between female offenders and their outcomes following release after completing their State prison term pre- and post-Realignment”
Mississippi's 2014 Corrections and Criminal Justice ReformPew's Public Safety Performance Project, May, 2014“...nonviolent offenders and those revoked for probation or parole violations accounted for a large and growing share of Mississippi's prison population.”
A New Approach to Reducing Incarceration While Maintaining Low Rates of Crime The Hamilton Project, May, 2014“What alternative policy options could we pursue in conjunction with scaling back incarceration rates that would reduce the social costs of incarceration while controlling crime?”
Criminal Justice Consensus Cost-Benefit Working GroupVermont Center for Justice Research, April, 2014“The State of Vermont needs to reinvigorate its commitment to supporting evidence-based programming in criminal and juvenile justice.”
Branded for Life: Florida's Prosecution of Children as Adults under its "Direct File" Statute Human Rights Watch, April, 2014“Florida transfers more children out of the juvenile system and into adult court than any other state. In the last five years alone, more than 12,000 juvenile crime suspects in Florida were transferred to the adult court system.”
Adventures in Risk: Predicting Violent and Sexual Recidivism in Sentencing Law Arizona State Law Journal, March, 2014“Whatever merit actuarial assessments may have for a variety of criminal justice decisions (such as bail, probation, and parole), they are far too problematic for use in sentencing matters.”
Victim Gender and the Death PenaltyCornell Law School, March, 2014“...our analyses suggest that victim gender continues to influence capital sentencing decisions.”
Reaching too far: How Connecticut's large sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark Prison Policy Initiative, March, 2014“This report shows that the law doesn't work, it cannot possibly work, and that it creates an unfair two-tiered system of justice based on a haphazard distinction between urban and rural areas of the state.”
Parolable Lifers in Michigan: Paying the price of unchecked discretion Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, February, 2014“With the average annual cost of incarcerating an aging prisoner at roughly $40,000, each decision to continue a lifer for five years costs taxpayers about $200,000. Research demonstrates that lifers have by far the lowest re-offense rates of all parolees”
Playbook for Change? States Reconsider Mandatory Sentences Vera Institute of Justice, February, 2014“...there is little evidence that longer sentences have more than a marginal effect in reducing recidivism-a key performance indicator of a state's correctional system. More than four out of 10 adult offenders still return to prison within three years...”
Michigan's Parolable Lifers: The Cost of a Broken Process Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, February, 2014“When most of today's parole-eligible lifers were sentenced, it was by judges who believed both a life sentence and a 40-year minimum term meant release within 16 years.”
Assessing Judicial Sentencing Preferences After Public Safety Realignment: A Survey of California Judges Stanford Criminal Justice Center, January, 2014“Our study finds that 57% of judges preferred to give an 1170(h) sentence over a felony probation sentence, except when the hypothetical contains information about the offender's substance abuse or mental illness.”
The New Normal? Prosecutorial Charging in California After Public Safety Realignment Stanford Criminal Justice Center, January, 2014“As for specific substantive conclusions, the undramatic one is that most charging or recommendation preferences remain consistent with traditional severity factors and do not manifest major alterations in light of AB 109.”
Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal SentencesUniversity of Michigan Law School, 2014(Blacks defendants receive federal sentences that are almost 10 percent longer than those of comparable whites arrested for the same crimes. Most of this disparity can be explained by prosecutors' initial charging decisions.)
A National Survey of Criminal Justice Diversion Programs and InitiativesCenter for Health and Justice at TASC, December, 2013(With many diversion programs in the country, there are no overarching standards for collecting or publishing data for the purposes of evaluating different types of programs against common sets of performance measures such as reducing costs and recidivism.)
A Living Death Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses ACLU, November, 2013“About 79 percent of the 3,278 prisoners serving life without parole were sentenced to die in prison for nonviolent drug crimes.”
Smart on Sentencing, Smart on Crime: An Argument for Reforming Louisiana's Determinate Sentencing Laws Reason Foundation, Pelican Institute for Public Policy, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Right on Crime, October, 2013“Today, Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, with 868 of every 100,000 of its citizens in prison.”
Progress Report: Three Strikes Reform (Proposition 36) Stanford Law School Three Strikes Project and NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, September, 2013“Fewer than 2% of the prisoners released under Prop 36 have been charged with new crimes, according to state and county records. The average recidivism rate over a similar period of time for non-Prop 36 inmates leaving California prisons is 16%.”
Life Goes On: The Historic Rise in Life Sentences in America Sentencing Project, September, 2013“As of 2012, there were 159,520 people serving life sentences, an 11.8% rise since 2008.”
Preliminary Crack Retroactivity Data Report Fair Sentencing Act U.S. Sentencing Commission, July, 2013“After federal sentencing guideline changes on crack cocaine were made retroactive, more than 7,300 defendants got on average a 29-month reduction in their sentences.”
Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a New Justice Reinvestment Experts from a coalition of organizations including The Sentencing Project, JFA Institute, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Justice Strategies., April, 2013“While JRI has played a significant role in softening the ground and moving the dial on mass incarceration reform, it runs the danger of institutionalizing mass incarceration at current levels.”
Gideon at 50: Three Reforms to Revive the Right to Counsel Brennan Center for Justice, April, 2013“Recommendations include: legalizing some petty offenses or reclassifying them into non-jailable civil infractions; increase funding for public defense; Increase effectiveness by funding regular trainings for attorneys and adding social workers.”
Crime, Cost, and Consequences: Is it Time to Get Smart on Crime? MassInc, Community Resources for Justice, March, 2013“If Massachusetts continues on the current course, the analysis contained in this report suggests the state will spend more than $2 billion over the next decade on corrections policies that produce limited public safety benefit.”
Tinkering with Life A Look at the Inappropriateness of of Life Without Parole as an Alternative to the Death Penalty The Sentencing Project, January, 2013“LWOP is often touted as the humane alternative to the death penalty, yet many of the problematic aspects of the death penalty are also applicable to this sentence.”
The State of Sentencing 2012: Developments in Policy and Practice Sentencing Project, January, 2013“State lawmakers in at least 24 states adopted 41 criminal justice policies that in 2012 may contribute to downscaling prison populations and eliminating barriers to reentry while promoting effective approaches to public safety.”
Lifer Parole Recidivism ReportCalifornia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, January, 2013“Lifer parolees receive fewer new convictions within three years of being released to parole (4.8 vs. 51.5%, respectively). They also have a markedly lower return to prison recidivism rate than non-lifer parolees (13.3 vs. 65.1%, respectively).”
Report to the Governor - 2012Oregon Commission on Public Safety, December, 2012“Oregon's imprisonment rate has grown at over three times the rate of the national average in the last decade. During that same period, prison admissions have grown to include increasing percentages of nonviolent offenders.”
Report on the Continuing Impact of United States v. Booker on Federal Sentences United States Sentencing Commission, December, 2012“This report assesses the continuing impact on the federal sentencing system of the Supreme Court's 2005 opinion in United States v. Booker, which rendered the sentencing guidelines advisory.”
The Anatomy of Discretion: An Analysis of Prosecutorial Decision Making Vera Institute of Justice, December, 2012“While prosecutorial discretion is generally seen as very broad and unconstrained, prosecutors often rely on a fairly limited array of legal and quasi-legal factors to make decisions, and are further constrained by several contextual factors.”
Report of the Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for GeorgiansSpecial Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians, November, 2012“The data shows that most individuals sentenced to prison are drug and property offenders, and these offenders are also staying behind bars for longer periods of time. Drug and property offenders represent almost 60 percent of all admissions.”
Restoration of Rights ProjectNational Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, October, 2012“54 jurisdictional profiles include provisions on loss and restoration of civil rights and firearms privileges, legal mechanisms for overcoming or mitigating collateral consequences, and provisions addressing non-discrimination in employment and licensing.”
Bail Fail Why the U.S. Should End the Practice of Using Money for Bail Justice Policy Institute, September, 2012“Although judges and judicial officers may deny or simply not be aware of any racial bias [...], there is strong evidence that these bail decision makers consider the lost freedom caused by pretrial detention to be a greater loss for whites than for blacks”
2012 Party Platforms on Criminal Justice PolicySentencing Project, September, 2012“Though the United States remains the world's leader in incarceration [...], the recently approved Democratic and Republican party platforms indicate ways to make progress on criminal justice reform while increasing public safety.”
Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories, 2009Bureau of Justice Statistics, August, 2012“During 2009, publicly funded crime labs began and ended the year with a total backlog of more than one million requests for forensic services.”
Three Strikes: The Wrong Way to Justice Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School, June, 2012“By properly limiting the applicability of the habitual offender provisions, Massachusetts will be able to reinvest in its people through education, treatment, training, and community development programs.”
Survey of Sentencing Practices FY 2011Massachusetts Sentencing Commission, May, 2012“For state prison sentences, the median minimum state prison sentence was 36.0 months and the median maximum state prison sentence was 48.0 months.”
Reallocating Justice Resources A Review of 2011 State Sentencing Trends Vera Institute of Justice, March, 2012“Early in the current recession, many states focused only on achieving quick cost savings. Now state lawmakers are considering multiple, related policy changes that will have long-term fiscal impacts.”
The State of Sentencing 2011Sentencing Project, February, 2012“During 2011, state legislatures in at least 29 states adopted 55 criminal justice policies that may contribute to continued population reductions and address the collateral consequences associated with felony convictions.”
Missouri Working Group on Sentencing and Corrections Consensus ReportMissouri Working Group on Sentencing and Corrections, December, 2011“The Working Group conducted extensive analysis of state data and trends and has reached consensus on a package of reforms that will improve public safety, hold offenders accountable, and contain corrections costs by strengthening community supervision.”
Report to Congress Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System United States Sentencing Commission, October, 2011“[C]ertain mandatory minimum provisions apply too broadly, are set too high, or both, to warrant the prescribed minimum penalty for the full range of offenders who could be prosecuted under the particular criminal statute.”
Annual Report to the United States Sentencing CommissionUnited States Department of Justice, July, 2011“In the last 50 years,the United States experienced an extraordinary increase, followed by an equally extraordinary decrease, in the number of Americans victimized by violent crime.”
Balancing Punishment and Treatment Alternatives to Incarceration in New York City Vera Institute of Justice, May, 2011“For those concerned about public safety, these results are good news; they show that many felony offenders can be sent to rigorous community programs rather than jail without increasing the risk to the public.”
Sentencing Reform Amid Mass Incarceration - Guarded Optimism Sentencing Project, May, 2011“A number of state have scaled back mandatory sentencing policies...”
The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey Sentencing Project, March, 2011“The proportion of African Americans serving JLWOP sentences for the killing of a white person (43.4%) is nearly twice the rate at which African American juveniles are arrested for taking a white person's life (23.2%).”
The State of Sentencing 2010 Developments in Policy and Practice Sentencing Project, February, 2011“During 2010, state legislatures in at least 23 states and the District of Columbia adopted 35 [...] policies that may contribute to reductions in the prison population and eliminate barriers to reentry while promoting effective approaches to public safety”
Turning the Corner Opportunities for Effective Sentencing and Correctional Practices in Arizona Justice Strategies, January, 2011“Arizona policymakers can restore judicial discretion to sentence people to more effective, less costly correctional supervision and treatment options in lieu of prison in cases where such measures would clearly better serve both justice and public safety.”
The Chicago Lawyers' Committee's Review of Alternatives for Non- Violent Offenders Chicago Lawyers' Committee, 2011“This article first addresses specific reforms that have been implemented nationwide relating to non-violent offenders, highlights examples of states that have implemented more aggressive aspects of such reforms, and discusses Illinois' policies.”
California Sentencing InstituteCenter on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, November, 2010“comprehensive analysis of sentencing policies and practices in all of California's 58 counties.”(Contains detailed county-level statistics)
Ending and Defending Against HIV Criminalization: State and Federal Laws and Prosecutions The Center for HIV Law and Policy, November, 2010“Thirty-two states and two U.S. territories have HIV-specific criminal statutes and thirty-six states have reported proceedings in which HIV-positive people have been arrested and/or prosecuted for consensual sex, biting, and spitting.”
Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States Alexes Harris, Heather Evans, and Katherine Beckett, University of Washington, May, 2010“[F]indings suggest that monetary sanctions create long-term legal debt and significantly extend punishment's effects over time.”
The State of Sentencing 2009 Developments in Policy and Practice Sentencing Project, January, 2010“During 2009 state legislatures in at least 19 states enacted policies that hold the potential to reduce prison populations and/or promote more effective approaches to public safety.”
Life Without Parole A Reconsideration Criminal Justice Policy Coalition and the Norfolk Lifers Group, 2010“Everyone serving a Life Without Parole sentence in MA, after 25 years should be afforded an opportunity to demonstrate both a rehabilitated character and a low public safety risk through access to a parole hearing and, where appropriate, parole.”
Until They Die A Natural Death Youth Sentenced to Life Without Parole in Massachusetts Children's Law Center of Massachusetts, September, 2009“Massachusetts [...] stands apart in giving the adult court exclusive jurisdiction over murder cases against children as young as 14 and then imposing a mandatory life without parole sentence for all first degree murder convictions.”
No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America Sentencing Project, July, 2009“A record 140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime.”
Sex Offender Registration and Notification Limited Effects in New Jersey National Institute of Justice, April, 2009“Convicted offenders and their offense types in this study were similar before and after Megan’s Law was passed.”
The State of Sentencing 2008 Developments in Policy and Practice Sentencing Project, February, 2009“A nationwide budget crisis coupled with widespread prison overcrowding has led many states to address critical challenges in the areas such as sentencing, drug policy, parole revocation, racial justice, disenfranchisement, juvenile justice, and education.”
Reaching too far, coming up short: How large sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark Prison Policy Initiative, January, 2009“Massachusetts cannot afford to preserve a law that fails to protect children while draining the state coffers and incarcerating Latinos and Blacks at a rate 26 to 30 times as frequently as Whites.”
The Geography of Punishment: How Huge Sentencing Enhancement Zones Harm Communities, Fail to Protect Children Prison Policy Initiative, July, 2008“Our analysis found that less than a third (29%) of White Hampden County residents live in enhancement zones, but that more than half (52%) of Black and Latino residents live in school zones.”(Finds zone law fails to move drug crimes away from schools while increasing racial disparities in sentencing.)
The State of Sentencing 2007: Developments in Policy and Practice The Sentencing Project, January, 2008“Confronted with the high cost of continued prison growth, policymakers in 18 states took steps during 2007 to review the effectiveness of their criminal justice systems or institute reforms to limit recidivism and sentence lengths...”
Cruel and Unusual: Sentencing 13- and 14-Year-Old Children to Die in Prison Equal Justice Initiative, November, 2007“In many states, 13- and 14-year-olds are subjected to the harshest possible prison sentence... In most of these cases, the judges who imposed death in prison sentences on young children had no other legal option.”
No Easy Answers: Sex Offender Laws in the USHuman Rights Watch, September, 2007“The evidence is overwhelming, as detailed in this report, that these laws cause great harm to the people subject to them. On the other hand, proponents of these laws are not able to point to convincing evidence of public safety gains from them.”
Cocaine and Federal Sentencing PolicyUnited States Sentencing Commission, May, 2007“Federal cocaine sentencing policy... continues to come under almost universal criticism... and inaction in this area is of increasing concern to many, including the Commission.”
Changing Direction? State Sentencing Reforms 2004-2006 The Sentencing Project, March, 2007“The report... identifies that the most popular approach for reducing prison crowding -- implemented by 13 states -- was the diversion of low-level drug offenders from prison to drug treatment programs.”
When A Historical Analysis of Life Sentences Imposed in Michigan Since 1900 Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, September, 2006“The historical record makes it indisputably clear that a life sentence in Michigan did not always mean”
Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems: The Florida Death Penalty Assessment Report American Bar Association, September, 2006“[R]esearch establishes that many Florida capital jurors do not understand their role and responsibilities when deciding whether to impose a death sentence.”
Alabama Sentencing Commission 2006 ReportAlabama Sentencing Commission, January, 2006“Of Alabama's inmate population, almost 1 out of 3 inmates are sentenced as an habitual offender.”
Second Chances Juveniles serving life without parole in Michigan prisons American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, January, 2006“The majority (221) of juvenile lifers are minority youth, 211 of whom are African-American. The percentage of African-American juvenile lifers (69%) is greatly disproportionate to the general population in Michigan, which is 15% African-American.”
Mandatory Minimum Sentences Briefing Connecticut General Assembly, December, 2005“The annual cost of incarceration associated with mandatory minimum sentences is $201.1 million.”
Minimum Mandatory Sentence Final Report Connecticut General Assembly, December, 2005“Mandatory minimum sentencing laws were specifically intended to deter offenders and thereby reduce crime (and curb drug use). There is no direct evidence to suggest that the state's mandatory minimum sentencing laws reduced the crime rate (or drug use).”
A Primer: Three Strikes - The Impact After More Than a Decade Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) - California's Nonpartisan Fiscal and Policy Advisor, October, 2005
Racial Divide: California's 3 Strikes Law Justice Policy Institute, October, 2004
No way out Michigan's parole board redefines the meaning of Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, September, 2004(When judges imposed a life sentence, they assumed that the prisoner would be parolled in 10-15 years, but in the 1990's the parol board started denying parol, in effect changing the sentence, contributing to overcrowding and increasing costs of prisons.)
The Meaning of "Life" Long Prison Sentences in Context Sentencing Project, May, 2004
Positive Trends in State-Level Sentencing and Corrections PolicyFamilies Against Mandatory Minimums, November, 2003“Texas policymakers introduced parole reforms in 2000. The parole board's approval rate for non-violent offenders rose, parole revocations fell sharply, and prison populations dropped by 7,698 from September 2000 to December 2001.”
Smart On Crime: Positive Trends in State-Level Sentencing and Corrections Policy Families Against Mandatory Minimums, November, 2003
Prisons and Sentencing in Massachusetts Waging a More Effective Fight Against Crime MassInc, June, 1999“Critics of mandatory minimum drug laws, both state and federal, claim that these draconian penalties are jamming prisons with nonviolent offenders, many of them serving long sentences for a first conviction.”
Striking Out: The Failure of California's "Three Strikes and You're Out" Law Justice Policy Institute, March, 1999
Truth in Sentencing in State PrisonsBureau of Justice Statistics, January, 1999“State sentencing law changes linked to increasing time served in State prisons”
Truth In Sentencing: Availability of Federal Grants Influenced Laws in Some States General Accounting Office, February, 1998
Three Strikes and You're Out: Estimated Benefits and Costs of California's New Mandatory-Sentencing Law RAND Foundation, 1994
The Debate on Rehabilitating Criminals: Is it True that Nothing Works? Jerome Miller, National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, March, 1989(The easiest thing to say is that rehabilitation has never been seriously tried. There are, however, some studies of small programs cited in Miller's footnotes that deserve attention.)
