Tuesday, September 22 2026:

• Incapacitating debt: Investigating the community-wide effects of incarceration on medical debt, Paywall :( Walter Campbell et al. June, 2026. "Non-white communities experience worsening medical debt as incarceration rises while white communities do not."
• Collateral consequences: The effects of justice processing for violations of drug laws in New York City, NORC at the University of Chicago & John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center. May, 2024. "A one percentage point increase in drug-related arrests three years before property tax assessment reduces the median tax assessment by 4.6% in areas with the greatest share of Hispanic residents."
• Disability rights on probation and parole, Alexis Karteron. 2025. "Examines the experiences of people with [various] disabilities to understand how disability discrimination manifests in probation and parole programs and identifies numerous policies and practices that likely run afoul of...federal disability rights laws."
• Disabled people in New York prisons aren't receiving accommodations they're entitled to, Curtis Brodner. September, 2026. "[New York's] DOCCS has designated 11 prisons to provide tools, staff support, & other accommodations for people with vision, hearing, & mobility disabilities...no single facility is designated to accommodate every category of disability..."
• The symbiotic harm of a criminal record, Ericka B. Adams, Elsa Y. Chen, & Sarah E. Lageson. October, 2025. "...A criminal record limited the employment and housing prospects for formerly convicted persons, decreased record holders' ability to participate in activities with children, and hindered adults' attempts to gain custody of younger relatives."
• Family matters: How family member incarceration, and who was incarcerated, is associated with older adults' health, Louisa Holaday et al. December, 2025. "Family member incarceration was independently associated with increased odds of reporting "fair"/"poor" physical and mental health. This differed by relationship, with...parental incarceration independently associated with the highest odds..."
• Winnable criminal justice reforms in 2026, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2025. "We've curated this list to offer policymakers & advocates straightforward solutions that would have the greatest impact on reducing incarceration and reversing harms experienced by people impacted by the criminal legal system."
• Using Medicaid reentry waivers to expand access to substance use disorder services: Three leading rural county initiatives, Health and Reentry Project. July, 2026. "To better understand how best to implement reentry waivers in rural counties...case studies from three counties in Washington state and Maine illustrate the approaches, resources, and partnerships 3 county jails are building."
• HIV in prisons, 2023 - statistical tables, Bureau of Justice Statistics. June, 2025. "From yearend 2022 to yearend 2023, the number of males in state and federal prison living with HIV increased from 11,500 to 11,710 (up 2%), and the number of females increased from 700 to 750 (up 7%)."
• Universal opt-out Hepatitis C Virus testing and treatment on entry in California state prisons, Ziping Ye et al. September, 2026. "Of the [nearly 177,000 people entering CA prisons from July 2016-June 2023], 76% were tested for HCV antibody, 19% of those tested...were ever infected with HCV, and 66% of those ever infected...were currently infected."
• These local jails were supposed to detain immigrants for only 72 hours, ProPublica. August, 2026. "Of the 423 immigrants rebooked at least twice in Pinellas and Orange counties [in Florida] through December 2025, 115 -- or 27% -- had no criminal charges or convictions except for traffic-related offenses."
• Warrant enforcement in Louisville Metro and the City of St. Louis from 2006 - 2019: A cross-site analysis, Lee Ann Slocum et al. December, 2020. "In St. Louis, 14% of arrests in 2019 were for bench warrants only, and 39%...involved at least one bench warrant. In Louisville Metro, bench warrant only arrests accounted for 19% of arrests, and...at least one bench warrant in 34% of arrests."
• How fines and fees in the criminal legal system hinder Black economic mobility, Urban Institute. March, 2026. "[In 2024,] 24% of Black working-age adults said someone in their household had been assessed or owed a fine/fee, compared with 18% of white adults. Black adults were also twice as likely as white adults to report...court- or incarceration-related costs."
• Tribal disparities in youth incarceration, Sentencing Project. August, 2025. "Disparities in tribal youth incarceration have grown worse over the course of the decade, with tribal youth being almost four times as likely to be incarcerated than their white peers."
• When bad policies spread: The expansion of the "sex offense registry" model to other convictions, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2026. "Public registries are not worth the trade-off; they may increase the likelihood of recidivism enough to cancel out any deterrent effect registration may have, while also putting at risk the safety of people who have to register."
• A second look: Local labor markets and the impact of ban the box policies after criminal legal involvement, Benjamin Pyle. July, 2024. "[Finds] stronger labor markets at release decrease recidivism rates, but also present novel evidence that demand is reducing recidivism through channels beyond employment for returning citizens."
• Potential fiscal, economic, and social impacts of the Televerde Foundation PATHS Program in Florida, University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research. July, 2026. "Florida's estimated 5-year recidivism rate for women is 17.4%, compared with an estimated 3.9% among Televerde PATHS [workforce training] Program participants. This...translates into approximately $11,919 in avoided incarceration costs per participant."
• Mercy and the construction of social control: A four-site analysis of clemency, Veronica L. Horowitz. November, 2023. "State actors seek to use the commutation process to generate compliance and consent. Crucial to this aim is the consensus among board members that the possibility of clemency provides hope to those seeking mercy."
• Menstruation as misconduct: How prisons punish people for having their periods, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2025. "In this briefing, we analyze prison rules and sanctions from every state, D.C., and the federal Bureau of Prisons to explain how many of them allow corrections departments to unjustly punish people for the normal bodily process of menstruation."
• Incarcerated people's perceptions of reproductive health care in a San Diego County women's jail: Interview findings from an exploratory study, Urban Institute. December, 2024. "[In this study of 34 incarcerated people, respondents] reported experiencing significant barriers in requesting care and lengthy delays in receiving care."
• Free to bleed: Rules on menstrual products in US women's prisons, Prison Flow Project. September, 2026. "Menstrual inequity behind bars is not simply a problem of insufficient supplies. It is produced at the intersection of incarceration, poverty, healthcare inequity, gender inequality, racial inequality, and institutional power."
• Equivalence of care? A scoping review of prison healthcare experiences of women and non-binary people who use drugs, Pip Buckingham et al. September, 2026. "While our [scoping] review found no studies that explicitly used the 'equivalence of care' framework...it identified research [on] the harms of incarceration and the poor quality of prison healthcare for this cohort [of women and non-binary people]."

Thursday, September 10 2026:

• In the Name of Security: An investigation into the everyday violence of prison strip searches, Khawla Nakua. September, 2026. "Of the 8,344 strip searches in women's prisons in Washington from 2022 to 2024, just 28 resulted in the discovery of contraband items. In Arizona, which provided data from both men's and women's facilities, just one search out of 28,045 did."
• "The system will choose security over humanity every time:" Understanding security and privacy for U.S. incarcerated users, Yael Eiger et al. April, 2026. "Participants describe pervasive surveillance, censorship, and usability problems with the technology available to them, including shifting and seemingly arbitrary usage policies."
• The solitary confinement crisis in immigration detention, Sabrineh Ardalan, Arevik Avedian, & Philip L. Torrey. 2025. "Placements involving a detainee with a serious mental illness lasted 22 percent longer on average compared to placements with no reported mental illness"
• Spatiotemporal facility-level patterns of summer heat exposure, vulnerability, and risk in U.S. prison landscapes, Ufuoma Ovienmhada et al. September, 2024. "Across the US, the prisons with the top 10 heat exposures had 8.6% higher proportions of nonwhite, non-Hispanic incarcerated populations than the lowest 10 prisons [in 2019]."
• Borough contrast: Prosecution and court outcomes across New York City, 2021-2024, Data Collaborative for Justice. April, 2026. "From 2021 to 2024, the rate at which judges set bail or remand in nonviolent felony cases significantly increased in Queens (17% to 25%). Bronx judges...had the lowest rate of setting bail or remand in 2024 (at 12%)."
• Does unauthorized immigration drive community crime rates? Evidence from 11,500 U.S. neighborhoods, Charis E. Kubrin et al. August, 2026. "We find that neighborhoods that experienced greater increases in the share of undocumented residents saw greater reductions in property crime and no detectable change in violent crime."
• What 911 data says about community needs in New York City, Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2026. "In 2025, 911 call-takers assigned almost 3.7 million calls to receive an NYPD response... call dispatchers identified nearly 42% of these calls as relating to crime. The vast majority of these crime related calls (91%) did not involve violent crimes."
• Characterizing rural substance use treatment experiences among individuals under community correctional supervision, Paywall :( Tawandra L. Rowell-Cunsolo et al. August, 2026. "More than 55% [of the 978 participants under community supervision] had engaged in some type of treatment for substance use in the past 6 months; among those, nearly half (46%) had enrolled in inpatient or residential treatment."
• Surveying correctional health staff on medication for opioid use disorder diversion: Barriers and mitigation strategies, Laura Lutgen-Nieves et al. April, 2026. "88% percent of jail and 87% of prison [correctional health care professional] respondents believed that a long-acting injectable buprenorphine formulation could help reduce MOUD diversion within their facilities."
• "You can't incarcerate yourself out of the drug problem in America:" A qualitative examination of Colorado's 2022 fentanyl criminalization law, Katherine LeMasters et al. April, 2025. "Analysis revealed that participants [including peer support, policymakers, program staff, and law enforcement] found increasing criminal penalties for fentanyl possession to be misguided."
• Hear our voices: Women inside MCI-Framingham speak on prison construction, Boston College Law School Civil Rights Clinic. February, 2026. "Only five women, or 16%, ranked new construction and renovation in their top three priorities. Instead, the most commonly chosen priorities were [healthcare access, reentry services, pathways to release, policy changes like elder parole, etc.]"
• An opportunity to 'be someone else:' The perceptions and experiences of male and female peer support workers in two US state prisons, Paywall :( Warren Stewart et al. August, 2026. "While male peer caregivers in the sample appeared to be motivated by issues related to identity, masculinity and religious beliefs, female peer caregivers cited the value of meaningful relationships."
• Medications-in-hand: Early learnings from Medicaid Reentry Waiver implementation in California, Justice System Partners. July, 2026. "Counties repeatedly described the tension between the CalAIM goal of providing medications at release and the jail reality that many releases - more than 75% - are unplanned, court-driven, or occur outside normal business hours."
• Links of previous incarceration with geriatric syndromes and chronic health conditions among older adults in the U.S., Alexander Testa et al. March, 2024. "Respondents with previous incarceration had significantly higher odds of reporting difficulty walking, activities of daily living difficulty, cancer diagnosis, depression diagnosis, and chronic lung disease [than those without previous incarcerations]."
• Factors associated with all-cause mortality in a western state prison system, 1999-2020, Paywall :( Jillian J. Turanovic, Nancy Rodriguez, & Julie L. Kuper. January, 2026. "Self-harm incidents and sentences of over 20 years were most strongly associated with mortality...Mortality risk increased substantially with age, with [those] aged 55+ at admission having over 11 times the risk of death compared [to those under 25]."
• Almost half of all incarcerated people are in rural jails and prisons and at risk of losing access to hospitals, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2025. "Nearly a million incarcerated people depend on rural hospitals... Almost 60% of people in prisons and 25% of those in local jails are confined in rural counties, which are home to 3,000 of the nation's correctional facilities."
• Independent evaluation of New York State Assisted Outpatient Treatment, Human Services Research Institute & University of Pittsburgh. June, 2026. "13% entered through a criminal-legal pathway - such as probation, jail, or court referral - where they reported that AOT was an alternative to further confinement."
• Contact cards in Cincinnati A review of racial bias in police stops, 2009-2025, Campaign Zero. May, 2026. "In 2025, Cincinnati Police officers stopped Black people 3.4x more often than White people, Black pedestrians were stopped 5.4x more often than White pedestrians, [and] Black people were stopped in vehicles 3.2x more often than White people."
• Policing homelessness: Neighborhood predictors of clearing encampments and vehicle residences, Paywall :( Brandon Morande. June, 2026. "Increases in neighborhood property value predict more encampment sweeps and vehicle impoundments."
• Private food, public harm: Privatized food service in prisons and jails, Center for Science in the Public Interest. 2025. "At the state level, 18 states' departments of corrections (more than a third of states) contract out some or all food service management functions, with Aramark holding statewide contracts for 17 states."
• Health, housing, and household circumstances among women on parole Findings from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2021-2023, Council on Criminal Justice. August, 2026. "About 24% of women on parole met the threshold for a severe mental health disorder, compared to 7% of women not on parole and 10% of men on parole."
• Inevitable yet ignored: Prison policies disregard the realities of menopause behind bars, Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2026. "We reviewed state and federal prison system policies in search of clues regarding health or educational services that specifically address menopause...we found an alarming lack of institutional policies about [this] major and unavoidable life stage."
• Mental health of adolescents in juvenile correctional facilities across axes of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity: Minnesota Student Survey, 2019, Charu Balamurugan, Julie A. Ward, & Kristy A. Clark. 2025. "Sexual and gender minority and racial and ethnical minority adolescents had the highest prevalence of past-year suicidal ideation (44.4%), suicide attempts (50.0%), self-harm (61.1%), and recent depressive symptoms (33.3%)."
• New study finds confined neurodivergent youth of color are particularly vulnerable to physical assault by staff, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2025. "[A review of a study finding] that children of color and neurodivergent children are disproportionately confined in juvenile facilities, and that neurodivergent children of color in particular are more likely to report being physically assaulted by staff."