Research about Criminal Justice Issues:

Organized by date added:

Wednesday, October 9 2024:

Tuesday, October 8 2024:

  • Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change, Julius A. McGee & Patrick T. Greiner. November, 2020. "We find that increases in incarceration within states are associated with increases in industrial emissions, and that increases in incarceration lead to a more tightly coupled association between gross domestic product per capita & industrial emissions."
  • Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substance Exposure Risks in US Carceral Facilities, 2022 Lindsay Poirier, Derrick Salvatore, Phil Brown, et al. May, 2024. "5% of US carceral facilities have at least 1 known source of PFAS contamination... also 47% have at least 1 presumptive source [of PFAS exposure]. A minimum of 990 000 people are incarcerated in these facilities, including at least 12,800 juveniles."
  • Prison disciplinary fines only further impoverish incarcerated people and families Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2024. "In 16 prison systems, we found policies referencing fines and/or fees related to confirmed disciplinary violations (where someone is found guilty or pleads guilty)."
  • The aging prison population: Causes, costs, and consequences, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2023. "According to the most recent data on local jails in the U.S., from 2020-2021 ...the segment of the jail population aged 55+ grew by a greater proportion than any other age group, 24% compared to an average increase of 15% across all other ages."
  • Prescription Patterns in Jails Before and Since the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multisite Serial Cross-Sectional Investigation, Amber H. Simpler, William Jett, Abdullah Ahsan, & Yash Arun Patade. August, 2024. "[From 2019-2023], the number of prescriptions in jails for various drug classes [grew], particularly central nervous system agents (13.5% to 17.7%)...The increase in prescriptions points toward a growing demand for managing pain, psychiatric conditions..."
  • Health, Access to Care, and Financial Barriers to Care Among People Incarcerated in US Prisons Paywall :( Emily Lupton Lupez, Steffie Woolhandler, David U. Himmelstein, et al. August, 2024. "Of pregnant people [in state prison] with a co-pay greater than 1 week's [prison] wage, 12% had no obstetrical examination and 62% had no pregnancy education [after admission to prison]."
  • Peer Education as a Tool to Improve Health Knowledge for People Who Are Incarcerated: A Secondary Analysis of Data From the Indiana Peer Education Program ECHO, Andrea D. Janota, Patrick F. Hibbard, Meghan E. Meadows, et al. August, 2024. "Training individuals who are [in prison in Indiana] as peer educators on relevant public health topics increases health knowledge and behavior intentions and likely results in improvements in personal and public health outcomes."
  • End-of-Life Care Planning: Perspectives of Returning Citizens, Paywall :( Erin Kitt-Lewis & Susan J. Loeb. April, 2024. "Most of the participating returning citizens [in the qualitative study] did not have even a basic understanding of advanced directives/care planning."
  • Disparities in Medication Use for Criminal Justice System-Referred Opioid Use Disorder Treatment J. Travis Donahoe, Julie M. Donohue, & Brendan K. Saloner. September, 2024. "49% of individuals referred to opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment by noncriminal justice sources received MOUD. A total of 34% of individuals referred to treatment by criminal justice sources received the same treatment."
  • The Perils of Late-Night Releases Sandra Susan Smith. June, 2024. "Within 185 of the 200 most populated cities in the United States, there are 141 jails. Of the 141 jails, 131 release during the late night and only 10 do not."
  • Racial/ethnic disparities in police recovery of stolen property: A previously unexplored facet of police/victim interaction, Paywall :( Alexander J. Vanhee. October, 2024. "Analyses of victim race suggested that Black, Asian, and Native American victims were all less likely to have their property recovered than white ones."
  • Not an alternative: The myths, harms, and expansion of pretrial electronic monitoring, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2023. "Jail populations in many jurisdictions have remained essentially the same or have even increased while [electronic monitoring] usage has skyrocketed, significantly increasing the total number of people under surveillance."
  • Does pretrial detention influence time until re-involvement with the criminal legal system? Paywall :( Ian A. Silve, Jason Walker, Matthew DeMichele, et al. September, 2024. "Spending 2-3 days, 3-7 days, & >7 days in pretrial detention was associated with an increased probability of a new criminal arrest & new violent criminal arrest earlier...compared to spending 0-1 day in pretrial detention."
  • No Release: Parole grant rates have plummeted in most states since the pandemic started, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2023. "In the 29 states for which we collected 2022 parole approval data, only 8 had grant rates above 50% - Connecticut, Idaho, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming."
  • Two years after the end of Roe v. Wade, most women on probation & parole have to ask permission to travel for abortion care, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2024. "In all, 41 states have some kind of abortion ban in place, whether "total bans" or bans based on gestational duration. In every one of these states, standard conditions of probation and/or parole require permission to travel out of state or county."
  • Do Parole Technical Violators Pose a Safety Threat? An Analysis of Prison Misconduct, Paywall :( Erin A. Orrick & Robert G. Morris. November, 2019. "Based on the official disciplinary records from male inmates readmitted to prison for technical violations and new offenses, technical violators were found to be significantly less likely to engage in any form of prison misconduct."
  • Association between willingness to use an overdose prevention center and probation or parole status among people who use drugs in Rhode Island, Michael Tan, Carolyn Park, Jacqueline Goldman, et al. February, 2024. "Most participants (71%) reported willingness to use an overdose prevention center (OPC), and... willingness to use an OPC did not vary by probation/parole status."
  • Mortality Disparities Among Arrestees by Race, Sentencing Disposition, and Place George Zuo, Beau Kilmer, & Nancy Nicosia. July, 2024. "In terms of racial disparities, all-cause mortality risk was 2.37 (95% CI, 1.95-2.88) times higher for American Indian/Alaska Native than White arrestees in the arrest-only disposition."
  • Bias, Distrust, and Trauma Racial Disparities in Boston Residents' Experiences with Law Enforcement and Related Outcomes, Sandra Susan Smith. May, 2024. "With few exceptions, Black Bostonians experience disparate treatment by law enforcement within categories of gender, age, educational attainment, neighborhood of residence, and income status."
  • "Expected to happen": perspectives on post-release overdose from recently incarcerated people with opioid use disorder, Pryce S. Michener, Elyse Bianchet, Shannon Fox, et al. July, 2024. "This study provides novel insights into the perceptions of post-release overdose risk from people with OUD who have experienced incarceration in Massachusetts jails and received MOUD while incarcerated."

Wednesday, August 28 2024:

  • U.S. Youth Attitudes on Guns American University's Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL). July, 2023. "59% of participants agreed that gun safety laws should be stricter. Yet about 40% of youth reported at least "somewhat easy" access to a gun, with 21% reporting "very easy" access to a gun."
  • Tombstone Towns and Toxic Prisons: Prison Ecology and the Necessity of an Anti-prison Environmental Movement, Paywall :( Elizabeth A. Bradshaw. July, 2018. "The failure of the Environmental Protection Agency to consider prisoners within federal environmental justice guidelines facilitates continued harm for this vulnerable population."
  • Race-Specific Risk Factors for All-Cause, Natural, and Unnatural Deaths Among Individuals Released from [Minnesota] State Prison, Minnesota Department of Corrections. March, 2023. "Both all-cause mortality and mortality due to specific causes of death were much higher among individuals released from [Minn.] state prison than among the general population."
  • Delayed Cancer Diagnosis and Management, Washington Department of Corrections Office of the Corrections Ombuds, Washington State. January, 2021. "These cases demonstrate the need to improve several care delivery processes within DOC, to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients with a cancer diagnosis."
  • The Carceral Home Kate Weisburd. January, 2024. "A fifty-state analysis of court supervision rules...reveal[s] the extent of targeted invasions of intimate life in the name of rehabilitation or an alternative to prison, rendering the home a highly surveilled space."
  • Housing security among people with criminal records: A focus on landlords, Dr. Lucius Couloute and Kacie Snyder. September, 2023. "These data suggest that landlord decision-making processes may be structured by broadly stigmatizing ideas around the incompetence or dangerousness of criminalized applicants, even when such stereotypes are unsubstantiated or disproven."

Tuesday, August 27 2024:

  • Climate Change and Incarcerated Populations: Confronting Environmental and Climate Injustices Behind Bars, Emily C. Gribble and David N. Pellow. June, 2022. "[We] focus on the brutal conditions incarcerated firefighters and natural disaster workers face while confronting year-round wildfire season as well as in the aftermath of climate-linked industrial accidents and weather events."
  • Hell and High Water: How Climate Change Can Harm Prison Residents and Jail Residents, and Why COVID-19 Conditions Litigation Suggests Most Federal Courts Will Wait-And-See When Asked to Intervene, Paloma Wu and D. Korbin Felder. June, 2022. "Prison and jail residents in most parts of the country will have difficulty using the courts to obtain preliminary relief to prevent climate-related injuries and harms."
  • A Large-Scale Study of the Police Retention Crisis Ben Grunwald. June, 2024. "The increase in [police leaving their jobs] after the summer of 2020 was smaller, later, less sudden, and possibly less pervasive than the retention-crisis narrative suggests."
  • 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."

Thursday, August 22 2024:

  • Coordinating Safety: Building and Sustaining Offices of Violence Prevention and Neighborhood Safety, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2023. "Most offices of violence prevention or neighborhood safety focus specifically on community and gun violence, with a smaller number also focusing on other forms of interpersonal violence."
  • The Real Causes and Solutions to Public Suffering, Including Public Drug Use Drug Policy Alliance. January, 2024. "In your reporting, we encourage you to prioritize the people most directly impacted by the government failures... rather than the people whose lives are disrupted by the discomfort of witnessing this public suffering in their day to day lives." (This issue brief is intended for journalists who report on public drug use and related policies in U.S. cities.)
  • Are Schools in Prison Worth It? The Effects and Economic Returns of Prison Education, Ben Stickle & Steven Sprick Schuster. October, 2023. "Vocational education is somewhat more practical than ABE or secondary education, leading to a 15.6% decrease in the odds ratio for recidivism, but...College programs are especially effective tools for decreasing recidivism."
  • Participation and Outcomes in SUNY College-in-Prison Programs Office of Higher Education in Prison, State University of New York. November, 2023. "After falling 55 percent in 2020-2021 from their peak in 2018-2019, total credits earned by incarcerated students were 23 percent below their pre-pandemic level in 2021-2022."
  • Ten Principles on Reducing Mass Incarceration American Bar Association Working Group on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System. August, 2022. "It is imperative that jurisdictions across the country reverse the devastating trend of mass incarceration and, in so doing, focus these efforts on reducing disparities in incarceration."
  • The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarceration, Paywall :( Jacob Harris et al.. November, 2023. "We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022."
  • Evaluating Bail Reform in New York's Justice Courts The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety. January, 2024. "In cases targeted by bail reform, sentence severity declined. Among misdemeanors resulting in conviction, jail sentences declined from 11% in 2018 to 6% in 2021."
  • "They Need to Go in There": Criminalized Subjectivity among Formerly Incarcerated Black Men, Lucius Couloute. January, 2024. "When explicitly asked about what they would say to powerful state officials, these Black men argued for (1) increased criminal justice transparency, (2) improved prison conditions, (3) additional reintegrative supports..."
  • Responding to Crimes of a Sexual Nature: What We Really Want Is No More Victims, Sentencing Project. January, 2024. "Compared to a decade ago, individuals convicted of rape or sexual assault are serving more time in prison prior to release...If this pattern persists over time, it will have a compounding effect on the size of the prison population."
  • Global governance and climate stress of incarcerated women: the case of the U.S, Paywall :( Daniela Jauk-Ajamie. November, 2022. "This paper takes the United States as a case study on the gendered implications of hyper-incarceration in the age of climate emergency."

Tuesday, August 6 2024:

  • Revenue Over Public Safety Brennan Center for Justice. July, 2022. "Officials seeking to alleviate prison and jail overcrowding by renting space from other jurisdictions have created a market in incarcerated people...federal government has exacerbated demand for bed space, such as through immigration enforcement."
  • Shadow Budgets: How mass incarceration steals from the poor to give to the prison, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2024. "Most [welfare fund] policies are so vague that prison officials enjoy wide discretion to spend incarcerated peoples' money as they please -- sometimes spending it on luxury perks for staff."
  • Out of Step: U.S. Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective, Sentencing Project. June, 2024. "Among other types of reforms, most U.S. states no longer disenfranchise individuals permanently for life and many no longer disenfranchise individuals upon release from incarceration."
  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2024. "Looking at the "whole pie" of mass incarceration opens up conversations about where it makes sense to focus our energies at the local, state, and national levels."
  • 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."
  • Protect and Redirect: America's Growing Movement to Divert Youth Out of the Justice System, Sentencing Project. March, 2024. "Among the most promising recent developments in youth diversion is the growing focus on restorative justice alternatives to formal court processing."

Monday, August 5 2024:

  • Afterward Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. April, 2023. "Fewer than half [of respondents] felt better after the person who killed their loved one was incarcerated. Fewer than half felt safer."
  • When You Are a Hammer, Every Problem Looks Like a Nail: Why Building New Prisons Will Do Nothing To Solve Old Problems in Alabama, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. May, 2020. "Alabama has the distinction of being the only state in the country to violate CRIPA, the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, throughout its entire prison system."
  • United States Department of Justice Investigation of Alabama's State Prisons for Men Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. October, 2019. "A warden at Holman, a maximum-security prison, informed the DOJ that on any given day there are "probably 11" security staff per shift for the entire complex of 800 prisoners."
  • A Bitter Pill Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. September, 2022. "While it's rare for people whose only offense is simple possession to land in prison, it is far from unheard of...Convictions for these collateral offenses can be what...sends them to prison for crimes that are driven by addiction, not malice."
  • Death Traps An examination of the routine, violent deaths of people in the custody of the State of Alabama, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. November, 2020. "2020 is on pace to be one of the most deadly years on record in Alabama prisons, with deaths by homicide between January and July at 10 compared to seven for the same time period in 2019."
  • Taken for a Ride How Excessive Ticketing Propels Alabama Drivers Into a Cycle of Debt, Incarceration, and Poverty, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. July, 2023. "The municipal court judge in Jacksonville won't issue a warrant of arrest until a person fails to appear in court three times for a given charge...In Anniston, however, a person can be arrested after missing a single court date."
  • Hepatitis C-related knowledge and attitude among adults on probation in a large US city Matthew S. Minturn et al. July, 2024. "Continuing to look for ways to educate and engage adult probation clients in testing and treatment for HCV should be a priority for practitioners, public health professionals, and law enforcement professionals."
  • 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."
  • 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."
  • Pediatric Health and System Impacts of Mass Incarceration, 2009-2020: A Matched Cohort Study, Samantha Boch et al. May, 2024. "Our study finds vast disparities between youth with documented probable contact to the justice system and matched youth."

Friday, July 19 2024:

  • A Cost-Benefit Analysis: The Impact of Ending Slavery and Involuntary Servitude as Criminal Punishment and Paying Incarcerated Workers Fair Wages, Edgeworth Economics and Worth Rises. January, 2024. "Once the adjustments to paying incarcerated workers are achieved the total fiscal benefits to incarcerated workers, their families and children, crime victims, and society at large is between $26.8 billion and $34.7 billion per year."
  • Workers Doing Time Must Be Protected by Job Safety Laws National Employment Law Project. April, 2024. "Excessive carceral costs and fees coupled with strong incentives for early release push incarcerated workers into accepting dangerous assignments."
  • The First Step Act's Prison Reforms Brennan 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."
  • Eight Key Considerations for Successful Implementation of New Medicaid Reentry Policies Health and Reentry Project. June, 2024. "Successful implementation of these policies requires that correctional facilities have data and IT systems that can share eligibility, enrollment, and pertinent patient clinical information across community and correctional systems."
  • Medicaid's New Role in Advancing Reentry: Key Policy Changes, Health and Reentry Project. March, 2024. "The minimum services states must provide to be approved for a waiver are: case management, medication assisted treatment (MAT), and a 30-day supply of medications upon release. States can go above and beyond these three services..."
  • Recommendations for Medicaid Coverage of Opioid Use Disorder Services in Jails and Prisons Health and Reentry Project and Viaduct Consulting, LLC. January, 2024. (This slide deck covers findings from three reports encouraging state and local governments to expand access to quality, evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder in prisons and jails by leveraging Medicaid coverage.)
  • Breaking Ground: How California is Using Medicaid to Improve the Health of People Leaving Incarceration, Health and Reentry Project. May, 2023. "Incarcerated adults who are enrolled in Medi-Cal and meet specific criteria and all Medi-Cal/CHIP-enrolled youth in youth correctional settings will qualify for Medi-Cal pre-release services."
  • Sex Offense Civil Commitment Minnesota's Failed Investment and the $100 Million Opportunity to Stop Sexual Violence, Mitchell Hamline School of Law. April, 2024. "As of September 1, 2023, only 21 of the 946 people committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program have been fully discharged from the program (~2%), while at least 94 have died during their commitment (~10%)."

Tuesday, June 18 2024:

  • COVID-19 Vaccine Refusal and Medical Distrust Held by Correctional Officers Erin Michelle Turner Kerrison & Jordan M Hyatt. July, 2023. "[In a sample of PA Department of Corrections staff], 73.5% non-security personnel answered that they would accept a vaccine, compared to half (48.8%) of corrections officers."
  • Contraband and Interdiction Modalities Used in Correctional Facilities Urban Institute. February, 2024. "Facilities participating in the [survey] reported on several strategies that were only used on incarcerated individuals, the most common of which included strip searches (91%), cell searches (98%), and opening and searching mail (97%)."
  • Discretion in the Prison Justice System: A Study of Sentencing in Institutional Disciplinary Proceedings, Paywall :( Timothy J. Flanagan. July, 1982. "Only about 3% of the [prison disciplinary infraction] cases in the sample resulted in dismissal of charges. Confinement to cell for a period of time was the modal disposition category, representing almost 30% of the outcomes."
  • Oregon shouldn't go backwards on drug decriminalization Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2024. "There is no evidence that Measure 110 was associated with a rise in crime. In fact, crime in Oregon was 14% lower in 2023 than it was in 2020."
  • Addicted to punishment: Jails and prisons punish drug use far more than they treat it, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2024. "Many people who use drugs and need care are arrested and jailed over and over until, finally, one event lands them in prison. We estimate that more than 578,000 people (47%) in prison in 2022 had a substance use disorder in the year prior to admission."
  • Effect of Continuing Care for People with Cocaine Dependence on Criminal Justice Sentences Alexandra S. Wimberly, Jordan M. Hyatt, & James R. McKay. January, 2019. "People with cocaine dependence [in an] intensive outpatient program & a telephone-based continuing care intervention had 54% lower odds of a criminal sentence in the 4 years after enrollment...compared to those [in only an] intensive outpatient program."
  • Fair Chance Act failures? Employers' hiring of people with criminal records, Sharon S. Oselin, Justine G. M. Ross, Qingfang Wang, & Wei Kang. November, 2024. "Only 25.8% of hiring decision makers indicated they would have seriously considered someone with a criminal conviction for the last entry-level/non-degreed position they hired for though there is variation based on the type of crime."
  • Testing the effects of a prosecutor policy recommending no-money release for nonviolent misdemeanor defendants Paywall :( Smith, A., Maddan, S., King, C., & Elshiekh, N.. October, 2020. "Defendants released on no-money bail were less likely to fail to appear, and defendants charged with [nonviolent misdemeanors] were less likely to be rearrested pending disposition."
  • Failure to Appear Across New York Regions Data 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%."

Thursday, June 6 2024:

  • Breaking news from inside: How prisons suppress prison journalism, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2023. "46 states and the federal government maintain the right to read and censor communications with the media. These policies are broadly explained as maintaining "security and order" -- a vague justification left to the discretion of prison officials."
  • Data Privacy in Carceral Settings: The Digital Panopticon Returns to Its Roots, Stephen Raher. May, 2024. "Communication technologies [are now] widespread [in jails and prisons] & the companies providing these services are embarking on a new line of business: monetizing the involuntary collection, sharing, and analysis of data collected from captive consumers."
  • Evaluating Firearm Violence After New Jersey's Cash Bail Reform Jaquelyn L. Jahn, Jessica T. Simes, & Jonathan Jay. May, 2024. "Although New Jersey's pretrial detention population dramatically decreased under bail reform, the study did not find evidence of increases in overall firearm mortality or gun violence, or within racialized groups during the postpolicy period."
  • The Consequences of Incarceration for Mortality in the United States Sebastian Daza, Alberto Palloni, & Jerrett Jones. April, 2021. "We estimate that incarceration's adult mortality excess translates into a loss of between 4 and 5 years of life expectancy at age 40."
  • Hungry and Malnourished: Food Service in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Pennsylvania Prison Society. May, 2024. "70-80% of survey respondents in Pennsylvania prisons reported being hungry every day between meals, [...] menus likely contribute to diet-related illness, [... and] hunger forces people to buy expensive junk food from commissary."
  • New data and visualizations spotlight states' reliance on excessive jailing Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2024. "In 28 states & D.C., more than 10% of the jail population is held on behalf of a state or federal authority. This both skews the data and gives local jail officials a powerful financial incentive to endorse policies that contribute to jail expansion."
  • Unhoused and under arrest: How Atlanta polices poverty, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2023. "Most strikingly, we find that 1 in 8 Atlanta city jail bookings in 2022 -- or 12.5% -- were of people who were experiencing homelessness."
  • Share of Adult Suicides After Recent Jail Release Ted R. Miller, Lauren M. Weinstock, Brian K. Ahmedani, et al.. May, 2024. "Among 7 million adults released from incarceration in 2019, nearly 20% of suicides occurred among those who were released from jail in the past year and 7% were by those in their second year of jail release."
  • Since you asked: How many women and men are released from each state's prisons and jails every year?, Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2024. "Even though prison and jail populations have unfortunately largely rebounded since [COVID-related population reductions], there were still 29% fewer releases from prisons and jails in 2022 compared to 2019."
  • Inequities in Mental Health Services: A 16-Year Longitudinal Study of Youth in the Justice System, Maria Jose Luna, Karen M. Abram, David A. Aaby, Leah J. Welty, & Linda A. Teplin. June, 2023. "Among a random sample of youth experiencing detention in Chicago in 1995, less than 20% of youth who needed mental health services received them in the following 20 years."

Tuesday, June 4 2024:

  • Electronically Monitored Youth: Stigma and Negative Social Functioning, Paywall :( Marijana M. Kotlaja & Lindsey E. Wylie. March, 2023. "Juveniles who felt more stigmatized for being on an EM, also experienced greater negative experiences within their social world and social functioning than youth who did not feel stigmatized."

Friday, May 3 2024:

  • Vaccine Effectiveness Against SARS-CoV-2 Related Hospitalizations in People who had Experienced Homelessness or Incarceration - Findings from the Minnesota EHR Consortium, Malini B. DeSilva, Gregory Knowlton, Nayanjot K. Rai, et al.. December, 2023. "Despite lower vaccination rates and potential for higher COVID-19 exposures in people experiencing homelessness or incarceration, COVID-19 vaccines reduced risk for SARS-CoV-2 related hospitalizations."
  • COVID-19 Vaccination of People Experiencing Homelessness and Incarceration in Minnesota Paywall :( Riley D. Shearer, Katherine Diaz Vickery, Peter Bodurtha, et al.. June, 2022. "By the end of 2021, 64% of the general population in Minnesota and 71% of people recently incarcerated in prison had completed the COVID-19 vaccine series, far exceeding the rate among people experiencing homelessness (34%) or jail incarceration (30%)."
  • Access to Psychiatric and Education Services During Incarceration in the United States Paywall :( Brandy F. Henry & Joy Gray. May, 2023. "Psychiatric disorders were associated with lower educational attainment before incarceration and lower access to education services during incarceration."
  • Forgotten Fundamentals: A Review of State Legislation on Nutrition for Incarcerated Pregnant and Postpartum People, Paywall :( Julia Vitagliano, Talia Shalev, Jennifer B Saunders, Ellen Mason, Jamie Stang, Rebecca Shlafer, & Bethany Kotlar. March, 2024. "Less than a third of states had nutrition-related mandates [for incarcerated pregnant people] and no states had statutes that included all key nutrition recommendations."
  • State level variation in substance use treatment admissions among criminal legal-referred individuals Paywall :( Riley D. Shearer, Tyler N.A. Winkelman, & Utsha G. Khatri. November, 2022. "Methamphetamine use was the most common substance leading to treatment referral from the criminal legal system in 24 states while opioid use was the most common reason for non-criminal legal referrals in 34 states."
  • Health Insurance and Mental Health Treatment Use Among Adults With Criminal Legal Involvement After Medicaid Expansion, Paywall :( Benjamin A. Howell, Laura C. Hawks, Lilanthi Balasuriya, Virginia W. Chang, Emily A. Wang, & Tyler N. A. Winkelman. April, 2023. "Medicaid expansion was associated with an 18 percentage-point increase in insurance coverage but no change in receipt of substance use treatment among individuals with substance use disorder."
  • Cancer incidence among incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals: A statewide retrospective cohort study, Jenerius A. Aminawung, Pamela R. Soulos, Oluwadamilola T. Oladeru, et al.. March, 2023. "Among Connecticut residents from 2005-16, cancer incidence was lower in incarcerated individuals, but higher in recently released individuals compared with the general population, and across all race and ethnic strata."
  • Racial differences in testing for infectious diseases: An analysis of jail intake data, Alysse G. Wurcel, Rubeen Guardado, Emily D. Grussing, et al.. December, 2023. "In one Massachusetts jail 2016-2020, Black non-Hispanic and Hispanic people were more likely to opt-in to and complete infectious disease testing than white people. These findings could be related to racial disparities in access to care in the community."
  • The Prevalence of Cognitive Impairment and Dementia in Incarcerated Older Adults Paywall :( Jacques Baillargeon, Lannette C Linthicum, Owen J Murray, et al.. December, 2023. "35% of our random sample of incarcerated older adults in Texas prisons met the threshold for mild cognitive impairment and 9.1% met the threshold for dementia."
  • The "Profane Margins" of the State: Florida Sheriff Walter R. Clark and the Local History of Crime, Policing, and Incarceration, Paywall :( Cindy Hahamovitch. 2023. "[...] we can find sheriffs with myriad responsibilities, unbridled power, and little oversight almost everywhere in the United States."
  • Minnesota Statewide Probation and Supervised Release Outcomes Report for 2019 Annual Report 2023, Minnesota Department of Corrections. December, 2023. "70% of the individuals leaving supervised release in Minnesota in 2019 had no new felony convictions within three years."
  • Racial Differences in Self-Report of Mental Illness and Mental Illness Treatment in the Community: An Analysis of Jail Intake Data, Narcissa Plummer, Rubeen Guardado, Yvane Ngassa, et al.. September, 2023. "In a Massachusetts jail, Hispanic, Black (NH), Asian/Pacific Islander (NH), other race/ethnicity people were less likely to report a history of mental illness at jail intake, and less likely to report receiving psychiatric medications in the community."
  • Women and Massachusetts County Jails: An Introduction, Women & Incarceration Project, Center for Women's Health & Human Rights at Suffolk University. March, 2024. "The large majority of women in Massachusetts county jails are aged 39 or younger. In contrast, ages are more evenly distributed among women at MCI-Framingham (a Massachusetts state prison)."
  • Health Care Access and Use Among Children & Adolescents Exposed to Parental Incarceration - United States, 2019, Rohan Khazanchi, Nia J. Heard-Garris, & Tyler N.A. Winkelman. October, 2022. "Parental incarceration was associated with an additional 123,703 children with no usual source of care, 114,795 with forgone dental care needs, 75,434 with delayed mental health care needs, and 53,678 with forgone mental health care needs"

Thursday, April 25 2024:

  • Lethal injection in the modern era: Cruel, unusual, and racist, Reprieve. April, 2024. "Black people had 220% higher odds of suffering a botched lethal injection execution than white people from 1976 to 2023."
  • Evaluation of Changes in US Health Insurance Coverage for Individuals With Criminal Legal Involvement in Medicaid Expansion and Nonexpansion States, 2010 to 2017, Benjamin A. Howell, Laura Hawks, Emily A. Wang, and Tyler N. A. Winkelman. April, 2022. "Medicaid expansion was associated with a 14.9-percentage point increase in insurance coverage...for low-income adults with recent criminal legal involvement."
  • The Affordable Care Act, Insurance Coverage, & Health Care Utilization of Previously Incarcerated Young Men: 2008-2015, Tyler N.A. Winkelman, HwaJung Choi, and Matthew M. Davis. March, 2017. "Uninsurance declined significantly among previously incarcerated men after the 2014 ACA implementation (-5.9 percentage points), primarily because of an increase in private insurance."
  • Employment and Health Among Recently Incarcerated Men Before and After the Affordable Care Act (2009-2017), Carmen M. Gutierrez and Becky Pettit. January, 2020. "After ACA implementation, uninsurance decreased by 26 percentage points among recently incarcerated, unemployed men."
  • Justice-Involved Adults With Substance Use Disorders: Coverage Increased But Rates Of Treatment Did Not In 2014, Brendan Saloner, Sachini N. Bandara, Emma E. McGinty, and Colleen L. Barry. June, 2016. "In 2014, after ACA implementation, the uninsurance rate among justice-involved individuals with substance use disorders declined from 38% to 28%... [and those] receiving treatment were more likely to have care paid for by Medicaid than in the prior decade"
  • Criminal record stigma, race, and neighborhood inequality Laura M. DeMarco. July, 2023. "The criminal record effect is estimated to be twice as large in gentrifying compared with nongentrifying neighborhoods and stronger in communities where the relative size of the Black population is shrinking."
  • Following Incarceration, Most Released Offenders Never Return to Prison Paywall :( William Rhodes, Gerald Gaes, Jeremy Luallen, Ryan Kling, Tom Rich, and Michael Shively. September, 2014. "Roughly two of every three offenders who enter and exit prison will never return to prison."
  • Racial and ethnic differences in the consequences of school suspension for arrest Benjamin W. Fisher & Alex O. Widdowson. June, 2023. "Within a given wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort, students who experienced an increase in suspension also experienced an increase of approximately 56.2% in their odds of being arrested in that same wave."

Tuesday, April 16 2024:

  • Gender Differences in the Determinants of Prison Rule Violations Katarzyna Celinska & Hung-En Sung. 2014. "Women averaged 1.96 infractions per person who violated a rule as compared with the rate of 2.27 infractions per person who violated a rule found among men. Women in prison were not only less likely to break rules but also did so less frequently than men."
  • Sex Differences in the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Institutional Misconduct among Adults in Prison Minnesota Department of Corrections. March, 2024. "In a sample of more than 6,000 men in MN prisons, men who reported 4 or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) had a 30% increase in the hazard of any type of disciplinary conviction (DC) compared to those with 0 ACEs"
  • Degrees of difference: Do college credentials earned behind bars improve labor market outcomes?, Abby Ballou. March, 2024. "Employers presented with an applicant who earned a bachelor's degree or sub-baccalaureate certificate in prison had a 42 percent higher odds of indicating willingness to call back the applicant, compared to an applicant with a GED (p = .001)."
  • Incarceration History and Access to and Receipt of Health Care in the US Jingxuan Zhao, Jessica Star, Xuesong Han, Zhiyuan Zheng, Qinjin Fan, Sylvia Kewei Shi, Stacey A. Fedewa, K. Robin Yabroff, Leticia M. Nogueira. February, 2024. "People with incarceration history had lower percentages of having a usual source of care or receiving preventive services: physical exams, blood pressure, cholesterol, or glucose tests, dental check ups, & breast and colorectal cancer screenings."
  • Mortality Among Individuals Released from U.S. Prisons: Does Military History Matter?, Minnesota Department of Corrections. November, 2023. "When model specification was improved by accounting for the sociodemographic and legal histories of returnees, we found that veterans showed no greater or less risk of mortality compared to non-veterans."
  • Hepatitis C Epidemiology in a Large Urban Jail: A Changing Demographic, Emily Hoff, Andrea Warden, Ruby Taylor, and Ank E. Nijhawan. March, 2022. "Among people in Dallas County Jail from 2015-19, HCV antibody positivity was significantly associated with older age, female sex, non-Hispanic White race versus non-Hispanic Black race, & being released to prison versus not."
  • Jail Conditions And Mortality: Death Rates Associated With Turnover, Jail Size, And Population Characteristics, Jessica L. Adler and Weiwei Chen. June, 2023. "Jails with higher turnover rates, capacity occupied, & populations were more likely to have higher overall mortality. Deaths due to suicide, drugs and alcohol, and homicide showed a significant association with high turnover."
  • Lifetime and Jail-Specific Suicidal Ideation: Prevalence and Correlates in a Sample of People in Jail in the United States, Bryce E. Stoliker, Haile Wangler, Frances P. Abderhalden, and Lisa M. Jewell. April, 2023. "Approximately 45% of the 196 people sampled reported a lifetime history of suicidal ideation (SI) & 30% reported SI during the current incarceration... Those who identified as non-men reported a higher prevalence than men on lifetime and jail-specific SI"
  • The deadliest local police departments kill 6.91 times more frequently than the least deadly departments... Josh Leung-Gagne. 2024. "The deadliest police departments [in the U.S.] kill 6.91 times more frequently than the least deadly departments, after accounting for variation in risk to officers and trauma care access."
  • Homicides involving Black victims are less likely to be cleared in the United States Paywall :( Gian Maria Campedelli. February, 2024. "The likelihood of a homicide clearance is 3.4 to 4.8 percent lower for homicides involving Black victims, and this race effect is slightly higher for males and that racial disparity has moderately but significantly increased over time."
  • Reducing Missed Appointments for Probation and Parole Supervision: a Randomized Experiment with Text Message Reminders, Charise Hastings, Chris Thomas, Michael Ostermann, Jordan M. Hyatt, & Steve Payne. December, 2021. "The best attendance of scheduled probation/parole meetings was found in the treatment group assigned to late text reminders 1 day before the appointment. That group had 29% fewer no-shows and 21% fewer cancelled appointments than the control group."

Tuesday, April 2 2024:

  • Unsustainable: Alabama's Increasing Trend of Keeping the Elderly Behind Bars, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. November, 2022. "The average age of the Alabama prison population has a positive linear relationship (r=.88) with [medical spending.]"
  • Mental and physical health morbidity among people in prisons: an umbrella review Louis Favril, Josiah D Rich, Jake Hard, & Seena Fazel. April, 2024. "Among incarcerated adults, the 6-month prevalence was 11% for major depression, 10% for PTSD, and 4% for psychotic illness...18% of people were antibody-positive for hepatitis C virus, 2.6% - 5.2% found for hepatitis B, HIV, and TB."
  • Recommended Mental Health Practices for Individuals Interacting With US Police, Court, Jail, Probation, & Parole Systems Paywall :( Jennifer E Johnson, Niloofar Ramezani, Jill Viglione, Maji Hailemariam, & Faye S Taxman. March, 2024. "Of the 59 recommended practices identified (e.g., permanent supportive housing, Medicaid continuity, medications, and psychotherapies) - each practice was present for criminal legal-involved individuals in only 22%-43% of U.S. counties."
  • New prisons for old men? Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. July, 2021. "The number of young people (age 15 to 30) in Alabama prisons has been cut in half over the last 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of people over age 50 has doubled. People over 50 are the least likely to re-offend and the most expensive to incarcerate..."
  • Jail Characteristics and Availability of Opioid Treatment Services: Results from a Nationally Representative Survey, Paywall :( Albert M. Kopak & Sierra D. Thomas. March, 2024. "Jail facilities located in the Northeast, larger jails, those in urban areas, and detention centers with higher turnover rates are significantly more likely to provide a wider variety of opioid treatment services."
  • State Medicaid Initiatives Targeting Substance Use Disorder in Criminal Legal Settings, 2021 Paywall :( Cashell D Lewis, Christina Andrews, Amanda J Abraham, Melissa Westlake, Faye S Taxman, & Colleen M Grogan. March, 2024. "In 2021, the majority of states did not report any targeted Medicaid initiatives for persons with substance use disorders residing in criminal legal settings (jails, prisons, community corrections)."
  • Mental health, chronic and infectious conditions among pregnant persons in US state prisons and local jails 2016-2017 Caitlin A Hendricks, Karissa M Rajagopal, Carolyn B Sufrin, Camille Kramer, & Monik C Jimenez. March, 2024. "Of the 445 newly admitted pregnant people in prisons and 243 in jails, 34% in prison and 23.5% in jail had a substance use disorder, and 27.4% of those in prison and 17.7% in jail had a psychiatric diagnosis. 20% in prison and 6.6% in jail had hepatitis C"
  • The association between attitudes and the provision of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) in United States jails Aly Pfaff, Amy Cochran, Jessi Vechinski, Todd Molfenter, & Gabriel Zayas-Caband. March, 2024. "Jails with staff with negative attitudes towards methadone & positive attitudes towards naltrexone were associated with fewer people screened for opioid use disorder (OUD), diagnosed, referred to treatment while in jail & after release, and provided MAT."
  • Barriers to access to psychiatric medications in Missouri county jails Jessica K Burval, Courtney A Iuppa, Carrie R Kriz, Shelby E Lang, Leigh Anne Nelson, Nicole A Gramlich, Ellie S R Elliott, & Roger W Sommi. October, 2023. "Of the 51 jails surveyed, only 57% of jails were able to provide long-acting injectable antipsychotics, 22% charged a fee for administration of medications, and 31% would not adjust medication times based on food requirements."
  • Misdemeanor Enforcement Trends in New York City, 2016-2022 Brennan Center for Justice. March, 2024. "In 2021 and 2022, approximately half of all minor offense cases were dismissed. Overall, the proportion of non-convictions increased steadily from 47% in 2016 to 70% in 2022."
  • Stalled: Alabama's Destructive Practice of Suspending Driver's Licenses Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. February, 2020. "A 2018 survey of Alabamians whose licenses were suspended due to unpaid tickets found 89% had to choose between basic needs like food, utilities, or medicine and paying what they owed and 64% were jailed in connection with unpaid traffic debt."
  • The Effects of Pretrial Detention Length on Sentencing Guideline Departures in Two Pennsylvania Counties Victoria R. Wrigley & Tre Schumacher. December, 2023. "A 2.7-fold increase in pretrial detention length was associated with a 15% reduction in the odds of a sentence differing from the recommended sentence, an 8% reduction in the odds of a shorter sentence, and an 11% increase in the odds of a longer sentence"

Thursday, March 21 2024:

  • Crisis in Corrections: The DOC Staff Shortage and the Inmate Experience, Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (CCJRC). January, 2024. "An overwhelming 93% of respondents incarcerated in Colorado say there is a staffing shortage at their facility, and 85% say that the shortage is either significant or moderate."
  • Structural Racism, Mass Incarceration, and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Severe Maternal Morbidity Elleni M. Hailu, Corinne A. Riddell, Patrick T. Bradshaw, Jennifer Ahern, Suzan L. Carmichael, & Mahasin S. Mujahid. January, 2024. "In this study of 10 million live hospital births across California from 1997-2018, Black and Hispanic/Latinx birthing people residing in counties with high Black-White jail incarceration inequity had increased odds of severe maternal morbidity."
  • Prison Buprenorphine Implementation and Postrelease Opioid Use Disorder Outcomes Benjamin J. Bovell-Ammon, Shapei Yan, Devon Dunn, Elizabeth A. Evans, Peter D. Friedmann, Alexander Y. Walley, Marc R. LaRochelle. March, 2024. "In a comparison between people released prior to and after making buprenorphine available in state prisons, postrelease buprenorphine increased from 11% of people released to 21% of people released and postrelease naltrexone receipt decreased."
  • Recent Incarceration, Substance Use, Overdose, and Service Use Among People Who Use Drugs in Rural Communities Daniel B. Hoover, P. Todd Korthuis, Elizabeth Needham Waddell, et al.. November, 2023. "Among people who use drugs in rural communities, 42% were recently incarcerated in the past 6 months, which was associated with overdose(s), substance use treatment, but not associated with MOUD treatment or carrying naloxone."
  • Prevention Over Punishment: Finding the Right Balance of Civil and Forensic State Psychiatric Hospital Beds, Treatment Advocacy Center. January, 2024. "The number of state hospital beds for adults with serious mental illness (SMI) has been declining and reached a historic low of 10.8 beds per 100,000 people in 2023, with 52% of those beds occupied by people committed through the criminal legal system."
  • Elements of State and Federal Prison Suicide Prevention and Response Policies Christine Tartaro & Emily Alas. February, 2024. "Results revealed that corrections department policies for suicide prevention and response contain about half of the recommended elements, and that most departments' suicide prevention policies are not included in departmental policy documents."
  • The problem with criminal records: Discrepancies between state reports and private-sector background checks, Sarah Lageson & Robert Stewart. February, 2024. "Based on this analysis of criminal records, 60% and 50% of participants had at least one false-positive error on their regulated and unregulated private sector background checks, and nearly all had at least one false-negative error."
  • Restoring and Rebuilding: Indigent Defense in Gwinnett County, Wren Collective. January, 2024. "In 2022, the county had 132 lawyers willing to take court appointments. Now, that number is 80. Those 80 lawyers are responsible for 13,000 cases/year. There are only 8 lawyers eligible to handle murder cases, which have a potential punishment of death..."

Wednesday, March 6 2024:

  • Hazardous heat exposure among incarcerated people in the United States Cascade Tuholske, Victoria D. Lynch, Raenita Spriggs, Yoonjung Ahn, Colin Raymond, Anne E. Nigra, & Robbie M. Parks. March, 2024. "The number of hot days per year increased during 1982-2020 for 1,739 carceral facilities. State-run carceral facilities in TX and FL accounted for 52% of total exposure to potentially hazardous heat, despite holding 12% of all incarcerated people."
  • Overcharged: Coerced labor, low pay, and high costs in Washington's prisons Columbia Legal Services. January, 2024. "People in Washington prisons are paid as little as 6% of the state minimum wage...Their wages are then deducted from between 5 to 100% for mandatory fees such as "the cost of incarceration," while basic goods...can cost a day's worth of earnings."
  • The Business Case for Criminal Justice Reform: Second Chance Hiring U.S. Chamber of Commerce. January, 2021. "At the national level, economists estimate that the Gross Domestic Product (G.D.P.) is reduced between $78 billion and $87 billion due to excluding formerly incarcerated job seekers from the workforce."
  • Incarceration Status Among Individuals Obtaining Abortion in the United States, 2020 Marielle Kirstein, Liza Fuentes, and Carolyn Sufrin. November, 2023. "Sixty-seven clinics across 25 states and the District of Columbia provided more than 300 abortions to incarcerated patients in 2020. Eleven of these clinics are in states that now have total or near-total abortion bans."
  • Electronic Monitoring of Migrants: Punitive not Prudent American Bar Association Commission on Immigration. February, 2024. "Electronic monitoring programs are not true alternatives to detention. They are an expansion of detention that imposes a significant financial cost on taxpayers and a considerable human toll on the participants and their family members."
  • Carceral Carousel Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Detention Watch Network. May, 2023. "States have sought to reduce prison populations and close some jails. However, those closures have rarely, if ever, meant that the prison facilities would no longer operate as cages...these closures have paved the way for new expansions of ICE detention."
  • Advancing Transgender Justice: Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars, Vera Institute of Justice and Black and Pink National. February, 2024. "Nearly 90 percent of the [transgender] survey respondents had experienced extended solitary confinement at some point during their incarceration. More than half reported non-consensual sexual contact while incarcerated."
  • Resetting the Record: The Facts on Hiring People with Criminal Histories RAND Corporation. January, 2024. "More than 25% of workers in the active workforce have at least one prior conviction. The evidence is overwhelming: People with conviction records can be (and are) successful employees."
  • A Decade of Lives Lost: A report of in-custody deaths in California between 2011-2022 Care First California. February, 2024. "Of the 2,312 deaths that occurred in Sheriff's custody across California, the majority of people died after they were taken to jail but before the resolution of their case...Nearly a quarter of deaths occurred before individuals entered the jail."
  • Evaluating the Impact of Desk Appearance Ticket Reform in New York State Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. February, 2024. "Desk Appearance Tickets (DATs) in New York State led more people charged with low-level offenses to avoid pre-arraignment detention, but varied by region. Statewide DAT issuance increased from 38% in 2019 to 58% in 2021, then declined to 50% in 2022."
  • Indigent Criminal Defense and Commonwealth's Attorneys Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. November, 2023. "The number of attorneys serving as court-appointed defense attorneys in Virginia has declined since FY13, especially during the last few years. Participation has declined by more than half, from nearly 4,000 attorneys in FY13 to about 1,900 in FY23."
  • Under-resourced and Ignored: Indigent Defense in Schuylkill County, Wren Collective. January, 2024. "We found an underfunded indigent defense system that lacks the support for enough lawyers to represent clients, including at bail hearings, for immigration consultations, and adequate technology for attorneys to properly do their jobs."
  • Racial disparities in youth pretrial detention: a retrospective cohort study grounded in critical race theory Andy Wen, Noah R. Gubner, Michelle M. Garrison, & Sarah Cusworth Walker. March, 2023. "After factoring in gender, age, crime severity, previous offenses, and variation between counties, our analyses show that Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and American Indian/Alaskan Native youth are more likely to experience pretrial detention than white youth."

Thursday, February 15 2024:

Monday, February 12 2024:

  • Lessons from COVID-19 can help prisons & jails prepare for the next pandemic Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2023. "Without any serious change to our reliance on mass incarceration -- this population will continue to bear the disproportionate burden of public health crises."
  • One in Five: How Mass Incarceration Deepens Inequality and Harms Public Safety (Part 4), Sentencing Project. January, 2024. "Mass incarceration's hold on vast public resources, its imposition of financial burdens, and the obstacles erected for people with criminal records further erode economic and social buffers against crime."
  • Since You Asked: What's next for prison and jail phone justice now that the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act is law?, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2023. "The Martha Wright-Reed Act accomplishes two main things: It clarifies the FCC's authority to regulate in-state calls placed from correctional facilities, as well as clarifying the agency's authority to regulate video calls."
  • How 12 states are addressing family separation by incarceration -- and why they can and should do more Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2023. "Four states and the federal prison system have implemented requirements that parents be detained within a specified distance of their kids, making it easier for children to access their caregivers."
  • Why states should change Medicaid rules to cover people leaving prison Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2022. "Research shows that expanding access to healthcare through Medicaid saves lives and reduces crime and arrest rates -- along with state spending."
  • How a Medicare rule that ends financial burdens for the incarcerated leaves some behind Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2023. "For people released from prison after January 1, 2023, there are new Medicare enrollment rules that create a 12-month Special Enrollment Period during which recently released people can enroll in Medicare Parts A and B without any financial penalties...."
  • New data on HIV in prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic underscore links between HIV and incarceration Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2023. "It seems unlikely that the drop in the HIV-positive prison population was the result of a targeted effort to protect the health of these individuals."
  • New data: Police use of force rising for Black, female, and older people; racial bias persists, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2022. "During traffic stops, Black and Hispanic people were the most likely groups to experience a search or arrest. Meanwhile, white people were the least likely to receive a ticket and the most likely just to get off with a warning during a traffic stop."
  • One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing (Part 2), Sentencing Project. November, 2023. "These racial and ethnic disparities in police contact snowball as individuals traverse the criminal legal system. They also, as discussed below, reduce the perceived legitimacy of policing."
  • Mortality, health, and poverty: the unmet needs of people on probation and parole, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2023. "Three in 10 people under community supervision have substance use disorders, four times the rate of substance use disorders in the general population."
  • Racial disparities in diversion: A research roundup, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2023. "Diversion decisions are often highly subjective, leaving candidates vulnerable to the racial biases held by police, prosecutors, judges, or other decisionmakers."
  • One in Five: Ending Racial Inequity in Incarceration (Part I), Sentencing Project. October, 2023. "As national and local politics resume the politicization of crime and drug policies, it is crucial to take stock of the progress that must be defended and built upon."
  • 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."
  • How your local public housing authority can reduce barriers for people with criminal records Prison Policy Initiative and Selena Munoz-Jones. February, 2023. "Public housing policies -- which should be a part of a crucial safety net against housing insecurity -- actually discriminate against people with criminal legal involvement and criminal records."
  • What is civil commitment? Recent report raises visibility of this shadowy form of incarceration, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2023. "With little transparency about or consistent standards regarding how to progress through treatment, many people inside say that civil commitment feels like a de facto life sentence."

Thursday, February 1 2024:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic and operational challenges, impacts, and lessons learned: A multi-methods study of U.S. prison systems, Meghan A. Novisky et al. December, 2023. "[Prison] daily operations were strained, especially in the areas of staffing, implementation of public health policy, and capacities to sustain correctional programming."
  • Death By Design: Part 1, The Wren Collective. December, 2023. "In all 28 Harris County capital cases we reviewed, trial lawyers failed to uncover relevant evidence."
  • Death By Design: Part 2, The Wren Collective. December, 2023. "Every single attorney we interviewed in Harris County told us that there were simply not enough well-trained mitigation specialists for hire, especially those trained in mental health."
  • Dementia in the incarcerated population: a retrospective study using the South Carolina Alzheimer's disease registry, USA, Paywall :( Margaret Chandlee Miller et al. February, 2023. "For ages 55 and above in South Carolina, the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias is 6.7% in the general, non-incarcerated population compared to 14.4% in the incarcerated population."
  • A Racial Disparity Across New York That Is Truly Jarring New York Civil Liberties Union. December, 2022. "In Manhattan -- one of the wealthiest and least equal places in the country -- courts convicted Black people of felonies and misdemeanors at a rate 21 times greater than that of white people over the past two decades."

Wednesday, January 31 2024:

  • "It Makes Him Feel Even Farther Away": Disruptions in Communication Among Families Impacted by Incarceration During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Paywall :( Breanna Boppre and Meghan A. Novisky. November, 2023. "Two rounds of interviews with family members...reveal stressors, including worry and frustration around uncertainty in communication, disconnected relationships due to visitation closure, and additional financial and emotional burdens."
  • Criminal Victimization, 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics. September, 2023. "Despite the recent increase, the last three decades saw an overall decline in the violent victimization rate from 79.8 to 23.5 per 1,000 from 1993 to 2022."
  • Capital Punishment, 2021 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. November, 2023. "Five states (Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi) and the BOP executed a total of 11 prisoners in 2021. Among the prisoners executed, 10 were male and 1 was female."
  • Pathways to Wellness: Health Needs of Black Women After Incarceration, National Black Women's Justice Institute. November, 2023. "The Black women in this study want to take preventative measures to address and improve their health and wellness. However, accessing healthcare after incarceration remains challenging."
  • Quality of Surgical Care Within the Criminal Justice Health Care System Rui-Min Mao et al. December, 2023. "[30-day readmission and mortality] outcomes were comparable between the Texas prison population and the general population.... However, morbidity was significantly higher in the prison population."
  • Emergency Medical Responses at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Centers in California Annette M. Dekker et al. November, 2023. "We found that EMS-reported medical emergencies were disproportionately for females at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, with 12% of all EMS-reported emergencies for female patients due to pregnancy concerns."

Thursday, December 21 2023:

  • "We're Hungry in Here": D.C. Department of Corrections Food Survey Results, dcgreens. December, 2023. "Six in ten residents responded that they "rarely" or "never" eat breakfast, seven in ten "rarely" or "never" eat lunch (most commonly bologna sandwiches) and six in ten respondents reported "rarely" or "never" eating dinner."
  • Decision-Making for Hospitalized Incarcerated Patients Lacking Decisional Capacity Paywall :( Sarah Batbold et al. December, 2023. "Clinicians will encounter incarcerated patients in both hospital and clinic settings and should receive education on how to support ethically and legally sound decision-making practices for this medically vulnerable population."
  • History of incarceration and age-related neurodegeneration: Testing models of genetic and environmental risks in a longitudinal panel study of older adults, Peter Tanksley, Matthew W. Logan, and J.C. Barnes. December, 2023. "These findings support the interpretation that APOE-e4 genotype and Lifetime incarceration operate as independent risk factors for cognitive impairment in later adulthood...together, [however, they may] inflict a multiplicative increase in risk."
  • One Size Doesn't Fit All: A Review of Post-Plea Problem-Solving Courts in Cook County, Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers. March, 2023. "Court personnel reported many success stories in their courts...[but] several of these programs are unlikely to meet all of Public Act 102-1041's stated goals."
  • "You Send Yourselves to Jail": Coercive Diversion in the Allegheny County Mental Health Court, Abolitionist Law Center. December, 2023. "As a plea-dependent court, [the mental health court] subjects people to most traditional carceral processes and leaves them with a permanent record."
  • Still Not Free When They Come Home: How Wisconsin's Criminal Legal System Harms Democracy and the Black Community on Milwaukee's North Side, Center for Popular Democracy and BLOC. October, 2023. "People released from prison did not know that their voting rights are restored after completing their sentences, received disinformation telling them they were ineligible to vote, or were too overwhelmed...to figure out voting right away."

Wednesday, December 20 2023:

  • No Justice, No Resilience: Prison Abolition As Disaster Mitigation in an Era of Climate Change, Paywall :( Carlee Purdum et al. December, 2021. "Incarceration undermines individual and collective resilience needed to recover from disasters, whereas carceral infrastructure facilitates disaster harm to incarcerated persons and their communities."

Tuesday, December 19 2023:

  • The High Costs of Cheap Food: Eating in West Virginia Prisons, West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. September, 2023. "According to the Department of Agriculture, as of August 9, 2023, the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) has failed to submit any documentation required by the Fresh Food Act since 2019."
  • Involuntary Civil Commitment as Mass Incarceration Tristan Campbell. September, 2023. "Despite civil commitment often mirroring--and sometimes substituting for--incarceration, there is almost no data in comparison."
  • Forgotten but not gone: A multi-state analysis of modern-day debt imprisonment, Johann D. Gaebler et al. September, 2023. "Between 2005 and 2018, around 38,000 residents of Texas and around 8,000 residents of Wisconsin were jailed each year for failure to pay (FTP), with the median individual spending one day in jail in both Texas and Wisconsin."
  • Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Mental Healthcare in Youth With Incarcerated Parents Jennie E. Ryan et al. March, 2023. "Black [and Latinx] youth with incarcerated parents were significantly less likely to report receiving mental health services than White [and non-Latinx] youth with incarcerated parents."

Monday, December 18 2023:

  • Parole Rules in the United States: Conditions of Parole in Historical Perspective, 1956-2020, Benjamin Wiggins et al. June, 2021. "The increasing number of standard conditions for people on parole, especially economic sanctions, can overwhelm a person on parole's willingness and capacity to comply."
  • Advancing the Use of Data in Prosecution: What We Measure Matters, Fair and Just Prosecution. October, 2023. "Although a great deal of progress has been made to center data and research in public discourse, few jurisdictions have chosen to devote sufficient resources to cultivate robust data capacity in prosecutors' offices."

Friday, December 15 2023:

Wednesday, December 13 2023:

Monday, December 11 2023:

  • Understanding the Landscape of Fines, Restitution, and Fees for Criminal Convictions in Minnesota Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. August, 2023. "In 2023, the [Minnesota] DOC reported that of 10,413 correctional fees imposed, it waived 338, for a waiver rate of 3.8%. However, of these, nearly 40% were waived due to the death of the person upon which the fees were originally imposed."
  • Examining the System-Wide Effect of Eliminating Bail in New York City: A Controlled-Interrupted Time Series Study, Data Collaborative for Justice. October, 2023. "We found that eliminating discretion to set bail for select charges, mostly misdemeanors and non-violent felonies, was not associated with a system-wide change in either two-year or pretrial recidivism in either direction."
  • Parole Condition Setting in Iowa Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. July, 2023. "There is a perception...that there are very few standard conditions because they fall into just eight paragraphs. But when...parsed into individual conditions, there are thirty-five distinct requirements."
  • Probation Condition Setting in Johnson County, Kansas Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. July, 2023. "The standard probation forms used in Johnson County, Kansas, do not mirror the requirements in statute, and people across the system have lost sight of which conditions are required by statute and which are not."
  • The Forgotten Jurisprudence of Parole and State Constitutional Doctrines of Vagueness Kristen Bell. September, 2023. "This Article unearths historic state court decisions holding that sentences that end through the discretionary judgment of a parole board are "void for uncertainty.""
  • Gideon at 60: A Snapshot of State Public Defense Systems and Paths to System Reform, National Institute of Justice Office for Access to Justice. November, 2023. "Two-thirds of states (34) do not have full statewide oversight of public defense, meaning they do not set standards or monitor whether people receive counsel in all cases where they have a right to it."

Friday, November 3 2023:

  • The Legislative Primer Series on Front-End Justice: Deflection and Diversion, National Conference of State Legislatures. August, 2023. "Thirty-one states have made significant amendments to, or created new, pretrial diversion programs since 2017."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Rhode Island, Prison Policy Initiative, the Redistricting Data Hub (Peter Horton and Spencer Nelson), Common Cause Rhode Island, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island. October, 2023. "In Providence, the neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates in 2020 are also the neighborhoods that were "redlined" in the mid-20th century...becoming home to predominantly non-white residents."
  • Extreme Heat and Suicide Watch Incidents Among Incarcerated Men David H. Cloud, Brie Williams, and Regine Haardorfer et al. August, 2023. "The incidence rate of daily suicide incidents increased by 29% when the heat index reached the level of caution and by 36% when reaching extreme caution."
  • "Smoke Screen": Experience with the Incarcerated Grievance Program in New York State Prisons, Correctional Association of New York. October, 2023. "The survey data confirms that the IGP [incarcerated grievance program] is heavily used and seen as vital by the incarcerated population, even as it fails to provide recourse."
  • Suicide in North Carolina Jails Disability Rights North Carolina. June, 2020. "While the total deaths [in North Carolina jails] increased by 6% (from 46 to 49) between 2018 and 2019, jail suicides increased by 67% (from 12 to 20). In 2019, 41% of all jail deaths were deaths by suicide."
  • Casting Out from the Inside: Abolishing Felony Disenfranchisement in New York, Elizabeth Neuland. December, 2022. "Felony disenfranchisement stands in stark opposition to rehabilitation because it alienates individuals from the very communities to which DOCCS is taking great measures to help them to return."
  • The State of New York City Jails: One Year of Measuring Jail Operations and Management on the Comptroller's DOC Dashboard, Office of the New York City Comptroller. August, 2023. "The share of incarcerated people [in NYC jails] with a serious mental illness increased 2% since August 2022, with the number of individuals nearly doubling since 2020, from 672 to 1,207."
  • Multnomah County Pretrial System Assessment Justice System Partners. February, 2020. "Addressing the over-supervision of pretrial defendants, especially low risk defendants that make up 53% of their court ordered population, will improve the program and save resources to potentially accept more cases."
  • Increasing Court-Appearance Rates and Other Benefits of Live-Caller Telephone Court-Date Reminders: The Jefferson County, Colorado, FTA Pilot Project and Resulting Court Date Notification Program, Timothy R. Schnake, Michael R. Jones, and Dorian M. Wilderman. June, 2012. "Telephone reminders using live callers work. They increase court appearance rates, dramatically reducing the significant costs associated with FTAs (failures to appear) and FTA warrants."

Wednesday, October 18 2023:

  • Thermal (In)equity and incarceration: A necessary nexus for geographers, Paywall :( Alex R Colucci, Daniel J Vecellio, and Michael J Allen. December, 2021. "In carceral spaces, thermal exposure agitates...complex situations, shaping a confluence of various economic, political, and ecological intersectionalities."
  • Trends in the New York State Prison Population, 2008-2023 Data Collaborative for Justice. July, 2023. "The percentage indicted in the 5 boroughs of New York City decreased from 51% in 2008 to 38% in 2023...[and] a higher percentage of the prison population was indicted in upstate counties with major urban centers and rural upstate counties."
  • Defining Flight Risk Lauryn P. Gouldin. April, 2018. "Even as scholars, reformers, and practitioners are showing renewed interest in pretrial detention and bail, there is little focus on one central question: the appropriate meaning and role of what is often called "flight risk.""
  • A Review of the Mississippi State Parole Board Mississippi Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review. July, 2021. "In 2019, the State Parole Board established hearing dates within thirty days of an offender's parole eligibility for only 53% of offenders who were eligible for parole."
  • What do Americans think about the U.S. prison system? YouGov. August, 2023. "Americans are fairly split on whether or not the level of incarceration is a problem in the U.S.: 36% say the U.S. incarcerates too many people, 21% say about the right number of people are incarcerated, and 24% say too few people are incarcerated."
  • Finding Home: Removing Barriers to Housing for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals, Megan Moore and Angie Weis Gammell. September, 2023. "Formerly incarcerated individuals have reported that Fair Chance Housing ordinances may actually further complicate their search for housing because they get further in the process, spending additional time and money, before ultimately being rejected."
  • Highlights from 2020-2022 Criminal Summons Data Data Collaborative for Justice. June, 2023. "In 2022, Black people were 9.10 times more likely than white people to be issued a summons, and Hispanic people were 6.78 times more likely to be issued a summons."

Thursday, October 5 2023:

  • When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2020 Homicide Data, Violence Policy Center. September, 2022. "This is the first analysis of the 2020 data on female homicide victims to offer breakdowns of cases in the 10 states with the highest female victim/male offender homicide rates."
  • Louisiana Deaths Behind Bars 2015-2021 Incarceration Transparency. June, 2023. "Since our last report analyzing deaths 2015-2019, an additional 375 incarcerated people have died behind bars. Our public records requests also produced documents on an additional 7 deaths that occurred 2015-2019."
  • Jail Health and Early Release Practices Brandon L. Garrett, Deniz Ariturk, Jessica Carda-Auten, and David L. Rosen. December, 2022. "Few states have rules that create formal legal vehicles for non-admission or release from jails for health-related reasons."
  • Does Jail Contribute to Individuals Churning in and Out of the Criminal Legal System? A Quasiexperimental Evaluation of Pretrial Detention on Time Until New Arrest, Ian A. Silver, Jason Walker, Matthew DeMichele, and Ryan M. Labrecque. July, 2023. "Spending more than 7 days in pretrial detention was associated with an increased probability of a new arrest and new violent arrest earlier when compared to spending 1 day or less in pretrial detention."
  • Stacked: Where Criminal Charge Stacking Happens -- And Where it Doesn't, Harvard Law Review. March, 2023. "Some states charge more offenses per defendant and do so more often than the federal government."

Friday, September 1 2023:

Thursday, August 31 2023:

  • The Cost of Doing Business: Why Criminal Justice Reform Is the Right Investment to Strengthen Mississippi's Economy and Workforce, FWD.us. June, 2023. "Each year, Mississippi's economy -- especially its small businesses -- lose an estimated $2.7 billion in earnings due to criminal convictions."
  • SMH: The rapid & unregulated growth of e-messaging in prisons, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2023. "Per-minute pricing [on tablet use] acts as a literacy tax, making it far more expensive for people who struggle to read and respond to messages."
  • Reducing Multigenerational Poverty in New York Through Sentencing Reform Jared Trujillo. November, 2023. "New York led the national charge in enacting harsh sentencing laws, while simultaneously shrinking its social safety net."
  • Pretrial Detention, Release, and Bail Practice in Oregon Oregon Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. June, 2021. "There is a lack of data collected by Oregon's county and municipal jails...there are 16 different jail management systems across the state."
  • High stakes mistakes: How courts respond to "failure to appear", Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2023. "We find that, on balance, "failure to appear" policies are about punishment, not improving appearance rates."

Tuesday, August 29 2023:

  • COVID-19 amplified racial disparities in the US criminal legal system Brennan Klein, C. Brandon Ogbunugafor, Benjamin J. Schafer et al. April, 2023. "States with fewer short-term prison sentences (Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Oregon and Wyoming) did not show the same racial disparity we found nationally."
  • Systemic Failures: Conditions in California State Prisons During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Prison Accountability Project at UCLA School of Law. June, 2023. "According to respondents, the [California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation] ignored over 80 percent of incarcerated people's requests for medical care and failed to protect people with pre-existing conditions from COVID-19."
  • Moving Justice Forward: A Blueprint for the Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice, Center for Justice Innovation. January, 2023. "Stakeholders expressed great interest in piloting and eventually expanding the use of restorative justice practices in local courts."
  • Digital inequalities in time of pandemic: COVID-19 exposure risk profiles and new forms of vulnerability, Laura Robinson, Jeremy Schulz, Aneka Khilnani et al. June, 2020. "...Restrictions imposed in the name of security already sharply curtail communication beyond prison walls, yet...fresh provision for digital communication might deliver outsized benefits." (This article covers digital and social inequalities for many groups, including older adults, gig workers, and incarcerated people.)
  • Office of the Public Defender Parole Project: Revised Report, New Jersey Office of the Public Defender. September, 2021. "From January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2019, 445 people who were sentenced to life in prison appeared before the Parole Board...39 applicants (8.76%) were paroled."
  • Collaborating Across the Walls: A Community Approach to Parole Justice, Michelle Lewin and Nora Carroll. October, 2017. "Many applicants appear before the Board numerous times, often on nine or ten occasions, before they are granted release, forcing them to languish in prison for many years longer than their minimum sentence."
  • Only Young Once: The Urgent Need for Reform of Louisiana's Youth Justice System, Southern Poverty Law Center. July, 2023. "Incarcerating a young person in Louisiana for one year ($156,570) is more expensive than the annual costs of enrollment in Louisiana public schools, Tulane University, and Louisiana State University combined ($118,571)."

Friday, August 25 2023:

  • The Criminalization of Poverty in Kentucky: How Economic Crises and Flawed Reforms Fueled an Incarceration Boom, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2023. "By turning to criminal legal fines and fees to fund court and jail operations, jurisdictions across Kentucky create a vicious cycle that traps people in poverty and makes it more difficult for people to lead stable lives after incarceration."

Wednesday, August 16 2023:

  • Cruel and Usual: An Investigation into Prison Abuse at USP Thompson, The Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs, Uptown People's Law Center, and Levy Firestone Muse LLP. July, 2023. "Hundreds of people held in in the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) Special Management Unit (SMU) endured years of unconstitutional and abusive conditions."
  • "All carrots and no stick": Perceived impacts, changes in practices, and attitudes among law enforcement following drug decriminalization in Oregon, Paywall :( Hope M. Smiley-McDonald, Peyton R. Attaway, Lynn D. Wenger, Kathryn Greenwell, Barrot H. Lambdin, and Alex H. Kral. August, 2023. "Law enforcement interviewees expressed frustration that they could not use drug possession as a "tool" for investigations to pursue and build cases, establish probable cause, and impose what they believed necessary for social order."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Louisiana, Voice of the Experienced, the Redistricting Data Hub (Spencer Nelson and Peter Horton), and the Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2023. "The city of New Orleans has an imprisonment rate of 652 per 100,000 residents, but 19 of the city's 72 neighborhoods have imprisonment rates above 1,000 per 100,000. It is not a coincidence that many of these neighborhoods are predominately Black."
  • Assessing the Effectiveness of Pretrial Special Conditions Full Findings from the Pretrial Justice Collaborative, Chloe Anderson, Erin Valentine, and Daron Holman. June, 2023. "The analysis found that being released on [electronic monitoring] or sobriety monitoring did not significantly improve court appearance rates."
  • Inequitable and Undemocratic: A Research Brief on Jury Exclusion in Massachusetts and a Multipronged Approach to Dismantle It, Katy Naples-Mitchell and Haruka Margaret Braun, Roundtable on Racial Disparities in Massachusetts Criminal Courts. June, 2023. "A conservative estimate of 95,000 people are disqualified from jury service [in Massachusetts] because of a felony conviction within seven years, a pending felony charge, or current incarceration at any given time."
  • In Prison, Discipline Comes Down Hardest On Women Joseph Shapiro, Jessica Pupovac, and Kari Lydersen. October, 2018. "In 13 of the 15 states we analyzed, women get in trouble at higher rates than men. The discrepancies are highest for more minor infractions of prison rules."
  • Incarceration of Youths in an Adult Correctional Facility and Risk of Premature Death Ian A. Silver, Daniel C. Semenza, and Joseph L. Nedelec. July, 2023. "Approximately 8% of youths incarcerated in adult correctional facilities were estimated to die by the age of 39 years. In comparison, just over 2% of youths without legal system contact before [age 18] were estimated to have died by the age of 39 years."

Friday, July 7 2023:

  • Special Report: Summer Heat in New Jersey Prisons, New Jersey Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson. September, 2022. "The Ombuds office confirmed that ice was provided on hot days, however, some facilities provided ice free of charge several times per day while others required a minimal payment or provided ice only on a single shift each day."
  • Unlocking College: Strengthening Massachusetts' Commitment to College in Prison, The Boston Foundation. October, 2022. "In Massachusetts, the average annual cost to incarcerate someone in a DOC facility is $92,000, significantly higher than a year of even the most expensive college program in the state."
  • Does New York's Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in New York City, Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. March, 2023. "The results indicate that bail reform's mandatory release provisions significantly reduced two-year re-arrest rates for any charge (44% vs. 50%) and for a felony (24% vs. 27%)."
  • New West Virginia Capias Law - Effective June 9, 2023 West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. May, 2023. "In March 2023, lawmakers passed legislation to address a growing reason why people are taken to West Virginia jails: capiases (also known as bench warrants). Senate Bill 633 provides a uniform standard for addressing capiases..."
  • Safe At Home: Improving Maryland's Parole Release Decision Making, Justice Policy Institute. May, 2023. "In Maryland, [parole] grant rates decline sharply beginning at 40 years of age."
  • Racial Injustice Report: Disparities in Philadelphia's Criminal Courts from 2015-2022, Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. June, 2023. "Black individuals account for 69% of police stops and 62% of individuals arrested; white people accounted for only 18% of police stops and 21% of arrests, despite the fact that Black and white people make up similar shares of the city's population."
  • Effective Alternatives to Youth Incarceration Sentencing Project. June, 2023. "Effective alternative-to-incarceration programs produce better public safety outcomes than incarceration, at far lower costs, and do far less damage to young people's futures."
  • 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."

Wednesday, June 28 2023:

  • 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."
  • Substantiated Incidents of Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Correctional Authorities, 2016-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. January, 2023. "In 29% of abusive sexual contact incidents in adult correctional facilities, the victim was not offered or provided medical treatment."
  • Correctional Populations in the United States, 2021 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2023. "At yearend 2021, an estimated 5,444,900 persons were under the supervision of adult correctional systems in the United States, a decline of 1% (down 61,100 persons) from yearend 2020."
  • Estimated Use of Prescription Medications Among Individuals Incarcerated in Jails and State Prisons in the US Jill Curran et al. April, 2023. "The relative disparity between disease burden and pharmaceutical volume varied from 1.9-fold to 5.5-fold and was greatest for asthma and least for hepatitis."
  • Mental health disparities in solitary confinement Paywall :( Jessica T. Simes, Bruce Western, and Angela Lee. July, 2022. "Disparities by mental health status result from the cumulative effects of prison misconduct charges and disciplinary hearings. We estimate that those with serious mental illness spend three times longer in solitary [than those without mental illness]."
  • Debt Sentence: How Fines and Fees Hurt Working Families, Wilson Center for Science and Justice and the Fines and Fees Justice Center. May, 2023. "This is the first study to use a nationally representative sample in examining the personal impacts court-imposed debt has on people unable to immediately pay off their fines and fees."
  • Probation and Parole in the United States, 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2023. "From yearend 2011 to yearend 2021, the total adult community supervision population fell 22%, from 4,818,300 to 3,745,000. Most of this decrease was due to a decline of 25% (1 million) in the number of adults on probation."
  • Federal Justice Statistics, 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2022. "U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 22% of matters concluded in FY 2021. The cases most likely to be declined were property fraud (45%) and regulatory public order (44%) offenses."
  • From Victim to Victor: An Inquiry into Death by Incarceration, Gender, and Resistance in Pennsylvania, Abolitionist Law Center. April, 2023. "One third of [survey respondents'] cases involved the death of a romantic partner, and in 85% of those cases, the participants had experienced partner abuse."

Tuesday, June 27 2023:

  • Neighborhood Incarceration Rates and Adverse Birth Outcomes in New York City, 2010-2014 Louisa W. Holaday et al. March, 2023. "In all models, as neighborhood incarceration rate increased, there was an increased incidence rate ratio of preterm birth [and an increased IRR of low birth weight]."
  • The State of Prison Food in New England: A Survey of Federal and State Policy, Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law. April, 2023. "Cost reductions that result in nutritionally inadequate food may ultimately cost taxpayers more as healthcare in public prisons constitutes their largest expenditure--estimates suggest these costs amount to over $12 billion per year."
  • Calculating Torture Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box Campaign. May, 2023. "State and federal prisons and local and federal jails in the U.S. have reported on a given day locking a combined total of more than 122,000 people in solitary confinement for 22 or more hours."
  • Increasing Public Safety by Restoring Voting Rights Sentencing Project. April, 2023. "Retaining one's voting rights regardless of involvement in the criminal legal system can be viewed as a public safety strategy."

Thursday, May 25 2023:

  • Coping With Limited Prosecutorial Resources: An Assessment of the Case Processing and Community Impact From...Prosecutors and Staff in a Southeastern County, Paywall :( Christi Metcalfe and Joseph B. Kuhns. March, 2023. "Results suggested that Mecklenburg County...suffered more broadly from criminal justice funding challenges, and faced staffing shortages and turnover that were perceived as affecting case dispositions, office morale, and community trust."
  • Sentencing Reform for Criminalized Survivors: Learning from New York's Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, Sentencing Project and Survivors Justice Project. April, 2023. "Since its passage, the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA) has freed people who otherwise would have spent considerably more time behind bars, but compromises...have limited its impact."
  • Lower-Level Enforcement, Racial Disparities, & Alternatives to Arrest: A Review of Research and Practice from 1970 to 2021, Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. February, 2023. (This policy review considers five key models of alternatives to arrest: citations, diversion programs, legalization, police-involved crisis response models, and non-police response models.)
  • Banning Torture: Legislative Trends and Policy Solutions for Restricting and Ending Solitary Confinement throughout the United States, Unlock the Box Campaign. January, 2023. "Given that even a brief time in solitary can cause devastating harm--without any benefit--policymakers should finally and fully end solitary confinement for all people, other than for periods of minutes or hours for purposes of emergency de-escalation."
  • You're Out!: Three Strikes Against the PLRA's Three Strikes Rule, Kasey Clark. March, 2023. "At a minimum, the PLRA has failed to achieve Congress's goal of garnering "better prisoner suits." The overall decrease in the proportion of wins by prisoner-plaintiffs...also suggests that more meritorious claims are being excluded from the courts."
  • Jail Populations, Violent Crime, and COVID-19: Findings from the Safety and Justice Challenge, CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance. March, 2023. "The public narrative that jail population reform leads to an increase in violent crime makes for attention-grabbing headlines, but it is not backed by any evidence-based research."
  • Reduction or Elimination of Costs and Fees Charged to Inmates in State Correctional Facilities Virginia Department of Corrections. October, 2022. "The 9% commission [on commissary purchases] collected by VADOC, in addition to high prices and sales tax, collected to fund these services places an unfair cost on some of the Commonwealth's poorest families."
  • Heat-related mortality in U.S. state and private prisons: A case-crossover analysis, Julianne Skarha et al. March, 2023. "A 10-degree (F) increase was associated with a 5.2% increase in total mortality and a 6.7% increase in heart disease mortality. The association between temperature and suicides was delayed, peaking around lag 3 (exposure at three days prior to death)."
  • Estimated Costs and Outcomes Associated With Use and Nonuse of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder During Incarceration and at Release in Massachusetts, Avik Chatterjee et al. April, 2023. "We found that initiating and continuing MOUD treatment during incarceration could avert a substantial number of opioid overdose deaths at a relatively low cost ($8 million over 5 years) and would be a highly cost-effective intervention."
  • Reformers Looking To Intervene in Mass Incarceration Must Understand the Role of Rural County Jails Sarah Walton. May, 2023. "In communities that lack alternatives, jails may become a catchall solution to local health and economic crises...healthcare facilities, schools, employers, and housing agencies are all necessary partners in addressing rising rural jail incarceration." (Read more in Sarah Walton, "The Gateway to Mass Incarceration: A County-Level Analysis of Jails in the United States," Ohio State University, forthcoming.)
  • Protected & Served? 2022 Community Survey of LGBTQ+ People and People Living with HIV's Experiences with the Criminal Legal System, Lambda Legal and Black and Pink National. February, 2023. "In terms of both expectations and real experiences, trans people, gender nonconforming/ nonbinary people, and people of color were more likely to say that police were or would be very hostile, very skeptical, and very unfair to them."
  • Justice Navigator Public Assessments Center for Policing Equity. December, 2022. (This platform contains analyses of policing data from seven participating departments across the country, to identify which policing practices have patterns of racial disparities, and what factors may be contributing to those disparities.)
  • Punishment Beyond Prisons 2023: Incarceration and supervision by state, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2023. "Understanding how each state fares in probation and parole in addition to its systems of confinement gives us a more accurate and complete picture of its reliance on punishment." (This is an update to our 2018 report,)
  • Excessive, unjust, and expensive: Fixing Connecticut's probation and parole problems, Prison Policy Initiative and the Katal Center for Equity, Health and Justice. May, 2023. "Those who are on probation and parole live in fear of arrest and incarceration for nearly any action that could constitute a violation -- a gross misuse of resources and a disservice to families in Connecticut."
  • Criminal Convictions in New York State, 1980-2021 Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. May, 2023. "Relative to their representation in the residential population, the conviction rate in 2019 for Black people statewide was 3.1 times higher than for white people."
  • Employment Application Criminal Record Questions and Willingness to Apply: A Mixed Method Study of Self-Selection, Paywall :( Mike Vuolo, Lesley E. Schneider, and Eric G. LaPlant. September, 2022. "[Job] applicants may self-select out rather than divulge their record...In interviews, participants described self-selecting out due to anticipatory stigma, often resulting in long-term burnout. Still, some respondents would apply..."
  • Race, work history, and the employment recidivism relationship Simon G. Kolbeck, Paul E. Bellair, and Steven Lopez. August, 2022. "Our findings imply that employment contributes to racial disparities in recidivism via racialized barriers to labor market participation rather than via differential effects."
  • 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."
  • 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."
  • Cost of Discretion: Judicial Decision-Making, Pretrial Detention, and Public Safety in New York City, Scrutinize, QSIDE Institute, and NYU School of Law. May, 2023. "The estimated impact of these judges' disproportionately carceral decisions over 2.5 years amounts to 580 additional people detained, 154 additional years of pretrial detention, and over $77 million of additional costs borne by New York City taxpayers."
  • Evidence Rules for Decarceration Erin Collins. April, 2023. "As we envision a path towards decarceration, we must consider the barriers created by evidence rules, even if defendants often are effectively dissuaded from exercising their right to trial and the rules are never applied."
  • Women's Pathways Into and Out of Jail in Buncombe County Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2022. "Very high bond amounts present an insurmountable challenge, leaving women with no other option but pretrial incarceration. Many women with bond amounts less than $10,000 found this sum impossible to pay, even when required to post only 10 percent..."
  • A Statewide Analysis of the Impact of Restitution and Fees on Juvenile Recidivism in Florida Across Race & Ethnicity Alex R. Piquero, Michael T. Baglivio, and Kevin T. Wolff. February, 2023. "The current study demonstrates youth assigned fees evidence significantly higher recidivism than similarly situated youth not assigned fees, as measured by an adjudication for a new criminal offense committed within 365 days."

Tuesday, April 18 2023:

  • Racial And Ethnic Inequalities In COVID-19 Mortality Within Carceral Settings: An Analysis Of Texas Prisons Paywall :( Neal Marquez, Destiny Moreno, Amanda Klonsky, and Sharon Dolovich. November, 2022. "COVID-19 mortality was 1.61 and 2.12 times higher for Black and Hispanic populations, respectively, when compared with the White population in Texas prisons."
  • Assessment of US Federal Funding of Incarceration-Related Research, 1985 to 2022 Samantha J. Boch, Aaron W. Murnan, Jordan F. Pollard et al. February, 2023. "Consistent with previous research, 0.12% of all projects funded at the NIH and 0.03% at the NSF since 1985 were related to incarceration...substantially lower than the number of projects that relate to other systems such as education and the military."
  • The Impacts of Length of Prison Stay on Recidivism of Non-Violent Offenders in Oregon Mark G. Leymon, Christopher M. Campbell, Kris Henning, and Brian C. Renauer. September, 2022. "In the few places significant results are present, [length of stay] increased the probability of recidivism at some points, and in other cases, it slightly decreased the probability of rearrest."
  • From Crisis to Care: Ending the Health Harm of Women's Prisons, Human Impact Partners. February, 2023. "The state of California invests $405 million a year in its women's prisons...[it] has the opportunity to invest that money in health-promoting support systems that people can access in their own communities."

Monday, April 17 2023:

  • Stepping on the Gas: Accelerating Florida's Economic Growth by Restoring the Freedom to Drive, Fines and Fees Justice Center. February, 2023. "As of November 2022, 716,383 Floridians cannot legally drive because of unpaid fines and fees--1 in 24 driving-age adults."
  • Prison agriculture in the United States: racial capitalism and the disciplinary matrix of exploitation and rehabilitation, Paywall :( Carrie Chennault and Joshua Sbicca. October, 2022. "Prison agriculture embodies explicit forms of exploitation and claims of rehabilitation...At least 662 adult state prisons have agricultural activities, including an array of animal, food, and plant production."
  • Reimagining Community Safety in California: From Deadly and Expensive Sheriffs to Equity and Care-Centered Wellbeing, Catalyst California. October, 2022. "For the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, 88.8% of officer time spent on stops (25,269 hours) was for officer-initiated stops rather than in response to a call for service, which accounted for only 11.2% (3,189 hours) of officer time spent on stops."
  • Ticketing and Turnout: The Participatory Consequences of Low-Level Police Contact, Jonathan Ben-Menachem and Kevin T. Morris. December, 2022. "Few analyses directly investigate the causal effect of lower-level police contact on voter turnout. To do so, we leverage individual-level administrative ticketing data from Hillsborough County, Florida."
  • Assessments & Surcharges: A 50-State Survey of Supplemental Fees, Fines and Fees Justice Center. December, 2022. "Whether they are called administrative assessments, surcharges, court costs, privilege taxes, docket fees, or something else...they are imposed in nearly every criminal, traffic, or local ordinance case."
  • Building Connections to Housing During Reentry: Results from a Questionnaire on DOC Housing Policies, Programs, and Needs, Council of State Governments Justice Center. April, 2023. "For almost half [of respondents], if housing is not identified prior to release, people must remain incarcerated until an address is approved."
  • A New Paradigm for Sentencing in the United States Vera 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."
  • Greening Criminal Legal Deserts in Rural Texas Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center. October, 2022. "The shortage of rural criminal lawyers is dire. Fewer than 1% of Texas criminal lawyers have their practice in a rural county."
  • Persevere: Our Ongoing Fight for an Equal Justice Judiciary, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. February, 2023. "Having judges who reflect and represent all of us also increases public trust in the judiciary and improves judicial decision-making."

Friday, March 31 2023:

  • Arrests as Regulation Eisha Jain. April, 2015. "When noncriminal justice actors rely on arrests (as proxies for information they value), they set off a complicated and poorly understood web of interactions with the criminal justice system."
  • Is Bail Reform Causing an Increase in Crime? Don Stemen and David Olson. January, 2023. "We considered eleven bail-reform jurisdictions to determine the effect, if any, of these policy changes on crime. Violent crime trends after reforms present no clear or obvious pattern in these jurisdictions."
  • Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Arrests in California Public Policy Institute of California. February, 2023. "California experienced persistent declines of 5 percent for felony arrests and 40 percent for misdemeanor arrests until at least July 2021--resulting in a rare near-convergence of these two arrest types."
  • Pandemic, Social Unrest, and Crime in U.S. Cities Year-End 2022 Update, Council on Criminal Justice. January, 2023. "There were 3.5% fewer aggravated assaults in 2022 than in 2021. The number of gun assaults dropped by 7% in 2022, but this trend is based on data from just 11 cities and should be viewed with additional caution."
  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2022. "This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus; it allows us to identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement."
  • Mass Incarceration Trends Sentencing Project. January, 2023. "The year 2023 marks the 50th year since the U.S. prison population began its unprecedented surge."
  • Special Legislative Commission on Structural Racism in Correctional Facilities of the Commonwealth Former Special Legislative Commission on Structural Racism in Correctional Facilities of the Commonwealth and African American Coalition Committee Structural Racism Commission. December, 2022. "Structural racism in Corrections systems produces or perpetuates unfair treatment and impacts by race and other intersecting identities...it can be dismantled with intentional partnership between the Legislative and Executive branches."
  • Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2023. "The disaggregated numbers presented here are an important step to ensuring that women are not left behind in the effort to end mass incarceration."

Sunday, March 12 2023:

  • High-Frequency Location Data Shows That Race Affects the Likelihood of Being Stopped and Fined for Speeding Pradhi Aggarwal et al. December, 2022. "Relative to a white driver traveling the same speed, minorities are 24 to 33 percent more likely to be stopped for speeding and pay 23 to 34 percent more in fines."
  • The Burden of Court Debt on Washingtonians Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2023. "At least 78 percent of people with legal-financial debt meet the state's indigency standard, yet courts routinely impose fines and fees at conviction averaging $695 for misdemeanor cases and $1,302 for felony cases."
  • Commission to Examine Reestablishing Parole State of Maine Legislature. December, 2022. "The Commission reports on the history and current state of parole in Maine, as well as its recomendations for exploring options to reestablish a parole system in Maine."
  • Over-Incarceration of Native Americans: Roots, Inequities, and Solutions, Safety and Justice Challenge. July, 2022. "Interventions meant to address over-incarceration of Native people should start at the tribal level. Tribes could impact disparity on a national level by providing supportive and restorative services for those involved in their own justice systems."
  • Preempting Progress: States Take Aim at Local Prosecutors, Jorge Camacho et al. January, 2023. "In the past three state legislative sessions, at least 28 preemption bills have been proposed in 16 states to undermine anti-carceral uses of prosecutorial discretion."

Friday, March 3 2023:

  • Overdose Prevention Centers: A Successful Strategy for Preventing Death and Disease, The Cato Institute. February, 2023. "Federally legalizing all drugs would allow harm-reduction organizations to operate facilities where people can consume drugs more safely."
  • Toward an Optimal Decarceration Strategy Ben Grunwald. April, 2022. "The public debate has focused almost exclusively on how we might decarcerate while minimizing any increases in crime and has, therefore, underappreciated the costs of prison itself. We should consider at least three more metrics..."
  • Broken Rules: Laws Meant to End Debtors' Prisons are Failing Nebraskans, ACLU of Nebraska. December, 2022. "Observations from a combined 2,300+ bail and sentencing hearings show systemic disregard of laws meant to protect Nebraskans who are struggling financially."
  • Are Supervision Violations Filling Prisons? The Role of Probation, Parole, and New Offenses in Driving Mass Incarceration, Michelle S. Phelps, H. N. Dickens, and De Andre' T. Beadle. January, 2023. "These estimates suggest that although adults on community supervision constitute a substantial part of mass incarceration's growth, technical violations have not been a primary driver of prison populations."
  • Homelessness and Contact with the Criminal Legal System among U.S. Combat Veterans: An Exploration of Potential Mediating Factors, Paywall :( Ugur Orak et al. December, 2022. "A large proportion (53.6%) of the association between homelessness and criminal legal system involvement was accounted for by indirect associations, most notably via drug use disorder (22.1%), moral injury (11.4%), and alcohol use disorder (10.7%)."

Friday, February 24 2023:

  • That Time We Tried to Build the Perfect Prison: Learning from Episodes Across U.S. Prison History, Paywall :( Ashley T. Rubin. December, 2022. "While many of these endeavours are impressive...it is also possible to locate these ventures in a very long line of efforts to construct the perfect prison, a slippery goal that changes over time."
  • 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."
  • Police Diversion at Arrest: A Systematic Review of the Literature, Paywall :( Caroline Harmon-Darrow et al. November, 2022. "Overall, police diversion programs were associated with reducing recidivism and lowering costs, although there is little association between program participation and improved behavioral health."
  • The Social Costs of Policing Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2022. "[One study found that] people who were stopped and questioned or arrested by the police decreased their formal interactions with important social and welfare institutions such as medical, financial, civic, and educational institutions."
  • Expungement of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study, J.J. Prescott and Sonja B. Starr. June, 2020. "What has been missing from the debate is hard evidence about the effects and true potential of conviction expungement laws...It leaves policymakers almost entirely in the dark."

Thursday, February 9 2023:

  • Prioritization of carceral spending in U.S. cities: Development of the Carceral Resource Index (CRI) and the role of race and income inequality, Britt Skaathun et al. December, 2022. "To our knowledge, this is the first study to consider the joint interaction of race and class on the prioritization of carceral systems over health and social support systems."
  • Mental Health of Incarcerated Veterans and Civilians: Latent Class Analysis of the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, Paywall :( Emily R. Edwards et al. September, 2022. "Classes were compared on Veteran status, military service-related variables, and treatment-related variables...Results attest to the importance of person-centered mental health care within correctional settings."
  • The Explosion of Unpaid Criminal Fines and Fees in North Carolina Duke Law Center for Science and Justice. April, 2020. "One in twelve adults in North Carolina currently have unpaid criminal court debt. This largely uncollectable debt may total well over one hundred million dollars."
  • Technical Violations and Their Effects on Pretrial/Bond Supervision Outcomes Paywall :( Haley R. Zettler and Kelli D. Martin. June, 2022. "While technical violations are associated with pretrial failure, the effects vary by violation type. Furthermore, the findings illustrate differences in risk factors for technical violations while on pretrial/bond supervision."
  • Monitoring Pretrial Reform in Harris County: Second Report of the Court-Appointed Monitor, Independent Monitor for the Odonnell v. Harris County Decree. March, 2021. "These data analyses show an overall decrease in the duration of pretrial detention: in more than 80% of the cases since 2017, defendants spent two days or fewer in jail before their release."
  • The Prison Industry Corporate Database Worth Rises. October, 2022. "The prison industry is worth over $80 billion and includes thousands of corporations. This is a database of corporations that do business with corrections and immigration detention in the U.S."
  • Mapping Transformative Schools: From Punishment to Promise, National Juvenile Justice Network. December, 2022. "Young people we talked to discussed the wide use of suspensions and expulsions for minor infractions, differences in suspensions and expulsions based on race and gender, and the lasting harm to students when they are suspended."

Friday, January 27 2023:

  • Changes in the Use of Telehealth Services and Use of Technology for Communication in U.S. Community Supervision Agencies Since COVID-19, Jill Viglione and Thuy Nguyen. May, 2022. "Our results indicated that agencies who implemented more COVID-19 mitigation strategies were more likely to institute changes to meet more safely face-to-face with individuals on supervision."
  • Inside Illinois Civil Commitment: Treatment Behind Razor Wire, Civil Commitment Working Group Illinois. November, 2022. "While anecdotal reports do reflect incremental improvements to conditions after recent leadership changes at Rushville, the fact remains that Rushville is not a treatment center, it is a prison full of people who are serving de facto life sentences."
  • Department of Corrections: Significant Deficiencies Demonstrate Need for Overhaul of the Prisoner Grievance Process Vermont State Auditor's Office. December, 2022. "The recordkeeping system that DOC uses to collect information on grievances-- the Offender Management System (OMS)--does not have reliable, basic information to determine the number, type, status, or outcome of prisoner grievances."
  • Using the Americans with Disabilities Act to Reduce Overdose Deaths David Howard Sinkman and Gregory Dorchak. January, 2022. "The Department [of Justice] has a powerful enforcement tool to address the opioid crisis: helping jails and prisons satisfy their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act by providing all medications used to treat Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)."
  • History of Incarceration and Its Association With Geriatric and Chronic Health Outcomes in Older Adulthood Ilana R. Garcia-Grossman et al. January, 2023. "In this study, at least 1 in 15 older US adults reported a history of incarceration in their lifetime. Past incarceration was associated with many chronic diseases and geriatric syndromes even after accounting for socioeconomic status."
  • Can There Be Acceptable Prison Health Care? Looking Back on the 1970s, Susan M. Reverby. January, 2019. "[Formerly incarcerated physician Alan] Berkman's argument--that control rather than care underlies the medical rationale in prison health care--still undermines humane treatment of incarcerated people."
  • Legal Reactivity: Correctional Health Care Certifications as Responses to Litigation, Spencer Headworth and Callie Zaborenko. August, 2021. "We find that corrections actors tend to adopt [third-party correctional health care] certifications when directly threatened by elevated rates of litigation in their states."
  • Right to a Healthy Prison Environment: Health Care in Custody Under the Prism of Torture, Juan E. Mendez. January, 2019. "A healthy [prison] environment requires structural integrity of prison systems, access to medical care and treatment, health care services, including dental, psychological, and rehabilitative services, and opportunity for prisoners to exercise."
  • Performance Measures for Medication-assisted Treatment in Correctional Settings: A Framework for Implementation, Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. December, 2022. "An individual released from custody may not realize that even brief incarcerations could result in reduced tolerance levels and resuming use at the same rate and/or dose of pre-incarceration, leading to a fatal unintentional overdose."
  • The benefits of live court date reminder phone calls during pretrial case processing Paywall :( Russell Ferri. March, 2022. "Court date reminders [via phone call] reduced the failure to appear (FTA) rate by 37%. The results suggest the timing of the reminders was not important."
  • An eye on reform: Examining decisions, procedures, and outcomes of the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision release process, Christopher M. Campbell et al. September, 2022. "All interviewees discussed how "articulating their rehabilitation" or "demonstrated insight" were both critical in the process and yet very difficult to achieve, often due to poor communication skills."
  • Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. November, 2022. "This report offers an account of the research evidence that can inform the public conversation and the policy discussion over reducing racial inequality in the criminal justice system and advancing racial equity."
  • Racial Disparities in the Administration of Discipline in New York State Prisons State of New York Offices of the Inspector General. November, 2022. "Of DOCCS employees who issued 50 or more Misbehavior Reports during the period reviewed, 226 employees issued them to only non-White incarcerated individuals, including 114 employees who issued them to only Black or Hispanic incarcerated individuals."
  • Sticky Stigma: The Impact of Incarceration on Perceptions of Personality Traits and Deservingness, Paywall :( Bridget Brew et al. July, 2021. "Members of marginalized groups who are most likely to experience incarceration or have an incarcerated loved one continue to face informal social exclusion and the attendant consequences long after the formal punishment."
  • Final Report of the Illinois Resentencing Task Force Illinois 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."
  • 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."
  • No Justice, No Pleas: Subverting Mass Incarceration Through Defendant Collective Action, Andrew Manuel Crespo. April, 2022. "Courts and prosecutors simply do not have the resources to sustain mass incarceration while affording everyone accused of a crime the constitutionally guaranteed right to a trial."
  • Pregnancy, Systematic Disregard and Degradation, and Carceral Institutions Lauren Kuhlik and Carolyn Sufrin. 2020. "We describe violations of constitutional and clinical standards of reproductive care behind bars... these reproductive coercions are grounded in historical legacies of slavery and the ongoing reproductive control of black and other marginalized bodies."

Friday, January 6 2023:

  • Impact of COVID-19 on State and Federal Prisons, March 2020-February 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics. August, 2022. "Almost 2,500 state and federal prisoners died of COVID-19-related causes during the 12 months from March 2020 to February 2021."
  • Jails in Indian Country, 2021, and the Impact of COVID-19, July-December 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. August, 2022. "About 5,780 persons were admitted to Indian country jails in June 2021, up 8% from the 5,330 admissions in June 2020."
  • "Not for Human Consumption": Prison Food's Absent Regulatory Regime, Amanda Chan and Anna Nathanson. May, 2021. "With the passage of the [Prison Litigation Reform Act]...Prisoners lost one of their tools for seeking humane food conditions, and they continue to suffer the consequences."
  • Criminal Victimization, 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics. September, 2022. "From 1993 to 2021, the rate of violent victimization declined from 79.8 to 16.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older."
  • The Birth of the Penal Organization: Why Prisons Were Born to Fail, Ashley T. Rubin. June, 2019. "We move away from the question, "Why do prisons fail?" and ask instead, "Why do we repeatedly expect prisons to succeed?""
  • Federal Deaths in Custody and During Arrest, 2020 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2022. "Federal law enforcement agencies reported 65 arrest-related deaths and 614 deaths in custody in fiscal year (FY) 2020."
  • Federal Prisoner Statistics Collected under the First Step Act, 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2022. "The federal prison population increased more than 3%, from 151,283 at yearend 2020 to 156,542 at yearend 2021."
  • Prisoners in 2021 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2022. "The U.S. prison population was 1,204,300 at yearend 2021, a 1% decrease from 2020 (1,221,200) and a 25% decrease from 2011 (1,599,000)."
  • Jail Inmates in 2021 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2022. "At midyear 2021, 29% of jail inmates (185,000) were convicted, either serving a sentence or awaiting sentencing on a conviction, while 71% of inmates (451,400) were unconvicted, awaiting court action on a current charge or held in jail for other reasons."
  • Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. November, 2022. "About 21% of U.S. residents age 16 or older had contact with police in 2020. Black (6%) and Hispanic (3%) persons were more likely to experience the threat or use of nonfatal force during their most recent police contact than white persons (2%)."
  • At What Cost? Findings from an Examination into the Imposition of Public Defense System Fees, National Legal Aid & Defender Association. July, 2022. "In the overwhelming majority of states, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not mean that counsel for those who cannot afford it is provided free of charge."
  • Freedom Denied: How the Culture of Detention Created a Federal Jailing Crisis, Alison Siegler. October, 2022. "Our courtwatching data reveal the myriad ways in which judges detain federal arrestees in contravention of the legal standards in the [Bail Reform Act of 1984]."
  • Data on Adjudication of Misdemeanor Offenses: Results from a Feasibility Study, Abt Associates and Bureau of Justice Statistics. November, 2022. "By focusing on misdemeanors, BJS is addressing a substantial gap in criminal justice statistics, as very little empirical information exists about misdemeanor charges filed in state, county, and municipal courts."
  • Why Youth Incarceration Fails: An Updated Review of the Evidence, Sentencing Project. December, 2022. "Compared to probation and other community alternatives, incarceration most often results in higher rates of rearrest and reincarceration [for young people]."

Wednesday, December 21 2022:

  • New data confirms that prisons neglected COVID-19 mitigation strategies, putting public health at risk Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2022. "Although crowded living spaces like prisons are generally hotspots for infection transmission, only some departments of corrections followed guidance from public health officials while others ignored even the most basic recommendations."
  • The state prison experience: Too much drudgery, not enough opportunity, Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2022. "The Survey data reveal that only 43% of people in state prisons have participated in educational programming (even though 62% had not completed high school upon admission)."
  • Both sides of the bars: How mass incarceration punishes families, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2022. "Nearly half (47%) of the approximately 1.25 million people in state prison are parents of minor children, and about 1 in 5 (19%) of those children is age 4 or younger."
  • Jail-based polling locations: A way to fight voter disenfranchisement, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2022. "In the June 2022 primary, roughly 25% of people detained at the [Cook County, Ill.] jail cast their ballots. This location was so successful that people at the jail actually voted at a higher rate than registered voters in Chicago (20%)."
  • Winnable criminal justice reforms in 2023 Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2022. "This list offers policymakers and advocates straightforward solutions that would have the greatest impacts on reducing incarceration and ameliorating harms experienced by those with a conviction history, without further investments in the carceral system."
  • New data LGBT people across all demographics are at heightened risk of violent victimization, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2022. "Lesbian and gay people experienced 44 victimizations per 1,000 people, which was more than twice the victimization rate of straight people (19 per 1,000 people). Bisexual people experienced victimization at almost seven times the rate of straight people."
  • Working in "a meat grinder": A research roundup showing prison and jail jobs aren't all that states promise they will be, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2022. "A 2016 paper studying correctional officers in Michigan estimated that 34% of participants had PTSD, 36% had depression, and 25% had both."
  • All profit, no risk: How the bail industry exploits the legal system, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2022. "While this report details the many legal advantages bail companies have secured for themselves, we conclude that "fixing" the system is not a viable option."
  • State of Phone Justice 2022: The problem, the progress, and what's next, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2022. "Our data, from December 2021, show that per-minute rates have been steadily falling over the last ten years, a result of action at both the FCC and at the state and local levels."
  • Mail scanning: A harsh and exploitative new trend in prisons, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2022. "We found 14 state prison systems that are scanning all incoming mail, but we're confident that this number is an undercount, because we couldn't verify the status of mail scanning in some other states."
  • Why states should change Medicaid rules to cover people leaving prison Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2022. "Legislation like [the Medicaid Reentry Act] would vastly expand access to healthcare after incarceration, closing the dangerous healthcare coverage gap and reducing preventable deaths and health problems that occur shortly after release."

Tuesday, December 13 2022:

  • Autism and the Criminal Justice System: Policy Opportunities and Challenges, International Society for Autism Research. April, 2022. "Inclusive research practices that meaningfully involve and partner with neurodiverse minority groups are needed to generate policy change in the criminal justice system, which excessively and disparately harms minority communities."
  • Mortality in a Multi-State Cohort of Former State Prisoners, 2010-2015 U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies. February, 2022. "We found that non-Hispanic white former prisoners were more likely to die within five years after prison release and more likely to die in the initial weeks after release compared to racial minorities and Hispanics."
  • Traffic Safety Center for Policing Equity. September, 2022. "Racially biased enforcement sets into motion a cascade of interrelated harms for millions of people: unaffordable fines and fees, mounting debt, driver's license suspensions, lost employment, unnecessary arrests, and even injury or death."
  • Surviving austerity: Commissary stores, inequality and punishment in the contemporary American prison, Paywall :( Tommaso Bardelli, Zach Gillespie and Thuy Linh Tu. August, 2022. "Prison commissary stores constitute a crucial mechanism for extending financial extraction inside carceral institutions, siphoning millions of dollars each year from impoverished households." (See also the authors' guest post on the same topic here.)
  • Pretrial Electronic Monitoring in San Francisco California Policy Lab. November, 2022. "The use of pretrial EM increased more than twenty-fold between 2017 and 2021."
  • Electronic Monitoring Fees: A 50-State Survey of the Costs Assessed to People on E-Supervision, Fines and Fees Justice Center. September, 2022. "At least 26 states have statutes or rules that impose fees to cover the costs of an EM program without specifying an amount, allowing [a company] to set any fee it deems appropriate, with little to no oversight to check such decisions."
  • Legal Ruralism and California Parole Hearings: Space, Place, and the Carceral Landscape, Kathryne M. Young. December, 2020. "[Parole] commissioners report that prisons' location in rural areas affects the rehabilitative resources available, which are seen as an important aspect of their readiness for release."
  • The Proliferation of Criminal Background Check Laws in the United States Paywall :( David McElhattan. January, 2022. "Panel analyses provide the strongest support for a model of racial classification, with the rate of background check adoption increasing as African-Americans represent larger shares of state criminal record populations."
  • America's Paper Prisons: The Second Chance Gap, Colleen Chien. December, 2020. "Among a host of petition-based second chance opportunities, to shorten sentences, restore one's vote, and clear one's criminal convictions, only a small fraction (less than 10 percent) of those eligible for relief actually received it."
  • Jail-based reentry programming to support continued treatment with medications for opioid use disorder: Qualitative perspectives and experiences among jail staff in Massachusetts, Atsushi Matsumoto et al. November, 2022. "Coordination of medications for opioid use disorder post-release continuity of care requires training supporting staff in reentry planning...and bridging partnerships between in-jail MOUD programs and community providers."
  • Diversion: A Hidden Key to Combating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice, Sentencing Project. August, 2022. "Of the youth referred to juvenile or family courts for delinquency each year, just 7% are accused of serious violent offenses...[most] youth accused of delinquency should be diverted rather than arrested and formally processed in a juvenile court."
  • Racial and Ethnic Disparities at the Front Door of Massachusetts' Juvenile Justice System: Understanding the Factors Leading to Overrepresentation of Black and Latino Youth Entering the System, Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Policy and Data Board. November, 2022. "[Racial] disparities are largest at the "front door" of the system-- the arrest and application for delinquency complaint stage. These early disparities matter."
  • Double Punished: Locked Out of Opportunity, Bellwether Education Partners. June, 2022. "In many states, we found that multiple agencies are involved in supporting juvenile justice education, creating a system of fragmented responsibility."

Thursday, December 1 2022:

  • Justice Diseased is Justice Denied: Coronavirus, Court Closures, and Criminal Trials, Ryan Shymansky. May, 2020. "Courts closing their doors to the public and delaying jury trials are doing so for admirable reasons...Yet these reasons alone do not render the Sixth Amendment meaningless."
  • Cruel and Usual: Contaminated Water in New York State Prisons, Shannon Haupt and Phil Miller. July, 2022. "The lack of thorough and consistent testing of water quality in prisons, [and] significant obstructions of due process for incarcerated people who raise complaints about the water, allows prisons to minimize and deny any presence of contaminated water."
  • Unjust Isolation: The Diminishing Returns of Solitary Confinement of Pregnant Women and California's Need to Regulate It, Richard Lee. July, 2021. "When all the risk factors of pregnant prisoners intersect, it puts them in an especially ill-equipped position to protect themselves mentally against the potential harms of solitary confinement."
  • A Deliberate Difference?: The Rights of Incarcerated Individuals Under the New Mexico State Constitution, Carson Thornton Gonzalez. July, 2022. "This Comment...encourages practitioners to be creative in their approach to prison conditions litigation under the [2021 New Mexico Civil Rights Act]."
  • The Victim/Offender Overlap and Criminal System Reform Cynthia Godsoe. May, 2022. "Beyond definitions of what is criminal, recognizing the [victim/offender] overlap complicates and even undercuts traditional rationales for punishment...while also strengthening the calls for a different approach to preventing and redressing harm."
  • Violent crime and public prosecution: A Review of Recent Data on Homicide, Robbery, and Progressive Prosecution in the United States, University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. October, 2022. "We find that neither having a "progressive" prosecutor nor a "middle" prosecutor had an effect on homicide or larceny compared to "traditional" prosecutors during this time (2018 to 2021)."
  • The Well-Being Impacts Associated with College in Prison: A Comparison of Incarcerated and Non-Incarcerated Students Who Identify as Women, Paywall :( Sarah Y. Moore and Tanya Erzen. November, 2022. "[The students'] measures of well-being, coping, and academic engagement were significantly better than the matched non-incarcerated sample for most measures."
  • Louisiana Justice: Pre-trial, Incarceration, & Reentry, Incarceration Transparency and Public Welfare Foundation. November, 2022. "This report significantly expands understanding of the state's practice of confining almost half of the prison population in local jails...creating political and financial incentives at the local level to build larger and higher-capacity facilities."
  • Does Public Health Start Within Jails? A New Incentive for Reform of Wisconsin's Bail System, Mahmood N. Abdellatif. July, 2022. "There is a growing impetus for states like Wisconsin to reduce their incarcerated populations by enacting sensible bail reforms that effectively consider a detainee's real threat to their communities or likelihood to abscond."
  • Coming Up Short: The Unrealized Promise of In Re Humphrey, UCLA School of Law and UC Berkeley Law. October, 2022. "The California Supreme Court ruled...that setting bail at an amount that a person cannot afford to pay is unconstitutional...18 month after it was decided, [Humphrey] remains unmet."
  • Parole, Victim Impact Evidence, and Race Alexis Karteron. May, 2022. "There is reason for concern that victim participation in the parole release process reinforces racial disparities within the criminal legal system."
  • Race and the Jury: How the Law is Keeping Minorities off the Jury, Stephanie Adamakos. May, 2016. "Federal statute requires that registered-voters lists be used as source lists, but many states supplement with Department of Motor Vehicle records of people with licenses...whites are more likely to be included in both of these source lists."
  • 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."
  • Justice Delayed: The Complex System of Delays in Criminal Court, Kat Albrecht et al.. July, 2022. "This Article demonstrates not only that case delay is a significant social and legal problem, but also that the leadership of the Circuit Court...[must rethink] the way in which Cook Count's criminal courts conduct business."

Friday, November 4 2022:

  • A community response approach to mental health and substance abuse crises reduced crime Thomas S. Dee and James Pyne. June, 2022. "We find that the program led to large and sustained reductions in reports of STAR-related offenses (disorderly conduct, substance use) in treated precincts, while unrelated offenses over the treatment period changed little in those same police precincts."
  • Voices from Within the Federal Bureau of Prisons: A System Designed to Silence and Dehumanize, More than Our Crimes and Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. September, 2022. "We hope these stories provoke deep thinking about what is going on behind all those fortress walls, to these invisible fellow Americans, and then compel you to demand both accountability for the FBOP and change in how we incarcerate in this country."
  • Provision of Air Conditioning and Heat-Related Mortality in Texas Prisons Julianna Skarha et al. November, 2022. "We found that 13% of mortality during warm months may be attributable to extreme heat in prisons without air conditioning in Texas. This is approximately a 30-fold increase in heat-attributed deaths when compared with estimates in the US population."
  • Prison Labor in Arizona: A year-long investigation, Paywall :( Arizona Republic and KJZZ News. July, 2022. "The Republic's and KJZZ's five-part series reveals the detrimental effects of what happens when a state exploits some of its poorest people for their labor."
  • Electronic Monitoring Fees: A 50-State Survey of the Costs Assessed to People on E-Supervision, Fines and Fees Justice Center. September, 2022. "Broad language in state statutes and rules often gives local governments considerable latitude in determining how much to charge. From a limited review of 31 local jurisdictions with EM programs, fees ranged from less than $1 a day up to $40 per day"
  • Criminal Justice Through Management: From Police, Prosecutors, Courts, and Prisons to a Modern Administrative Agency, Edward L. Rubin and Malcolm M. Feeley. September, 2022. "We recommend that the criminal justice system of each state be redesigned and restructured as a single administrative agency...We offer this as a standard for assessment of the present system, a way to highlight dysfunction and suggest much-needed reform."
  • Justice System Disparities: Black-White National Imprisonment Trends, 2000 to 2020, Council on Criminal Justice. September, 2022. "Faster growth in the nation's Black adult resident population contributed more to its respective imprisonment rate decline than did the White adult resident population growth."
  • Voting From Jail (Working Paper), Anna Harvey and Orion Taylor. October, 2022. "Registered voters booked into county jails for the full duration of 2020 voting days were on average 46% less likely to vote in 2020, relative to registered voters booked into the same jails within 7-42 days after Election Day."
  • Exceptionally Lethal: American Police Killings in a Comparative Perspective, Paul J. Hirschfield. September, 2022. "Cross-national comparative analyses can help identify stable and malleable factors that distinguish high-FPV (fatal police violence) from low-FPV countries."
  • Reducing Deaths in Law Enforcement Custody: Identifying High-Priority Needs for the Criminal Justice System, Duren Banks et al. October, 2022. "[Interview and virtual group] Participants concurred that there is currently insufficient data to study the effectiveness of any policies or programs designed to reduce law enforcement-related deaths."
  • Justice by Geography: The Role of Monetary Sanctions Across Communities, Gabriela Kirk et al. January, 2022. "Our finding that acquaintanceship density influences both the role and nature of monetary sanctions provides a fuller picture of the factors that lead to varying local legal cultures surrounding monetary sanctions."
  • Obscuring the Truth: How Misinformation is Skewing the Conversation about Pretrial Justice Reforms in Illinois, End Money Bond. October, 2022. "By detailing how misinformation shaped the public debate of pretrial justice reforms in Cook County, we hope to arm journalists with the resources needed to cover the statewide reforms included in the Pretrial Fairness Act."
  • Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States, 2022 National Registry of Exonerations. September, 2022. "Innocent Black people are 19 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent whites--a much larger disparity than we see for murder and rape-- despite the fact that white and Black Americans use illegal drugs at similar rates."

Wednesday, October 19 2022:

  • Crime Survivors Speak: National Survey of Victims' Views on Safety and Justice, Alliance for Safety and Justice. September, 2022. "According to the Survey, only 1 in 4 victims found the justice system helpful in providing information about recovering from crime or referrals for support services."
  • Effective Communication with Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, and Low Vision Incarcerated People Tessa Bialek and Margo Schlanger. July, 2022. "There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for prisoners with communication disabilities...policies and practices should acknowledge that they may be differently and/or multiply disabled in ways that affect their abilities and needs."
  • Incarceration status and cancer mortality: A population-based study, Oluwadamilola T. Oladeru et al. September, 2022. "Incarcerated individuals were diagnosed with cancer at a distant stage more frequently compared to those recently released or never incarcerated."
  • There Are Better Solutions: An Analysis of Fulton County [Georgia]'s Jail Population Data, 2022, American Civil Liberties Union. October, 2022. "The county's failure to account for ability to pay bail, confinement of people charged only with misdemeanors, failure to timely indict people, and failure to fully utilize diversion programs has led to population levels above capacity at the jail."
  • Reforming the police through procedural justice training: A multicity randomized trial at crime hot spots, David Weisburd et al. January, 2022. "Intensive training in procedural justice (PJ) can lead to more procedurally just behavior and less disrespectful treatment of people [by police officers] at high-crime places."
  • Fulfilling the Promise of Public Safety: Some Lessons from Recent Research, Ben Struhl and Alexander Gard-Murray, Univ. of Pennsylvania Crime and Justice Policy Lab. June, 2022. "Countries with much more robust social service provision still have police forces 80-85% the size of American forces. The public safety challenge is sufficiently complex that [we] should all consider multiple kinds of responses."
  • Cages Without Bars: Pretrial Electronic Monitoring Across the United States, Patrice James et al. September, 2022. "Rather than serve as an alternative to physical confinement, electronic monitoring expands mass incarceration -- operating as a digital form of imprisonment and often leading people back into physical jails and prisons for minor technical violations." (The harms caused by EM to people and communities are so great that EM cannot be "reformed" or adapted into a practice that is not still no longer fundamentally carceral, punitive, and harmful. The goal must be to end its use.)
  • Rethinking Electronic Monitoring: A Harm Reduction Guide, American Civil Liberties Union. September, 2022. "Rather than serve as an alternative to physical confinement, EM expands mass incarceration -- operating as a digital form of imprisonment and often leading people back into physical jails and prisons for minor technical violations."
  • Conceptualizing and Measuring Public Stigma Toward People With Prison Records Paywall :( Luzi Shi et al. July, 2022. "Results show that [public stigma] is positively related to support for disenfranchisement and punitive policies and negatively related to support for rehabilitative policies."

Friday, September 30 2022:

  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in California, Prison Policy Initiative and Essie Justice Group. August, 2022. "Some areas of federally recognized tribal land -- including the Fort Mojave Reservation and Big Valley Rancheria -- have imprisonment rates more than five times the imprisonment rate of Los Angeles."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Delaware, Prison Policy Initiative, Kyra Hoffner, and Jack Young. September, 2022. "Baltimore communities with high rates of incarceration were more likely to have high unemployment rates, low household income, a high percentage of residents with less than a high school diploma or GED, decreased life expectancy..."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Pennsylvania, Prison Policy Initiative and the Public Interest Law Center. September, 2022. "We find that incarcerated people in Pennsylvania come from every corner of the Commonwealth: every single one of the 67 counties is missing a portion of its population to prisons."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Washington, Prison Policy Initiative and More Equitable Democracy. August, 2022. "People living in the Skokomish Reservation and Squaxin Island Reservation experience imprisonment rates of over 1,000 per 100,000 residents, which is almost double the rate of imprisonment in Tacoma and more than 6 times the imprisonment rate in Seattle."

Thursday, September 22 2022:

  • Repurposing Correctional Facilities to Strengthen Communities Sentencing Project. August, 2022. "Prison capacity nationwide has been reduced by 81,444 beds [between 2000 and 2022]. Jurisdictions seeking support to finance prison reuse can access federal resources to purchase, construct, or improve designated facilities or provide related services."
  • Time-In-Cell: A 2021 Snapshot of Restrictive Housing based on a Nationwide Survey of U.S. Prison Systems, The Correctional Leaders Association & The Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School. August, 2022. "In 2012, few statutes focused on the use of restrictive housing. Between 2018 and 2020, when the last report was published, legislators in more than 25 states introduced bills to limit the use of restrictive housing, and some fifteen enacted legislation."
  • Identifying the Impact of Incarceration on Parenting: An Examination of Incarcerated Parents' Perceptions in the "Reading for a Change" Program in Colorado, Paywall :( Kyle C. Ward et al. August, 2022. "Using semi-structured interviews, incarcerated parents...indicated considerable barriers to visits, high costs of keeping in touch, significant impacts on the family at home..."
  • HIV in Prisons, 2020 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. May, 2022. "From 2016 to 2020, the number of male prisoners who had HIV declined an average of 6% per year, while the number of female prisoners with HIV declined 10% per year on average."
  • Federal Justice Statistics, 2020 Bureau 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."
  • First Report of the Task Force on Issues Faced by TGNCNBI People in Custody Task Force on Issues Faced by TGNCNBI People in Custody. August, 2022. (This report details findings and recommendations of the Task Force on Issues Faced by Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, Non-Binary, and Intersex (TGNCNBI) People in Custody, created to assess conditions and policies in New York City jails.)
  • Criminal Violations Jacob Schuman. February, 2022. "While technical violations [of supervised release] punish non-criminal behavior, criminal violations drive punishment by increasing sentences for criminal convictions and making punishing crimes easier."
  • The Limits of Recidivism: Measuring Success After Prison, Richard Rosenfeld and Amanda Grigg, eds., National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. May, 2022. "We must move beyond the recidivism rate to adequately measure post-release criminal behavior, which will require reversing the polarity of recidivism from failure to success."
  • Inmate Assistance Programs: Toward a Less Punitive and More Effective Criminal Justice System, Murat C. Mungan, Erkmen Giray Aslim, and Yijia Lu. July, 2022. "The cost savings from reducing sentences...can be used to finance [Inmate Assistance Programs] without significantly affecting deterrence due to the ineffectiveness of lengthy imprisonment sentences."
  • Does distance decrease healthcare options for pregnant, incarcerated people? Mapping the distance between abortion providers and prisons, Paywall :( Julia Gips, Kevin J. Psoter, and Carolyn Sufrin. April, 2020. "We georeferenced 643 abortion clinics, 75 state prisons and 20 federal prisons. The farthest minimum distance between a state prison and abortion clinic was 383 miles; the shortest was 2.2 miles."
  • Justice for Girls Blueprint: The Way Forward for Florida, Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center. July, 2022. "Statewide, Black girls make up only 21% of girls ages 10-17, but they represent 45% of the girls who were arrested, 52% of girls on probation caseloads, 47% of girls incarcerated, and 52% of the girls transferred into the adult criminal justice system."
  • Diversion: A Hidden Key to Combating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice, Sentencing Project. August, 2022. "Nationwide in 2019, 52% of delinquency cases involving white youth were handled informally (diverted), far higher than the share of cases diverted involving Black youth (40%)."
  • Extended Injustice: Court Fines and Fees for Young People are Counterproductive, Particularly Harm Black Young People, Families, and Communi, The Commonwealth Institute. July, 2022. "While detailed Virginia data on the impact of juvenile court fines and fees by race is not available, analyses from other states shows that Black youth pay the highest amount in fines as a result of greater frequency and duration of probation conditions."

Tuesday, September 20 2022:

  • But Who Oversees the Overseers?: The Status of Prison and Jail Oversight in the United States, Michele Deitch. October, 2020. "External oversight is a cost-effective tool that jurisdictions can adopt to combat negative correctional outcomes and maximize positive ones."
  • The Effects of Misdemeanor Bail Reform Paul Heaton, University of Pennsylvania Law School Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice. August, 2022. "Misdemeanor pretrial reform produced more lenient outcomes and reduced the system's imprint without adversely impacting public safety."
  • Racial equity in eligibility for a clean slate under automatic criminal record relief laws Paywall :( Alyssa C. Mooney, Alissa Skog, and Amy E. Lerman. August, 2022. "In California, one in five people with convictions met criteria for full conviction relief under the state's automatic relief laws. Yet the share of Black Americans eligible for relief was lower than White Americans..."
  • Three Strikes in California Mia 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."

Friday, September 16 2022:

  • Shifting Power: The Impact of Incarceration on Political Representation, Brianna Remster and Rory Kramer. April, 2019. "Drawing on data from the Census, Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections, and Pennsylvania Redistricting Commission, we develop a counterfactual framework to examine whether removing and returning prisoners to their home districts affects equal representation."
  • The Usual, Racialized, Suspects: The Consequence of Police Contacts with Black and White Youth on Adult Arrest, Anne McGlynn-Wright, Robert D Crutchfield, Martie L Skinner, Kevin P Haggerty. May, 2022. "Our findings indicate that police encounters in childhood increase the risk of arrest in young adulthood for Black but not White respondents."
  • 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."
  • Correctional Medical Care for Female Prisoners: Legal Issues Surrounding Inadequate Treatment of Chronic and/or Preexisting Health Conditions, Paywall :( Chelsi Lamberton and Michael S. Vaughn. June, 2022. "Through the lens of federal court litigation...this article discusses women who brought legal challenges, questioning the adequacy of correctional medical care rendered to their chronic and preexisting health conditions."

Monday, August 15 2022:

  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Colorado, Prison Policy Initiative and Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. July, 2022. "The five most populous counties in the state -- El Paso, Denver, Arapahoe, Jefferson, and Adams -- are home to over 65% of the state's imprisoned population (over 9,000 imprisoned people), but are home to only 55% of the state's total population."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Nevada, Prison Policy Initiative, Silver State Voices, and ACLU of Nevada. August, 2022. "People living in the South Fork Reservation, Ely Reservation, Carson Colony, and the Battle Mountain Reservation experience imprisonment rates ranging from 1,389 per 100,000 to 2,817 per 100,000.."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Virginia, Prison Policy Initiative and New Virginia Majority. July, 2022. "More than half of everyone incarcerated from Richmond come from just 22 of the city's more than 140 neighborhoods."

Friday, August 12 2022:

  • The Cost of Solitary Confinement: Why Ending Isolation in California Prisons Can Save Money and Save Lives, Berkeley Underground Scholars and Immigrant Defense Advocates. July, 2022. "This report estimates the Mandela Act would save, at a minimum, an estimated $61,129,600 annually based on a conservative estimate of the costs associated with solitary confinement."
  • The Hidden Costs of Florida's Criminal Justice Fees Rebekah Diller, Brennan Center for Justice. August, 2019. "Since 1996, Florida added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations for criminal defendants and, at the same time, eliminated most exemptions for those who cannot pay"
  • The relationship between community public health, behavioral health service accessibility, and mass incarceration Niloofar Ramezani et al. July, 2022. "In this study, one county-level health factor emerged as important factor influencing per capita jail population: more physically unhealthy days within the past 30 days predicted a higher per capita jail population."
  • Restructuring Civilian Payouts for Police Misconduct Rashawn Ray, Center for Justice Research. July, 2022. "By restructuring police-civilian payouts from taxpayer funding to police department insurances, monies typically spent on civilian payouts and lawyer fees can be used for education, jobs, and infrastructure."
  • Law Enforcement Agencies' College Education Hiring Requirements and Racial Differences in Police-Related Fatalities Paywall :( Thaddeus L. Johnson, Natasha N. Johnson, William J. Sabol and David T. Snively. July, 2022. "Results show that adopting agency college degree requirements is generally associated with decreases in police-related fatalities (PRFs) over time, with significant reductions observed for PRFs of Black and unarmed citizens."
  • Exploitative Revenues, Law Enforcement, and the Quality of Government Service Rebecca Goldstein, Michael W. Sances, and Hye Young You. August, 2018. "We find that police departments in cities that collect a greater share of their revenue from fees solve violent and property crimes at significantly lower rates."
  • Effects of New York City's Neighborhood Policing Policy Brenden Beck, Joseph Antonelli, and Gabriela Piñeros. October, 2020. (We find [New York City's)
  • Collection at all Costs: Examining the Intersection of Mass Incarceration and the Student Debt Crisis, Student Borrower Protection Center. July, 2022. "While advocates have long decried the harms that mass incarceration and the student loan debt trap inflict...the ways each of these crises amplify and worsen the abuses of the other is rarely in the national spotlight."
  • Racial Equity in Montana's Criminal Justice System: An Analysis of Court, Corrections, and Community Supervision Systems, The Council of State Governments Justice Center. July, 2022. "Once incarcerated, American Indian people remain in secure or alternative facilities for an average of 27.4 days longer than similarly situated White people."
  • Housing Instability Following Felony Conviction and Incarceration: Disentangling Being Marked from Being Locked Up, Brielle Bryan. April, 2022. "Conviction, independent of incarceration, introduces [housing] instability into the lives of the 12 million Americans who have been convicted of a felony but never imprisoned."
  • Older Offenders in the Federal System United 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."
  • A Different Way Forward: Stories from Incarcerated Women in Massachusetts and Recommendations, Sarah Nawab, Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts. July, 2022. "Nineteen (of 22) women interviewed and six (of 10) women surveyed reported that they had either experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct or harassment by correctional or other staff."
  • Reimagining Restitution: New Approaches to Support Youth and Communities, Juvenile Law Center. July, 2022. "Across the country, juvenile courts impose restitution orders on youth too young to hold a job, still in full-time school, and often living in families already struggling to get by. This process doesn't work for anyone."

Wednesday, August 10 2022:

  • Examining Prison Releases in Response to COVID: Lessons Learned for Reducing the Effects of Mass Incarceration, Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. July, 2022. "Most COVID-related releases were quite modest, amounting to the equivalent of less than 10% of the 2019 prison populations in 27 of the 35 jurisdictions in which releases occurred."
  • Punishment of People with Serious Mental Illness in New York State Prisons: An Analysis of 2017-19 Disciplinary Data in Prison Residential Mental Health Treatment Units, #HALTSolitary and Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement. May, 2022. "Of the 399 people disciplined in a Residential Mental Health Treatment Unit during the 29-month review period, 99% were sanctioned with segregated confinement and 85% received at least six months or more of additional segregation time,"
  • The consequences of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act for police arrests Jessica T. Simes and Jaquelyn L. Jahn. January, 2022. "We observe the largest negative differences for drug arrests: we find a 25-41% negative difference in drug arrests in the three years following Medicaid expansion, compared to non-expansion counties."
  • Addressing Florida's Parole System Right 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."
  • Criminal History, Race, and Housing Type: An Experimental Audit of Housing Outcomes, Paywall :( Peter Leasure, R. Caleb Doyle, Hunter M. Boehme, and Gary Zhang. March, 2022. "Results showed several statistically and substantively significant differences among the criminal record, race, and housing type conditions."
  • Parole Revoked: Justifying Rerelease for Juvenile Lifers, Paywall :( Stuti S. Kokkalera and Beatriz Amalfi Marques. March, 2022. "Our analysis reveals that most parole revocations stem from technical violations rather than any new criminal activity...revocation review decisions avoid acknowledging the obstacles in juvenile lifer reentry."
  • Emerging Adults and the Criminal Justice System: Specialized Policies, Practices & Programs, Loyola University Chicago Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice. September, 2017. "This document provides information on policies, programs and services dedicated and / or available to emerging adults - generally defined as 18 - 25 year olds or a subset thereof - in contact with criminal justice systems across the United States."

Friday, July 1 2022:

  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in New York, Prison Policy Initiative and VOCAL-NY. June, 2022. "The city of Rochester -- the fourth most populous city in the state -- with an incarceration rate of 1,051 per 100,000 city residents, is more than 5 times the rate in New York City."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Maryland, Justice Policy Institute and Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2022. "A number of less populous areas, including Wicomico, Dorchester, and Somerset counties on the Eastern Shore, rank in the top fifth of Maryland counties when it comes to prison incarceration rates."
  • Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in New Jersey, Prison Policy Initiative and New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. June, 2022. "In New Jersey incarcerated people come from all over the state, but are disproportionately from a few specific cities, most notably Camden, Atlantic City, Paterson, Newark, and Jersey City."
  • Chronic Punishment: The unmet health needs of people in state prisons, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2022. "In this analysis of a unique, large-scale survey of people in state prisons, we add to the existing research showing that state prisons fall far short of their constitutional duty to meet the essential health needs of people in their custody."
  • 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."

Friday, June 17 2022:

Monday, June 6 2022:

  • Association of State COVID-19 Vaccination Prioritization With Vaccination Rates Among Incarcerated Persons Breanne E. Biondi et al. April, 2022. "Our data suggest that state prioritization of incarcerated persons was associated with increased vaccination rates in this population, although vaccination rates may vary owing to state vaccine rollout, availability, or incarcerated persons' preference."
  • Elderly, Detained, and Justice-Involved: The Most Incarcerated Generation, Rachel Bedard, Joshua Vaughn and Angela Silletti Murolo. March, 2022. "A birth cohort born in the 1960s and 70s were set on a path towards lifetime justice involvement as a result of having come into adolescence during the height of the crack era and crime waves of the 1980s and early 1990s."
  • Elderly, Detained, and Justice-Involved: The Most Incarcerated Generation, Rachel Bedard, Joshua Vaughn and Angela Silletti Murolo. March, 2022. "A birth cohort born in the 1960s and 70s were set on a path towards lifetime justice involvement as a result of having come into adolescence during the height of the crack era and crime waves of the 1980s and early 1990s."
  • Parole, Power, and Punishment: The Massachusetts Parole Board's Discriminatory Treatment of People with Mental Health Disabilities, Northeastern University School of Law and Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee (MHLAC). March, 2022. "The Board's Handbook lists factors that Board members can consider. No regulation, however, requires [their consideration]...the Board's largely arbitrary decision-making process allows for implicit bias that directly impacts those with disabilities."
  • 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."
  • Motherhood and Pregnancy Behind Bars: Texas Must Rethink How It's Treating Mothers and Families, Texas Center for Justice and Equity. May, 2022. "Disregarding women's requests for help had occurred so often in Texas corrections facilities that the Legislature passed [a bill requiring] corrections officers to promptly respond when a woman was experiencing labor and take her to a medical facility."

Thursday, June 2 2022:

  • Opioid Overdose Deaths Among Formerly Incarcerated Persons and the General Population: North Carolina, 2000-2018, Paywall :( Shabbar I Ranapurwala et al. February, 2022. "While nationwide opioid overdose death rates declined from 2017 to 2018, OOD rates among North Carolina formerly incarcerated people increased by about a third, largely from fentanyl and its analogs."
  • Racial Bias and Prison Discipline: A Study of North Carolina State Prisons, Katherine M. Becker. April, 2022. "Holding other variables constant, a Black person incarcerated in North Carolina was 10.3% more likely than a similarly situated white person to receive at least one disciplinary write-up in 2020."
  • Providing Identification for Those Released from Incarceration National Conference of State Legislatures. April, 2022. "Approximately 17 states have laws aimed at helping previous offenders get identification either at release or immediately following. But these laws vary."
  • Realignment and Recidivism Revisited: A Closer Look at the Effects of California's Historic Correctional Reform on Recidivism Outcomes, Paywall :( Mia Bird, Viet Nguyen, and Ryken Grattet. November, 2021. "All groups [of types of offenders] experienced decreases in reconviction, which gives credence to the idea that a significant reprioritization of who should be in prison can positively affect public safety."
  • Reducing Barriers to Reentry for Older Adults Leaving Incarceration Justice in Aging. May, 2022. "Policies that improve timely access to Social Security and SSI for the reentry population would help everyone reentering our communities and could particularly help reduce income inequities for people of color, people with disabilities, and older adults."

Monday, May 9 2022:

  • Criminalized or Medicalized? Examining the Role of Race in Responses to Drug Use, Paywall :( Sade L Lindsay, Mike Vuolo. August, 2021. "We analyze 400 articles from the New York Times and Washington Post to assess the degree to which the two crises were racialized, criminalized, and medicalized. We find that media coverage medicalized and humanized White people who use opiates..."
  • The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention Revisited Christopher Lowenkamp. March, 2022. "There is no observable "deterrent effect" of pretrial detention, and in fact there is a consistent "criminogenic effect" of pretrial detention on rearrest." (This report follows up on Lowenkamp's 2013 report, The Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention, which also examined jail admissions in Kentucky.)
  • Do Exonerees Face Housing Discrimination? An Email-Based Field Experiment and Content Analysis, Jeff Kukucka et al. September, 2021. "Consistent with prior work on racial bias and discrimination, our findings suggest that exonerees and ex-offenders not only experience overt prejudice when seeking housing, but also some subtler prejudices within the responses they do receive."
  • Treatment Combinations: The Joint Effects of Multiple Evidence-Based Interventions on Recidivism Reduction, Paywall :( Ming-Li Hsieh et al. October, 2021. "Those who participated in three types of treatment combinations consisting of basic skills, vocational training, and cognitive behavioral treatment were more likely to reduce postrelease reconvictions."

Friday, May 6 2022:

  • Three State Prison Oversight During the COVID-19 Pandemic Pennsylvania Prison Society, John Howard Association, and Correctional Association of New York. April, 2022. "[We] provide data unavailable in states lacking similar independent oversight, and it tells a story of very different responses to comparable challenges, and a lack of transparency on the details of the crisis and policies developed in response."
  • Cold, Rotting & Moldy Meals: Food Oppression in the Orange County Jails, Stop the Musick Coalition. December, 2021. "The food served in Orange County jails has never been healthy, but before COVID, the jails served two hot meals a day...For almost two years, people incarcerated in Orange County jails have been eating three bagged, cold, spoiled meals every day."
  • The Psychological Effects of Solitary Confinement: A Systematic Critique, Craig Haney. March, 2018. "Solitary confinement not only is a common form of mistreatment to which prisoners of war have been subjected and been adversely affected, but is also associated with "higher levels of later life disability" among returnees."
  • Analysis of "Stand Your Ground" Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides Michelle Degli Esposti et al. February, 2022. "[Stand-your-ground] laws were associated with an 8% to 11% national increase in monthly rates of homicide and firearm homicide. State-level increases in homicide and firearm homicide rates reached 10% or higher for many Southern states."
  • Drug Arrests Stayed High Even as Imprisonment Fell From 2009 to 2019 Pew Charitable Trusts. February, 2022. "[We] found divergent enforcement trends--high rates of arrest but substantially reduced incarceration--coupled with a lack of treatment options and high mortality rates among people with illicit drug dependence."
  • A Look Inside the Black Box of New York State's Criminal Justice Data Measures for Justice. February, 2022. "This report addresses the ways New York State's criminal justice data infrastructure fails to meet basic levels of transparency that are requisite for evidence-based decision making and general accountability."
  • Understanding Trends in Jail Populations, 2014 to 2019: A Multi-Site Analysis, Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College. December, 2022. "People who were charged, but not yet convicted of a crime (pretrial admissions) were the majority of admissions in all three counties (St. Louis, MO, Durham, NC, and Louisville, KY) in 2014 and 2019."
  • System Involvement Among LBQ Girls and Women UCLA Williams Institute. April, 2022. "Among those who are incarcerated, the percentage of girls and women who are LBQ is 3 and 10 times higher, respectively, than the proportion of queer girls and women in the general population."
  • Contacts with the Police and the Over-Representation of Indigenous Peoples in The Canadian Criminal Justice System Jean-Denis David and Megan Mitchell. April, 2021. "Indigenous peoples are more likely to encounter the police for a variety of reasons including for law enforcement reasons, for non-enforcement reasons, including being a victim or a witness to a crime, and for behavioural health-related issues."
  • Beyond the count: A deep dive into state prison populations Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2022. "Incarcerated people are a diverse cross-section of society whose disadvantages and unmet needs often begin early in life, and persist throughout their often lifelong involvement with the criminal legal system."
  • Executive Inaction: States and the federal government fail to use commutations as a release mechanism Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2022. "In addition to granting few commutations, most of the states in our sample do not appear to maintain robust data on their commutation systems."
  • Recidivating Patterns of Individuals Commuted in 2020 Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. March, 2022. "18 percent (48 individuals) were arrested within one year of their commutation, 8 percent (20 individuals) were convicted of a new misdemeanor or felony crime, and 2 percent (6 individuals) were reincarcerated."
  • Reducing the Health Harms of Incarceration Aspen Health Strategy Group. April, 2022. "Incarceration is a primary source of poor health for individuals, families, communities, and our nation as a whole. The consequences of these various sources of harm continue long after release, with higher rates of mortality and morbidity."
  • Felony Murder: An On-Ramp for Extreme Sentencing Sentencing 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."
  • Race and Ethnicity Differences in Police Contact and Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward the Police Among Youth Paywall :( Kathryn Foster, Melissa S. Jones, and Hayley Pierce. March, 2022. "When a direct stop involved more officer intrusiveness, black youth reported less respect and more negative perceptions of procedural justice."

Monday, April 18 2022:

  • Waiting for Relief: A National Survey of Waiting Periods for Record Clearing, Margaret Love and David Schlussel, Collateral Consequences Resources Center. February, 2022. "The waiting periods for felony convictions range from as high as 10 or 20 years in North Carolina to as low as 0-2 years in California, with most states falling at the lower end of that range."
  • The Reincorporation of Prisoners into the Body Politic: Eliminating the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy, Mira K. Edmonds. March, 2021. "Elimination of the [policy] furthers the bipartisan criminal legal system reform focus on reducing recidivism through effective reentry."
  • Justice-involved Individuals in the Labor Market since the Great Recession Keith Finlay and Michael Mueller-Smith. September, 2021. "While [justice-involved] groups did experience some improvement in economic outcomes during the recovery, their average outcomes remain far below even those of a reference cohort of adults..."
  • Barred from employment: More than half of unemployed men in their 30s had a criminal history of arrest, Shawn Bushway et al. February, 2022. "By age 35, approximately 50% of the black men in the [survey] have been arrested, 35% have been convicted, and 25% have been incarcerated."

Thursday, April 14 2022:

  • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness National Coalition for the Homeless. 2006. "LGBT youth face the threat of victimization everywhere: at home, at school, at their jobs, and, for those who are out-of-home, at shelters and on the streets."
  • Police Contact and Mental Health Amanda Geller, Jeffrey Fagan, and Tom R. Tyler. December, 2017. "Recent police contact is associated with increased levels of anxiety symptoms, and both quantity and intensity of recent stop experience are significantly associated with increased PTSD symptoms."

Friday, April 1 2022:

  • Criminal Victimization, 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2022. "From 2016 to 2020, the percentage of persons who were victims of aggravated assault declined from 0.25% to 0.20%. The percentage who were victims of simple assault declined from 0.70% in 2016 to 0.61% in 2020."
  • Stalking Victimization, 2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2022. "About 1.3% (3.4 million) of all persons age 16 or older were victims of stalking in 2019. Less than a third (29%) of all stalking victims reported the victimization to police in 2019."
  • Capital Punishment, 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "Prisoners under sentence of death on December 31, 2020 had been on death row for an average of 19.4 years."
  • Profle of Prison Inmates, 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "Prisoners held in state prison in 2016 were older than those held in state prison in 2004. Te average age of state prisoners was 39 in 2016, compared to 35 in 2004."
  • Mortality in State and Federal Prisons, 2001-2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "A total of 65,027 state prisoners and 7,125 federal prisoners died while in custody during 2001-19."
  • Mortality in Local Jails, 2000-2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "A total of 1,200 persons died in local jails in 2019, a more than 5% increase from 2018 (1,138 deaths) and a 33% increase from 2000 (903), when the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) began its Mortality in Correctional Institutions data collection."
  • Prisoners in 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "The prison populations of California, Texas, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons each declined by more than 22,500 from 2019 to 2020, accounting for 33% of the total prison population decrease."
  • Jail Inmates in 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "The number of inmates in local jails across the United States decreased 25% from midyear 2019 (734,500) to midyear 2020 (549,100), after a 10-year period of relative stability."
  • Correctional Populations in the United States, 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2022. "The decline in the correctional population during 2020 was due to decreases in both the community supervision population (down 276,700 or 6.6%) and the incarcerated population (down 294,400 or 18.9%)."
  • Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "The adult probation population declined 8.3% during 2020, the largest annual decrease since 1980 when BJS began the probation collection."
  • Employment of Persons Released from Federal Prison in 2010 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2021. "A third (33%) of persons in the study population did not find employment at any point during the 16 quarters after their release from prison from 2010 to 2014."
  • Pretrial Release and Misconduct in Federal District Courts, Fiscal Years 2011-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2022. "While 19% of all released defendants committed some form of pretrial misconduct during FYs 2011-18, defendants with a financial bond (10%) did so less often than defendants with an unsecured bond (20%)."

Friday, March 25 2022:

  • Compassionate Release: The Impact of the First Step Act and COVID-19 Pandemic, United States Sentencing Commission. March, 2022. "As the length of the offender's original sentence increased, the likelihood that the court would grant relief decreased (from 56.9% of offenders sentenced to a term of 12 months or less to 19.8% of offenders sentenced to a term of 120-240 months)."
  • In-Cell Dining During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey of People in Pennsylvania State Custody, Pennsylvania Prison Society. March, 2022. "The survey found that 62% of respondents want to return to eating in dining halls, and 74% report being served rotten food in the last month."
  • California Crime Survivors Speak: A Statewide Survey of California Victims' Views on Safety and Justice, Californians for Safety and Justice. April, 2019. "By a nearly a five to one margin, victims say that prison either makes it more likely someone will commit crimes or has no public safety impact at all. Only a small percentage believe that prisons help rehabilitate people."
  • Fentanyl in Colorado: Overview and recommendations for addressing the overdose crisis, Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. March, 2022. (This brief describes the failure to prevent fentanyl overdose by increasing criminal punishment, and instead offers public health and harm reduction strategies like increasing medication-assisted treatment in prisons and jails.)
  • Incarceration and subsequent risk of suicide: A statewide cohort study, Paywall :( Erin Renee Morgan et al. January, 2022. "Suicide risk was 62% higher among previously incarcerated individuals compared with the general population."
  • People in Prison in Winter 2021-22 Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2022. "All states and the federal prison system reduced their prison populations in 2020, but 19 states and the federal government increased the number of people incarcerated in prisons in 2021."
  • Recidivism of Federal Violent Offenders Released in 2010 United States Sentencing Commission. February, 2022. "Over an eight-year follow-up period, nearly two-thirds (63.8%) of violent offenders released in 2010 were rearrested, compared to more than one-third (38.4%) of non-violent offenders."
  • Access, Success, and Challenges in College-in-Prison Programs within the State University of New York Higher Education for the Justice-Involved, State Univ. of New York. December, 2021. "It is difficult for newly released prisoners to continue their education, and our data indicate that few do. Most face immediate challenges in securing housing, jobs, transportation, and identification, let alone stress in [reentry adjustment]."
  • Too Many Locked Doors Sentencing Project. March, 2022. "Given the short- and long-term damages stemming from youth out of home placement, it is vital to understand its true scope. In 2019, there were more than 240,000 instances of a young person detained, committed, or both in the juvenile justice system."
  • Using Multidisciplinary Partnerships to Advance Juvenile Justice Reform: Experiences in 10 Communities, Paywall :( Todd Honeycutt et al. September, 2021. "Developing diverse partnerships to engage in juvenile justice reform is an achievable goal that can advance reform efforts."

Monday, March 21 2022:

  • New data: The changes in prisons, jails, probation, and parole in the first year of the pandemic, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2022. "Most of the drop in prison populations occurred within the federal Bureau of Prisons and just three states: California, Florida, and Texas."
  • COVID looks like it may stay. That means prison medical copays must go. Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2022. "Medical copays encourage a dangerous waiting game for incarcerated people, correctional agencies, and the public, with little payoff in terms of offsetting medical costs and reducing "unnecessary" office visits."
  • State prisons and local jails appear indifferent to COVID outbreaks, refuse to depopulate dangerous facilities Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2022. "The increasing jail populations across the country suggest that after the first wave of responses to COVID-19, many local officials have allowed jail admissions to return to business as usual."
  • The prison context itself undermines public health and vaccination efforts Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2022. "49% of respondents reported that they generally trust doctors and healthcare providers to make medically correct judgements, but only 9% of respondents trust doctors or healthcare providers in a prison to make medically correct judgments."
  • Research roundup: The positive impacts of family contact for incarcerated people and their families, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2021. "As with visitation, family phone calls are shown to reduce the likelihood of recidivism; more consistent and/or frequent phone calls were linked to the lowest odds of returning to prison."
  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2022. "This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus; it allows us to identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement."
  • New data on formerly incarcerated people's employment reveal labor market injustices Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2022. "Of more than 50,000 people released from federal prisons in 2010, a staggering 33% found no employment at all over four years post-release, and at any given time, no more than 40% of the cohort was employed."

Monday, February 28 2022:

  • Canary in the Coal Mine: A Profile of Staff COVID Deaths in the Texas Prison System, Alexi Jones, Michele Deitch, and Alycia Welch, Prison and Jail Innovation Lab. February, 2022. "A total of 78 TDCJ employees have died from COVID... With 26 deaths for every 10,000 TDCJ employees, Texas has the highest rate of staff deaths among the largest prison systems in the country and the second highest rate of death nationwide."

Monday, February 21 2022:

  • Prisons, Nursing Homes, and Medicaid: A COVID-19 Case Study in Health Injustice, Mary Crossley. 2021. "This essay highlights the experiences of Black people and disabled people, and how societal choices have caused them to experience the brunt of the pandemic. It will focus on prisons and nursing homes--institutions that emerged as COVID-19 hotspots."
  • Massachusetts Uniform Citation Data Analysis Report Salem State University, Worcester State University. February, 2022. "Hispanic motorists, followed by African American/Black motorists are most likely to receive a criminal citation whereas motorists in the Other race category, followed by White motorists were least likely to receive a criminal citation."
  • The High Cost Of A Fresh Start: A State-by-State Analysis of Court Debt As a Bar To Record Clearing, National Consumer Law Center and Collateral Consequences Resource Center. February, 2022. "In almost every jurisdiction we studied, outstanding court debt is a barrier to record clearing in at least some cases, either rendering a person entirely ineligible for relief or making it difficult for them to qualify."
  • Measuring Racial Discrimination in Bail Decisions David Arnold, Will Dobbie, and Peter Hull. October, 2020. "Our most conservative estimates from NYC show that approximately two-thirds of the observed racial disparity in release decisions is due to racial discrimination, with around one-third due to unobserved racial differences in misconduct risk."
  • Reimagining Judging Nancy 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..."
  • Can Restorative Justice Conferencing Reduce Recidivism? Evidence From the Make-It-Right Program (Working Paper), Yotam Shem-Tov, Steven Raphael and Alissa Skog. January, 2022. "Assignment to [a restorative justice program] reduces the probability of a rearrest within six months by 19 percentage points, a 44 percent reduction relative to the control group...the reduction in recidivism persists even four years after randomization."

Friday, February 18 2022:

  • "My Greatest Fear is To Be a Lab Rat For the State": COVID-19 and Vaccine Hesitancy in NYS Prisons, Correctional Association of New York. January, 2022. "Of 166 respondents, 42.7% said that DOCCS administering the vaccine would make them less likely to accept the vaccine (n=71)."
  • The Novel Coronavirus and Enforcement of the New Separate System in Prisons Michael Klein et al. March, 2022. "All regions report that they gave more [COVID-19] protections to officers as compared with inmates. Several regions also show substantial differences between the policy responses for these two groups."
  • Justice-Involved Individuals and the Consumer Financial Marketplace Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. January, 2022. "People exiting jail or prison face frequent fees for the prepaid cards they often have no choice but to receive...even market-rate fees on a prepaid product would burden this vulnerable class of people relative to receiving cash or checks."
  • Debt to Society: The Role of Fines & Fees Reform in Dismantling the Carceral State, Wesley Dozier and Daniel Kiel. September, 2021. "Between 2005 and 2017, the Tennessee General Assembly passed forty-six bills that increased the amount of debt owed by individuals who make contact with the criminal legal system."
  • Recidivism and mortality after in-jail buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder Paywall :( Elizabeth A. Evans, Donna Wilson, and Peter D. Friedmann. February, 2022. "Among incarcerated adults with opioid use disorder, risk of recidivism after jail exit is lower among those who were offered buprenorphine during incarceration."
  • Association Between Assistance With Medicaid Enrollment and Use of Health Care After Incarceration Among Adults With a History of Substance Use, Marguerite E. Burns et al. January, 2022. "After implementation of [Medicaid] enrollment assistance, the likelihood of any outpatient visit increased by 7.7 percentage points, a relative change of 47.8% receiving this service within 30 days of release."
  • Access Denied: Eliminating Barriers and Increasing Economic Opportunity for Justice-Involved Individuals, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. September, 2021. "The [Small Business Administration] continues to impose extensive criminal record-related restrictions in its general small business loan programs, frustrating lawful efforts by entrepreneurs and employees with criminal histories."
  • The Civil Rights Implications of Cash Bail U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. January, 2022. (This report examines pretrial incarceration trends, constitutional and legal concerns regarding pretrial and bail practices, an analysis of the role of the federal government regarding bail practices, and an in-depth investigation of four jurisdictions.)
  • Losing Years Doing Time: Incarceration Exposure and Accelerated Biological Aging among African American Adults, Paywall :( Mark T. Berg et al. October, 2021. "Incarceration exposure predicted accelerated aging, leaving formerly incarcerated African American individuals biologically older than their calendar age."
  • From Reentry to Reintegration: Criminal Record Reforms in 2021, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. January, 2022. "The title of this report emphasizes the continuum from reentry to the full restoration of rights and status represented by reintegration."
  • Driver's License Suspension for Unpaid Fines and Fees: The Movement for Reform, Joni Hirsch and Priya Sarathy Jones, Fines and Fees Justice Center. September, 2021. "In Florida, 72% of all driver's licenses suspension notices are issued for nonpayment of fines and fees. That is nearly 1.2 million suspension notices in Florida alone."
  • The Effect of Prison Industry on Recidivism: An Evaluation of California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA), James Hess and Susan F. Turner, Center for Evidence-Based Corrections. November, 2021. "CALPIA participants were significantly less likely to be arrested at one, two and three years post release [compared to waitlisted people]."
  • 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."
  • Community Relationship Quality and Reincarceration Following Rural Drug-Using Women's Reentry From Jail Paywall :( Martha Tillson et al. January, 2022. "Women who were reincarcerated during the 12-month postrelease period (43.4%) were younger, less employed, more likely to have used illicit drugs, and reported lower-quality community relationships at 12-month follow-up."

Friday, January 28 2022:

  • A Statistical Overview of the Kentucky Death Penalty Frank R. Baumgartner. January, 2022. "Race may be the most powerful driving factor in Kentucky's death penalty. But the racial disparities laid out here, extreme as they are, are not the only flaws in the system."
  • Broken Rules: How Pennsylvania Courts Use Cash Bail to Incarcerate People Before Trial, ACLU Pennsylvania. December, 2021. "The average statewide bail amount was $38,433 -- more than half the average household income in Pennsylvania."
  • Availability of Medications for the Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder Among Pregnant and Postpartum Individuals in US Jails, Carolyn Sufrin, Camille T. Kramer, Mishka Terplan et al. January, 2022. "A substantial proportion of US jails did not provide access to MOUD to pregnant people with OUD. Although most jails reported continuing to provide MOUD to individuals who were receiving medication before incarceration, few jails initiated MOUD.."
  • Student Arrests in Allegheny County Schools: The Need for Transparency and Accountability, ACLU Pennsylvania. January, 2022. "Black students with disabilities (served under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) accounted for 2.3% of total student enrollment, but 8.4% of students referred to law enforcement and 9.1% of students who were arrested."

Tuesday, January 18 2022:

  • Pandemics, Prisons, and Policy: An Overview of Criminal Justice and Public Health in Tennessee, Hadassah Betapudi and Anna Walton. December, 2021. "Among the 50 states, Tennessee ranks 20th for the highest number of state prisoners infected with coronavirus per capita, with 7,290 total cases.20 Significantly, this means there is one known case per every three prisoners."
  • Investigation of New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision Incarcerated Individual Drug Testing Program, New York Office of the Inspector General. January, 2022. "From January through August 2019, incarcerated individuals found to have positive drug test results at a disciplinary hearing received significant--and in some cases ultimately undeserved--punishments that jeopardized their rehabilitation and release."
  • When Accidental Overdose is Treated As Murder: Seeking Relief for Defendants, Morgan Godvin, Northeastern University Health in Justice Action Lab. October, 2021. "By scapegoating individuals for structural failures and conflating performative vengeance with justice, the government has opened a new frontier in the Drug War."
  • Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review, Damon M. Petrich et al. September, 2021. "Beginning in the 1970s, the United States began an experiment in mass imprisonment...Skeptics argued that imprisonment may have a criminogenic effect. The skeptics were right."
  • Costs and Consequences of Eliminating a Routine, Point-Of-Care HIV Screening Program in a High-Prevalence Jail Angela B. Hutchinson et al. November, 2021. "Routine HIV screening in high-prevalence jails is cost effective and has a larger impact on public health than targeted testing."
  • The Paid Jailer: How Sheriff Campaign Dollars Shape Mass Incarceration, Common Cause and Communities for Sheriff Accountability. December, 2021. "Sheriffs are politicians who make major decisions about health and safety for millions of Americans--and they shouldn't be up for sale to the highest bidder."
  • The Thin Blue Waveform: Racial Disparities in Officer Prosody Undermine Institutional Trust in the Police, Nicholas P. Camp et al. July, 2021. "Officers communicate different levels of respect, warmth, and ease toward Black and White citizens....these interpersonal cues accumulate across interactions to shape citizens' perceptions of and trust in law enforcement."
  • Police Exposures and the Health and Well-being of Black Youth in the US: A Systematic Review, Paywall :( Monique Jindal et al. September, 2021. "Evidence shows that police exposures are associated with adverse health outcomes for Black youth."
  • Criminalizing Homelessness: Circumstances Surrounding Criminal Trespassing and People Experiencing Homelessness, Paywall :( Brie Diamond, Ronald Burns, Kendra Bowen. December, 2021. "Criminal trespassing (CT) is an understudied misdemeanor offense often enforced to maintain control over contested spaces and, in practice, often disproportionately used against disenfranchised populations such as the homeless and mentally ill."
  • 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."
  • Mortality and Cause of Death Among Youths Previously Incarcerated in the Juvenile Legal System Donna A. Ruch et al. December, 2021. "In this cohort study of 3645 previously incarcerated youths, the all-cause mortality rate was 5.9 times higher in previously incarcerated youths than the rate observed in general population, Medicaid-enrolled youths."

Monday, January 10 2022:

  • Punitive ambiguity: State-level criminal record data quality in the era of widespread background screening, Paywall :( David McElhattan. February, 2021. "This study develops the concept of punitive ambiguity to characterize the burdens of incomplete criminal records and examines how they vary at the state level, providing evidence that punitive ambiguity is racially patterned."
  • Bloody Lucre: Carceral Labor and Prison Profit, Laura I. Appleman. August, 2021. "The economic exploitation that occurs with most inmate labor is doubly troubling in times of emergency or disaster, where often prisoners' health, safety, and even life is risked to ensure cost-savings on the part of governments or private industry."
  • The Effects of College in Prison and Policy Implications Paywall :( Matthew G. T. Denney and Robert Tynes. December, 2021. "We employ a design-based approach to infer the causal effect of participation in [a college-in-prison program]. We find a large and significant reduction in recidivism rates."
  • Association of Incarceration With Mortality by Race From a National Longitudinal Cohort Study Benjamin J. Bovell-Ammon et al. December, 2021. "Experiencing an incarceration in adulthood was associated with lower life expectancy for Black but not for non-Black participants. Our study confirmed known racial disparities in rates of incarceration and life expectancy."
  • Beyond Jails: Community-Based Strategies for Public Safety, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2021. "Genuine partnership with nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups must be at the center of efforts to create a network of supports that function effectively, equitably, and without funneling people into the criminal legal system."
  • Proliferation or adaptation? Differences across race and sex in the relationship between time served in prison and mental health symptoms, Paywall :( Lauren C. Porter, Meghan Kozlowski-Serra, and Hedwig Lee. May, 2021. "Drawing on data from the Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities in 2004 (N = 12,118), our findings suggest that time served is correlated with mental health symptoms, but that the association differs across race and sex."
  • Policing the pandemic: estimating spatial and racialized inequities in New York City police enforcement of COVID-19 mandates, Sandhya Kajeepeta et al. November, 2021. "Findings suggest that ZIP codes with higher percentages of lower income and Black residents experienced disproportionately high rates of policing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the name of public health."
  • Beyond Payment Plans: Breaking the Cycle of Court Debt in Tennessee, Think Tennessee. December, 2021. "For Tennesseans who face an endless cycle of penalties due to an inability to pay court debt, the county where they live could determine whether they have access to a payment plan that could help them break free."
  • The Perils of Probation: How Supervision Contributes to Jail Populations, Vera Institute of Justice. October, 2021. "People held for probation violations can make up a fairly large proportion of the average daily jail population even in sites with relatively low jail admissions for violations."
  • Georgia: Monitoring Data Trends after 2017 Justice Reinvestment Initiative Reforms, Council of State Governments Justice Center. November, 2021. "The reduction in the active felony probation population resulting from Georgia's Justice Reinvestment policies has allowed officers to focus time and resources on people at the highest risk to recidivate."
  • Justice in Decision-Making: Studying Racial & Ethnic Disparities in the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance. October, 2021. "While our analysis showed that case processing in the Brooklyn DA's office resulted in fewer racial and ethnic disparities than expected overall, there were more notable disparities within specific offense types or charges."
  • Effect of Juvenile Justice Fee Repeal on Financial Sanctions Borne by Families Jaclyn E. Chambers, Karin D. Martin, and Jennifer L. Skeem. September, 2021. "We estimate that the likelihood of experiencing any financial sanction was 22.2% lower post-repeal [in Alameda County] compared to pre-repeal, and the total amount of sanctions was $1,583 (or 70%) lower."
  • Youth in Adult Courts, Jails, and Prisons Sentencing Project. December, 2021. "In 2019, on any given night, there were 3,500 children sleeping in adult jails and prisons."
  • Adolescent Protective and Risk Factors for Incarceration through Early Adulthood Paywall :( Elizabeth S. Barnert et al. April, 2021. "Adolescent protective factors against incarceration onset and higher incarceration frequency centered on education, including a higher grade point average and a higher likelihood of having future plans to attend college."

Tuesday, December 21 2021:

  • Data update: As the Delta variant ravages the country, correctional systems are dropping the ball (again), Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2021. "While some prison systems and local jails have maintained historically low populations, others have returned to pre-pandemic levels, despite the ongoing dangers of COVID-19."
  • Since you asked: What information is available about COVID-19 and vaccinations in prison now?, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2021. "Only two states -- Maryland and South Carolina -- are publishing the number of incarcerated people who have refused the vaccine, while no prison systems are publishing the number of staff who have refused a vaccine."
  • Blood from a stone: How New York prisons force people to pay for their own incarceration, Tommaso Bardelli, Zach Gillespie and Thuy Linh Tu. October, 2021. "A study by members of the New York University Prison Education Program Research Collective gives important first-hand accounts of the damage done when prisons shift financial costs to incarcerated people."
  • Winnable criminal justice reforms in 2022 Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2021. "We've curated this list to offer policymakers and advocates straightforward solutions that would have the greatest impacts without further investments in the carceral system and point to policy reforms that have gained momentum in the past year."
  • Unsupportive environments and limited policies: Pregnancy, postpartum, and birth during incarceration, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2021. "Jails, prisons, and youth facilities have yet to adequately recognize pregnancy and postpartum needs either in policy or in practice."
  • Show me the money: Tracking the companies that have a lock on sending funds to incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2021. "We looked at all fifty state departments of corrections to figure out which companies hold the contracts to provide money-transfer services and what the fees are to use these services."
  • For the poorest people in prison, it's a struggle to access even basic necessities Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2021. "Most prison systems claim to provide assistance to people who are extremely poor (or, in correctional policy terms, "indigent"). Our survey reveals that these "indigence policies" are extremely limited."
  • The U.S. criminal justice system disproportionately hurts Native people: The data, visualized, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2021. "We're lucky when criminal justice data is broken down by race and ethnicity enough to see how Native populations are criminalized and incarcerated. Here's a roundup of what we know."
  • Recent studies shed light on what reproductive "choice" looks like in prisons and jails Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2021. "Two recent studies reveal that abortion and contraception access varies greatly between states -- and that abortion access for incarcerated people is related to broader state policies."

Wednesday, December 15 2021:

  • Neighborhood Racial and Economic Segregation and Disparities in Violence During the COVID-19 Pandemic Paywall :( Julia P. Schleimer et al.. December, 2021. "In 2020, violence was higher in less-privileged neighborhoods than in the most privileged...The events of 2020 exacerbated disparities in several forms of violence."
  • Protective State Policies and the Employment of Fathers with Criminal Records Paywall :( Allison Dwyer Emory. November, 2021. "Consistent with research linking policies regulating access to records to racial discrimination, black men living in protective states reported this employment penalty even if they did not have criminal records themselves."
  • A Prosecutorial Solution to the Criminalization of Homelessness Andrew I. Leaf, U. of Penn. Law Review. November, 2021. "If prosecutors decline to prosecute, and offer a diversion program to, those who are in or looking to join the workforce, much of the harm antihomeless laws inflict would be alleviated."
  • Jail and Overdose: Assessing the Community Impact of Incarceration on Overdose, Grant Victor et al.. July, 2021. "Each prior booking increased the hazard of mortality by approximately 20%, while the presence of a syringe charge at most recent booking prior to release more than tripled the hazard of mortality."
  • Police Violence Reduces Civilian Cooperation and Engagement with Law Enforcement Desmond Ang et al.. September, 2021. "We find evidence that high-profile acts of police violence may severely impair civilian trust and crime-reporting...[In] eight major cities, we show a sharp drop in the ratio of 911 calls to ShotSpotter shots immediately after George Floyd's death."
  • 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."

Tuesday, December 14 2021:

  • The 'Olympic Hurdles' of Obtaining Federal Benefits for Inmates with Disabilities: A Study of Two Massachusetts County Jails, Paywall :( Shahrzad Sajadi. November, 2019. "Complicated application procedures [for governmental assistance] often result in the formerly jailed returning to prior lifestyles and rearrests. This study explores SSI/SSDI systems at two Massachusetts county jails."
  • Methods of Calculating the Marginal Cost of Incarceration: A Scoping Review, Stuart John Wilson and Jocelyne Lemoine. December, 2021. "There is a lack of, and need for, peer-reviewed literature on methods for calculating the marginal cost of incarceration, and marginal cost estimates of incarceration, to assist program evaluation, policy, and cost forecasting."
  • Reducing Trauma from Behind Bars: Enhancing Parent-Child Attachment Through a Digitally Distributed Reading Program, Paywall :( David M. McLeod et al.. November, 2021. "The intervention [video reading to children] appeared to increase the frequency of correspondence between the parent and child, improved the sense of parent-child relationship, and increased a sense of involvement, attachment, and connectedness."
  • Enhanced Public Defense Improves Pretrial Outcomes and Reduces Racial Disparities Paul Heaton. May, 2021. "Bail advocates did not reduce detention rates (at least on average) but did substantially reduce clients' likelihood of bail violation (-64%) and future arrest (- 26%)."

Tuesday, November 16 2021:

  • A Dose of Dignity: Equitable Vaccination Policies for Incarcerated People and Correctional Staff During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Itay Ravid, Jordan Hyatt, and Steven L. Chanenson. September, 2021. "Governments--and the society they represent--have both a constitutional and a moral obligation to take care of people they choose to incarcerate. That includes providing vaccines...There are no constitutional exceptions for public health crises."
  • The Golden Key: How State-Local Financial Incentives to Lock Up Kentuckians Are Perpetuating Mass Incarceration, Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. October, 2021. "Some county jails rely on the economies of scale created by overcrowding including the extra revenue that comes from holding people in state and federal custody and from charging fees to those who are incarcerated."
  • New York State's New Death Penalty: The Death Toll of Mass Incarceration in a Post Execution Era, Columbia University Center for Justice. October, 2021. "More people have died in NY State custody in the last decade than the total of number of people executed in the 364 years New York State had the death penalty."
  • Is It Dangerous to Live in Neighborhoods with More Immigrants? Assessing the Effects of Immigrant Concentration on Crime Patterns, Paywall :( Sungil Han and Alex R. Piquero. April, 2021. "Results show that immigrant concentration is negatively associated with crime counts and, most importantly, that immigrant concentration moderates the effect of structural conditions on crime."
  • Racial Disparities in Law Enforcement Stops Public Policy Institute of California. October, 2021. "We analyze data for almost 4 million stops by California's 15 largest law enforcement agencies in 2019, examining the extent to which people of color experience searches, enforcement, intrusiveness, and use of force differently from white people."
  • Automating Banishment Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. October, 2021. "Over the past decade, we have been working to build power to abolish LAPD surveillance. This report grew out of that organizing and examines the relationships of policing and surveillance to displacement, gentrification, and real estate development."
  • Compassionate Release Data Report: Calendar Years 2020 to 2021, United States Sentencing Commission. September, 2021. (This report contains charts and tables describing the 20,565 motions for compassionate release decided upon by the courts in 2020 and the first half of 2021; of those, just over 3,600 or 17.5% were granted.)
  • Untangling Eviction, Disadvantage, Race, and Social Processes: Neighborhood Factors Influencing Crime, Paywall :( Eileen M. Kirk. April, 2021. "Eviction is likely concentrated in neighborhoods vulnerable to crime, but the connection between eviction and neighborhood violent crime has not yet been examined...this Boston-based study is a first step in filling this knowledge gap."
  • Race, Ethnicity, and Official Perceptions in the Juvenile Justice System: Extending the Role of Negative Attributional Stereotypes, Paywall :( Laura Beckman and Nancy Rodriguez. April, 2021. "Using juvenile probation file content (N = 285) that quantitatively captures court officials' perceptions...youth of color are more likely to be linked to negative internal attributions in comparison with White youth."

Wednesday, November 10 2021:

  • Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review, Petrich, Damon et al.. September, 2021. "Compared with noncustodial sanctions, custodial sanctions, including imprisonment, have no appreciable effect on reducing reoffending. The studies tend to show that placing offenders in custody has a slight criminogenic effect."
  • Prevalence, Comorbidity, and Continuity of Psychiatric Disorders in a 15-Year Longitudinal Study of Youths Involved in the Juvenile Justice System, Teplin, Linda et al.. April, 2021. "Among participants with a [psychiatric] disorder at baseline, 64.3% of males and 34.8% of females had a disorder 15 years later. Compared with females, males had 3.37 times the odds of persisting with a psychiatric disorder 15 years after baseline."
  • Youth in Adult and Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Comparison of Services and Behavioral Management, Paywall :( Park, Insun and Christopher J. Sullivan. May, 2021. "Youth in adult facilities had similar or more access to institutional programs but also exhibited relatively higher involvement in misconduct based on official reports [compared to youth in juvenile residential facilities]."

Thursday, October 28 2021:

  • The predatory dimensions of criminal justice Joshua Page and Joe Soss. October, 2021. "Consistent with developments that financialized the broader political economy, predatory criminal justice practices pivoted toward tools that charge prices, create debts, and pursue collections."
  • What to Do About Closing Rikers Vital City. September, 2021. "Closing Rikers and the policies that make the closure possible will determine whether New York City remains the safest large city in the country with the fewest people jailed per capita."
  • Cops, Clinicians, or Both? Collaborative Approaches to Responding to Behavioral Health Emergencies, National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. August, 2020. "Individuals [in behavioral health crisis] account for a quarter of police shootings and over 2 million jail bookings per year. Explicit and implicit bias magnify these problems for people of color."
  • Driving Injustice: Consequences and Disparities in North Carolina Criminal Legal and Traffic Debt, Duke Law School Wilson Center for Science and Justice. September, 2021. "Over 650,000 people, or 1 in 12 adults in North Carolina currently have unpaid criminal court debt. One consequence of unpaid debt is indefinite suspension of driving privileges."

Monday, October 18 2021:

  • 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."
  • Defund the Police - Invest in Community Care: A Guide to Alternative Mental Health Responses, Interrupting Criminalization. May, 2021. "This guide highlights considerations for real, meaningful shifts away from law enforcement and towards autonomous, self-determined community-based resources and responses to unmet mental health needs."
  • Cops Don't Stop Violence: Combating Narratives Used to Defend Police Instead of Defunding Them, Community Resource Hub and Interrupting Criminalization. July, 2021. "Police are facing one of the greatest crises of legitimacy in a generation. So they are reaching for one of their most reliable weapons -- fear."
  • Predictive Properties of a General Risk-Need Measure in Diverse Justice Involved Youth: A Prospective Field Validity Study, Jessica Prince et al.. April, 2021. "Across jurisdictions, there has been debate about the use of structured risk-need assessment measures with diverse justice involved youth (e.g., Indigenous peoples, females)."
  • Federal Sentencing of Child Pornography: Production Offenses, United States Sentencing Commission. October, 2021. "Notably, in 2020 alone, the Cyber Tipline of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received 21.7 million reports of child sexual abuse imagery, online child exploitation and enticement, child sexual molestation, and child sex trafficking."
  • Federal Sentencing of Child Pornography: Non-Production Offenses, United States Sentencing Commission. June, 2021. "The average sentence [for non-production child pornography offenses] increased more gradually, from 91 months in fiscal year 2005 to 103 months in fiscal year 2019."

Friday, October 8 2021:

  • The Opioid Epidemic and Homicide in the United States Paywall :( Richard Rosenfeld, Joel Wallman, Randolph Roth. January, 2021. "Those who happen to live in communities with high opioid use...suffer from the impact of living in communities with high homicide rates."
  • Impact of a Prison Therapeutic Diversion Unit on Mental and Behavioral Health Outcomes Molly Remch. September, 2021. "After adjustment for confounding, the rate of all infractions in restrictive housing was 3 times the rate in TDU."
  • 'I Refuse to Let Them Kill Me': Food, Violence, and the Maryland Correctional Food System, The Maryland Food & Prison Abolition Project. September, 2021. "Food in prison serves three fundamental functions: as an everyday mechanism of control, dehumanization, and punishment; as a site of exploitation and profit for private food service corporations; and as a form of violence and premature death." (This report is divided into six parts, all of which are available at this link.)
  • Disability's Fourth Amendment Jamelia Morgan. April, 2021. "I discuss the ways in which disability mediates interactions with law enforcement and how Fourth Amendment doctrine renders disabled people vulnerable to policing and police violence."
  • Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression, Global Burden of Diseases 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators. October, 2021. "We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the National Vital Statistics System."
  • Policing by the Numbers Council on Criminal Justice. June, 2021. "Efforts to develop responses that achieve the twin goals of crime control and justice must be grounded in hard data and research evidence, as well as personal and professional experience."
  • Police Foundations: A Corporate-Sponsored Threat to Democracy and Black Lives, Color of Change and LittleSis. October, 2021. "[We] have compiled the most extensive research to date on the links between police foundations and corporations, identifying over 1,200 corporate donations or executives serving as board members for 23 of the largest police foundations in the country."
  • Electronic Prisons: The Operation of Ankle Monitoring in the Criminal Legal System, Kate Weisburd et al.. September, 2021. "Monitoring and its attendant rules significantly burden basic rights, liberty and dignity."
  • Public Opinion About Police Weapons and Equipment: An Exploratory Analysis, Paywall :( Kevin H. Wozniak, Kevin M. Drakulich, and Brian R. Calfano. March, 2021. "We find that public opinion defies easy classification into "militarized" versus "routine" equipment categories...perceptions of police misconduct and bias predict opposition to some types of tools."
  • County-Level Context and Sentence Lengths for Black, Latinx, and White Individuals Sentenced to Prison: A Multi-Level Assessment, Paywall :( Katherine A. Durante. June, 2021. "Race and ethnicity continue to be salient predictors of punishment, with Black and Latinx individuals facing harsher outcomes than their White counterparts."

Tuesday, October 5 2021:

  • Pandemic, Social Unrest, and Crime in U.S. Cities Council on Criminal Justice. July, 2021. "The motor vehicle theft rate was 21% higher - 9,861 more motor vehicle thefts - during the first half of 2021 than the year before."
  • A global analysis of the impact of COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions on crime Amy E. Nivette et al.. June, 2021. "While some early studies suggested that violent and non-violent crime dropped as regulations were imposed, there is also evidence that the effects of COVID-19 on crime are not universal across countries nor across different categories of crime."
  • How Does Restorative Justice Work? A Qualitative Metasynthesis Masahiro Suzuki and Xiaoyu Yuan Shanghai. October, 2021. "Knowledge is scarce as to what elements of restorative justice lead to the positive results, and how."
  • The Overlooked Victim Right: According Victim-Survivors a Right of Access to Restorative Justice, Lynn S. Branham. August, 2021. "Criminal justice systems in the United States currently leave victim-survivors with some of their most basic needs unmet or only partially met."
  • Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics and the Justice Systems National Council for Mental Wellbeing. August, 2021. "CCBHCs are required to deliver a comprehensive scope of services to meet clients' full [mental health/substance use] needs while integrating services with primary care."
  • A Neglected Problem: Understanding the Effects of Personal and Vicarious Trauma on African Americans' Attitudes Toward the Police, Paywall :( Daniel K. Pryce et al.. April, 2021. "Even for the proportion of African Americans who had positive perceptions and interactions with the police, their views of the police seemed to be further complicated by broader concerns of discriminatory treatment."
  • Recidivism Rates: What You Need to Know, Council on Criminal Justice. September, 2021. "This brief summarizes the key takeaways from the most recent [recidivism] report, released in July 2021, and analyzes them in the context of previous findings."
  • Beyond The Record: A Justice-Oriented Approach to Background Checks, John Jay College Institute for Justice and Opportunity. September, 2021. "This guide contains information about the negative impact of a conviction record, and how background checks often perpetuate the racial disparities within our country's criminal legal system."

Friday, September 24 2021:

  • 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."

Friday, September 17 2021:

  • Keeping COVID Out of Prisons: Approaches in Ten Countries, Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research. May, 2021. "The South African prison population declined after a period of relative stability prepandemic. Total prisoner numbers were in the region of 162-164,000 in the four years prior to the pandemic, but had fallen to 147,922 in June 2020."
  • Locked in and Locked Down - Prison Life in a Pandemic: Evidence from Ten Countries, Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research. May, 2021. "We present evidence of how life in custody changed as a result of the global health emergency, drawn from over 80 interviews with prisoners, ex-prisoners and their loved ones, which we and our research partners conducted before and during the pandemic."
  • Reducing Restrictive Housing Use in Washington State Keramet Reiter, JD, PhD. August, 2021. "A greater proportion of people in DOC experienced Intensive Management Unit confinement over time. In 2002, 24% of the prison population had spent at least one day in an IMU. By 2017, over one-third (34%) of the prison population had spent time in an IMU."
  • Supporting Success: The Higher Education in Prison Key Performance Indicator Framework, Institute for Higher Education Policy. September, 2020. "Better understanding of student outcomes, academic quality, civic engagement, and soft skill development associated with higher education in prison will help both practitioners and policymakers."
  • Reforming solitary confinement: the development, implementation, and processes of a restrictive housing step down reentry program in Oregon, Ryan M. Labrecque, Jennifer J. Tostlebe, Bert Useem and David C. Pyrooz. August, 2021. "We focus on the task set forth by the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) to create a new unit that is committed to rehabilitative programming, increased socialization opportunities, and blunting some of the harsher conditions of restrictive housing."
  • Back-to-School Action Guide: Re-Engaging Students and Closing the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Sentencing Project. August, 2021. "Unless schools tap the resources of community partners and aggressively embrace promising new approaches, many young people will likely be criminalized or excluded from school due to predictable behavior problems."
  • Improving the Food Environment in Washington State-Run Correctional Facilities: The Healthy Commissary Project, Alyssa Auvinen et al.. August, 2015. "The Healthy Commissary Project demonstrates the feasibility of partnerships between health departments, corrections, and advocacy organizations to implement effective nutrition interventions in correctional facility commissaries."
  • Improving Long-Term Employment Outcomes: Promising Findings from New York State, Center for Employment Opportunities. February, 2019. "12 months post-enrollment [Center for Employment Opportunities] participants were 52% more likely to be employed than their counterparts in the comparison group."

Wednesday, September 15 2021:

  • Association of Jail Decarceration and Anticontagion Policies With COVID-19 Case Growth Rates in US Counties Eric Reinhart and Daniel L. Chen. September, 2021. "When controlling for anticontagion policies, mass release events were associated with a 3.1% decrease in COVID-19 growth rates 2 weeks later and a 5.3% decrease in daily jail population."
  • Nutrition in Midwestern State Department of Corrections Prisons: A Comparison of Nutritional Offerings, Mitchel K. Holliday and Kelli M. Richardson. September, 2021. "Sodium was offered in excess across 14 of the 15 menus reviewed. The average daily offering was 3,625 mg or 158% of the recommended level for males and 3,059 mg or 133% of recommended levels for females."
  • Hate Crime Victimization, 2005-2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. September, 2021. "On average, U.S. residents experienced approximately 246,900 hate crime victimizations each year between 2005 and 2019."
  • Hate Crime Recorded by Law Enforcement, 2010-2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. September, 2021. "The number of [hate] incidents decreased 17% from 2010 to 2014, before increasing 25% from 2015 to 2019. By comparison, the total volume of reported crime-- both hate and nonhate incidents--decreased 22% during the 10-year period."
  • Family member incarceration and mental health: Results from a nationally representative survey, Kristin Turney. June, 2021. "The stressor of incarceration proliferates to have reverberating mental health consequences for those connected to the incarcerated, via pathways such as destabilized family economic wellbeing or impaired relationships between family members."
  • Prisons and Mental Health: Violence, Organizational Support, and the Effects of Correctional Work, Paywall :( Amy E. Lerman, Jessie Harney, Meredith Sadin. September, 2021. "Correctional workers have a high likelihood of exposure to violence in the workplace. However, empirical literature has largely neglected the mental health consequences of prison work."
  • Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 24 States in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), Bureau of Justice Statistics. September, 2021. "Almost half (49%) of released prisoners had a probation or parole violation or an arrest for a new offense within 3 years that led to imprisonment."

Tuesday, September 14 2021:

  • States of emergency: The failure of prison system responses to COVID-19, Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2021. "It's telling that not one prison system in the U.S. scored higher than a C; as a whole, the nation's response to the pandemic behind bars has been a shameful failure."
  • Access in Brief: Health Care Needs of Adults Involved with the Criminal Justice System, Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. August, 2021. "When compared to their peers with other forms of coverage, Medicaid beneficiaries under community supervision were more likely to have Hepatitis B or C, chronic bronchitis, or asthma."
  • States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021, Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2021. "Every U.S. state, and the United States as a nation, is an outlier in the global context. No other country incarcerates as many people, including countries with similar rates of"
  • Racial and Ethnic Disparities throughout the Criminal Legal System: A Result of Racist Policies and Discretionary Practices, Urban Institute. August, 2021. "Racial biases are so deeply embedded in the criminal legal system that disparities based on race exist at each decision point, impacting subsequent decision points and resulting in negative outcomes for Black people and other people of color."
  • Women, Incarceration, and Violent Crime: A Briefing in Response to Plans for Building a New Women's Prison in Massachusetts, Women and Incarceration Project. September, 2021. "The population of women convicted of crimes classified as violent by the Massachusetts DOC should not be used as justification for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on constructing a new women's prison."

Monday, August 30 2021:

  • Is There a Temporal Relationship between COVID-19 Infections among Prison Staff, Incarcerated Persons and the Larger Community in the United States?, Danielle Wallace et al.. June, 2021. "Even with strong infection control policies in place, correctional staff are associated with infection spread within prisons."
  • Understanding the place of punishment: Disadvantage, politics, and the geography of imprisonment in 21st century America, Katharine Beckett and Lindsey Beach. February, 2021. "Geographic variation in the use of prisons in 21st century America affords an opportunity toassess--and advance--alternative theoretical perspectives on punishment."
  • Violence, Hunger, and Premature Death: How Prison Food in Maryland Became Even Worse During Covid-19, The Maryland Food & Prison Abolition Project. August, 2021. "As atrocious as the correctional food systems were prior to 2020, however, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically exacerbated the crisis of prison food prison."
  • Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration Sentencing Project. July, 2021. "Black youth are more than four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities as their white peers. In 2015, Black youth's incarceration rate was 5.0 times as high as their white peers, an all-time peak."
  • Better for Everyone: Black Descriptive Representation and Police Traffic Stops, Leah Christiani et al.. March, 2021. "Even though increased black representation would not eliminate racial disparities, it may be an important part of reducing the amount of negative police contact that individuals experience."
  • Racial Equity and Criminal Justice Risk Assessment Urban Institute. March, 2021. "Practitioners and policymakers must determine how (or whether) to balance the use of risk assessment as a component of evidence-based practice with pursuing goals of reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system."

Tuesday, August 24 2021:

  • "Every Thought and Dream a Nightmare": Violence and Trauma Among Formerly Imprisoned Gang Members, Paywall :( Shytierra Gaston, Faraneh Shamserad, and Beth M. Huebner. August, 2021. "Although direct involvement in violence dissipated after prison, exposure to vicarious victimization was substantial and ongoing."
  • Rethinking Approaches to Over Incarceration of Black Young Adults in Maryland Justice Policy Institute. November, 2019. "Nearly eight in 10 people who were sentenced as emerging adults and have served 10 or more years in a Maryland prison are black. This is the highest rate of any state in the country."
  • 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."
  • Breastfeeding in Incarcerated Settings in the United States: A National Survey of Frequency and Policies, Paywall :( Ifeyinwa V. Asiodu, Lauren Beal, and Carolyn Sufrin. April, 2021. "Our data show inconsistent implementation of policies and practices supportive of breastfeeding in prisons and jails."
  • The Relevance of Women's Economic Marginalization to Recidivism Paywall :( Merry Morash and Deborah A. Kashy. August, 2021. "This study examines whether changes over time in women's criminogenic needs, particularly their financial needs, predict recidivism...Women whose financial needs decreased were less likely to be rearrested and convicted relative to other women."
  • Replacing School Police with Services that Work: Better Ways to Improve School Safety and Reduce Discipline Disparities, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. August, 2021. "The ongoing presence of police in schools increases school arrests, instances of physical restraint, and suspensions and expulsions, all of which are disproportionately experienced by students with disabilities, especially students of color."
  • The Presence of School Resource Officers (SROs) in America's Schools Justice Policy Institute. July, 2020. "Allowing police officers to needlessly handle minor infractions in schools often marks a student's first contact with the criminal justice system, potentially setting them up for a lifetime of collateral consequences."

Wednesday, August 11 2021:

  • National Snapshot: Access to Medications For Opioid Use Disorder in U.S. Jails and Prisons, Shelly Weizman, Joanna Perez, Isaac Manoff, Melissa Baney, and Taleed El-Sabawi. July, 2021. "In almost every state, some form of MOUD is available in at least one jail or prison, and only a handful of state departments of corrections have policies against offering MOUD in prisons."
  • Empire State of Incarceration Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2021. "As bail setting practices changed and counties moved to release more people to prevent the spread of COVID-19 across the state, Black people were left behind."
  • Arrest Trends: Suburban Police Are Driving the Use of Arrests, Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2021. "In principal cities, racial disparities in arrests persist but have dropped by more than 50 percent. This progress has not occurred elsewhere; racial disparities in arrests have increased in suburban cities."
  • Reducing Policing's Footprint? Racial Disparities and Arrest Trends After Misdemeanor Decriminalization and Legalization in Denver and Philadelphia, Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2021. "Arrests have declined by at least 40 percent for every decriminalized offense category in Philadelphia, with the steepest decreases in the years immediately following decriminalization."
  • The Intersection of Race and Algorithmic Tools in the Criminal Legal System Vincent M. Southerland. October, 2020. "[Algorithmic] tools, as currently designed and deployed in the current legal framework fail to correct or upend the racial inequity that pervades the criminal legal system."
  • The New York State Trial Penalty: The Constitutional Right to Trial Under Attack, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. March, 2021. "By 1996 and every year after, 98% to 99% of misdemeanor convictions were obtained by plea. If someone is convicted in New York State, whether of a felony or a misdemeanor, it is overwhelmingly likely that they were convicted by plea rather than at trial."
  • Detention Diversion Advocacy Program (DDAP) Evaluation Moira DeNike. July, 2021. "The findings very clearly indicate that DDAP participants had a lower likelihood of any subsequent justice referrals and of any subsequent felony referrals as compared with a similarly-situated set of non-DDAP-served youth." (DDAP is a juvenile diversion program in San Francisco, operated by the nonprofit organization, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.)

Friday, August 6 2021:

  • Alcohol and Drug Use and Treatment Reported by Prisoners: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016, Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2021. "Female state prisoners (58%) were more likely than male state prisoners (48%) to have met the criteria for having a substance use disorder in the 12 months prior to admission to prison."
  • On the Road to Freedom: An Abolitionist Assessment of Pretrial & Bail Reforms, Critical Resistance. June, 2021. "While ending money bail is nonnegotiable for our movement, our goal is to weaken the state's power to jail, surveil, and punish."
  • Probation and Parole in the United States, 2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2021. "The probation population has declined each year since 2007; The parole population increased or stayed relatively the same each year since 2014."
  • Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 34 States in 2012: A 5-Year Follow-Up Period (2012-2017), Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2021. "Nearly half (46%) of prisoners released in 2012 returned to prison within 5 years for a parole or probation violation or a new sentence."
  • Sexual Assaults Recorded by Law Enforcement, 2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2021. "This report presents statistics on sexual assault victimizations that were reported to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2019 by law enforcement agencies in 20 states."
  • The Evolving Science on Implicit Bias: An Updated Resource for the State Court Community, National Center for State Courts. March, 2021. "Ultimately, judicial leadership must determine the goals of institutional efforts to address systemic and implicit biases."
  • Models of Prosecutor-Led Diversion Programs in the United States and Beyond Kay L. Levine and Ronald F. Wright. May, 2020. "Prosecutor-led diversion programs create the greatest risk of abuse, because other governmental actors are not necessary to resolve a case. The prosecutor might operate the diversion program in a way that widens the net of social control..."

Monday, August 2 2021:

  • The Revelatory Nature of COVID-19 Compassionate Release in an Age of Mass Incarceration, Crime Victim Rights, and Mental Health Reform, Jennifer A. Brobst. July, 2021. "Early COVID-19 compassionate release decisions reveal that courts continue to base early release decisions primarily on an assessment of public safety risk from crime, not community impact, crime victim impact, or even prisoner health."
  • Understanding the Landscape of Higher Education in Prison Survey 2018-2019 A Confidential Follow-up to the 2020 Annual Survey of Higher Education in Prison Programs, Alliance for HIgher Education in Prison. July, 2021. "The survey aimed to illuminate program demographics, program funding, use of technology, student enrollment, and program data collection and evaluation, and the associated challenges and opportunities." (See the five linked data briefs that describe the survey's findings.)
  • Paternal Jail Incarceration and Birth Outcomes: Evidence from New York City, 2010-2016, Paywall :( Yi et al.. April, 2021. "We found strong positive baseline associations (p < 0.001) between paternal jail incarceration during pregnancy with probabilities of all adverse outcomes examined."
  • Building exits off the highway to mass incarceration: Diversion programs explained, Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2021. "We envision the criminal justice system as a highway where people are heading toward the possibility of incarceration; depending on the state or county, this highway may have exit ramps in the form of diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration."
  • Slamming the Courthouse Door: 25 years of evidence for repealing the Prison Litigation Reform Act, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2021. "The PLRA should be repealed. It was bad policy in the 1990s -- and allowing it to continue today is even worse policy."
  • Punitive Surveillance Kate Weisburd. March, 2021. ""Punitive surveillance" allows government officials and for-profit companies to track, record, search and analyze the location, biometric data and other meta-data of thousands of people on probation and parole, and is subject to almost no limitations."
  • Pregnancy Prevalence and Outcomes in U.S. Jails Sufrin et al.. May, 2020. "About 3% of admissions of females to U.S. jails are of pregnant people; extrapolating study results to national female jail admission rates suggests nearly 55,000 pregnancy admissions in 1 year."
  • Opioid use disorder incidence and treatment among incarcerated pregnant women in the United States: results from a national surveillance study, Paywall :( Sufrin et al.. February, 2020. "Twenty-six per cent of pregnant women admitted to prisons and 14% to jails had OUD. One-third were managed through withdrawal. The majority who were prescribed MOUD were on methadone (78%, prisons; 81%, jails), not buprenorphine."
  • Pregnancy Prevalence and Outcomes in 3 United States Juvenile Residential Systems Paywall :( Kim et al.. February, 2021. "There were 71 admissions of pregnant adolescents reported over 12 months from participating JRS. At the time of the census, 6 of the 183 female adolescents (3.3%) were pregnant."

Wednesday, July 14 2021:

  • Digitizing and Disclosing Personal Data: The Proliferation of State Criminal Records on the Internet, Lageson, Sarah, Elizabeth Webster, and Juan Sandoval. December, 2020. "These digital disclosures...mean that criminal punishment now includes the deprivation of privacy as the justice system distributes personal information across the Internet."
  • Harm Reduction at The Center of Incarceration Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia. April, 2021. "Even when the reality of trauma in correctional institutions is fully appreciated, policies often only focus on programs for people who are incarcerated, as if they are the problem, instead of on the system itself."
  • Bottleneck: The Place of County Jails in California's COVID-19 Correctional Crisis, Hadar Aviram. May, 2021. "The closure of prisons created a bottleneck in jails, jamming the flow of residents in and out of county facilities. This resulted in serious overcrowding, which was documented in several lawsuits brought on behalf of jail population."
  • Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent: The Role of Prosecutors, Police and Other Law Enforcement, National Registry of Exonerations. September, 2020. "More than a third of all exonerations included misconduct by police officers, [and] nearly as many involved misconduct by prosecutors."
  • Collective Bargaining Rights, Policing, and Civilian Deaths Cunningham, Jamein, Donna Feir, and Rob Gillezeau. March, 2021. "Using an event-study design, we find that the introduction of duty to bargain requirements with police unions has led to a significant increase in non-white civilian deaths at the hands of police during the late twentieth century."

Monday, July 12 2021:

  • Dead Man Waiting: A brief profile of deaths in Texas prisons among people approved for parole release, Deitch, Michele, Destiny Moreno, and Alycia Welch. June, 2021. "The data reveals that a large number of people die in Texas prisons each year even though the Parole Board had already determined that these individuals were worthy of parole and no longer presented a risk to public safety."

Friday, July 9 2021:

  • Inmates May Work, But Don't Tell Social Security Stephanie Hunter McMahon. July, 2021. "Despite a prevailing requirement that inmates work and despite them being forced to work under threat of punishment, inmates are not "employees" or "workers" in the commonly understood sense."
  • New data: State prisons are increasingly deadly places Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2021. "New data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that state prisons are seeing alarming rises in suicide, homicide, and drug and alcohol-related deaths."
  • What families can expect to be charged under the new FCC rules Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2021. "A new order from the Federal Communications Commission lowers existing caps on rates and fees in the prison and jail telephone industry."
  • Breaking the Cycle: Interrupting Generational Incarceration in Maine, Place Matters Maine. 2015. "Black or African American and Native American or Indigenous children are disproportionately affected by parental incarceration in Maine."
  • Prison Population Trends 2020 Massachusetts Department of Correction. May, 2021. "The MA DOC jurisdiction population's historic decline since 2012 (n=11,723) continued through to January 1st, 2021 (n=6,848)."
  • With over 2,700 deaths behind bars and slow vaccine acceptance, prisons and jails must continue to decarcerate Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2021. "Just because vaccines are increasingly available does not mean that the COVID-19 crisis in prisons and jails is over - far from it. Yet new data show more prisons and jails are returning to "business as usual.""
  • Rise in jail deaths is especially troubling as jail populations become more rural and more female Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2021. "New data show record high deaths of people locked up in jail, as jail populations have shifted toward smaller, rural jails and growing numbers of women."
  • Smoke and mirrors: A cautionary tale for counties considering a big, costly new jail, Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2021. "How law enforcement and jail architects almost duped taxpayers into approving a new jail far bigger than the county needs, by offering biased analysis and misleading arguments."
  • Freedom, Then the Press: New York Media and Bail Reform, FWD.us. April, 2021. "Media outlets across New York played a major role in generating the fear and backlash that is driving the increase in the jail population and exposing thousands more people to the possibility of illness and death behind bars."
  • Policy Assessments Council on Crime and Justice Task Force on Policing. May, 2021. "Task Force members weighed the relative value of each proposal based on the best available research and on their professional expertise and lived experiences."
  • Brutality in the Name of "Safety": Baton Rouge Parish Policing and Tactics, The Promise of Justice Initiative. May, 2021. "With a jail population rate that is 66% higher than the national average, there is statistical proof that EBR readily weaponizes over-policing and incarceration to address what are in fact social and societal problems."
  • The role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in Chicago Paywall :( Ba, Bocar A., Dean Knox, Jonathan Mummolo, and Roman Rivera. February, 2021. "Relative to white officers, Black and Hispanic officers make far fewer stops and arrests, and they use force less often, especially against Black civilians."
  • Do Police Make Too Many Arrests? Cho, Sungwoo, Felipe Goncalves, and Emily Weisburst. April, 2021. "Because the observed decline in enforcement is concentrated among arrests for low-level offenses, we argue that low-level enforcement could be reduced at the margin without likely increases in crime."
  • Citizens, Suspects, and Enemies: Examining Police Militarization, Mitt Regan. March, 2021. "The conviction that police officers need [military-grade weapons] reflects a subtle cultural shift in the understanding of the nature of police work."
  • A New Lease on Life Sentencing Project. June, 2021. "People convicted of homicide and other crimes of violence rarely commit new crimes of violence after release from long-term imprisonment."
  • 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."

Monday, June 28 2021:

  • Investigation of the Massachusetts Department of Correction United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts. November, 2020. "The conditions in Massachusetts Department of Correction's prisons (MDOC) violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."
  • Louisiana Deaths Behind Bars: 2015 - 2019, Incarceration Transparency. June, 2021. "Prisons and jails should ideally have lower death rates than the general public due to the physical proximity of medical care behind bars, 24-hour staffing and supervision, and reduced probability of certain types of deaths, such as car accidents..."
  • The People's Plan for Prison Closure Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB). April, 2021. "Accomplishing our goal of closing ten prisons in five years will be hard. It will require political courage. But history is watching us..."
  • No Kickbacks Parole Illinois. June, 2021. "Through its "surcharges", "kickbacks", and denial of basic necessities, the IDOC is effectively siphoning millions of dollars from largely low income communities by preying on people's love for their incarcerated friend or family member."
  • 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."

Friday, June 11 2021:

  • Just over half of incarcerated people are vaccinated, despite being locked in COVID-19 epicenters Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2021. "Most states did not prioritize incarcerated people in their vaccination plans. As a result, seven months since the first vaccines were distributed, just 55% of people in prison have been vaccinated, leaving them vulnerable to infection."
  • The U.S. Sentencing Commission's Recidivism Studies: Myopic, Misleading, and Doubling Down on Imprisonment, Nora V. Demleitner. December, 2020. "The overly broad definition of "recidivism" and the focus on easily measurable and static risk factors, such as prior criminal record, create a feedback loop."
  • Age Gradient in Women's Crime: The Role of Welfare Reform, Paywall :( Hope Corman, Dhaval M. Dave, and Nancy E. Reichman. February, 2021. "Using Federal Bureau of Investigation data, we investigated the age-patterning of effects of welfare reform on women's arrests for property crime, the type of crime that welfare reform has been shown to affect."
  • Youth in Adult and Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Comparison of Services and Behavioral Management, Paywall :( Insun Park and Christopher J. Sullivan. May, 2021. "Given contemporary efforts to prevent adolescents from experiencing the negative consequences of incarceration, it is critical to assess the impact of juvenile transfer."

Tuesday, June 8 2021:

  • Jails, Sheriffs, and Carceral Policymaking Aaron Littman. May, 2021. "Sheriffs have a unique combination of controls over how big and how full their jails are, but this role consolidation does not produce the restraint that some have predicted. Their disclaimers of responsibility are a smokescreen..."

Wednesday, June 2 2021:

  • Carceral-community epidemiology, structural racism, and COVID-19 disparities Eric Reinhart, Daniel L. Chen. May, 2021. "We find that cycling individuals through Cook County Jail in March 2020 alone can account for 13% of all COVID-19 cases and 21% of racial COVID-19 disparities in Chicago as of early August."
  • The Impacts of Solitary Confinement Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2021. "The widespread use of solitary does not achieve its intended purpose--it does not make prisons, jails, or the community safer, and may actually make them less safe."
  • Mapping U.S. Jails' Use of Restrictive Housing: Trends, Disparities, and Other Forms of Lockdown, Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2021. "Units that are not classified as restrictive housing by corrections agencies also held people in their cells for 22 hours or more per day."
  • Prisons and Penny-Pinching: Finding Budget Savings in the Time of COVID-19, Texas Public Policy Coalition. January, 2021. "Even a small percentage reduction in the number of annual revocations can potentially yield millions in annual cost savings."
  • Paid Your Debt to Society? Court-related Financial Obligations and Community Supervision during the First Year after Release from Prison, Paywall :( Nathan W. Link. February, 2021. "One's status as being under correctional supervision at release from prison leads to increased debt, which in turn increases the chance of remaining under supervision during the first year out."
  • Authoritarian exclusion and laissez-faire inclusion: Comparing the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses in England & Wales and Norway, Alice Ievins, Kristian Mjaland. March, 2021. "Contrary to what might be expected, we find that the punishment of men convicted of sex offenses ismore paternalistic and interventionist in England & Wales, as well as more liberal--in that it respects the autonomy of the punished person--in Norway."
  • The carceral production of transgender poverty: How racialized gender policing deprives transgender women of housing and safety, Dilara Yarbrough. May, 2021. "Laws crafted with race-neutral language target survival and coping strategies disproportionately used by people of color and trans people in public space."
  • Risk factors for suicide in prisons: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Shaoling Zhong et al.. February, 2021. "Single risk factors are not sufficient to identify individuals at high risk of suicide."
  • Accessing justice: The impact of discretion, 'deservedness' and distributive justice on the equitable allocation of policing resources, Sarah Charman, Emma Williams. May, 2021. "Indeed, the often invisible and unchecked nature of police discretion challenges its neutrality and highlights the subjective nature of such practices which are influenced by judgement, interpretation and previous experience."
  • Decoupling Crisis Response from Policing -- A Step Toward Equitable Psychiatric Emergency Services, New England Journal of Medicine. May, 2021. "Police responses to psychiatric crises harm patients far too often, especially in minority communities, where a long history of institutional racism informs warranted distrust of law enforcement."
  • 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."

Thursday, May 27 2021:

  • Federal Prisoner Statistics Collected Under The First Step Act, 2020 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2021. "The portion of federal prisoners who were the parent, step-parent, or guardian of a minor child (defined as a dependent age 20 or younger by the BOP) grew from 45% to 49% from year-end 2018 to year-end 2019."
  • Beyond Recidivism and Desistance Paywall :( Susan Starr Sered, Maureen Norton-Hawk. April, 2021. "Conventional measures of recidivism and desistance tend to...(3) overly focus on individual choices and narratives in contexts where freedoms are constrained by structural and institutional policies and practices."
  • Due Process in the Time of COVID: Defenders as First Responders in a Juvenile Court System Struggling with the COVID-19 Pandemic, National Juvenile Defender Center. March, 2021. "The shift to technology-based communications and remote hearings threatens young people's constitutional rights, including fundamental aspects of effective legal representation, due process, and access to courts."

Tuesday, May 25 2021:

  • Summit Food Services Provides Inadequate Nutrition at Missouri Jail Kevin Bliss, Prison Legal News. October, 2019. "[An independent registered dietitian's] report stated, "the food is too high in sodium, too high in processed, refined carbohydrates and sugars and too low in fiber.""
  • 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."
  • Federal Justice Statistics, 2017-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2021. "Of the 372,354 persons under some form of federal correctional control at fiscal year-end 2018, 60% were in secure confinement and 40% were under community supervision."
  • What Doesn't Get Measured Doesn't Get Done: A Roadmap for Data Collection and Reporting in the Era of Bail Reform, Joanna Thomas, Abdiaziz Ahmed, New York City Criminal Justice Agency. April, 2021. "Proper pretrial data collection, analysis, and reporting can help to build systems that meet local needs, save money, improve program practices, and decrease jail crowding."
  • Prison Visitation and Concerns about Reentry: Variations in Frequency and Quality of Visits are Associated with Reentry Concerns among People Incarcerated in Prison, Paywall :( Thomas Baker, Meghan M. Mitchell Jill A. Gordon. May, 2021. "The impact of visitation on incarcerated people's concerns about reentry has received little empirical attention."
  • What you should know about halfway houses [Website] Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2020. "Very little data about halfway houses has been available to the public, even though they are a major feature of the carceral system."
  • Redefining the Narrative: On Behalf of the Statewide Women's Justice Task Force of Illinois, Deanna Benos, Alyssa Benedict, The Women's Justice Institute. April, 2021. "Prisons have been deployed as a default response to women's attempts to survive untenable social conditions, yet there is no evidence that any amount of time in prison is helpful or even improves public safety."
  • Doing Double Time: Women, Incarceration and Employment Discrimination, Diane van den Broek, Prudence Black, Nicki (identity protected). April, 2021. "Her [Nicki's] story presents a portrait of a woman at the frontline of post-incarceration and employment, where vulnerability and insecurity prevail."
  • Pregnant Women in DOJ Custody: U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons Should Better Align Policies with National Guidelines, United States Government Accountability Office. January, 2021. "By taking steps to more closely align agency standards and policies with national guidance as feasible, USMS and BOP would be better positioned to help ensure the health of pregnant women in their custody."

Friday, May 21 2021:

  • Mortality in State and Federal Prisons, 2001-2018 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2021. "In 2018, a total of 4,135 state prisoners died in publicly or privately operated prisons, and an additional 378 federal prisoners died in facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)."
  • The cumulative risk of jail incarceration Bruce Western, Jaclyn Davis, Flavien Ganter, and Natalie Smith. April, 2021. "The contours of jail incarceration observed in New York City follow the pattern of mass criminalization where large numbers of Black and Latino men are subject to penal control, in most cases for low-level offenses."
  • Mortality in Local Jails, 2000-2018 - Statistical Tables Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2021. "In 2018, a total of 1,120 inmates died in local jails, an increase of nearly 2% from the 1,099 deaths reported in 2017."
  • In Your State Gideon at 50. April, 2016. "This interactive map provides the public and policy-makers with a birds-eye view of some of the most critical aspects of the provision of public defense."
  • Right to Counsel Services in the 50 States: An Indigent Defense Reference Guide for Policymakers, Sixth Amendment Center. March, 2017. "The variations amongst how states deal with the Sixth Amendment does not stop at funding and oversight. The number of structural approaches to providing lawyers to the poor is great."

Monday, May 17 2021:

  • Adequacy of Healthcare Provided In Louisiana State Prisons Loyola University, Louisiana State University, VOTE (Voices of the Experienced). May, 2021. "The real-world minimum wage equivalent of [medical co-pays] for incarcerated people who earn incentive wages of $.02/per hour is: $1,087.5 for a routine visit, $2,175 for an emergency visit, and $725 for a prescription."

Friday, May 14 2021:

  • ALC Court Watch Docket Report #01 Cash Bail, Arbitrary Detention and Apartheid in Allegheny County, [PDF] Abolitionist Law Center. November, 2020. "Black residents of Allegheny County are more likely to be arrested, charged, and have monetary bail imposed against them."
  • ALC Court Watch Docket Report #02 Maintaining Apartheid: Arrest and Cash Bail in Allegheny County, [PDF] Abolitionist Law Center. April, 2021. "In a county that is less than 13% Black, 56% of all arrests between Aug 14 and Dec 31 of 2020 were of Black residents."
  • The Pandemic Gender Gap Behind Bars: Meeting the Needs of Women in Custody During COVID-19 and Planning for the Future, Alycia Welch and Michele Deitch. May, 2021. "Even before the pandemic, women were overlooked in correctional facilities that were not designed for them and that are not administered with them in mind."

Thursday, May 13 2021:

  • How Much Criminal Justice Debt Does the U.S. Really Have? Fines & Fees Justice Center. April, 2021. "At least $27.6 billion of fines and fees is owed across the nation.."
  • 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."

Tuesday, May 11 2021:

  • A First Step, a Second Chance: Public Support for Restoring Rights of Individuals with Prior Convictions, Paywall :( Christina Mancini, Robyn McDougle, and Brittany Keegan. November, 2020. "Results suggest most of the public supports expungement reform, but less than 40% support rights restoration generally, with approval levels dependent on specific type of restoration."

Friday, April 16 2021:

Thursday, April 15 2021:

  • Prison Population Reductions and COVID-19: A Latent Profile Analysis Synthesizing Recent Evidence From the Texas State Prison System, Noel Vest, Oshea Johnson, Kathryn Nowotny & Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein. December, 2020. "Current prison population and level of employee staffing predicted membership in the high-outbreak and high-death profiles when compared with the low-outbreak profile."
  • New data: The revolving door between homeless shelters and prisons in Connecticut, Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2021. "1 in 5 people who used homeless shelters in the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness' network had been released from prison in the past three years."
  • Revisiting and Unpacking the Mental Illness and Solitary Confinement Relationship Paywall :( Sonja E. Siennick, Mayra Picon, Jennifer M. Brown & Daniel P. Mears. December, 2020. "Having a mental illness was associated with an increase of up to 170% in the odds of extended solitary confinement, depending on the diagnosis."
  • Death Penalty Statutes and Murder Rates: Evidence from Synthetic Controls, Brett Parker. February, 2021. "Applying this technique using seven states that recently abolished the death penalty and twenty-nine states that retained the punishment during the same period, I find no evidence that the presence of a capital punishment statute in a state is sufficient,"
  • New data on jail populations: The good, the bad, and the ugly, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2021. "While the total jail population dropped by 25% between June 2019 and June 2020, racial disparities increased over the same period."
  • Visualizing the unequal treatment of LGBTQ people in the criminal justice system Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2021. "The data is clear: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ ) people are overrepresented at every stage of criminal justice system, starting with juvenile justice system involvement."
  • One Year Later: Bail Reform and Judicial Decision-Making in New York City, Center for Court Innovation. April, 2021. "Predictably, making more cases newly re-eligible for bail and detention in July increased judges' use of both options."
  • It's all about the incentives: Why a call home from a jail in New York State can cost 7 times more than the same call from the state's prisons, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2021. "These exorbitant phone rates cost some the poorest residents of New York State -- and a group disproportionately made up of women of color -- more than $13 million a year just to talk to their jailed loved ones."
  • The American Racial Divide in Fear of the Police Justin Pickett, Amanda Graham, and Frank Cullen. April, 2021. "Most Whites felt safe, but most Blacks feared the police even more than crime, being afraid both for themselves and for others they cared about."
  • Research roundup: Violent crimes against Black and Latinx people receive less coverage and less justice, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2021. "In a 2018 Washington Post analysis of nearly 50,000 homicides around the country, the authors found that an arrest was made in 63 percent of murders of white victims, compared to 48 percent of those with Latinx victims and 46 percent with Black victims."
  • Pandemic Caseloads Highlights: Court filings and dispositions 2019-2020, Court Statistics Project. March, 2021. "While the number of case filings is expected to return to normal in criminal, traffic, and juvenile over the course of 2021, no surge in cases is expected."
  • Pleading for Justice: Bullpen Therapy, Pre-Trial Detention, and Plea Bargains in American Courts, Paywall :( Amy E. Lerman, Ariel Lewis Green, and Patricio Dominguez. March, 2021. "In a national sample, defendants held in custody pre-trial are significantly more likely to enter a guilty plea, all else equal."

Monday, April 12 2021:

  • Black and (Thin) Blue (Line): Corruption and Other Political Determinants of Police Killings in America, Oguzhan C. Dincer and Michael Johnston. February, 2021. "Our evidence suggests that police can kill Black Americans with impunity because of a lack of accountability - exemplified by corruption - that is largely determined by political influences."
  • Felony Case Delay in New York City: Lessons from a Pilot Project in Brooklyn, Center for Court Innovation. March, 2021. "Despite the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial, in 2019, for indicted felonies, New York City only met the state's standard for a six-month resolution in about a third of cases."

Friday, April 9 2021:

Thursday, April 8 2021:

  • COVID-19 Testing in State Prisons Council on Criminal Justice. April, 2021. "The evidence suggests that more testing, early testing, and early mass testing may have been strategies that helped states achieve lower rates of COVID-19 mortality behind bars."
  • Misdemeanor Prosecution Amanda Y. Agan, Jennifer L. Doleac, and Anna Harvey. March, 2021. "We find that, for the marginal defendant, nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense leads to large reductions in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint over the next two years."
  • Immigrant Sanctuary Policies and Crime-Reporting Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis of Reports of Crime Victimization to Law Enforcement, 1980 to 2004, Paywall :( Ricardo D. Martinez-Schuldt and Daniel E. Martinez. January, 2021. "We find that Latinos are more likely to report violent crime victimization to law enforcement after sanctuary policies have been adopted within their metropolitan areas of residence."
  • What Jails Cost: A Look at Spending in America's Large Cities, Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2021. "Since 2011, jail budgets increased 13 percent--accounting for inflation--while jail populations declined 28 percent."
  • Policing and public health calls for service in Philadelphia Jerry H. Ratcliffe. March, 2021. "In Philadelphia, at least in a relatively normal (i.e. non-COVID-19) year, calls to the police that start or result in some form of medical/public health connection comprise about 8% of the police activity that originates from the public."
  • Applying Procedural Justice in Community Supervision Assessment of Pilot Testing in the Georgia Department of Community Supervision, Urban Institute. March, 2021. "The supervisee-level analyses found that supervisees from the training group had significantly fewer arrests, warrants, delinquent reports, and convictions than supervisees from the control group."
  • 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."

Tuesday, March 30 2021:

  • Disabilities Reported by Prisoners Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2021. "Nearly 4 in 10 state prisoners (40%) and 3 in 10 federal prisoners (29%) reported having a disability."
  • Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2021. "Nearly 1.5 million persons age 17 or younger had a parent who was in state or federal prison in 2016."
  • Time Served in State Prison, 2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2021. "The average time served by state prisoners released in 2018, from initial admission to initial release, was 2.7 years, and the median time served was 1.3 years."
  • Veterans in Prison Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2021. "An estimated 107,400 veterans were serving time in state or federal prison in 2016."

Monday, March 29 2021:

  • Foster Care, Permanency, and Risk of Prison Entry Paywall :( Font et al. March, 2021. "Nearly 13 percent of the sample experienced imprisonment in young adulthood. Compared with emancipated youth, hazard of imprisonment was 1.58-1.96 times higher among reunified youth."
  • The Consequences Are Black and White: Race and Poor Health Following Incarceration, Paywall :( Julie L. Kuper and Jillian J. Turanovic. February, 2021. "Findings indicate that Black respondents reported within-person health declines that were more substantial than those of Whites after first incarceration. Additional analyses revealed that these race differences were more pronounced among Black males."
  • Hidden Figures: Rating the COVID Data Transparency of Prisons, Jails, and Juvenile Agencies, COVID, Corrections, and Oversight Project. March, 2021. "Correctional agencies -- especially jails and juvenile agencies -- are failing at publishing adequate data on how COVID is impacting the people who work and live in these institutions."
  • Locking Up My Generation: Cohort Differences in Prison Spells Over the Life Course, Paywall :( Rand. October, 2020. "Our study highlights a heretofore overlooked perspective: that the crime-punishment wave in the 1980s and 1990s created cohort differences in incarceration over the life course that changed the level of incarceration even decades after the wave."
  • Social Fabric: A New Model for Public Safety and Vital Neighborhoods, The Square One Project. March, 2021. "We have models available, but we've never made a sustained commitment to any institution other than the police and the prison system."
  • Correctional Facility and Inmate Locations: Urban and Rural Status Patterns, Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications. July, 2017. "We find that a disproportionate share of prisons and inmates are located in rural areas, while a disproportionate share of inmates are from urban areas."
  • Revolving Doors: Examining the Effect of Race and Ethnicity on Discretionary Decision-Making in Parole Revocations, Tri Keah S. Henry. August, 2020. "Findings suggest that race/ethnicity significantly influences parole revocation outcomes."

Wednesday, March 24 2021:

  • Grave Consequences: How the Criminalization of Disability Leads to Deaths in Jail, Disability Rights Oregon. February, 2021. "DRO's investigation found the following jail conditions put individuals with disabilities at risk of deadly harm."
  • Proliferation of Punishment: The Centrality of Legal Fines and Fees in the Landscape of Contemporary Penology, Paywall :( Ilya Slavinski and Becky Pettit. January, 2021. "Enforcement of LFOs varies geographically and is related to conservative politics and racial threat."
  • The High Price of Using Justice Fines and Fees to Fund Government in New York Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2020. "In 2018, New York state and local governments collected at least $1.21 billion in criminal and traffic fines and fees as revenue."
  • Reducing the Misuse and Overuse of Jails in Safety and Justice Challenge Sites: An Interim Progress Report, CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance. February, 2021. "Since implementation of the initiative began in 2016, ADP has declined substantially in many SJC sites. Ten of the 14 sites represented in this report experienced ADP reductions by Year 3, for a combined reduction of 18 percent."
  • Racialized Re-entry: Labor Market Inequality After Incarceration, Bruce Western and Catherine Sirois. June, 2019. "Qualitative interviews suggest that whites more than blacks and Hispanics find stable, high-paying jobs through social networks."

Tuesday, March 23 2021:

  • Are Effects of School Resource Officers Moderated by Student Race and Ethnicity? Paywall :( Scott Crosse et al.. March, 2021. "We found that increases in offenses and exclusionary reactions due to increased SRO presence were most evident for Black and Hispanic as opposed to White students."
  • Mass Incarceration and Children's Health: A State-Level Analysis of Adverse Birth Outcomes and Infant, Child, and Teen Mortality, Paywall :( James M Conway. February, 2021. "Results indicated that as hypothesized, incarceration rates positively predicted infant mortality, child mortality (for Black children only), preterm births, and low-weight births. Relationships tended to be stronger for Black than for white children."
  • New York City Jails: COVID Discharge Policy, Data Transparency, and Reform, Eli Miller, Bryan D. Martin, and Chad Topaz. February, 2021. "Their success with discharge during the early stages of COVID-19 suggests that low-risk inmates could be discharged sooner in general."

Monday, March 22 2021:

  • Solitary: The Family Experience, Open MI Door Campaign and Citizens for Prison Reform. February, 2021. "Among those in administrative segregation and Level V cells, approximately 20 percent have been in for 6-12 months; 32 percent have been in for 1-2 years; and a shocking 47 percent have been in isolation for more than 2 years."
  • DPIC Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic, Death Penalty Information Center. February, 2021. "Of the 185 exonerations that have occurred since 1973, 69.2 percent (128) have included official misconduct by police, prosecutors, or other government officials."
  • Getting under the skin: Physiological stress and witnessing paternal arrest in young children with incarcerated fathers, Paywall :( Luke Muentner, Amita Kapoor, Lindsay Weymouth, Julie Poehlmann-Tynan. February, 2021. "Results indicate that children had higher cumulative stress hormone concentrations when they witnessed their father's arrest."
  • Association between county jail incarceration and cause-specific county mortality in the USA, 1987-2017: a retrospective, longitudinal study, Sandhya Kajeepeta et al. February, 2021. "Specifically, mortality caused by infectious disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, substance use, and suicide is the strongest driver of the association between jail incarceration and county mortality."
  • The Enormous Cost of Parole Violations in New York The Justice Lab and The Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform. March, 2021. "In 2019, New York's state and local governments collectively spent $683 million to incarcerate people on parole for rules violations, without evidence that this massive expenditure of resources meaningfully contributed to public safety."
  • Safety We Can Feel Safety We Can Feel. February, 2021. "Respondents wanted to see more funding going towards centers for mental health and addiction recovery (58%), housing and stability assistance (57%), and education and youth programming (53%) as approaches to addressing violence."
  • 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."

Friday, March 5 2021:

  • Poverty and Mass Incarceration in New York: An Agenda for Change, Brennan Center for Justice. February, 2021. "Roughly 337,000 New Yorkers have spent time in prison at some point in their lives. That burden has fallen disproportionately on people of color: three-quarters of the state's formerly imprisoned population is Black or Latino."
  • What Jails Cost Statewide: Spending on Jails Across the Rural-Urban Spectrum, Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2021. "Three out of five people incarcerated in local jails were in smaller cities and rural communities."

Wednesday, February 10 2021:

Wednesday, February 3 2021:

  • The Reintegration Agenda During Pandemic: Criminal Record Reforms in 2020, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. January, 2021. "In 2020, 32 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted 106 legislative bills, approved 5 ballot initiatives, and issued 4 executive orders to restore rights and opportunities to people with a criminal record."
  • Reining in Solitary Confinement in Texas: Recent Progress and Next Steps, Texas Public Policy Foundation. January, 2021. "As of 2019, some 25.5% of those in solitary confinement in Texas have been there for 6 years or more, compared to the 5.7% average across the 33 surveyed states."
  • Raising Arizona's Commitment to Health and Safety: The Need for Independent Oversight of Arizona's Prison System, Michele Deitch. January, 2021. "Over the last decade or so, Arizona's prisons have become synonymous with mismanagement, lack of safety, unconstitutional health care, and abysmal conditions for people in custody."
  • The Cost of Incarceration in New York State: How Counties Outside New York City Can Reduce Jail Spending and Invest in Communities, Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2021. "In 2019, the 57 counties outside New York City -- which are responsible for funding their own jails -- collectively spent more $1.3 billion to staff and run their jails."
  • An Essay Concerning Pretrial Services Lehigh County Controller. January, 2021. "In 2019, there were a total of 5,230 cases that made their way through Lehigh County's criminal justice system...Of those cases, roughly 49% were unable to post bail."
  • Do District Attorneys Represent Their Voters? Evidence from California's Era of Criminal Justice Reform, Michael W. Sances. January, 2021. "While voter preferences vary greatly across issues and geography, DA's almost always take the conservative position."
  • Racial Disparities in Youth Incarceration Persist Sentencing Project. February, 2021. "In ten years, the United States has cut youth incarceration in half.1 While the reduction is impressive, youth involvement in the juvenile justice system continues to impact youth of color disproportionately."

Tuesday, February 2 2021:

  • The Pandemic Behind Bars: COVID-19, Vaccination, and the People in Colorado's Prisons and Jails, Colorado Health Institute. January, 2021. "Outbreaks at prisons, jails, and other correctional and detention facilities account for 1 in every 24 cases of COVID-19 in Colorado since the start of the pandemic, and 15 of the 20 largest outbreaks in the state have occurred in prisons and jails."
  • Local Spending on Jails Tops $25 Billion in Latest Nationwide Data The Pew Charitable Trusts. January, 2021. "Jail and other local corrections costs had risen sixfold since 1977, with jail costs reaching $25 billion."
  • The Demand Is Still #DefundPolice: Lessons from 2020, Interrupting Criminalization. January, 2021. (Over the past six months, organizers secured divestment of over $840 million dollars from police departments, investments of at least $160 million dollars in communities, and increased transparency and community control over budgets in many areas.)

Thursday, January 28 2021:

  • The Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on Prison Adjustment and Recidivism Among Military Veterans: Evidence from Minnesota, Matthew W. Logan, Susan McNeeley, and Mark Morgan. January, 2021. "Our results indicate that the effects of TBI, PTSD, and other indicators of criminogenic risk are relevant when examining the experiences of justice-involved military veterans--especially with respect to recidivism-based outcomes."
  • Health Departments Taking Action on Incarceration: A Framework for Advancing Health Instead of Punishment During COVID-19, Human Impact Partners. January, 2021. "We know that there is no way for anyone to be truly safe and healthy inside a jail, prison, or immigration detention center, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic."
  • People in Jail and Prison in 2020 Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2021. "The number of people incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails in the United States dropped from around 2.1 million in 2019 to 1.8 million by mid-2020--a 14 percent decrease."

Tuesday, January 26 2021:

  • Immigration and Crime: A Public Policy Red Herring, CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance. January, 2021. "Despite fears that more immigration leads to higher rates of violent crime, one of the most consistent findings among research on this topic is that increases in immigration are associated with decreases--not increases--in violent offenses."
  • Punishing Relations: How WA DOC's Collateral Damage and Hidden Costs Imprison Families, Washington Corrections Watch. January, 2021. "The financial and emotional burdens of incarceration are primarily borne by female family members, most especially in communities of color."
  • Health Care Needs and Utilization Among New Yorkers With Criminal Justice System Involvement NYC Health, NYC Criminal Justice, and NYU Wagner. January, 2021. "Individuals who have had any jail contact have a higher burden of disease, including chronic illness, multi-morbidity, mental health and substance use disorders, and greater health care utilization."
  • Unmasked: Impacts of Pandemic Policing, COVID19 Policing Project. October, 2020. "Black people specifically were 4.5 times more likely to be policed and punished for violations of COVID-19 orders than white people."
  • Top Trends in State Criminal Justice Reform, 2020 Sentencing Project. January, 2021. "Incarcerated people are nearly 5X more likely to get COVID-19 compared to the general population. Yet only a handful of states took steps to decarcerate in 2020."
  • Chasing Justice: Addressing Police Violence and Corruption in Maryland, ACLU of Maryland. January, 2021. "91% of officers' use of force was targeted toward Black residents."
  • Mass Extraction: The Widespread Power of U.S. Law Enforcement to Search Mobile Phones, Upturn Toward Justice in Technology. October, 2020. "We found that state and local law enforcement agencies have performed hundreds of thousands of cellphone extractions since 2015, often without a warrant."
  • Building Safe, Thriving Communities: Research-Based Strategies for Public Safety, NYU Law School Center for Race, Inequality, and the Law and the Justice Collaborative Institute. October, 2020. "More and more, elected leaders and their constituents are recognizing that a path to safety and stability does not lie in a return to past, failed practices, but in an evidence-based, innovative reimagining of our law enforcement system."

Tuesday, December 29 2020:

  • "Defunding the Police" and People With Mental Illness Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. August, 2020. "We should dramatically reduce the role of the police in the lives of people with mental illness. As the same time, mental health services should be expanded and racial disparities in their delivery eliminated."

Tuesday, December 22 2020:

  • Incarcerated people and corrections staff should be prioritized in COVID-19 vaccination plans Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2020. "38 of the 49 states addressed (or seemed to address) incarcerated people as a priority group at all, in the original plans or in later updates. But in many states, correctional staff are prioritized before incarcerated people."
  • Officer Use of Force and the Failure of Oversight of New York City Jails Jennifer Ferentz. November, 2020. "Ultimately, this Note argues the actors responsible for changing the rules governing New York City jails and the practices carried out within them are abdicating that responsibility when it comes to this violence."
  • Since you asked: Just how overcrowded were prisons before the pandemic and how overcrowded are they now?, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2020. "41 states are currently operating at 75% or more of their capacity, with at least 10 of those state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons operating at more than 100%."
  • The research is clear: Solitary confinement causes long-lasting harm, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2020. "Prisons and jails are already inherently harmful, and placing people in solitary confinement adds an extra burden of stress that has been shown to cause permanent changes to people's brains and personalities."
  • The Impact of Incarceration on Food Insecurity among Households with Children Sally Wallace and Robynn Cox. October, 2012. "Food insecurity for adults and households with children (a less dire level of food insecurity than very low food security) is affected by parental incarceration under most specifications with magnitudes of impact from 4 to 15 percentage points."
  • Trends in Issuance of Criminal Summonses in New York City, 2003-2019 Data Collaborative for Justice. December, 2020. "Almost half of all marijuana possession summonses were issued to Black people (45.5%). Over 40% of summonses issued for disorderly conduct, public consumption of alcohol, and violations of transit authority rules were issued to Black people."

Monday, December 21 2020:

  • The Accreditation Con: A Broken Prison and Detention Facility Accreditation System That Puts Profits Over People, Office of Senator Elizabeth Warren. December, 2020. "It reveals that the ACA's private prison accreditation system is riddled with conflicts of interest, lacks transparency, and is subject to zero accountability even though millions in taxpayer dollars to flow to the ACA and private prison companies."

Thursday, December 17 2020:

  • Hotbeds of Infection: How ICE Detention Contributed to the Spread of COVID-19 in the United States, Detention Watch Network. December, 2020. "ICE's failure to release people from detention during the pandemic added over 245,000 cases to the total U.S. caseload."

Wednesday, December 16 2020:

  • Defund Sheriffs: A Toolkit for Organizers, Working Families, Sheriffs for Trusting Communities, Faith in Action Fund, & Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability. October, 2020. "Defunding sheriffs should be an urgent priority for anyone concerned with mass incarceration and police violence."
  • Emergency Department visits for depression following police killings of unarmed African Americans Paywall :( Abhery Das, Parvati Singh, Anju K.Kulkarni, and Tim A. Bruckner. November, 2020. "Police killings of unarmed African Americans correspond with an 11% increase in ED visits per 100,000 population related to depression among African Americans in the concurrent month and three months following the exposure (p < 0.05)."

Tuesday, December 15 2020:

  • Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison, Impact Justice. December, 2020. "Budget cuts and stagnant spending have led to fewer hot meals, smaller portions, lower-quality protein, fewer fresh fruits and vegetables, and more ultra-processed foods, as well as poorly equipped and ill-supervised kitchens that compromise quality."
  • Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center. November, 2020. "Non-policing approaches to violence prevention can produce significant benefits without the attendant harms of policing and punishment."
  • Medicaid's Evolving Role in Advancing the Health of People Involved in the Justice System The Commonwealth Fund. November, 2020. "Siloes between correctional and community health care providers disrupt care coordination and create gaps in treatment and health services that can be life-threatening."
  • Experience to Action: Reshaping Criminal Justice After COVID-19, Council on Criminal Justice. December, 2020. "The size, scale, and scope of the criminal justice system, along with the absence of effective public health coordination, posed a significant obstacle to COVID-19 prevention and control."
  • The "Radical" Notion of the Presumption of Innocence Square One Project. May, 2020. "Of the approximately 612,000 individuals that are currently being held in county jails, the vast majority, about 460,000, are awaiting some type of adjudication and thus are presumed innocent."
  • Counterevidence of crime-reduction effects from federal grants of military equipment to local police Paywall :( Gunderson et al. December, 2020. "We show that the 2014 data are flawed and that the more recent data provide no evidence that 1033 SME reduces crime."
  • The Prison Industry: How It Started, How It Works, How It Harms, Worth Rises. December, 2020. "This report maps the twelve sectors of the prison industry and details the extraction of wealth from the families that have been most disproportionately brutalized by over-policing, mass criminalization, mass incarceration, and mass surveillance."
  • Exploring Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System Over the Year Following First Arrest Paywall :( Padgaonkar et al. December, 2020. "Black youth committed fewer offenses prior to arrest than White youth, Black and Latino youth were more likely to be formally processed, and Black youth were most likely to be rearrested."
  • Learned Helplessness, Criminalization, and Victimization in Vulnerable Youth Square One Project. December, 2020. "In the United States and worldwide, youth detainment has become an immediate, catch-all response to challenges perceived as affecting public order and safety."

Friday, December 11 2020:

  • Institutional Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in American Prisons Meghan A. Novisky, Chelsey S. Narvey, and Daniel C. Semenza. October, 2020. "Correctional facilities remain high-risk locales for outbreaks and it is imperative that policies moving forward protect those who are most vulnerable while ensuring equity in access to those protections."
  • Racial prejudice predicts police militarization Tyler Jimenez, Peter J. Helm, Alexis Wilkinson, & Jamie Arndt. December, 2020. "Studies 2 and 3 are the first to explicitly connect these variables, finding that racial prejudice is predictive of both support for police militarization and actual police acquisitions of military equipment."
  • States Can Shorten Probation and Protect Public Safety The Pew Charitable Trusts. November, 2020. "Many people on supervision serve longer terms than are necessary for public safety."
  • Institutionalizing inequality in the courts: Decomposing racial and ethnic disparities in detention, conviction, and sentencing, Paywall :( Marisa Omori and Nick Petersen. September, 2020. "Our findings indicate that inequality is, in part, institutionalized through legal case factors, suggesting these factors are not "race neutral" but instead racialized and contribute to inequalities in court outcomes."

Tuesday, November 24 2020:

  • Naming and Shaming: Violations of the Human Rights of Transgender Persons with Felonies in Texas, Human Rights Clinic, Austin Community Law Center, and Trans Pride Initiative. November, 2020. "By contributing to and facilitating an environment where the human rights of transgender persons are repeatedly and callously disregarded, Texas violates international treaties and the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States."

Monday, November 23 2020:

  • Dollars and Sense in Cook County: Examining the Impact of General Order 18.8A on Felony Bond Court Decisions, Pretrial Release, and Crime, Safety and Justice Challenge. November, 2020. "GO18.8A also had no impact on new criminal activity or new violent criminal activity of those defendants released."
  • Hepatitis C Litigation: Healing Inmates as a Public Health Strategy, Robert Katz. April, 2020. "When an inmate HCV lawsuit brings about the universal treatment of infected inmates, it simultaneously vindicates the inmates' Eighth Amendment rights and maximally advances the public health goal of eradicating HCV. I"

Thursday, November 19 2020:

  • Punishing status and the punishment status quo: Solitary confinement in U.S. Immigration prisons, 2013-2017, Konrad Franco, Caitlin Patler, and Keramet Reiter. October, 2020. "Solitary confinement cases involving immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are vastly overrepresented in comparison to the share of these groups in the overall detained population."
  • Since you asked: What role does drug enforcement play in the rising incarceration of women?, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2020. "Over the past 35 years, total arrests have risen 25% for women, while decreasing 33% for men. The increase among women is largely driven by drugs."
  • Spend Your Values, Cut Your Losses 2021 Divestment Portfolio: Smart and Safe Justice System Solutions That Put Communities First, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. November, 2020. "Texas spends the most in the nation on prisons and jails; over the past three decades, it has grown 5x faster than the state's rate of spending on elementary and secondary education."
  • MA DOC Expenditures and Staffing Levels for Fiscal Year 2020 Lifers' Group Inc.. October, 2020. "The DOC spent nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in Fiscal 2020, a 6% increase or nearly $40 million over Fiscal 2019."
  • How Governors Can Use Categorical Clemency as a Corrective Tool Urban Institute. November, 2020. "Though many clemency deliberations are independent case-by-case assessments, in some cases, governors can also extend clemency eligibility categorically to groups of people in prison to mitigate structural issues or accomplish larger reform goals."
  • Evidence Shows That Most Immigrants Appear for Immigration Court Hearings Vera Institute of Justice. October, 2020. "Data from Vera's programs and other studies shows that most immigrants released from custody continue to appear in court when represented by counsel."
  • New BJS data: Prison incarceration rates inch down, but racial equity and real decarceration still decades away, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2020. "At the current pace of decarceration, it will be 2088 when state prison populations return to pre-mass incarceration levels."
  • Behavioral Health Crisis Alternatives: Shifting from Police to Community Responses, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2020. "Communities must pursue new approaches that minimize trauma and distress, promote dignity and autonomy, and reduce repeat encounters with police for people who experience behavioral health crises."
  • The Community Responder Model: How Cities Can Send the Right Responder to Every 911 Call, Center for American Progress. October, 2020. "Estimates for the share of calls that could be handled by [community responders] range from a low of 21 percent of calls in Detroit to a high of 38 percent in Seattle and Portland."
  • Wealth and Retirement: Pondering the Fate of Formerly Incarcerated Men During the Golden Years, Paywall :( Ngina Chiteji. October, 2020. "We find that formerly incarcerated men have little wealth accumulated by their late 40s and 50s, that they have limited access to on-the-job pensions, and that some may not even be able to rely on Social Security when they are old."
  • The Case Against Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments Pretrial Justice Institute. November, 2020. "RAIs simply add a veneer of scientific objectivity and mathematical precision to what are really very weak guesses about the future, based on information gathered from within a structurally racist and unequal system of law, policy and practice."
  • Releasing people pretrial doesn't harm public safety Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2020. "No matter the type of pretrial reform, the results were the same: Releasing people pretrial did not negatively impact public safety."
  • New BJS data reveals a jail-building boom in Indian country Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2020. "The share of people held pretrial in Indian country jails increased by 20 percentage points (an 80% increase) from 1999 to 2018, and the average length of stay in Indian country jails has doubled since 2002."

Tuesday, November 10 2020:

  • COVID and Corrections: A Profile of COVID Deaths in Custody in Texas, COVID, Corrections, and Oversight Project. November, 2020. "In one prison, the Duncan Unit, almost 6% of the incarcerated population has died."
  • Understanding Health Reform As Justice Reform: Medicaid, Care Coordination, and Community Supervision, Square One Project. October, 2020. "Health system reform built upon the foundation of Medicaid programs can provide many of the health and social supports needed to help people with health problems successfully return and remain in their communities."
  • 2020 State Ratings Report: Human Rights Protections for Children in the U.S. Justice System, Human Rights for Kids. November, 2020. "Our findings reveal that the overwhelming majority of the nation - 42 states - have made minimal to no efforts to create a legal framework to protect the human rights of children in the justice system."

Monday, November 9 2020:

  • Misunderstood and Mistreated: How Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Experience the Texas Criminal Legal System, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. October, 2020. "Approximately 14,700 people with I/DDs are currently incarcerated in Texas."
  • Civic Responses to Police Violence Desmond Ang and Jonathan Tebes. October, 2020. "We find that exposure to police violence leads to significant increases in registrations and votes. These effects are driven entirely by Blacks and Hispanics and are largest for killings of unarmed individuals."
  • New York's Ferguson Problem: How the state's racist fee system punishes poverty, lacks transparency, and is overdue for reform, No Price on Justice. September, 2020. "A national study found that 34 New York localities are about as reliant, if not more reliant, on fines and fees revenue as Ferguson was during the period investigated."
  • Reducing Racial Disparities in Crime Victimization Anna Harvey and Taylor Mattia. July, 2020. "We find that successful litigation over racially discriminatory practices substantially reduced both absolute and relative Black crime victimization, without increasing white victimization."

Wednesday, October 21 2020:

  • Time-In-Cell 2019: A Snapshot of Restrictive Housing Based on a Nationwide Survey of U.S. Prison Systems, The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School and the Association of State Correctional Administrators. September, 2020. "As of the summer of 2019, an estimated 55,000 to 62,500 prisoners in the United States were held in isolation for an average of 22 hours a day for 15 days."
  • Sanctuary policies reduce deportations without increasing crime Paywall :( David K. Hausman. October, 2020. "hese findings suggest that sanctuary policies, although effective at reducing deportations, do not threaten public safety."

Tuesday, October 20 2020:

  • Locked Out 2020: Estimates of People Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction, Sentencing Project. October, 2020. "As of 2020, an estimated 5.17 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction."
  • Voting with a Criminal Record How Registration Forms Frustrate Democracy, ACLU. October, 2008. "This analysis finds that 33 states plus the District of Columbia currently use registration forms that do not sufficiently convey information about the voter eligibility of the 47 million Americans with criminal records."
  • Challenging Jail-Based Disenfranchisement: A Resource Guide for Advocates, Campaign Legal Center. December, 2019. "Jail-based disenfranchisement is not the result of one bad law; instead, it is caused by a complicated, convoluted net of practical barriers that deprive eligible, incarcerated voters of their constitutional right to vote."
  • Voting in California Jails: A community toolkit, ACLU of Northern California. August, 2020. "There are roughly 82,000 people in California's jails and practically all of those individuals who are adult citizens have the right to vote."
  • Jails in Indian Country, 2017-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. October, 2020. "A total of 84 jails in Indian country held an estimated 2,870 inmates at midyear 2018, a 2% increase from the 2,820 inmates held in 84 facilities at midyear 2017"
  • NYPD Officer Misconduct Analysis New York University's Public Safety Lab. September, 2020. "We find that precincts with higher percentages of Black residents had higher levels of excess misconduct complaints, both all and substantiated, between 2006-2019."
  • Criminal Justice System Involvement and Food Insufficiency: Findings from the 2018 New York City Community Health Survey, Paywall :( Alexander Testa and Dylan B.Jackson. September, 2020. "Personal and family history of CRJ involvement is associated with a higher likelihood of experiencing moderate-to-severe food insufficiency."
  • The Treatment-Industrial Complex: Alternative Corrections, Private Prison Companies, and Criminal Justice Debt, Laura I Appleman. October, 2020. "This Article explores and analyzes the little-researched area of criminal justice debt arising from alternative corrections: how private corrections companies profit from supervising those individuals released, paroled, sent to rehabilitation or diversion"
  • 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."
  • Improving Health Equity for Women Involved in the Criminal Legal System Golembeski et al.. May, 2020. "We delineate reproductive health and motherhood, aging in prison, and reentry as critical areas exemplifying women's complex health-related needs, which may be best addressed via gender-responsive and trauma-informed care."
  • Specialized Parole and Resentencing Laws Focused on Emerging Adults: New and proposed reforms in CA, IL, CO, D.C., and FL, Emerging Adult Justice Project. September, 2020. "Essentially, emerging adults are viewed as less culpable and more malleable by virtue of their age, and the statutes and proposals examined in this factsheet codify that conception."

Friday, October 9 2020:

  • Credit Overdue: How States Can Mitigate Academic Credit Transfer Problems for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System, Southern Poverty Law Center. October, 2020. "The findings confirmed that youth frequently don't receive credit for the work they complete while in juvenile justice facilities."
  • Understanding Police Enforcement Vera Institute of Justice. September, 2020. "Most calls do not relate to serious or violent crime; instead, the most frequent calls involve nuisance complaints and low-level crimes."
  • America's Hidden Common Ground on Police Reform and Racism in the United States: Results from a Public Agenda/USA Today/Ipsos Hidden Common Ground survey, Ipsos and Public Agenda. June, 2020. "Most Americans (58%) say racial bias against Black or African Americans committed by police and law enforcement is a serious problem in their community, including 75% of Democrats and 51% of Independents as well as 40% of Republicans."
  • Youth Justice Under the Coronavirus: Linking Public Health Protections with the Movement for Youth Decarceration, Sentencing Project. September, 2020. "Despite almost two decades of declines in U.S. youth incarceration, The Sentencing Project reveals more than 1,800 incarcerated youth have tested positive for COVID-19 since March, including more than 300 cases in Florida and Texas."

Tuesday, October 6 2020:

  • Eligible, but excluded: A guide to removing the barriers to jail voting, Prison Policy Initiative & Rainbow PUSH Coalition. October, 2020. "Most people in jail are legally eligible to vote, but they are prevented from doing so by numerous barriers."

Thursday, October 1 2020:

  • Solitary Confinement in the Pelican State Texas Public Policy Foundation & Right on Crime. September, 2020. "Louisiana ranks #1 in percentage of inmates in segregation in the United States."
  • Associations Between Parole, Probation, Arrest, and Self-reported Suicide Attempts William C. Bryson, Jennifer Piel & Stephen Thielke. August, 2020. "Adults with recent arrest had higher risk of suicide attempts than those with parole, probation, or matched controls with no CJ involvement."
  • Research Memo: Police Unions and the Obstacles They Pose, Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability. September, 2020. "Police unions and the LEOBR/POBR pose major obstacles to police reform, specifically in regard to accountability, transparency, and community safety."
  • Ohio Could Save Big by Implementing Bail Reform: A Fiscal Impact Analysis, ACLU of Ohio. September, 2020. (Over 3,000 people charged with a misdemeanor are awaiting trial in Ohio jails at an annual cost of $74 to $96 million. And nearly 9,600 people charged with a felony are awaiting trial in Ohio jails at an annual cost of $235 to $306 million.)
  • Toward Shared Safety: The First-Ever National Survey of America's Safety Gaps, Alliance for Safety and Justice. September, 2020. "Broad consensus exists at the neighborhood level and across different demographics: public safety policies and investments should prioritize violence prevention, recovery, mental health, reentry and the most effective strategies to stop the cycle of crime"
  • Trauma, Healing, and Justice: Native Hawaiian Women in Hawaii's Criminal Justice System, Paywall :( Toni Bissen. September, 2020. "Native Hawaiian women comprise 21% of the female population in Hawaii but account for 40% of the jail and prison population."

Wednesday, September 30 2020:

Tuesday, September 29 2020:

  • Tracking Enforcement Trends in New York City: 2003-2018, Data Collaborative for Justice. September, 2020. "There were 5.8 enforcement actions among Black people for every one enforcement action among White people in 2018."
  • Pardons and Public Safety: Examining A Decade of Recidivism Data in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity. August, 2020. "Of the 3,037 people who applied for a pardon, only 2 (0.066%) were later convicted of a crime of violence."

Friday, September 11 2020:

  • Monitoring Pretrial Reform in Harris County: First Sixth Month Report of the Court-Appointed Monitor, Independent Monitor for the Odonnell v. Harris County Decree. September, 2020. "Second, contrary to bail industry and prosecutor propaganda, the data shows that recidivism has not increased, but is actually slightly down. This suggests that systems can release far more people while also reducing the rates of new arrests."

Wednesday, September 9 2020:

  • Correctional Populations in the United States, 2017-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. August, 2020. "An estimated 6,410,000 persons were held in prisons or jails or were on probation or parole in 2018."
  • How Many Complaints Against Police Officers Can Be Abated by Incapacitating A Few "Bad Apples?" Aaron Chalfin and Jacob Kaplan. August, 2020. "Our analysis suggests that surgically removing predictably problematic police officers is unlikely to have a large impact on citizen complaints."
  • Officer-Involved Shootings in Texas: 2016-2019, Texas Justice Initiative. August, 2020. "Shootings of civilians and their subsequent deaths caused by officers have been increasing over the four years"
  • Racial Disparities in the Massachusetts Criminal System The Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School. September, 2020. "The Commonwealth significantly outpaced national race and ethnicity disparity rates in incarceration, imprisoning Black people at a rate 7.9 times that of White people and Latinx people at 4.9 times that of White people."
  • The Effects of Holistic Defense on Criminal Justice Outcomes RAND Corporation. January, 2019. "Over the ten-year study period, holistic defense in the Bronx resulted in nearly 1.1 million fewer days of custodial punishment."
  • In the Shadows: A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining, Vera Institute of Justice. September, 2020. "Researchers estimate that more than 90% of criminal cases that end in conviction are the result of plea bargaining, a low-visibility, off-the-record, and informal process that usually occurs far from open court."
  • Lives on the Line: Women with Incarcerated Loved Ones and the Impact of COVID-19 Behind Bars, Essie Justice Group and Color of Change. September, 2020. (Only 7% of respondents reported that their incarcerated loved one had adequate access to basic necessities to prevent the spread of COVID-19.)

Tuesday, September 8 2020:

  • The Many Roads to Reintegration: A 50-State Report on Laws Restoring Rights and Opportunities After Arrest or Conviction, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. September, 2020. "The area where there is least consensus, and that remains most challenging to reformers, is managing dissemination of damaging criminal record information."
  • The Science of Solitary: Expanding the Harmfulness Narrative, Craig Haney. September, 2020. "Solitary confinement represents a particularly toxic, dangerous subset of a much broader, scientifically well-documented, extremely harmful condition--the deprivation of meaningful social contact."
  • Polluting our prisons? An examination of Oklahoma prison locations and toxic releases, 2011-2017, Paywall :( Maggie Leon-Corwin, Jericho R McElroy, Michelle L Estes, Jon Lewis, Michael A Long. January, 2020. "Our results find that prison zip codes have greater TRI emissions compared to non-prison zip codes."
  • State supervision, punishment and poverty: The case of drug bans on welfare receipt, Amanda Sheely. August, 2020. "I find that poverty is lower among people with drug convictions in states that opted out of the drug ban, compared to full ban states."
  • Local Labor Market Inequality in the Age of Mass Incarceration Luke Petach and Anita Alves Pena. 2020. "While income inequality is associated with higher rates of incarceration for all race and ethnicity groups (although not always in statistically significant fashion), the effect is largest for non-white, nonHispanic individuals."
  • 96 Deaths in Detention: A View of COVID-19 in the Federal Bureau of Prisons as Captured in Death Notices, World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School. August, 2020. "They reveal substantial shortcomings that are an indictment of the Bureau, the Department of Justice, and the current Administration, and the American public that has proven too willing to write off the lives of millions of incarcerated people."
  • Law Enforcement Super Pacs and the Fight for Reform Democratic Policy Center. June, 2020. "This report outlines an under-investigated aspect of law enforcement union power: their use of independent expenditure groups to influence elections and their ability to hire top Democratic consultants to execute their campaigns."
  • Which Side Are We On: Can Labor Support #BlackLivesMatter and Police Unions?, David Unger. July, 2020. "An estimated 60 to 80 percent of police officers nationwide are unionized,twice the 34 percent unionization rate for the entire public sector, and at least ten times the rate of private sector unionization."
  • Impacts of Private Prison Contracting on Inmate Time Served and Recidivism Anita Mukherjee. August, 2020. "The empirical analysis shows that private prison inmates serve 90 additional days. This is alternatively estimated as 4.8 percent of the average sentence."
  • More Work to Do: Analysis of Probation and Parole in the United States, 2017-2018, Kendra Bradner, Vincent Schiraldi, Natasha Mejia, and Evangeline Lopoo. August, 2020. "From 2008 to 2018, the decline in the number of people on probation has failed to keep pace with the decline in arrests, resulting in an increase in the rate of probation, per arrest."
  • Life Years Lost to Police Encounters in the United States Elizabeth Wrigley-Field. August, 2020. "This implies a loss of roughly 16,000 years of life for recent cohorts of Black men."
  • An Examination of Women's Experiences with Reporting Sexual Victimization Behind Prison Walls Paywall :( April Surrell and Ida M. Johnson. September, 2020. "The interviewees identified stigma and gossip, officer camaraderie, and fear of retaliation as the dominant barriers to reporting and investigating incidents of sexual assault."

Tuesday, September 1 2020:

  • The Other Epidemic: Fatal Police Shootings in the Time of COVID-19, ACLU. August, 2020. "From January 1, 2015, to June 30, 2020, police officers shot and killed 5,442 people."

Monday, August 31 2020:

  • The First Step Act of 2018: One Year of Implementation, United States Sentencing Commission. August, 2020. (Since authorized by the First Step Act, 2,387 out of 226,000 people incarcerated in federal prisons received a reduction in sentence as a result of retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.)
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement, Brennan Center for Justice. August, 2020. "Alarmingly, internal FBI policy documents have also warned agents assigned to domestic terrorism cases that the white supremacist and anti-government militia groups they investigate often have "active links" to law enforcement officials."

Thursday, August 20 2020:

Tuesday, August 18 2020:

  • No Access to Justice: Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness and Jail, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2020. "Researchers have found that homelessness is between 7.5 and 11.3 times more prevalent among the jail population, and in some places the rate is much higher."
  • Public opinion and the politics of collateral consequence policies Paywall :( Travis Johnston and Kevin H Wozniak. August, 2020. "We find that Americans generally oppose benefit restrictions, though support for these policies is higher among Republicans and people with higher levels of racial resentment."

Tuesday, August 4 2020:

  • Limiting COVID-19 Transmission and Mitigating the Adverse Consequences of a COVID-19 Outbreak in Correctional Settings: RELEASE * COHORT * TEST, AMEND & Berkeley School of Public Health. May, 2020. "As the COVID-19 epidemic sweeps into correctional institutions around the nation, these critical actions must be urgently prioritized by system and political leaders in order to avert a health and humanitarian disaster among incarcerated people..."
  • Whom the State Kills Scott Phillips & Justin Marceau. July, 2020. "The overall execution rate is a staggering seventeen times greater for defendants convicted of killing a white victim."
  • National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies COVID-19 Policy Response Survey National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies. July, 2020. "Most surveyed jurisdictions increased: use of video conferencing for court hearings, pretrial release, release on personal recognizance for non-violent crimes, and cite & release."
  • Probation and Parole in the United States, 2017-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. August, 2020. "An estimated 1 in 58 adults in the U.S. were under community supervision at year-end 2018."
  • Revoked: How Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States, Human Rights Watch & the ACLU. July, 2020. "The most common rule violations that trigger incarceration in Wisconsin are using drugs and consuming alcohol or entering bars. In Pennsylvania, state parole violations largely result from people failing to report address changes and using drugs."
  • Sticker Shock 2020: The Cost of Youth Incarceration, Justice Policy Institute. July, 2020. "The average state cost for the secure confinement of a young person is now $588 per day, or $214,620 per year, a 44 percent increase from 2014."

Thursday, July 30 2020:

  • Criminal Disqualifications in the Paycheck Protection Program Keith Finlay, Michael Mueller-Smith, Brittany Street. July, 2020. "Black and Hispanic men, younger men, and Black women experience higher than average exclusion from PPP eligibility due to higher rates of contact with the criminal justice system in each state."
  • Who Must Pay to Regain the Vote? A 50-State Survey, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. July, 2020. "In most of the others (16 states), regaining the vote is tied to completion of supervision, which may give courts and supervision officials some discretion to delay reenfranchisement temporarily if LFOs have not been paid, but not to deny it permanently."
  • Aligning Correctional Health Standards With Medicaid-Covered Benefits Marin G. Olson, Utsha G. Khatri, Tyler N. A. Winkelman. July, 2020. "Few correctional facilities have formal accreditation, and even accredited facilities do not always meet constitutional requirements."
  • Confronting the Demographics of Power: America's Sheriffs, Women Donors Network. June, 2020. "Ninety two percent of sheriffs are white. Ninety percent are white men."
  • Good Cop, Bad Cop: Using Civilian Allegations to Predict Police Misconduct, Kyle Rozema and Max Schanzenbach. May, 2019. "The worst 1 percent of officers, as measured by civilian allegations, generate almost 5 times the number of payouts and over 4 times the total damage payouts in civil rights litigation."
  • Do Detainees Plead Guilty Faster? A Survival Analysis of Pretrial Detention and the Timing of Guilty Pleas, Paywall :( Nick Peterson. April, 2019. "Survival analyses indicate that pretrial detainees plead guilty 2.86 times faster than released defendants do."
  • Use of Structured Sanctions and Incentives in Probation and Parole Supervision Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. July, 2020. "There is strong evidence that the use of incentives by supervising officers produces improved supervision outcomes for individuals convicted of more serious offenses and people classified as higher risk to reoffend."
  • Illinois Failing Key Pillar of COVID-19 Response: Prisons Remain Crowded While Early Releases Exacerbate Racial Inequity, Restore Justice. June, 2020. "White people are being released from prison at much higher rates--and much earlier--than their Black and Latino peers. While white people comprise just 32 percent of the Illinois prison population, they account for nearly half of all early releases."
  • Barred from working: A Nationwide Study of Occupational Licensing Barriers for Ex-Offenders, Institute for Justice. May, 2020. "Six states--Alabama, Alaska, Nevada, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont--were tied for last, receiving a zero on a 100-point scale for their lack of protections for felons seeking licenses."
  • Youth Detention Admissions Remain Low, But Releases Stall Despite COVID-19 The Annie E. Casey Foundation. July, 2020. "In the months since the pandemic emerged in March, the disparities in detention that disadvantage Black youth have gotten worse, solely because Black youth have been released at a slower rate than their white peers."

Tuesday, July 28 2020:

  • Medical Isolation and Solitary Confinement: Balancing Health and Humanity in US Jails and Prisons During COVID-19, David H. Cloud, Cyrus Ahalt, Dallas Augustine, David Sears MD & Brie Williams. 2015. "Any effective and ethical medical isolation and quarantine program in US jails and prisons must be preceded by the immediate release of as many people as possible from jails and prisons to ensure that adequate physical space & medical staff are available."
  • Decarceration and Crime During COVID-19 ACLU. July, 2020. "Over this time period, we found that the reduction in jail population was functionally unrelated to crime trends in the following months."
  • No Excuses: Governors Must Pursue Decarceration Along With Investments in Reentry Services, The Justice Collaborative Institute. June, 2020. "Meaningful reentry services are available and can be expanded by building upon a large network of existing programs."

Monday, July 27 2020:

Thursday, July 2 2020:

  • Police Officers Rarely Charged for Excessive Use of Force in Federal Court TRAC. June, 2020. "In fact, in the twenty-year period between 1990 and 2019, federal prosecutors filed SS 242 charges about 41 times per year on average."
  • Race and Reasonableness in Police Killings Jeffrey Fagan and Alexis Campbell. May, 2020. "Black suspects are more than twice as likely to be killed by police than are persons of other racial or ethnic groups; even when there are no other obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable."
  • 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."

Wednesday, July 1 2020:

  • The Cumulative Probability of Arrest by Age 28 Years in the United States by Disability Status, Race/Ethnicity, and Gender, Erin J. McCauley. 2015. "Estimates demonstrated that those with disabilities have a higher cumulative probability of arrest than those without. The risk was disproportionately spread across races/ethnicities, with Blacks with disabilities experiencing the highest risk of arrest."
  • "Whatever they do, I'm her comfort, I'm her protector." How the foster system has become ground zero for the U.S. drug war, Movement for Family Power, NYU Family Defense Clinic, Drug Policy Alliance. June, 2020. "We estimate this number jumps to one in three Black and/or Latinx children having had contact with ACS in the past five years, either through an investigation, service provision or foster care."
  • The Broad Scope and Variation of Monetary Sanctions: Evidence From Eight States, Sarah Shannon, Beth M. Huebner, Alexes Harris, et al.. June, 2020. (Key trends include: the lack of transparent processes in implementing this form of punishment, the wide variation in practices and policies across jurisdictions, and the ways that noncompliance deepens legal entanglements and collateral consequences.)
  • Incarcerated Parents and Child Welfare in Washington Sayer Rippey. March, 2020. "From 2006 to 2016, 32,000 incarcerated parents in the United States permanently lost their parental rights without ever being accused of child abuse.1 Of these, approximately 5,000 lost their parental rights solely because of their incarceration."
  • Incarceration Weakens a Community's Immune System: Mass Incarceration and COVID-19 Cases in Milwaukee Preliminary Results, Measures for Justice. June, 2020. "The number of incarcerations is a strong predictor of the number of COVID-19 cases above and beyond the effect of other predictors in the model, including poverty, unemployment, and population not in the labor force."
  • Examining the Relationship Between Incarceration and Population Health: The Roles of Region and Urbanicity, Paywall :( Robert R. Weidner and Jennifer Schultz. May, 2020. "Results indicate that level of incarceration has a detrimental effect on both mortality (i.e., premature death) and morbidity (i.e., self-reported health), and that these effects are more pronounced in rural and Southern counties."
  • Injustice and the Disappearance of Discretionary Detention under Trump: Detaining Low Risk Immigrants without Bond, Robert Koulish and Katherine Evans. May, 2020. "The data show that officers have manipulated the risk tool by subjecting low-risk immigrants to blanket detention, which has come to define the no-release Trump immigration policy in the New York City area."
  • Trauma and Loss During Reentry: Early Findings from a Multi-State Trial, Florida State University Institute for Justice Research and Development. May, 2020. "47% of our participants experienced at least one traumatic event in the 8 months after their release from incarceration."
  • Sending New Yorkers to Jail: Police Unions, Campaign Contributions, and the Political Fight to Rollback Bail Reform, Center for Community Alternatives, Citizen Action of New York, and the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York. June, 2020. (On average, Senators who voted to expose more New Yorkers to money bail received 10 times as much in law enforcement union donations as those who voted in opposition.)
  • Widespread Desire for Policing and Criminal Justice Reform The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. June, 2020. "Americans, regardless of race, strongly support policies that include body cameras, holding police accountable for excessive force and racially biased policing, and creating criteria for the use of force."
  • To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct, Somil Trivedi and Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. May, 2020. "The persistent, codependent relationship between police and prosecutors exacerbates police misconduct and violence and is aided by prosecutors in both legal and extralegal ways."
  • Police Brutality Bonds: How Wall Street Profits from Police Violence, Action Center on Race & the Economy. June, 2020. "In the twelve cities and counties included here, we found a total of nearly $878 million in bond borrowing to cover police related settlements and judgments."
  • #DefundPolice Toolkit: Concrete Steps Toward Divestment from Policing & Investment in Community Safety, Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action & Movement for Black Lives. June, 2020. "#DefundPolice is a strategy that goes beyond dollars and cents--it is not just about decreasing police budgets, it is about reducing the power, scope, and size of police departments."
  • Police Killings in the US: Inequalities by Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Position, People's Policy Project. June, 2020. "Whites in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 7.9 per million, compared to 2 per million in the least-poor areas. Blacks in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 12.3 per million, compared to 6.7 per million in the least-poor areas."
  • The Limits of Fairer Fines: Lessons from Germany, Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. June, 2020. "Germany also shows us that considering ability to pay at sentencing in every case is possible without being unduly cumbersome."
  • Why Bail Reform is Safe and Effective: The Case of Cook County, The JFA Institute. April, 2020. "Judge Evans' Order has resulted in over 3,000 people each year who no longer are needlessly jailed because they can't afford bail. Thousands more are either spending less time in jail or avoiding prison sentences. And crime rates have dropped."
  • Paying on Probation: How Financial Sanctions Intersect with Probation to Target, Trap, and Punish People Who Cannot Pay, Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. June, 2020. "All but two states have statutes authorizing the imposition of supervision fees on people sentenced to some or all types of supervised probation.75 Most supervision fees are assessed monthly, and can be quite high, ranging from $10 to $150 per month."
  • The Complexities of Race and Place: Childhood Neighborhood Disadvantage and Adult Incarceration for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos, Steven Elias Alvarado. June, 2020. "Blacks, the findings suggest, experience the weakest neighborhood associations with incarceration, suggesting that residential mobility for blacks does not protect against incarceration as much as it does for whites and Latinos."
  • Whitewashing the Jury Box: How California Perpetuates the Discriminatory Exclusion of Black and Latinx Jurors, Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic. 2015. "We evaluated nearly 700 cases decided by the California Courts of Appeal from 2006 through 2018, which involved objections to prosecutors' peremptory challenges. In nearly 72% of these cases, district attorneys used their strikes to remove Black jurors."
  • Do Public Defender Resources Matter? The Effect of Public Defender and Support Staff Caseloads on the Incarceration of Felony Defendants, Aaron Gottlieb and Kelsey Arnold. April, 2020. "Results suggest that felony defendants in counties with higher public defender and support staff caseloads are more likely to be detained pretrial and that felony defendants in counties with smaller support staff caseloads receive shorter incarceration."

Friday, June 26 2020:

  • Physical Health and Disability Among U.S. Adults Recently on Community Supervision Tyler N. A. Winkelman, Michelle S. Phelps, Kelly Lyn Mitchell, Latasha Jennings, and Rebecca J. Shlafer. April, 2020. "Compared to the general population, adults recently on community supervision were significantly more likely to report fair or poor health, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hepatitis B or C, one or more chronic conditions, and any disability."
  • Failing Grades: States' Responses to COVID-19 in Jails & Prisons, Prison Policy Initiative and ACLU. June, 2020. "Despite all of the information, voices calling for action, and the obvious need, state responses ranged from disorganized or ineffective, at best, to callously nonexistent at worst."
  • Police Disciplinary Appeals Stephen Rushin. 2019. "Many communities have established appeals procedures that may hamper reform efforts, contribute to officer misconduct, and limit public oversight of police departments."

Tuesday, June 23 2020:

Friday, June 5 2020:

  • Commercialized (In)justice Litigation Guide: Applying Consumer Laws to Commercial Bail, Prison Retail, and Private Debt Collection, National Consumer Law Center. June, 2020. "States and local governments have increasingly offloaded core functions of their criminal legal systems--traditionally public services--onto private corporations operating to maximize profit for their owners and shareholders."

Tuesday, June 2 2020:

  • Criminal Record Stigma in the College-Educated Labor Market Michael Cerda-Jara, Aminah Elster, and David J. Harding. May, 2020. "The overall callback rate is 50 percent lower for college-educated men with criminal records compared to college-educated men with no record."
  • Compassionate release was never designed to release large numbers of people Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2020. "Unfortunately, what they, and the American public, are learning is that compassionate release is not a transparent and linear process, but an unpredictably ordered series of obstacles."
  • Persistent and aggressive interactions with the police: potential mental health implications, J.L. Hirschtick et al.. February, 2019. (Men reporting a high number of lifetime police stops have three times greater odds of current PTSD symptoms compared with men who did not report high lifetime police stops, even after adjusting for a range of factors.)
  • Collateral Damage: The Health Effects of Invasive Police Encounters in New York City, Abigail A. Sewell and Kevin A. Jefferson. April, 2016. "It shows that, holding constant crime levels, segregation measures, and known sociodemographic correlates of health, community-level Terry stop patterns associate with individual-level illness."
  • Risk of Police-Involved Death by Race/Ethnicity and Place, United States, 2012-2018 Paywall :( Frank Edwards, Michael H. Esposito, and Hedwig Lee. August, 2018. (Police were responsible for about 8% of all homicides with adult male victims between 2012 and 2018, with Black men having the highest risk of mortality from police violence.)
  • Police Union Contracts Stephen Rushin. March, 2017. "Across America's largest cities, many police officers receive excessive procedural protections during internal disciplinary investigations, effectively immunizing them from the consequences of misconduct."
  • TRENDS: Police Militarization and the Use of Lethal Force, Paywall :( Edward Lawson, Jr.. July, 2018. (There is a positive and significant association between militarization and the number of suspects killed, controlling for several other possible explanations.)
  • The Wandering Officer Ben Grunwald & John Rappaport. April, 2020. "In any given year over the last three decades, an average of roughly 1,100 full-time law-enforcement officers in Florida walk the streets having been fired in the past, and almost 800 having been fired for misconduct."
  • Catalyzing Policing Reform with Data: Policing Typology for Los Angeles Neighborhoods, Urban Institute. May, 2020. "However, across all groups and their varied activity levels, Black people are stopped at the highest rate."
  • Bail Reform Revisited: The Impact of New York's Amended Bail Law on Pretrial Detention, Center for Court Innovation. May, 2020. "When compared to the original reforms passed in 2019, the amendments will produce a 16 percent relative increase in the use of money bail and pretrial detention among New York City criminal cases and a 16 percent increase in the pretrial jail population."
  • The Relationship Between Structural Racism and Black-White Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings at the State Level Paywall :( Aldina Mesic et al. April, 2018. "For every 10-point increase in the state racism index, the Black-White disparity ratio of police shooting rates of people not known to be armed increased by 24%."
  • Using Shifts in Deployment and Operations to Test for Racial Bias in Police Stops John M. MacDonald and Jeffrey Fagan. May, 2019. "For blacks, impact-zone formation increases arrests, summons, and frisks. For Hispanics, impact-zone formation increases arrests, frisks, and street detention."

Monday, June 1 2020:

  • Does contact with the justice system deter or promote future delinquency? Results from a longitudinal study of British adolescent twins, Ryan T. Motz et al.. December, 2019. "We found that contact with the justice system--through spending a night in jail/prison, being issued an ASBO, or having an official crime record--promotes misbehavior, which supports the labeling hypothesis."
  • U.S. Prison Decline: Insufficient to Undo Mass Incarceration, Sentencing Project. May, 2019. "At the pace of decarceration since 2009, averaging 1% annually, it will take 65 years-- until 2085--to cut the U.S. prison population in half."
  • Racial Disparities in NYPD's COVID-19 Policing: Unequal Enforcement of 311 Social Distancing Calls, The Legal Aid Society. May, 2020. "Although the official data released by the city is limited and incomplete, the data that is available demonstrates the disproportionate impacts of the NYPD's pandemic policing on Black and Latino New Yorkers."
  • A randomized control trial evaluating the effects of police body-worn cameras David Yokum, Anita Ravishankar, and Alexander Coppock. May, 2019. "Our results indicate that cameras did not meaningfully affect police behavior on a range of outcomes, including complaints and use of force."
  • Examining the Role of Use of Force Policies in Ending Police Violence Samuel Sinyangwe. September, 2016. "These results suggest specific changes to police department use of force policies can significantly reduce police violence in America."
  • Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime Paywall :( Christopher M. Sullivan & Zachary P. O'Keeffe. September, 2017. "Analysing several years of unique data obtained from the NYPD, we find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony assault and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp reductions in proactive policing."
  • The Effect of Direct and Vicarious Police Contact on the Educational Achievement of Urban Teens Paywall :( Aaron Gottlieb and Robert Wilson. August, 2019. "We find that arrest, police contact that does not result in arrest, and vicarious police contact are all associated with reductions in educational achievement."
  • Preventing the Use of Deadly Force: Paywall :( Jay T. Jennings and Meghan E. Rubado. February, 2017. "Findings show that one policy--the requirement that officers file a report when they point their guns at people but do not fire--is associated with significantly lower rates of gun deaths."

Friday, May 15 2020:

  • People in Prison in 2019 [Website] Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2020. ""Vera researchers collected data on the number of people who were incarcerated in state and federal prisons as of December 31, 2019...[and] updated data on people in prison at the end of the first quarter of 2020.""

Thursday, May 14 2020:

  • Prisons as Panacea or Pariah? The Countervailing Consequences of the Prison Boom on the Political Economy of Rural Towns, John M. Eason. January, 2017. "Thus, neither entirely pariah nor panacea, the prison functions as a state-sponsored public works program for disadvantaged rural communities but also supports perverse economic incentives for prison proliferation."

Tuesday, May 12 2020:

Friday, May 8 2020:

  • The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players, Worth Rises. May, 2020. "This report exposes over 4,100 corporations that profit from the devastating mass incarceration of our nation's marginalized communities--disproportionately those of color and with low income."

Thursday, May 7 2020:

  • How prepared are state prison systems for a viral pandemic? Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2020. "Most prisons are still aiming to keep the virus out of their facilities, rather than focusing on how to minimize the harm to incarcerated people, to their staff and to society as a whole"
  • Voting in Jails Sentencing Project. May, 2020. "In local jails the vast majority of persons are eligible to vote because they are not currently serving a sentence for a felony conviction."
  • While jails drastically cut populations, state prisons have released almost no one Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2020. "Our analysis finds that jails are responding to the unprecedented public health crisis by rapidly dropping their populations. In contrast, state prisons have barely budged."
  • Prisoners in 2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2020. "At year-end 2018, an estimated 1,465,200 prisoners were under state or federal jurisdiction."
  • Resentencing of Juvenile Lifers: The Philadelphia Experience, Tarika Daftary-Kapur and Tina M. Zottoli. April, 2020. "269 lifers have been re-sentenced in Philadelphia and 174 have been released. Six (3.5%) have been re-arrested. Charges were dropped in four of the cases and two (1%) resulted in new convictions."
  • A Review of Recreation Requirements in U.S. Juvenile Justice Facilities Paywall :( Maria Leon, Corliss Outley, Miner Marchbanks, Brandy Kelly Pryor. August, 2019. "There is not a shared definition of recreation, only 70% of states have daily mandatory minimums requirements, only 44% of states require youth be given time outside, and only 56% of states include justifications for denying youth access to recreation."

Wednesday, May 6 2020:

  • Rikers 6-A Early Release Program: Results After One Month of Operations, Center for Court Innovation. April, 2020. "After one month of operations, only 7 of the 312 released individuals--2.2 percent--have been re-arrested while in the program. Of these, 4 were for alleged misdemeanor offenses."

Friday, May 1 2020:

  • Recommendations for Rapid Release and Reentry During the COVID-19 Pandemic NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. April, 2020. "[The assumptions and recommendations in this report] provide guidance to agencies supporting rapid release from incarceration and community reentry in response to COVID-19."
  • Since you asked: Is social distancing possible behind bars?, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2020. "The short answer is no - social distancing is even harder behind bars than in nursing homes or on cruise ships."
  • Since you asked: What data exists about Native American people in the criminal justice system?, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2020. "Problems with data collection - and an unfortunate tendency to group Native Americans together with other ethnic and racial groups in data publications - have made it hard to understand the effect of mass incarceration on Native people."
  • A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform, ACLU. April, 2020. "On average, a Black person is 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates."
  • Large scale releases and public safety Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2020. "Large-scale releases have been common throughout U.S. and international history for a variety of legal, political and health reasons."
  • Reproductive Healthcare Experiences of Incarcerated Women: A Qualitative Study, Paywall :( Sarah O'Connor and Rebecca Perkins. 2015. "Most women described fragmentation of care with inability to consistently access reproductive and prenatal healthcare services. Frequent transitions between institutions exacerbated problems with access."

Thursday, April 30 2020:

  • Flattening the Curve: Why Reducing Jail Populations Is Key to Beating COVID-19, ACLU, Washington State University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Tennessee. April, 2020. "Models projecting total U.S. fatalities to be under 100,0001 may be underestimating deaths by almost another 100,000 if we continue to operate jails as usual."
  • Policing in a Time of Pandemic: Recommendations for Law Enforcement, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and Georgetown Law Innovative Policing Program. April, 2020. "Traditional law enforcement practices such as stops, searches, and arrests currently create a substantial risk of infection for police, suspects and community members alike."
  • Modeling COVID-19 and impacts on U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, 2020 Irvine et al.. April, 2020. "Preventing the rapid spread necessitates intervention measures such as granting ICE detainees widespread release from an unsafe environment by returning them to the community."
  • Protecting Rural Jails from Coronavirus Data for Progress and The Justice Collaborative. April, 2020. "Our analysis shows that a significant percentage of people being held in jails--12% nationally and over a third in some states--are housed in counties without any ICU beds."
  • Hundreds are still jailed for technical parole violations in NYC, which means decarceration is happening far too slowly Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2020. "As of April 22nd, there were still 293 people held in NYC jails for technical parole violations:"
  • Policy Reforms Can Strengthen Community Supervision: A framework to improve probation and parole, The Pew Charitable Trusts. April, 2020. "This report details the challenges facing community supervision systems around the country and outlines specific policy changes that states can make to achieve improved outcomes."
  • At Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Dramatic and Rapid Reductions in Youth Detention The Annie E. Casey Foundation. April, 2020. "A survey of juvenile justice agencies in 30 state finds that the number of young people in local secure detention centers fell by 24% in March 2020, a sign that the coronavirus pandemic is dramatically altering the juvenile justice system."

Monday, April 27 2020:

Tuesday, April 14 2020:

  • Understanding Violent-Crime Recidivism J.J. Prescott, Benjamin Pyle, and Sonja B. Starr. September, 2020. "Although estimates vary, our synthesis of the available evidence suggests that released violent offenders, especially homicide offenders who are older at release, have lower overall recidivism rates relative to other released offenders."

Tuesday, April 7 2020:

  • Five ways the criminal justice system could slow the pandemic Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2020. "Given the toll COVID-19 has already taken on our jails and prisons, as well as our society at large, the time is now for federal, state, and local officials to put public health before punishment."
  • The Case for Clean Slate in North Carolina R Street. March, 2020. "1.6 million North Carolinians, or close to one in five individuals, have a criminal record."
  • Mapping disadvantage: The geography of incarceration in New York, Prison Policy Initiative and VOCAL-NY. February, 2020. "A relatively small number of areas in New York are disproportionately impacted by incarceration, and high imprisonment rates correlate with other community problems related to poverty, employment, education, and health."
  • Opioids, Race, and Drug Enforcement: Exploring Local Relationships Between Neighborhood Context and Black-White Opioid-Related Possession Arrests, Paywall :( Ellen A. Donnelly, Jascha Wagner, Madeline Stenger, Hannah G. Cortina, Daniel J. O'Connell, Tammy L. Anderson. March, 2020. "Calls for police service for overdoses increase White arrests in more advantaged, rural communities. Economic disadvantage and racial diversity in neighborhoods more strongly elevate possession arrest rates among Blacks relative to Whites."
  • The National Registry of Exonerations Annual Report The National Registry of Exonerations. March, 2020. "Last year saw a record number of years lost to prison by defendants exonerated for crimes they did not commit--1,908 years in total for 143 exonerations, an average of 13.3 years lost per exoneree."
  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2020. "The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people"
  • Data Collected Under the First Step Act, 2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2020. (At year-end 2018, a total of 80,599 people in federal prisons-- or 45% of the BOP population--were the parent, step-parent, or guardian of a minor child.)
  • Contraception need and available services among incarcerated women in the United States: a systematic review, Mishka S. Peart & Andrea K. Knittel. March, 2020. "Incarcerated women desire access to standard and emergency contraception from carceral health care systems."
  • Post-release mortality among persons hospitalized during their incarceration Paywall :( David L. Rosen, Andrew L. Kavee, Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein. April, 2020. "People hospitalized during incarceration constitute a particularly vulnerable, yet relatively easily identifiable priority population to focus health interventions supporting continuity of care following prison release."
  • Federal Sentencing of Hispanic Defendants in Changing Immigrant Destinations Paywall :( Jeffery T. Ulmer and Brandy R. Parker. June, 2019. "New destinations, along with non-immigrant destinations, sentenced Hispanic non-citizens more harshly, especially the undocumented."
  • Long-term consequences of being placed in disciplinary segregation Christopher Wildeman and Lars Hojsgaard Andersen. March, 2020. "The results from matched difference-in-differences analyses show that Danish inmates placed in disciplinary segregation experience larger drops in employment and larger increases in the risk of being convicted of a new crime in the 3 years after release."
  • Jail Inmates in 2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2020. "The male jail inmate population decreased 9% from 2008 to 2018, while the female inmate population increased 15%."
  • Which Police Departments Want Reform? Barriers to Evidence-Based Policymaking, Samantha Goerger, Jonathan Mummolo, and Sean J. Westwood. April, 2020. "Many agencies that indicate interest in transparent, evidence-based policymaking are likely engaging in cheap talk, and recoil once performance evaluations are made salient."
  • Demonstrations, demoralization, and de-policing Paywall :( Christopher J. Marier and Lorie A. Fridell. March, 2020. "Post-Ferguson protests in 2014 did not appreciably worsen police morale nor lead to substantial withdrawal from most police work, suggesting that the police institution is resilient to exogenous shocks."
  • Policing the American University Civilytics Consulting LLC. February, 2020. "Since reporting began, campus police departments arrests of black adults have annually increased. Recent reductions in total arrests are due to a sharp decrease in arrests of white adults."
  • Time, Money, and Punishment: Institutional Racial-Ethnic Inequalities in Pretrial Detention and Case Outcomes, Paywall :( Brandon P. Martinez, Nick Petersen, Marisa Omori. October, 2019. "Results indicate that time and money significantly stratify defendants by race and ethnicity, where bond amounts increase time detained, and that time detained in turn reinforces racial inequalities in conviction and incarceration."
  • Technical violations, immigration detainers, and other bad reasons to keep people in jail Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2020. "We found that across 10 urban areas, the share of people held at least in part for probation or parole reasons ranged widely, from 6% to 58% of the average daily jail population."
  • Connecting Families: Compelling messaging for prison phone justice campaigns, Worth Rises. March, 2020. "71% of people support providing families and their loved ones behind bars phone calls at no cost."
  • Racial Inequities in New York Parole Supervision Kendra Bradner and Vincent Schiraldi. March, 2020. "Black and Latinx people are significantly more likely than white people to be under supervision, to be jailed pending a violation hearing, and to be incarcerated in New York State prisons for a parole violation."
  • The Race of Defendants and Victims in Pennsylvania Death Penalty Decisions: 2000-2010, Paywall :( Jeffery T. Ulmer, John H. Kramer, and Gary Zajac. August, 2019. "We find that those who kill white victims, regardless of defendant race, are more likely to receive the death penalty."
  • Life Without Parole Sentencing in North Carolina Brandon 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."
  • 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."
  • Treatment Needs and Gender Differences Among Clients Entering a Rural Drug Treatment Court With a Co-Occurring Disorder The National Drug Court Resource, Policy, and Evidence-Based Practice Center. February, 2020. "Males had longer CJ involvement, alcohol use, and more needle sharing compared to females. Females reported more trauma, sexual abuse, interpersonal violence, chronic and recent medical conditions, unstable housing, and a lower rate of employment."
  • The Future of Dignity: Insights from the Texas Women's Dignity Retreat, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. March, 2020. "Female incarceration in Texas has increased at more than twice the rate of male incarceration over the past 40 years."
  • Recommendations for Addressing Racial Bias in Risk and Needs Assessment in the Juvenile Justice System Child Trends. January, 2020. "Because risk and needs assessments may disproportionately impact youth of color, there is a need to improve their accuracy and underlying properties."

Wednesday, March 4 2020:

  • Changing Course in the Overdose Crisis: Moving from Punishment to Harm Reduction and Health, Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2020. "U.S. policies, practices, and systems continue to criminalize and punish people who use drugs within and beyond the criminal justice system."
  • Incarcerated Adults with Dependent Children Daniel M. Leeds, Juliana Pearson, Simone Robers, and Leslie Scott. February, 2020. "More than three-quarters of incarcerated parents with a child under the age of 18 have low literacy (75 percent) and numeracy (89 percent) skills."
  • From Decarceration to E-Carceration Chaz Arnett. February, 2020. "A move from decarceration to e-carceration, or from mass incarceration to mass surveillance, will likely fail to resolve, and may exacerbate, one of the greatest harms of mass incarceration: the maintenance of social stratification."
  • Restorative Prosecution? Rethinking Responses to Violence, Olivia Dana and Sherene Crawford. January, 2020. "As progressive prosecutors attempt to take on criminal justice reform, restorative justice offers a path forward, as well as a means of handling violent cases, and complements the reforms they are already carrying out for lower-level, nonviolent cases."
  • County-level jail incarceration and preterm birth among non-Hispanic Black and white U.S. women, 1999-2015 Paywall :( Jaquelyn L. Jahn, Jarvis T. Chen, Madina Agenor, Nancy Krieger. July, 2020. "Jail incarceration increases non-Hispanic Black and White women's risk of preterm birth."
  • After Cash Bail: A Framework for Reimagining Pretrial Justice, The Bail Project. February, 2020. "As we look to a future after cash bail, it is clear that transformational change will require a clear commitment to move past the incarceration paradigm and reimagine how society responds to poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, and violence."
  • Driving While Black and Latinx: Stops, Fines, Fees, and Unjust Debts, New York Law School Racial Justice Project. February, 2020. "Traffc debt suspensions disproportionately harm New Yorkers of color, and will continue to do so if the current law remains unchanged."
  • Women in Prison: Seeking Justice Behind Bars, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. February, 2020. "Many incarcerated women continue to experience physical and psychological safety harms while incarcerated and insufficient satisfaction of their constitutional rights."

Tuesday, February 18 2020:

  • A Never-Ending Sentence: The Impact of Criminal Conviction in Project-Based Section 8 Housing Tenant Selection Plans in Cuyahoga County, Reentry Housing Workgroup of the Cleveland Reentry Strategy Coalition. 2015. "The review of [Tenant Selection Plans] shows that criminal convictions, even from misdemeanors, have a long-term impact on access to Project-Based Section 8 Housing in Cuyahoga County"
  • Ending the War on Drugs in Travis County, Texas: How Low-Level Drug Possession Arrests are Harmful and Ineffective, TCJC, Grassroots Leadership, Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, and the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. February, 2020. "Between 2013 and 2017, the number of low-level Possession of a Controlled Substance (POCS) cases in Travis County increased by 43 percent,3 and Travis County courts saw a 66 percent increase in the overall number of new felony drug possession cases."
  • Laying the Groundwork: How States Can Improve Access to Continued Education for People in the Criminal Justice System, Council of State Governments Justice Center. February, 2020. "These findings highlight how far all states have to go to adopt the statewide postsecondary education policies and practices necessary to help incarcerated people transition to leading productive lives in the community."
  • Mortality in State and Federal Prisons, 2001-2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2020. "The number of deaths in state prisons rose 1.3% from 2015 to 2016 (from 3,682 to 3,729), while the number of deaths in federal prisons fell 15% (from 455 to 388)."
  • County Jail Incarceration Rates and County Mortality Rates in the United States, 1987-2016 Sandhya Kajeepeta, Caroline G. Rutherford, Katherine M. Keyes, Abdulrahman M. El-Sayed, and Seth J. Prins. January, 2020. "Within-county increases in jail incarceration rates are associated with increases in subsequent mortality rates after adjusting for important confounders."
  • Mortality in Local Jails, 2000-2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2020. "From 2006 to 2016, suicide was the leading single cause of death in local jails each year; it accounted for nearly a third of jail deaths in 2016 (31%)."
  • Reconciling Police and Communities with Apologies, Acknowledgements, or Both: A Controlled Experiment, Thomas C. O'Brien, Tracey L. Meares, Tom R. Tyler. February, 2020. "The evidence suggests that police leaders should combine acknowledgement of responsibility for the mistrust with an apology if they want to enlist the cooperation of people who are least likely to trust the police."
  • In Trouble: How the Promise of Diversion Clashes With the Reality of Poverty, Addiction, and Structural Racism in Alabama's Justice, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. February, 2020. "Fifty-five percent of them made less than $14,999 per year, yet the median amount they reported paying for diversion was $1,600 -- more than ten percent of their total income."
  • An Organizer's Guide to Confronting Pretrial Risk Assessment Tools in Decarceration Campaigns Community Justice Exchange. December, 2019. "This guide provides tools for opposing [risk assessment tools], and an analysis that our opposition to them is one part of a larger organizing strategy to end pretrial incarceration and mass supervision."
  • Successful Reentry: A Community-Level Analysis, The Harvard University Institute of Politics Criminal Justice Policy Group. December, 2019. "Our research showed that several dynamic risk factors - namely health, employment, housing, skill development, mentorship, social networks, and organization type - significantly affect the success of reentry."

Monday, February 17 2020:

  • Pathways to Reintegration: Criminal Record Reforms in 2019, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. February, 2020. "In 2019, 43 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted an extraordinary 152 laws aimed at reducing barriers faced by people with criminal records in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life."
  • "Gladiator School: Returning Citizens' Experiences with Secondary Violence Exposure in Prison", Paywall :( Meghan A. Novisky & Robert L. Peralta. February, 2020. "We find that secondary violence was frequently experienced in prison and often took the form of witnessing non-weaponized assaults, weaponized assaults, multi-perpetrator assaults, and homicide."
  • Reversing the Pipeline to Prison in Texas: How to Ensure Safe Schools AND Safe Students, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. February, 2020. "Traditional, punitive models of student discipline are not only ineffective, but harmful to students and communities."

Friday, January 24 2020:

  • Criminal Justice Reform in the Fentanyl Era: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, Drug Policy Alliance. January, 2020. "A recent analysis of federal fentanyl sentencing revealed that 75% of all individuals sentenced for fentanyl trafficking were people of color, suggesting that fentanyl enforcement already mirrors other disparate drug enforcement."

Thursday, January 23 2020:

  • Avoiding the Runaround: The Link Between Cultural Health Capital and Health Management Among Older Prisoners, Paywall :( Meghan A. Novisky. July, 2018. "Findings show that older prisoners make deliberate choices to protect their health from the constraints and deprivations inherent in their carceral lives."

Wednesday, January 22 2020:

  • Solitary Confinement and the U.S. Prison Boom Paywall :( Ryan T. Sakoda, Jessica T. Simes. December, 2019. "Long stays in solitary confinement were rare in the late 1980s with no detectable racial disparities, but a sharp increase in capacity after a new prison opening began an era of long-term isolation most heavily affecting Black young adults."
  • State criminal justice policy context and opioid agonist treatment delivery among opioid treatment admissions, 2015 Shivani Mantha, Pia M. Mauro, Christine M. Mauro, Silvia S. Martins. January, 2020. "Criminal justice referral to treatment was associated with an 85% reduction in the odds of receiving [opioid agonist treatment], compared to other sources of treatment referral"
  • America's Favorite Antidote: Drug-Induced Homicide in the Age of the Overdose Crisis, Leo Beletsky. September, 2019. "At a time of crisis, drug-induced homicide laws and prosecutions represent a false prophecy of retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation."
  • Diverted Opportunities: Gaps in Drug Treatment for Justice System-Involved Populations in Harris County, Texas, Katharine Neill Harris and Jay Jenkins. December, 2019. "Findings from this project are consistent with prior research that suggests the justice system is generally not designed to meet the needs of a large segment of the diverted population."
  • School Discipline, Safety, and Climate: A Comprehensive Study in New York City, Center for Court Innovation. October, 2019. "Students with disabilities, those who were chronically absent, and those who were economically disadvantaged were more likely to be arrested than their counterparts."
  • Court-Ordered Community Service: A National Perspective, Center for Court Innovation. November, 2019. "Numerous findings also suggest current practices are undercutting the potential of community service to act as an alternative to fines and fees."
  • Racial disparities in health conditions among prisoners compared with the general population Kathryn M. Nowotny, Richard G. Rogers, Jason D. Boardman. December, 2017. "The incarcerated population generally has worse health than the noninstitutionalized population, especially for hypertension, heart problems, asthma, kidney problems, stroke, arthritis, and cancer."
  • Health Behaviors and Outcomes Associated With Personal and Family History of Criminal Justice System Involvement, New York City, 2017, Paywall :( Maria Baquero, Kimberly Zweig, and Sharon B. Meropol. January, 2020. "New York City adults with personal or family CJS involvement, or both, were more likely to report adverse health outcomes and behaviors."
  • Drug use in the year after prison Paywall :( Bruce Western, Jessica T. Simes. August, 2019. "Results suggest that in a Medicaid expansion state where health coverage is widely provided to people leaving prison, formerly-incarcerated men and women use medications, not illegal drugs, to address their health needs."
  • Mass incarceration and public health: the association between black jail incarceration and adverse birth outcomes among black women in Louisiana, Lauren Dyer, Rachel Hardeman, Dovile Vilda, Katherine Theall & Maeve Wallace. December, 2019. (This analysis of births among black women in Louisiana demonstrated that higher parish-level incarceration prevalence for black individuals were associated with significantly greater risks for preterm birth among parish residents.)
  • An Analysis of State Statutes Regarding the Role of Law Enforcement Paywall :( Carly E. Cortright, Wesley McCann, Dale Willits, Craig Hemmens, Mary K. Stohr. October, 2018. "Our findings indicate a counterintuitive reversal in the trend, with more states removing order maintenance and peacekeeping duties from their statutes despite the wide dominance of community-oriented policing."
  • Bias in Video Evidence: Implications for Police Body Cameras, Ashley Kalle, Georgina Hammock. 2019. "While watching the same video, diff erent conclusions were drawn about what transpired, who was culpable, the character of the individuals involved, and the level of force used based on observers' focus and their racial attitudes."
  • Crisis Response Services for People with Mental Illnesses or Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: A Review of the Literature on Police-based and Other First Response Models, Vera Institute of Justice. October, 2019. "Police-based and related crisis response services for people with mental illnesses or I/DD can play a vital role in reducing justice system contact and improving health outcomes among these vulnerable populations."
  • Housing Not Handcuffs: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. December, 2019. "Over the past thirteen years, there has been a dramatic increase in criminalization laws, yet access to affordable housing grows ever more elusive."
  • Civil Rights and Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments David G. Robinson and Logan Koepke. December, 2019. "Pretrial risk assessment instruments often appear to function as a substitute for broader or more fundamental changes."
  • Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English, Taylor Jones, Jessica Rose Kalbfeld, Ryan Hancock, and Robin Clark. 2019. "Here, we demonstrate that Philadelphia court reporters consistently fail to meet this level of transcription accuracy when confronted with mundane examples of spoken African American English."
  • National Study of Prosecutor Elections UNC School of Law. January, 2020. "Although most prosecutor elections are uncontested, most voters tend to live in jurisdictions that are more likely to give them a choice."
  • Fee Abolition and the Promise of Debt-Free Justice for Young People and Their Families in California: A Status Report on the Implementation of Senate Bill 190, Berkeley Law Policy Advocacy Clinic. October, 2019. "In violation of SB 190, some counties continue to assess prohibited fees against young people ages 18-21 in criminal court for home detention, electronic monitoring, and drug testing."

Tuesday, January 21 2020:

  • Treatment versus Punishment: Understanding Racial Inequalities in Drug Policy, Jin Woo Kim, Evan Morgan, Brendan Nyhan. December, 2019. "Policy makers were more likely to introduce punitive drug-related bills during the crack scare and are more likely to introduce treatment-oriented bills during the current opioid crisis."
  • One Year After the First Step Act: Mixed Outcomes, Sentencing Project. December, 2019. "Expansion of good-time credits implemented in July led to the release of approximately 3,000 in federal prisons; one-third, however, were transferred to the custody of other jurisdictions because of existing detainers."
  • Gang Takedowns in the De Blasio Era: The Dangers of 'Precision Policing', The Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. December, 2019. "Gang policing replicates the harms of mass incarceration strategies that have come under increased scrutiny. It is dangerous and discriminatory and will not uplift neighborhoods struggling with intra-community violence, gang-related or otherwise."

Friday, January 17 2020:

  • Winnable criminal justice reforms: A Prison Policy Initiative briefing on promising state reform issues for 2020, Prison Policy Initiative. 2015. "https://static.prisonpolicy.org/reports/winnable2020.pdf"
  • Top Trends in State Criminal Justice Reform, 2019 Sentencing Project. January, 2020. "In recent years most states have enacted reforms designed to reduce the scale of incarceration and the impact of the collateral consequences of a felony conviction."
  • Suicide in North Carolina Jails: High Suicide and Overdose Rates Require Urgent Jail Reform Action, Disability Rights North Carolina. October, 2019. "Jail deaths by overdose nearly tripled between 2017 and 2018, increasing by 175%"
  • Snapping Back: Food Stamp Bans and Criminal Recidivism, Cody Tuttle. May, 2019. "This paper provides evidence that denying drug offenders SNAP benefits has increased their likelihood of recidivism."
  • Measuring Change: From Rates of Recidivism to Markers of Desistance, Cecelia M. Klingele. 2019. "This Article suggests that, however popular, recidivism alone is a poor metric for gauging the success of criminal justice interventions or of those who participate in them."
  • 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."
  • The Problem of Problem-Solving Courts Erin Collins. November, 2019. "They also reveal a new problem with the model itself - its entrenchment creates resistance to alternatives that might truly reform the system."
  • Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2019, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2019. "On any given day, over 48,000 youth in the United States are confined in facilities away from home as a result of juvenile justice or criminal justice involvement."

Tuesday, January 14 2020:

Monday, January 13 2020:

  • Aging alone: Uncovering the risk of solitary confinement for people over 45, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2017. "We estimate that more than 44,000 people 45 and older experience solitary in state prisons each year."
  • EFF warns against using incarcerated people as "endless supply of free data" Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2016. "Research using incarcerated people now must be pre-approved by an Independent Review Board. That review didn't happen here."
  • 20 years is enough: Time to repeal the Prison Litigation Reform Act, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "The Prison Litigation Reform Act, which made it much harder for incarcerated people to file and win civil rights lawsuits in federal court, was a key part of the Clinton-era prison boom."
  • Actual violent crime has nothing to do with our fear of violent crime Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2018. "Comparing violent crime rates to public opinion data shows that there's a long-standing disconnect between perception and reality."
  • Police, courts, jails, and prisons all fail disabled people Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2017. "In 2015, police shot 124 people experiencing a mental health crisis. In 36% of those cases, the officers were called to help the person get medical treatment, and shot them instead."
  • New report: Disabled people targeted by violence at high rates, Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2017. "Disabled people experience violent victimization at over twice the rate of people without disabilities."
  • We know how to prevent opioid overdose deaths for people leaving prison. So why are prisons doing nothing? Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2019. "Proven treatments for opioid use disorders exist -- they just aren't accessible to people in and recently released from prison."
  • Seizing Chicago: Drug stings and asset forfeiture target the poor, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2017. "Instead of protecting Chicago's communities, state asset forfeiture practices and drug stings set up by federal agents target low-income, Black, and Latino residents, setting them up to fail."
  • BJS report: Drug abuse and addiction at the root of 21% of crimes, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2017. "More than half of the state prison population and two-thirds of the sentenced jail population report drug dependence or abuse, compared to just 5% of the adult general population."
  • Have we gone too far myth busting criminal justice reform? Drug policy is still important, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "We didn't get mass incarceration from War on Drugs alone, but drugs play an important role in less discussed stages of criminal justice systems"
  • Tracking the impact of the prison system on the economy Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2017. "In 2012 -- the most recent data available -- the more than 2.4 million people who work for the justice system (in police, corrections and judicial services) at all levels of government constituted 1.6% of the civilian workforce."
  • Uncovering Mass Incarceration's Literacy Disparity Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2016. "People in prison are 13 to 24 percent more represented in the lowest levels of literacy than people in the free world."
  • How does unaffordable money bail affect families? Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2018. "Using a national data set, we find that over half of the people held in jail pretrial because they can't afford bail are parents of minor children."
  • For families of incarcerated dads, Father's day comes at a premium Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2017. "Over 1.5 million children have a father incarcerated in prison today."
  • It's not just the franchise: Mass incarceration undermines political engagement, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2017. "Contact with the criminal justice system impacts not only individual experiences of political participation, but also community-wide political engagement."
  • Incarceration shortens life expectancy Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2017. "Each year in prison takes 2 years off an individual's life expectancy. With over 2.3 million people locked up, mass incarceration has shortened the overall U.S. life expectancy by 5 years."
  • Unpacking the connections between race, incarceration, and women's HIV rates Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2017. "If it weren't for the racial disparity in male incarceration rates, Black women would have lower rates of HIV infection than white women."
  • Food for thought: Prison food is a public health problem, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2017. "Administrators looking to save a few cents per meal have traded a healthy food service program for processed foods that make incarcerated people sick."
  • The life-threatening reality of short jail stays Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2016. "Suicide continues to be the leading cause of death in local jails."
  • How America's major urban centers compare on incarceration rates Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2019. (Only 13 of the urban counties evaluated had incarceration rates significantly (that is, more than 10%) lower than the states they belong to.)
  • New York State's elderly prison boom: An update, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2018. "Even as the incarceration rate for all other age groups declines, the number of people age 50 and over incarcerated in New York continues to rise rapidly."
  • Incremental declines can't erase mass incarceration Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2018. "Ending mass incarceration will require a fresh and holistic look at our societal values and priorities."
  • Another century of mass incarceration? Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2016. "If the U.S. doesn't make reducing the correctional population a priority, generations will be burdened by mass incarceration."
  • Tallying the extent of the Clinton-era crime bills Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "The problem isn't one bill, or two or even three but at least seven bills."
  • BJS data shows graying of prisons Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "ccording to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, people 55+ are now the fastest growing age group in the U.S. prison population."
  • President Obama's record on clemency: A premature celebration, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "With a little over 6 months left in his term, President Obama is on track to become the President who has granted the smallest portion of clemency requests in history."
  • Using the federal budget to fuel decarceration Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2015. "Given the federal government's historical role in fueling mass incarceration, Chettiar points out, federal budgetmakers could switch gears to instead incentivize smarter and more measured criminal justice policymaking."
  • Criminal justice reform at the ballot box: Even County Auditors are worth your attention, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2018. "In some counties - like Multnomah County, Oregon - auditors are joining the movement to hold jails accountable."
  • Money and Power: Corruption in Local Sheriff Departments, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2017. "This practice has led to an unfortunate temptation: some sheriffs try to spend as little as possible on jail food (a cruel practice that also raises public health concerns), so that they can keep any unspent funds for themselves."
  • Exploring the staying power of elected sheriffs - a preliminary analysis Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2017. "The average expenditures of a sheriff over his/her career is nearly 2 million dollars and just looking at a single four year campaign cycle, average expenditures top $600,000."
  • The downstream effect of 35 years of jail growth? A state prison boom, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2017. "Putting more people in jail for minor crimes will soon mean a state prison system bursting at the seams."
  • Some private prisons are, um, public. Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2016. "It is time to accept the counter-intuitive truth: sometimes the government profits off of mass incarceration."
  • Jails matter. But who is listening? Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2015. "Jails matter because a staggering 11 million people cycle through them each year."
  • LGBTQ youth are at greater risk of homelessness and incarceration Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2019. "Homelessness is the greatest predictor of involvement with the juvenile justice system. And since LGBTQ youth compose 40% of the homeless youth population, they are at an increased risk of incarceration."
  • The dismal state of transgender incarceration policies Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2017. "Even in supposed progressive bastions such as California and Vermont, a trans person is not assured of the full range of basic rights that the federal commission deemed necessary for their safety while incarcerated."
  • New government report points to continuing mental health crisis in prisons and jails Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2017. "Only a third of incarcerated people experiencing serious psychological distress were receiving treatment"
  • Police stops are still marred by racial discrimination, new data shows. Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2018. "Police threatened or used force against nearly 1 million people, who were disproportionately Black or Hispanic."
  • Data confirms that police treat Black Americans with less respect Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2017. "Analyses of police body cam footage reveals racial disparities in officer respect toward civilians."
  • Don't confuse respect for police with confidence in them Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2016. "Americans' respect for local police is apparently much higher than their confidence in the police in general."
  • Stop and frisk dropping but still ineffective Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "The number of stop and frisks has gone down in recent years, but the practice is still not working."
  • New report reveals civil forfeiture Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2015. "Criminal forfeiture accounts for only 13% of all government seizure of property. So almost 90% of forfeiture proceeds come from situations where citizens may have done nothing wrong."
  • New data highlights pre-incarceration disadvantages Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2018. "Boys born into families at the bottom 10% of the income distribution are 20 times more likely to experience prison in their 30's than their peers born into the top 10%."
  • The Crippling Effect of Incarceration on Wealth Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2016. "Once released, that individual may make gains in wealth accumulation, but they will always remain at significantly lower levels of wealth compared to those who are never incarcerated in their lifetime."
  • Findings from Harris County: Money bail undermines criminal justice goals, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2017. "The authors' findings provide strong evidence that bail set without consideration of defendants' ability to pay violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses."
  • Pretrial detention costs $13.6 billion each year Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2017. "On any given day, this country has 451,000 people behind bars who are being detained pretrial... It costs local governments nationwide: $13.6 billion."
  • Who is in jail? Deep dive Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2015. "It's very important that we get local officials to focus on the policies that impact the size of their pretrial populations because that's the overwhelming majority of the people in jail on a given day."
  • Why expensive phone calls can be life-altering for people in jail - and can derail the justice process Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2019. "The cost of jail phone calls punishes people in the most desperate circumstances, most of whom have not been convicted of a crime."
  • Who's really bringing contraband into jails? Our 2018 survey confirms it's staff, not visitors, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2018. "By blaming contraband on in-person visitors, sheriffs distract from a far more likely source: jail staff."
  • Texas prisons, we've got some questions about your commissary vendors Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2018. "Incarcerated people can't hunt for the best price -- they are captive to the questionable decisions of commissary purchasing managers."
  • How to spot the hidden costs in a "no-cost" tablet contract Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2018. "Companies like JPay are offering "free" tablet programs to a growing number of states, and legislators should approach these offers with caution."
  • Findings from Knox County, Tenn.: Replacing in-person visits with video calling is bad policy, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2018. "The ban on in-person visits makes the jail more dangerous, does nothing to stop the flow of contraband, and strips money from the pockets of families."
  • Jail phone companies flood money into sheriff races Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2017. "New research shows jail phone companies contributing significant sums to Sheriff's campaigns, in one case funding a quarter of Sheriff's campaign spending."
  • The Wireless Prison: How Colorado's tablet computer program misses opportunities and monetizes the poor, Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2017. "Tablets could be an important rehabilitative tool, but not when GTL puts profit above service."
  • Evading regulation, some in-state phone calls from jails cost over $1.50 a minute Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2017. "These pricing schemes have resulted in 15 minute calls that would cost $24.95 from the Arkansas County Jail via Securus and $17.77 from the Douglas County jail in Oregon via Global Tel*Link."
  • The multi-million dollar market of sending money to an incarcerated loved one Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2017. "Private companies amassing monopoly contracts, creating potential to rake in $172 million from friends and family sending money to incarcerated loved ones."
  • Paging anti-trust lawyers: Prison commissary giants prepare to merge, Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2016. "We estimate that commissaries throughout the country rake in about $1.6 billion in sales each year."
  • Travis County, Texas: A Case Study on Video Visitation, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2016. "While the majority rated their experience with video visitation as positive, almost all (91%) reported they would prefer face-to-face visitation."
  • Prison profiteers use campaign contributions to buy contracts Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2015. "The Voice of OC has revealed that $85,000 in campaign contributions to two Orange County, California county supervisors by Global Tel*Link flipped the two supervisors from being opponents of charging families high phone rates into supporters."
  • Are private prisons driving mass incarceration? Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2015. "Private prisons are more like a parasite on the publicly-owned prison system, not the root cause of mass incarceration."
  • Are campaign contributions the new "commission"? Analysis of Securus's contributions in Sacramento, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2015. "We argue that the FCC can simply ensure that the rates and fees charged are reasonable and leave the companies and the facilities to fight over whether and how to share the reasonable profits that remain."
  • Red states, blue states: What do these mean for people on parole?, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2019. (In 2016, Massachusetts returned almost a quarter of its entire parole population to prison for technical violations, while Texas returned only 1%..)
  • Should prosecutors and survivors have a voice in shortening long sentences? Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2018. "Prosecutors are particularly unfit to determine whether individuals they have not seen in years or decades still pose a threat to public safety."
  • New reports show probation is down, but still a major driver of incarceration Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2018. "Probation and parole widen the net of incarceration by keeping people under onerous restrictions and monitoring instead of focusing squarely on reentry assistance."
  • Probation population declines: Good, but not good enough, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2016. "o make a real dent in the country's bloated correctional population, policy makers need to advance criminal justice and social policies aimed at reducing the number of people on probation."
  • Probation: The nicest sounding way to grease the skids of mass incarceration, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2015. "More than half the people under correctional control are on probation."
  • New poll shows mass incarceration is a Latinx issue Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2018. "The majority of Latinxs favor rehabilitation over more punitive responses to crime, such as added police or prisons."
  • The parallel epidemics of incarceration & HIV in the Deep South Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2017. "HIV disproportionately impacts communities that are already marginalized by poverty, inadequate resources, discrimination -- and mass incarceration."
  • New data: The rise of the "prosecutor politician", Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2017. "Shugerman argues that the prosecutor's office has become a "stepping stone for higher office... with dramatic consequences in American criminal law and mass incarceration.""
  • Jail will separate 2.3 million mothers from their children this year Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2018. "80% of the women jailed each year are mothers. We're inflicting profound damage not only on them, but their children as well."
  • State-level studies identify causes of the national "gender divide" Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2018. "Nationally, women's incarceration rates still hover near record highs, even as men's rates are going down."
  • BJS update: Women's state prison populations rose while men's fell, again., Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2018. "State prisons cut men's populations in 2016, but incarcerated more women, widening the 'gender divide.'"
  • Breaking open the "black box": How risk assessments undermine judges' perceptions of young people, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2018. "Algorithmic risk assessments treat youth as a one-dimensional factor, pointing only to higher risk."
  • Locking up youth with adults: An update, Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2018. "Incarcerating youth in adult facilities is even more harmful than incarcerating them with people their own age."
  • Girls are being put behind bars more and more. Will Congress do anything to help? Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2016. "Girls, and especially girls of color, are judged for their 'bad character' while boys are 'just being boys.'"
  • Why do we lock juveniles up for life and throw away the key? Race plays a big part., Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2016. "The Phillips Black Project found that black youth are twice as likely to receive a juvenile life without parole sentence compared to their white peers for committing the same crime."

Friday, January 10 2020:

  • Cruel and unusual punishment: When states don't provide air conditioning in prison, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2019. "13 famously hot states lack universal A/C in their prisons."
  • Since You Asked: How did the 1994 crime bill affect prison college programs?, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2019. "Without federal aid, the rate of college course participation in prisons dropped by half."
  • Since you asked: Is it me, or is the government releasing less data about the criminal justice system?, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2019. (Reports by the Bureau of Justice Statistics are slowing down - and its framing of criminal justice issues is becoming more punitive.)
  • Prisons neglect pregnant women in their healthcare policies Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2019. "Our 50-state survey finds that in spite of national standards, most states lack important policies on prenatal care and nutrition for pregnant women."
  • How many people in your state go to local jails every year? Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2019. (The number of people who go to jail each year varies dramatically from state to state. In South Dakota, 2,888 people per 100,000 go to jail each year, while in California 934 per 100,000 go.)
  • How race impacts who is detained pretrial Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2019. "In large urban areas, Black felony defendants are over 25% more likely than white defendants to be held pretrial."
  • When jails replace in-person visits with video, what happens when the technology fails? Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2019. "As more jails ban face-to-face visits in favor of paid video chats, a growing number of people in jail are being cut off from their families when the technology breaks down."
  • The biggest priorities for prison and jail phone justice in 40 states Prison Policy Initiative. September, 2019. "For example, the Minnesota Department of Corrections charges only $0.75 for a 15-minute in-state call from state prison, but the jails in the state charge, on average, $7.19 for the same call."
  • More states are signing harmful "free prison tablet" contracts Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2019. "Tablet computers are delivering a captive audience to profit-seeking companies, while enabling prisons to cut essential services like law libraries."
  • On kickbacks and commissions in the prison and jail phone market Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2019. "Phone providers are so creative in their influence-peddling that the most viable reform strategies do not focus only on "commissions.""
  • New data: Low incomes - but high fees - for people on probation, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2019. "Nationwide, two-thirds (66%) of people on probation make less than $20,000 per year."
  • BJS fuels myths about sex offense recidivism, contradicting its own new data Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2019. "The BJS data show that people who served time for sex offenses had markedly lower recidivism rates than almost any other group. Yet the data continue to be framed in misleading ways."
  • Who's helping the 1.9 million women released from prisons and jails each year? Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2019. "In 2016, about 81,000 women were released from state prisons nationwide, and women and girls accounted for at least 1.8 million releases from local jails in 2013 (the last year all jails were surveyed)."

Thursday, December 19 2019:

  • Paying for Jail: How County Jails Extract Wealth from New York Communities, Worth Rises and Brooklyn Community Bail Fund. December, 2019. "We estimate that in 2017 the 57 counties outside of New York City extracted over $25.1 million for phone calls, $14.1 million for commissary, and $0.2 million for disciplinary tickets."

Wednesday, December 18 2019:

  • Rethinking the "Drug Dealer" Drug Policy Alliance. December, 2019. "Imprisoning people who sell drugs does not reduce the drug supply, increase drug prices, or prevent drug use."

Monday, December 16 2019:

  • A Piece of the Puzzle: State Financial Aid for Incarcerated Students, Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2019. "Partnering with colleges and universities to provide postsecondary programs can help state corrections agencies meet institutional goals related to evidence-based practices and recidivism reduction."
  • People in Jail in 2019 Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2019. "At midyear 2019, there were an estimated 758,400 people in local jails, up 13,200 (1.8 percent increase) from midyear 2017."
  • Ineffective Assistance of Library: The Failings and the Future of Prison Law Libraries, Jonathan Abel. June, 2012. "The courts' attempts to graft an access-to-courts rationale onto a law library system that had developed for other purposes led to a law library doctrine riddled with contradictions and doomed to failure."

Wednesday, December 4 2019:

  • Driving on Empty: Florida's Counterproductive and Costly Driver's License Suspension Practices, Fines & Fees Justice Center. 2015. "Between 2015-2017, more than 3.5 million suspension notices were issued for unpaid court debt."
  • Association of Punitive and Reporting State Policies Related to Substance Use in Pregnancy With Rates of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, Laura J. Faherty, Ashley M. Kranz, Joshua Russell-Fritch, et al.. November, 2019. (Punitive policies related to substance use in pregnancy were not associated with a reduction in (neonatal abstinence syndrome) NAS rates, and in fact, these policies may have been associated with an increase in rates of NAS.)
  • Prosecutors and Responses to Violence Institute 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."

Tuesday, December 3 2019:

  • Socioeconomic Barriers to Child Contact with Incarcerated Parents Paywall :( Batya Y. Rubenstein, Elisa L. Toman, Joshua C. Cochran. August, 2018. "Analyses suggest that lower income parents are less likely to be visited by their children. We also find that economic disadvantage may condition impacts of other practical barriers, such as distance from home."
  • Bringing it all back home: Understanding the medical difficulties encountered by newly released prisoners in New Orleans, Louisiana, William Lee Vail, Anjali Niyogi, Norris Henderson, and Ashley Wennerstrom. 2015. "Most FIPs face significant barriers to access of healthcare, including lack of insurance, funding, knowledge of community services and social support. Importantly, there is an overall distrust of institutions and medical care systems."
  • Growth in ICE Detention Fueled by Immigrants with No Criminal Conviction TRAC Immigration. November, 2019. "On the last day of April 2019, ICE held about 50,000 people in detention centers nationwide. Nearly 32,000 - or 64% - of detainees had no criminal conviction on record."
  • Trends in Correctional Control by Race and Sex The Council on Criminal Justice. December, 2019. (For Black individuals, increases in length of stay, admissions per arrest, and arrests per offender offset the 3% decline in offending rates for rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.)
  • The Influence of Familial Social Support on Physical Health During Reentry Paywall :( Chantal Fahmy and Danielle Wallace. August, 2019. "The results suggest that social support has important repercussions on one's physical health and thus success at reintegration."

Friday, November 29 2019:

  • Trapped Inside: The Past, Present, and Future of Solitary Confinement in New York, New York Civil Liberties Union. October, 2019. "40,000 solitary confinement sanctions were given in 2018. One-quarter were in the form of special housing unit, or SHU sanctions, the most restrictive form of isolation."
  • The Steep Costs of Criminal Justice Fees and Fines: A Fiscal Analysis of Three States and Ten Counties, Brennan Center for Justice. November, 2019. (Criminal fines and fees burden the members of society who are least able to pay, and the costs of collection are many times greater than those of general taxation, effectively canceling out much of the revenue.)
  • The Company Store and the Literally Captive Market: Consumer Law in Prisons and Jails, Stephen Raher. November, 2019. "The growth of public expense associated with mass incarceration has led many carceral systems to push certain costs onto the people who are under correctional supervision."
  • The Price of Taxation by Citation: Case Studies of Three Georgia Cities that Rely Heavily on Fines and Fees, Institute for Justice. October, 2019. "Our findings also suggest taxation by citation is shortsighted. Cities may gain revenue, but they may also pay a price for it in the form of lower community trust and cooperation."
  • Unintended Consequences: Effects of Paternal Incarceration on Child School Readiness and Later Special Education Placement, Anna R. Haskins. April, 2014. "Mass incarceration facilitates the intergenerational transmission of male behavioral disadvantage, and because of the higher exposure of black children to incarceration, it also plays a role in explaining the persistently low achievement of black boys."
  • Overcoming Barriers that Prevent Eligible Incarcerated People from Voting in Massachusetts The Emancipation Initiative. October, 2019. "There are up to 10,000 voters incarcerated in Massachusetts on any given day who retain the right to vote on paper."
  • An Examination of Care Practices of Pregnant Women Incarcerated in Jail Facilities in the United States C. M. Kelsey, Nickole Medel, Carson Mullins, Danielle Dallaire, Catherine Forestell. February, 2017. (In this first study to examine practices in regional jails nationwide, we found evidence that standards of care guidelines to improve health and well-being of pregnant incarcerated women are not being followed in many facilities.)
  • Jails: Inadvertent Health Care Providers: How county correctional facilities are playing a role in the safety net, The Pew Charitable Trusts. January, 2018. (This report examines two ways in which jails can deliver healthcare more effectively: by providing high-value care within their walls and by facilitating well-designed health handoffs to community providers at re-entry.)
  • Jailing Immigrant Detainees: A National Study of County Participation in Immigration Detention, 1983-2013, Emily Ryo and Ian Peacock. November, 2019. "We find that the number of counties confining immigrant detainees steadily increased between 1983 and 2013, with the largest growth concentrated in small to medium sized, rural, and Republican counties located in the South."
  • Broken Ground: Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2019. "Rural areas, suburban areas, and midsized cities remain in a jail population boom and continue to build larger jails."
  • Statewide Policies Relating to Pre-Arrest Diversion and Crisis Response R Street. October, 2019. "Laws that grant local officials noncriminal responses to crises can propel diversion efforts or provide alternative, supplemental crisis responses."
  • Pushed Out and Locked In: The Catch-22 for New York's Disabled, Homeless, Sex-Offender Registrants, Allison Frankel. November, 2019. "New York should immediately stop detaining people solely because they are homeless, and divert its attention from sex-offender regulations that have no demonstrable impact on public safety."
  • Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2019. "More incarcerated women are held in local jails than in state prisons, in stark contrast to incarcerated men, meaning that reforms that only impact people in prison will not benefit them."

Wednesday, November 13 2019:

  • Criminal records and college admissions: A modified experimental audit, Robert Stewart and Christopher Uggen. October, 2019. "We find that applicants with prior criminal records were rejected at arate approximately 3 times higher than applicants without records from colleges that require criminal history information."

Monday, November 11 2019:

  • Acute Care for Patients Who Are Incarcerated: A Review, Paywall :( Lawrence A. Haber, Hans P. Erickson, Sumant R. Ranji, et al. September, 2019. "Patients who are incarcerated have a protected right to health care but may experience exceptions to physical comfort, health privacy, and informed decision-making in the acute care setting."
  • The Right to Counsel in Wayne County, Michigan: Evaluation of Assigned Counsel Services in the Third Judicial Circuit, Sixth Amendment Center. August, 2019. "Every aspect of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is impaired."

Friday, November 8 2019:

  • Overdose Education and Naloxone Distribution in the San Francisco County Jail Paywall :( Lynn D. Wenger et al.. October, 2019. (Of incarcerated people who received naloxone upon re-entry, 32% reported reversing an overdose and 44% received refills from community-based programs after reentry.)
  • Incarceration Exposure and Maternal Food Insecurity During Pregnancy: Findings from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), 2004-2015, Paywall :( Alexander Testa and Dylan B. Jackson. October, 2019. "Exposure to incarceration either personally or vicariously through a partner is associated with a 165% increase in the odds of food insecurity."
  • Remote Adjudication in Immigration Ingrid V. Eagly. November, 2015. (Detained litigants assigned to televideo courtrooms exhibited depressed engagement with the adversarial process--they were less likely to retain counsel, apply to remain lawfully in the United States, or seek voluntary departure.)
  • The Power of Observation: An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Body Worn Cameras on Police Use of Force and Productivity, Taeho Kim. October, 2019. (This study finds that body worn cameras are associated with a drop of 43% in use of force, a reduction of 81% in subject injury, yet not with officer injury, or other productivity measures such as crime and clearance rates.)
  • Police Stops and Searches of Indigenous People in Minneapolis: The Roles of Race, Place, and Gender, Marina Mileo Gorsuch and Deborah Rho. April, 2018. "Our analysis shows that Minneapolis police disproportionately stopped Native Americans in Minneapolis in non-vehicle stops and suspicious vehicle stops, but not in traffic enforcement stops."
  • Age-Standardized Mortality of Persons on Probation, in Jail, or in State Prison and the General Population, 2001-2012 Paywall :( Christopher Wildeman, Alyssa W. Goldman, and Emily A. Wang. August, 2019. "Persons on probation died at a rate 3.42 times higher than persons in jail, 2.81 times higher than persons in state prison, and 2.10 times higher than the general US population."

Tuesday, October 15 2019:

Monday, October 14 2019:

  • Postincarceration Fatal Overdoses After Implementing Medications for Addiction Treatment in a Statewide Correctional System, Traci C. Green et al.. April, 2018. "We observed a large and clinically meaningful reduction in postincarceration deaths from overdose among inmates released from incarceration after implementation of a comprehensive MAT program in a statewide correctional facility."
  • Cops and No Counselors: How the Lack of School Mental Health Staff is Harming Students, ACLU. March, 2019. "We found that schools with police reported 3.5 times as many arrests as schools without police. As a result, students with disabilities and students of color are frequently sent into the criminal system."

Friday, October 11 2019:

  • Torture By Another Name: Solitary Confinement in Texas, Texas Civil Right Project. October, 2019. "Our continued investigation has confirmed that people are still suffering severe harm in Texas' solitary confinement cells and are being deprived of minimal life necessities."
  • Literature Locked Up: How Prison Book Restriction Policies Constitute the Nation's Largest Book Ban, Pen America. September, 2019. "With over two million Americans incarcerated, the book-restriction regulations within the United States carceral system represent the largest book ban policy in the United States."
  • Association of Restrictive Housing During Incarceration With Mortality After Release Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, Josie Sivaraman, David L. Rosen, et al.. October, 2019. "Compared with individuals who were incarcerated and not placed in restrictive housing, individuals who spent any time in restrictive housing were 24% more likely to die in the first year after release, especially from suicide and homicide."
  • Dying in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison The Promise of Justice Initiative. July, 2018. "Focusing on data from 2012 to 2016, the report notes that inadequate medical and mental healthcare and insufficient staff training has left to a mortality rate among prisoners that is several times higher than the national average."
  • The Cannabis Effect on Crime: Time-Series Analysis of Crime in Colorado and Washington State, Ruibin Lu et al.. October, 2019. "Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington."
  • Level of Criminal Justice Contact and Early Adult Wage Inequality Robert Apel and Kathleen Powell. February, 2019. "On the contrary, formerly incarcerated blacks earn significantly lower wages than their similar-age siblings with no history of criminal justice contact (and even their similar-age siblings who have an arrest record)."
  • Can Restorative Practices Improve School Climate and Curb Suspensions? RAND Corporation. December, 2018. "Suspension rates of African American students and of those from low-income families also went down in PERC schools, shrinking the disparities in suspension rates between African American and white students andbetween low- and higher-income students."
  • Value to the Soul: People with Criminal Convictions on the Power of the Vote, New Jersey Institute for Social Change. 2015. (In 2019, New Jersey denies the right to vote to 102,245 people. That is more people than reside in New Jersey's capital city of Trenton, and more people than live in Camden, Hoboken, and in hundreds of other municipalities in New Jersey.)
  • Diversion to What? Evidence-Based Mental Health Services that Prevent Needless Incarceration, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. September, 2019. "Investing in community-based mental health services provides numerous benefits, including a reduction in law enforcement intervention and incarceration."
  • Atlas of Surveillance: Southwestern Border Communities, Electronic Frontier Foundation. October, 2019. "We found 36 local government agencies using automated license plate readers (ALPR), 45 outfitting officers with body-worn cameras, and 20 flying drones."
  • Police Contact and the Legal Socialization of Urban Teens Amanda Geller and Jeffrey Fagan. February, 2019. "We find that both personal and vicarious police contact are associated with increased legal cynicism...Legal cynicism is amplified in teens reporting intrusive contact but diminished among teens reporting experiences characterized by procedural justice."
  • The Great Decoupling: The Disconnection Between Criminal Offending and Experience of Arrest Across Two Cohorts, Vesla M. Weaver, Andrew Papachristos, and Michael Zanger-Tishler. February, 2019. "The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime."
  • Face Off: Law Enforcement Use of Face Recognition Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation. February, 2018. "Law enforcement officers can use mobile devices to capture face recognition-ready photographs of people they stop on the street; surveillance cameras boast real-time face scanning and identification capabilities."
  • New Era of Public Safety: A Guide to Fair, Safe, and Effective Community Policing, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. March, 2019. (This report was developed to give individuals, communities, activists, advocacy organizations, law makers, and police departments the knowledge to carry out police reform.)
  • Assessing Potential Impacts of 2020 Bail Reforms in New York City Data Collaborative for Justice. September, 2019. "Had the 2020 Bail Reforms been in place in 2018, 20,349 of the 31,609 cases where bail was set would have resulted in release without bail."
  • Bail and Pretrial Detention: Contours and Causes of Temporal and County Variation, Katherine Hood and Daniel Schneider. February, 2019. "The politicization of judicial offices, partisan affiliations of district attorneys and governors, income inequality, unemployment rates, and the size of the black population all seem to be related to bail-setting practices."
  • Disordered Punishment: Workaround Technologies of Criminal Records Disclosure and the Rise of a New Penal Entrepreneurialism, Alessandro Corda and Sarah E. Lageson. September, 2019. "Criminal records, or proxies for them, are now actively produced and managed by third parties via corporate decision-making processes, rather than government dictating boundaries or outsourcing duties to private actors."
  • State Medical and Geriatric Parole Laws National Conference of State Legislatures. August, 2018. "While the vast majority of states have medical parole laws and a number of states have a geriatric parole law, they are rarely used."
  • Voters Support Reducing the Use of Fines and Fees in Sentencing Data for Progress and The Justice Collaborative. August, 2019. "Sixty-four percent either somewhat or strongly supported limiting the use of fines and fees to those able to pay."
  • The Effect of Scaling Back Punishment on Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes John 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"
  • In Brief: Examining the Changing Racial Composition of Three States' Prison Populations, CSG Justice Center. March, 2015. "In each of these cases, closer inspection of the data shows that these states experienced considerable reductions in the overall number of people being admitted to prison, and that the decline in admissions has been steepest for blacks and Hispanics."
  • State Supreme Court Diversity Brennan Center for Justice. July, 2019. "Twenty-four states currently have an all-white supreme court bench, including eight states in which people of color are at least a quarter of the state's general population."
  • Rhetoric, Not Reform: Prosecutors & Pretrial Practices in Suffolk, Middlesex, and Berkshire Counties, CourtWatch MA. October, 2019. "Prosecutors in Massachusetts may talk about reform and decarceration, but the limited available data suggest their practices don't live up to their rhetoric."
  • On Track: How well are states preparing youth in the juvenile justice system for employment?, CSG Justice Center. September, 2019. "Most incarcerated youth are not provided the workforce development services necessary to obtain viable employment in the community after release."

Thursday, October 10 2019:

Tuesday, September 24 2019:

  • Cashing in on Cruelty: Stories of death, abuse and neglect at the GEO immigration detention facility in Aurora, ACLU of Colorado. September, 2019. "The decision to stop Mr. Samimi's methadone, and subsequent failure to recognize and treat his withdrawal properly, exposes a critical lack of competency, compassion and proper medical care inside the facility."
  • The Effect of Sentencing Reform on Crime Rates: Evidence from California's Proposition 47, Patricio Dominguez-Rivera, Magnus Lofstrom, and Steven Raphael. July, 2019. "We find little evidence that the changes in correctional populations, arrests, and convictions reclassifications ushered in by California's proposition 47 impacted violent crime rates in the state."
  • Immigrants' Deportations, Local Crime and Police Effectiveness Annie Laurie Hines and Giovanni Peri. June, 2019. (We find that Secure Communities-driven increases in deportation rates did not reduce crime rates for violent offenses or property offenses.)
  • Louisiana Death-Sentenced Cases and Their Reversals, 1976-2015 Frank Baumgartner and Tim Lyman. April, 2016. "No matter the race of the offender, killers of whites are more than six times more likely to receive a death penalty than killers of blacks, and 14 times more likely to be executed."
  • Fees, Fines and Fairness: How Monetary Charges Drive Inequity in New York City's Criminal Justice System, New York City Comptroller. September, 2019. "100,000 civil judgments were issued in just one year for failure to pay criminal court debts in New York City, all but criminalizing poverty."
  • Plus a Life Sentence? Incarceration's Effects on Expected Lifetime Wage Growth, Theodore S. Corwin III and Daniel K. N. Johnson. June, 2019. "Our work indicates a dampening effect of incarceration on wage growth in the lifetime."
  • The School to Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime, Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Stephen B. Billings, and David J. Deming. August, 2019. "Students who are quasi-randomly assigned to schools with higher conditional suspension rates are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults."
  • The 1994 Crime Bill Legacy and Lessons, Part 1: Impacts on Prison Populations, The Council on Criminal Justice. September, 2019. "Congress appropriated $3 billion in funding for grant programs to expand prison capacity; the funding supported the construction of about 50,000 prison beds, representing about 4% of state prison capacity at the time."
  • The Role of Police Unions in the 21st Century Texas Public Policy Foundation. September, 2019. "However, police unions have more recently become involved in policy issues beyond those bounded by typical labor relations--for instance, criminal justice public policy and training; and union involvement can become problematic."
  • Policing, Poverty, and Racial Inequality in Tulsa, Oklahoma Human Rights Watch. September, 2019. "Human Rights Watch found that, beyond the statistical disparities of treatment by police of the different races, black people nearly all had personal experiences of abusive policing, ranging from extreme violence towards themselves or family members, to m"
  • When Stop and Frisk Comes Home: Policing Public and Patrolled Housing, Alexis Karteron. July, 2019. "Largely because of the vast array of behavior that is regulated in public and patrolled housing, law enforcement officers have broad authority to stop, arrest, and search people in and around such locations."
  • Free to Drive: States punish poverty by suspending millions of driver's licenses for unpaid fines and fees, Free to Drive. September, 2019. "44 states and District of Columbia still suspend, revoke or do not allow a person to renew their driver's license if they have unpaid court debt."
  • Racial Profiling in Louisiana: Unconstitutional and Counterproductive, Southern Poverty Law Center. September, 2018. "For example, in 2016, black people were 2.9 times as likely as white people to be arrested for marijuana possession in Louisiana, despite evidence that black people and white people use marijuana at similar rates."
  • Los Angeles County Office of Diversion and Reentry's Supportive Housing Program A Study of Participants' Housing Stability and New Felony Convictions, RAND Corporation. August, 2019. "LA County ODR's supportive housing program improved housing stability and reduced criminal justice involvement. 86% had no new felony convictions after 12 months."
  • The impact of residential change and housing stability on recidivism: pilot results from the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE), David S. Kirk, Geoffrey C. Barnes, Jordan M. Hyatt, and Brook W. Kearley. December, 2017. "Rearrest was lower among the treatment group of movers than the non-movers, and was also lower for non-movers who received free housing versus non-movers who did not receive housing."
  • Are a Disproportionate Number of Federal Judges Former Government Advocates? The Cato Institute. September, 2019. "The key takeaway is that the federal judiciary is massively tilted in favor of former prosecutors over former criminal defense attorneys, and in favor of advocates for government more generally over advocates for individuals in cases against government."

Friday, September 20 2019:

  • The State of Capital Punishment National Conference of State Legislatures. July, 2019. "Increasingly, capital punishment legislation being considered in state legislatures across the nation is focused on concerns over cost, viable methods of execution, intellectual disability, and lengthy trial and appellate procedures."
  • The Construction and Criminalization of Disability in School Incarceration Jyoti Nanda. September, 2019. "For students of color, instead of a designation that attracts more resources, disability is one of the mechanisms through which they are criminalized."
  • Unlocking the Bar: Expanding Access to the Legal Profession for People with Criminal Records in California, Stanford Center on the Legal Profession & Stanford Criminal Justice Center. July, 2019. "Successive barriers impede access to California's legal profession for qualified candidates with criminal records."

Thursday, September 19 2019:

  • The Effect of Public Health Insurance on Criminal Recidivism Erkmen Giray Aslim, Murat C. Mungan, Carlos Navarro, and Han Yu. July, 2019. "Exploiting administrative data on prison spells, we show that the ACA Medicaid coverage expansion significantly reduces the probability of returning to prison for violent and public order crimes among multi-time reoffenders."
  • 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."
  • A Fair Fight: Achieving Indigent Defense Resource Parity, Brennan Center for Justice. September, 2019. "Chronic underfunding has led to drastic resource disparities between prosecutors and defenders, undermining the very basis of our criminal legal system."
  • Raise The Floor: Increasing the Minimum Age of Prosecution of Youth as Adults, Campaign for Youth Justice. September, 2019. "Efforts by state legislatures to set or raise the minimum age of transfer are critical first steps toward protecting children and youth from a system that was not created to serve or rehabilitate them."

Friday, September 6 2019:

  • Efficiency and Cost: The Impact of Videoconferenced Hearings on Bail Decisions, [PDF] Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 2010. "We find a sharp increase in the average amount of bail set in cases subject to the video conferencing, but no change in cases that continued to have live hearings."

Friday, August 30 2019:

  • Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2019. "Our analysis confirms that people who are repeatedly arrested and jailed are arrested for lower-level offenses, have unmet medical and mental health needs, and are economically marginalized."
  • Women in Prison Camp: Judicial Process and Effect on Families, Capella. June, 2019. "Most women in this study (86%) consider themselves punished predominantly by separation from their families and children. Collateral damage to the families and young children is considered legally permissible and thus remains ignored."

Wednesday, August 28 2019:

  • Association of Parental Incarceration With Psychiatric and Functional Outcomes of Young Adults Elizabeth J. Gifford, Lindsey Eldred Kozecke, and Megan Golonka. August, 2019. "Parental incarceration is associated with a broad range of psychiatric, legal, financial, and social outcomes during young adulthood. Parental incarceration is a common experience that may perpetuate disadvantage from generation to generation."
  • Examining the relationship between U.S. incarceration rates and population health at the county level Robert R. Weidner and Jennifer Schultz. August, 2019. "Results of our analyses indicate that higher levels of incarceration are associated with higher levels of both morbidity (percentage reporting fair or poor health) and mortality (life expectancy)."
  • The Treatment of People with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System: The Example of Oneida County, New York, Alexander Black, Kylie Davis, Kenneth Gray, Connor O'Shea, Alexander Scheuer. June, 2019. "The sub-standard condition of inpatient psychiatric facilities, due to deinstitutionalization and capital flight, means that there are not nearly enough beds or psych wards to house, let alone care for, all individuals with severe mental health issues."
  • The Effectiveness of Mental Health Courts in Reducing Recidivism and Police Contact: A Systematic Review, Desmond Loong, Sarah Bonato, Jan Barnsley, Carolyn S. Dewa. June, 2019. (The results suggest there is some evidence that mental health courts help to reduce recidivism rates, but the effect on police contact is less clear. Results also suggest case managers or access to vocational and housing may be important components.)
  • The Contagiousness of Police Violence Thibaut Horel, Trevor Campbell, Lorenzo Masoero, Raj Agrawal, Andrew Papachristos and Daria Roithmayr. November, 2018. "Most remarkably, within two years, exposure to a single shooting more than doubles a network neighbor's probability of a future shooting."
  • Decriminalization and Depenalization of Marijuana Possession: A Case Study of Enforcement Outcomes in Prince George's County, Meghan Kozlowski, Emily Glazener, James A. Mitchell, James P. Lynch, Jinney Smith. 2015. "The results suggest that changing arrest policies for low-quantity marijuana possession led to increases in enforcement for other low-level misdemeanor offenses. Additionally, our findings shed light on net-widening as a potential unintended consequence."
  • Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue? Testing Opposing Views of Forfeiture., Brian Kelly. June, 2019. "These results add to a growing body of scholarly evidence supporting forfeiture's critics, suggesting that claims about forfeiture's value in crime fighting are exaggerated at best and that police do use forfeiture to raise revenue."
  • Confirmation Bias and Other Systemic Causes of Wrongful Convictions: A Sentinel Events Perspective, Kim Rossmo and Joycelyn Pollock. July, 2019. "Detectives must minimize the risk of error by accurately assessing evidence reliability and avoiding premature shifts to suspect-based investigations. Resolving issues of cognitive bias and avoiding logic/analytic mistakes are equally important."
  • Diversity on the Force: Where Police Don't Mirror Communities, Governing. September, 2015. "Despite efforts to improve diversity, minorities remain largely underrepresented in many local police departments."
  • 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."

Tuesday, August 27 2019:

  • The Darkest Corner: Special Administrative Measures and Extreme Isolation in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Center for Constitutional Rights. September, 2017. "Special Administrative Measures are the darkest corner of the U.S. federal prison system, combining the brutality and isolation of maximumsecurity units with additional restrictions that deny individuals almost any connection to the human world."
  • Immigration, Citizenship, and the Federal Justice System, 1998-2018 Bureau of Justice Statistics. August, 2019. "In 1998, 63% of all federal arrests were of U.S. citizens; in 2018, 64% of all federal arrests were of non-U.S. citizens."

Monday, August 26 2019:

  • Pretrial Release Without Money: New York City, 1987-2018, New York City Criminal Justice Agency. March, 2019. "In 2018 there were more than three times as many releases without money than money bails."

Friday, August 23 2019:

  • Collateral Consequences: The Crossroads of Punishment, Redemption, and the Effects on Communities, The United States Commission on Civil Rights. June, 2019. "The reach of each collateral consequence extends past people with criminal records to affect families and communities."
  • Incarceration and opioid withdrawal: The experiences of methadone patients and out-of-treatment heroin users, Mitchell et al.. June, 2019. (Withdrawal is infrequently treated and represents a lost opportunity to engage or retain heroin addicted individuals in treatment and thereby reduce their risk for HIV, for overdose deaths, and for recidivism to drug use and crime.)
  • ISOLATED: ICE Confines Some Detainees with Mental Illness in Solitary for Months, Project On Government Oversight. August, 2019. "About 40 percent of the records show detainees placed in solitary have mental illness. At some detention centers, the percentage is much higher."
  • An Analysis of Texas Jail Bookings: How Texas Counties Could Save Millions of Dollars by Safely Diverting People From Jail, Texas Appleseed. April, 2019. "Our overarching finding is that tens of thousands of people who are booked into Texas jails each year never need to be booked in jail at all."
  • Gatekeepers: The Role of Police in Ending Mass Incarceration, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2019. "The mass enforcement of relatively minor law violations suggests that policing practices currently tend toward punitive approaches in ways that are often not necessary to achieve public safety."
  • The 911 Call Processing System: A Review of the Literature as it Relates to Policing, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2019. "Analysis of calls for service data provides a huge and largely untapped opportunity for researchers and practitioners to inform and transform policy and practice."
  • Opportunity Costs: Unequal Justice in Alabama's Community Corrections Programs, Southern Poverty Law Center. August, 2019. "The SPLC's eight-month investigation of community corrections programs in Alabama reveals serious flaws in a "user-funded justice" system that, in many locales, seems to be focused more on raising money than on rehabilitation or public safety."
  • The Agony & the Ecstasy of #MeToo: The Hidden Costs of Reliance on Carceral Politics, Guy Padraic Hamilton-Smith. July, 2019. "Approaches that rely on carceral politics are deaf to the needs of survivors, especially when those needs diverge from maximizing state power."
  • Misdemeanor Appeals Nancy J. King and Michael Heise. July, 2019. (Authors found that appellate courts review no more than eight in 10,000 misdemeanor convictions, and disturb only one conviction or sentence out of every 10,000 misdemeanor judgments.)

Monday, August 12 2019:

  • Can't Pay, Can't Vote: A National Survey on the Modern Poll Tax, Campaign Legal Center and the Civil Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law. July, 2019. "But, the majority of states condition rights restoration, either explicitly or implicitly, on the payment of legal financial obligations."
  • The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice: Key Process and Outcome Evaluation Findings, Urban Institute. August, 2019. "Although community perceptions improved in the aggregate, views of police and police legitimacy remain largely negative in the neighborhoods most affected by crime and disadvantage."

Friday, August 9 2019:

Wednesday, August 7 2019:

  • Capital Punishment, 2017: Selected Findings, Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2019. "At year-end 2017, a total of 32 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) held 2,703 prisoners under sentence of death, which was 94 (3%) less than at year-end 2016."
  • Use of Medication-Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in Criminal Justice Settings Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. July, 2019. "Following incarceration, individuals with opioid use disorder enter back into the environment where their substance use originated. Unfortunately, this puts the individual at high risk for relapse."
  • LGBTQ Youth of Color Impacted by the Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Systems: A Research Agenda, UCLA Williams Institute. June, 2019. "LGBTQ youth of color appear to stay longer in child welfare and juvenile justice systems and to be at elevated risk of discrimination and violence once system-involved compared to other groups of youth."
  • Managing Mental Illness in Jails: Sheriffs Are Finding Promising New Approaches, Police Executive Research Forum. September, 2018. "The mental health crisis in the United States has been thrust upon America's correctional agencies."
  • Police-Mental Health Collaborations: A Framework for Implementing Effective Law Enforcement Responses for People Who Have Mental Health Needs, Council of State Governments. July, 2019. "Increasingly, officers are called on to be the first--and often the only--responders to calls involving people experiencing a mental health crisis."
  • Network exposure and excessive use of force: Investigating the social transmission of police misconduct, Marie Ouellet, Sadaf Hashimi, Jason Gravel, and Andrew V. Papachristos. July, 2019. "Our findings indicate officers' peers may serve as social conduits through which misconduct may be learned and transmitted."
  • Changes in Enforcement of Low-Level and Felony Offenses Post-Ferguson: An Analysis of Arrests in St. Louis, Missouri, Lee Ann Slocum, Claire Greene, Beth M. Huebner, and Richard Rosenfeld. July, 2019. "We find that there was an initial reduction in low-level arrests of Whites and Blacks in the wake of Ferguson. Enforcement of misdemeanors and ordinance violations then increased and returned to expected levels, but only for Blacks."
  • Examining Judicial Pretrial Release Decisions: The Influence of Risk Assessments and Race, Brian P. Schaefer and Tom Hughes,. January, 2019. "The findings indicate that Black, moderate or high risk felony arrestees are more likely to be required to post a financial bond than non-financial bond compared to their White or lower risk counterparts."
  • As Wall Street Banks Sever Ties, Private Prison Companies Stand to Lose Over $1.9B in Future Financing Center for Popular Democracy, In the Public Interest, and Public Accountability Initiative. July, 2019. "Given the six banks' commitments to provide no new financing, GEO Group and CoreCivic will potentially face a $1.9 billion shortfall when the current agreements expire."
  • Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Arrests for Drug Possession After California Proposition 47, 2011-2016 Mooney et al.. August, 2018. "Reducing criminal penalties for drug possession can reduce racial/ethnic disparities in criminal justice exposure and has implications for improving health inequalities linked to social determinants of health."
  • Cumulative Sexual Victimization and Mental Health Outcomes Among Incarcerated Women Jennifer Hartsfield, Susan F. Sharp, and Sonya Conner. March, 2017. "Our findings confirm prior research about the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse among women prisoners with more than half of the respondents reported experiencing childhood sexual abuse, similar to past research."

Tuesday, August 6 2019:

  • Collective Bargaining and Police Misconduct: Evidence from Florida, Dhammika Dharmapala, Richard H. McAdams, and John Rappaport. January, 2018. "Collective bargaining rights lead to about a 27% increase in complaints of officer misconduct for the typical sheriff's office."

Tuesday, July 30 2019:

  • Fulfilling the Promises of Free Exercise for All: Muslim Prisoner Accommodation in State Prisons, Muslim Advocates. July, 2019. "Despite Muslims constituting a significant and growing share of prisoners, many state departments of correction still have policies that are outdated, under-accommodating, or non-accommodating of Muslim prisoners."
  • The Impact of Police on Criminal Justice Reform: Evidence from Cincinnati, Ohio, Robin S. Engel, Nicholas Corsaro, M. Murat Ozer. May, 2017. "When arrest becomes systematically viewed by police as a limited and precious commodity, to be used sparingly and for the most chronic or serious offenders, change throughout the criminal justice system will likely result."
  • New York, New York: Highlights of the 2019 Bail Reform Law, Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2019. "If implemented effectively, a conservative estimate of the legislation's impact suggests that New York can expect at least a 40 percent reduction overall in the state's pretrial jail population."

Friday, July 26 2019:

  • Reducing Crime Through Environmental Design: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Street Lighting in New York City, Crime Lab New York & Science in Service of Cities. April, 2019. "After accounting for potential spatial spillovers, we find that the provision of street lights led, at a minimum, to a 36 percent reduction in nighttime outdoor index crimes."
  • The California Death Penalty is Discriminatory, Unfair, and Officially Suspended. So Why Does Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey Still Seek to Use It?, ACLU. June, 2019. "All of the 22 people who have received death sentences while Lacey has been in office are people of color."
  • Decreasing HIV transmissions to African American women through interventions for men living with HIV post-incarceration: An agent-based modeling study, Adams et al.. July, 2019. "Interventions to improve care engagement and decrease sexual risk behaviors post-incarceration for men living with HIV have the potential to decrease HIV incidence within African American heterosexual networks."
  • Does our county really need a bigger jail? A guide for avoiding unnecessary jail expansion, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2019. "Counties will likely find that most people incarcerated in their local jail do not need to be incarcerated and would be better served in the community, allowing the county to avoid the costly and harmful route of jail expansion altogether."
  • Survey of law enforcement access to sealed non-conviction records Collateral Consequences Resource Center. 2015. "25 states, plus two territories, the District of Columbia and the Federal system, exempt law enforcement agencies generally from sealing or expungement laws, or in a few cases have no law authorizing sealing of non-conviction records."
  • Effect of Pretrial Detention in Oregon Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. 2015. "After controlling for several factors (e.g., criminal history), our analyses reveal that detained defendants were more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as part of their sentence compared to those who were released prior to their disposition.."
  • Promoting Equity with Youth Diversion R Street. July, 2019. "The full potential of diversion policies and programs are undermined when youth of different racial and ethnic backgrounds do not have the same opportunities to be diverted and are not offered programs with their individual needs in mind."

Thursday, July 25 2019:

  • Louisiana on Lockdown: A Report on the Use of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons, With Testimony From the People Who Live It, Solitary Watch, ACLU LA, and Jesuit Social Research Institute. June, 2019. "The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LADOC) reported that 19 percent of the men in its state prisons--2,709 in all--had been in solitary confnement for more than two weeks. Many had been there for years or even decades."
  • Still Worse Than Second-Class: Solitary Confinement of Women in the United States, ACLU. June, 2019. "Nearly 70 percent of women in prison or jail have a history of mental health conditions--a much higher rate than for men in prison or jail. Solitary confinement has been shown to exacerbate underlying mental health conditions."
  • Not in Isolation: How to Reduce Room Confinement While Increasing Safety in Youth Facilities, Stop Solitary for Kids. June, 2019. "It is more critical than ever that youth justice facility and agency administrators develop alternatives to room confinement consistent with evolving best practices, professional standards, and an understanding of adolescent development."

Wednesday, July 17 2019:

  • ICEwatch: ICE Raids Tactics Map A Brief Summary of ICE Raids Trends to Accompany, Immigrant Defense Project. July, 2018. "Since its inception, ICE has demonstrated an indifference to community members' constitutional rights and little interest in internal accountability for misconduct."

Tuesday, July 16 2019:

  • Convictions of Innocent People with Intellectual Disability Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Amelia Hritz. June, 2019. "The available data raise the disturbing likelihood that wrongful convictions of the persons with intellectual disability are not rare/"
  • Preventing Suicide and Self-Harm in Jail: A Sentinel Events Approach, Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2019. "Research and guidance from experts demonstrate that it is possible to forestall suicides in custody with a comprehensive suicide prevention program."
  • Bail Reform in New York: Legislative Provisions and Implications for New York City, Center for Court Innovation. April, 2019. "In New York City, 43 percent of the almost 5,000 people detained pretrial on April 1, 2019 would have been released under the new legislation. Outside of New York City, the effects could be even greater."
  • Prosecutorial Misconduct: Mass Gang Indictments and Inflammatory Statements, Babe Howell. May, 2019. "Inflammatory narratives which improperly attribute carnage and enormous amounts of violence to large groups of young men of color play into three pressing problems of society--racism, wrongful convictions, and mass incarceration."
  • At the Intersection of Health and Justice: How the Health of American Indians and Alaska Natives Is Disproportionately Affected by Disparities in the Criminal Justice System, Bette Jacobs, Mehgan Gallagher, and Nicole Heydt. February, 2019. "Issues related to unemployment, substance abuse, and systemic legal disparities are precursors to many cases leading to disability and death. Incarceration affects one's life course and, consequently, one's health."

Monday, July 15 2019:

  • Economic decline, incarceration, and mortality from drug use disorders in the USA between 1983 and 2014: an observational analysis, Elias Nosrati et al.. July, 2019. (The rapid expansion of the prison and jail population in the USA over the past four decades might have contributed to the increasing number of deaths from drug use disorders.)
  • The Debt Spiral: How Chicago's Vehicle Ticketing Practices Unfairly Burden Low-Income and Minority Communities, Woodstock Institute. 2015. "Tickets are disproportionally issued to drivers from low-income and minority areas, who then become trapped in an inescapable cycle of debt simply because they lack the means to pay these tickets."
  • Punishing Homelessness Sara Rankin. January, 2019. "Cities throughout the country are increasingly enacting and enforcing laws that punish the conduct of necessary, life-sustaining activities in public, even when many people have no other option."
  • Disparate Justice: Where Kentuckians Live Determines Whether They Stay in Jail Because They Can't Afford Cash Bail, Kentucky Center for Economic Policy. June, 2019. "In certain counties, people with low incomes face much higher risk of harms from being detained in jail ranging from job loss to higher likelihoods of being found guilty and committing crimes in the future."
  • Democracy, Bureaucracy and Criminal Justice Reform Lauren M. Ouziel. May, 2019. "Elected leaders are voted in with high expectations for transformative change, yet may be stymied by the bureaucracy's resistance to it."
  • Understanding Risk and Needs in Misdemeanor Populations: A Case Study in New York City, Center for Court Innovation. June, 2018. "Despite the low-level nature of most criminal behavior, many defendants have serious needs for treatment and services that, if left unmet, can lead to a revolving door of more low-level arrests and re-arrests."
  • Second Looks & Second Chances Shon 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."
  • Extraneous factors in judicial decisions Shai Danziger, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso. April, 2011. "We find that the percentage of favorable rulings drops gradually from ~65% to nearly zero within each decision session and returns abruptly to ~65% after a break. Our findings suggest that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables."
  • "Nothing Good Happens in There:" Closing and Repurposing Youth Detention Facilities in California, Impact Justice. July, 2019. "Our experience in this field has demonstrated time and again that simply closing a facility is not enough: The real focus of the work must be in developing and implementing repurposing strategies which truly benefit the community."
  • Restorative Justice and Youth Offenders in Nebraska Kristen M. Blankley and Alisha Caldwell Jimenez. June, 2019. "Although Nebraska's statewide victim/youth conference program is developing, the program is promising and offers some opportunities for other restorative justice programs around the country."

Wednesday, July 3 2019:

  • The Public Finance of Capital Punishment Alex Lundberg. April, 2019. "In Texas the cost of trial is borne primarily at the county level. A panel of Texas county spending over the last decade shows counties meet the expense of trial by raising property tax rates and by reducing public safety expenditure."
  • Next Steps in Federal Corrections Reform Implementing and Building on the First Step Act, Urban Institute. May, 2019. (Successful implementation will require the commitment and buy-in of the DOJ and BOP, education and training, adequate funding, faithful development and execution of the risk and needs assessment tool, and outside oversight to monitor progress.)
  • The Impact of Parental Incarceration on the Physical and Mental Health of Young Adults Rosalyn D. Lee, Xiangming Fang, and Feijun Luo. December, 2012. "This study suggests exposure to parental incarceration in childhood is associated with health problems in young adulthood."
  • Linkages Between Incarceration and Health Michael Massoglia and Brianna Remster. May, 2019. "Incarceration is associated with worse health for all formerly incarcerated persons compared with never incarcerated persons."
  • Citizenship and Punishment: The Salience of National Membership in U.S. Criminal Courts, Michael T. Light, Michael Massoglia, and Ryan D. King. October, 2014. "Noncitizens--particularly undocumented immigrants--are far more likely to be incarcerated and sentenced for longer periods than are U.S. citizens."
  • Hidden challenges: Sex offenders legislated into homelessness, Jill S. Levenson. June, 2016. (The unique stigma of the registered sex offender status coupled with residence restrictions can obstruct community re-entry even more profoundly)
  • Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles Ozkan Eren and Naci Mocan. September, 2016. "We show that upset losses of the LSU football team increase disposition (sentence) length imposed by judges, and that this effect persists throughout the work week following a Saturday game."

Tuesday, July 2 2019:

  • Appropriate Placement and Treatment of Transgender Prisoners: Constitutional Concerns and Arguments for Alternative Housing and Treatment Policies, Scott J. Schweikart. December, 2018. "The problem facing transgender prisoners has a significant racial and socio-economic component as imprisoned transgender people are"

Friday, June 28 2019:

  • Recidivism of Felony Offenders in California Public Policy Institute of California. June, 2019. "We find that rearrest and reconviction rates have declined for felony offenders released from October 2011 to October 2015."

Thursday, June 27 2019:

Friday, June 21 2019:

  • Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions Alma Cohen and Crystal S. Yang. June, 2017. "Exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges, we find that Republican appointed judges sentence black defendants to longer prison terms than similar whites compared to Democratic appointed judges."

Wednesday, June 19 2019:

  • Sharks and Minnows in the War on Drugs: A Study of Quantity, Race and Drug Type in Drug Arrests, Joseph E. Kennedy, Isaac Unah, and Kasi Wahlers. December, 2018. "This Article is the first to conclusively establish that the war on drugs is being waged primarily against those possessing or selling minuscule amounts of drugs."
  • How Police Technology Aggravates Racial Inequity: A Taxonomy of Problems and a Path Forward, Laura Moy. February, 2019. "Police technology may (1) replicate inequity in policing, (2) mask inequity in policing, (3) transfer inequity from elsewhere to policing, (4) exacerbate inequitable policing harms, and/or (5) compromise oversight of inequity in policing."
  • Confined and Costly: How Supervision Violations Are Filling Prisons and Burdening Budgets, Council of State Governments. June, 2019. (45% of state prison admissions nationwide are due to violations of probation or parole.)

Friday, June 14 2019:

  • The Safe Alternatives to Segregation Initiative: Findings and Recommendations for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2019. "17.4 percent of people incarcerated in Louisiana's state-operated prisons were housed in some form of segregated housing, which is approximately 3.9 times the estimated national average of 4.5 percent."
  • Not in my Exam Room: How U.S. Immigration Enforcement Is Obstructing Medical Care, Physicians for Human Rights. June, 2019. "Public health research has documented widening racial and ethnic health disparities as a result of punitive and discriminatory immigration enforcement practices within the militarized border zone."
  • Promoting Reentry Success Through Increased Access to Social Security Benefit American Jail Association. February, 2019. "Jails that connect people experiencing disabling health conditions to Social Security Administration (SSA) disability benefits programs can see significant reductions in recidivism rates."
  • Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban Men Geller et al.. December, 2014. "Participants who reported more police contact also reported more trauma and anxiety symptoms, associations tied to how many stops they reported, the intrusiveness of the encounters, and their perceptions of police fairness."
  • Paid in Full: A Plan to End Money Injustice in New Orleans, Vera Institute of Justice. June, 2019. "Money injustice is deeply unfair and harmful to those directly impacted, exacerbates poverty and racial inequality, wastes scarce taxpayer dollars, and does not deliver the safety all people value."
  • The State of Black Immigrants Black Alliance for Just Immigration. January, 2019. "Black immigrants are disproportionately represented among immigrants facing deportation in immigration court on criminal grounds."
  • The Gendered Burdens of Conviction and Collateral Consequences on Employment Joni Hersch and Erin E. Meyers. June, 2019. "Licensing restrictions, stigma, and perceived risk in hiring decisions in female-dominated occupations and industries, along with barriers to childcare subsidies are all likely to exert a heightened burden on women."
  • Promoting a New Direction for Youth Justice Strategies to Fund a Community-Based Continuum of Care and Opportunity, Urban Institute. March, 2019. "Structural inequalities result in the reality that some communities simply do not have the resources to offer all youth the same access to education, jobs, health care, supports, and opportunities that promote healthy development and safe neighborhoods."

Wednesday, June 12 2019:

  • Evaluation of North Carolina's Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education Program RAND Corporation. May, 2019. "Housing, employment, and transportation were among the top referrals to services provided to Pathways students, followed by family and substance abuse treatment services."
  • Unlocking Potential: Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education, Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2019. (The presence of higher education in prisons has the potential to reshape the ways in which incarcerated people--and their future potential--are viewed, by shifting the perspectives of corrections staff, faculty, administrators, families and students.)
  • Investing in Futures: Economic and Fiscal Benefits of Postsecondary Education in Prison, Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2019. "Expanding access to postsecondary education in prison is likely to reduce recidivism rates, resulting in a decrease in incarceration costs across states of $365.8 million per year."
  • Expanding Medicaid Access to Halfway House Residents: Early Qualitative Findings from Connecticut's Experience, Urban Institute. December, 2018. "Residents no longer have to contend with their fears of returning to the medical unit of a correctional facility for care, and they perceive that Medicaid gives them access to their choice of higher-quality providers."
  • Gone but Not Forgotten: The Untold Stories of Jail Deaths in Washington, Columbia Legal Services. May, 2019. (Over 200 people died in Washington jails between January 1, 2005 and June 15, 2016.)
  • The Immediate Consequences of Federal Pretrial Detention Stephanie 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."
  • Moving Beyond Youth Prisons: Lessons from New York City's Implementation of Close to Home, Columbia University Justice Lab. February, 2019. (New York City's Close to Home initiative represented more than moving jurisdictional control over residential services from one place to another. Rather, it was a fundamental shift in philosophy, which prioritized communities over incarceration.)

Thursday, June 6 2019:

  • Prosecutors and Frequent Utilizers: How Can Prosecutors Better Address The Needs of People Who Frequently Interact with the Criminal Justice and Other Social Systems?, Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College. February, 2019. "These considerations shift the focus of prosecution from punishment to problem solving, and metrics of success beyond conviction and recidivism rates to individual and community wellbeing."
  • Does Locked Up Mean Locked Out? The Effects of the Anti-Drug Act of 1986 on Black Male Students' College Enrollment, Tolani Britton. April, 2019. "The results suggest that Black males had a 2.2% point decrease in the relative probability of college enrollment after the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986."
  • Do Private Prisons Affect Criminal Sentencing? Christian Dippel and Michael Poyker. March, 2019. "We found that a doubling of private prisons' capacities causes a moderate increase in the sentencing length of 23 days, but has no effect on the probability of getting a prison term."

Tuesday, June 4 2019:

  • Aggressive Policing and Academic Outcomes: Examining the Impact of Police "Surges" in NYC Students' Home Neighborhoods, Joscha Legewie, Chelsea Farley, Kayla Stewart. May, 2019. "Aggressive policing in communities can harm Black boys' educational performance, as measured by state tests."
  • Justice "cost points": Examination of privatization within public systems of justice, Alexes Harris, Tyler Smith, Emmi Obara. May, 2019. "Even though justice institutions primarily remain public entities, private corporations are running many key justice system programs and generating large profits from captive populations."
  • Levers of Change In Parole Release And Revocation Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. May, 2019. "Paroling authorities have continued to occupy an influential, but low visibility niche, across the landscape of corrections. Parole boards and the release systems they drive exert a large impact on prison populations that is seldom acknowledged."

Friday, May 31 2019:

  • Thinking About Emerging Adults and Violent Crime Emerging Adult Justice Project. May, 2019. "Viewed through this lens, punishment oriented approaches to violent acts are inadequate. Instead, punitive criminal justice policy often perpetuates violence by adding to the socio-economic disadvantage in which violence can flourish."
  • Urban crime rates and the changing face of immigration: Evidence across four decades, Robert Adelman, Lesley Williams Reid, Gail Markle, Saskia Weiss, and Charles Jaret. September, 2016. "Our results indicate that immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime throughout the time period."
  • Reconsidering the "Violent Offender" Square One Project. May, 2019. "A meaningful decrease in the United States' historically high rates of incarceration will require that reforms extend to people imprisoned for offenses considered violent."
  • More Black than Blue: Politics and Power in the 2019 Black Census, The Black Futures Lab. May, 2019. "More than half (55 percent) of respondents have personally had a negative interaction with the police at some point, and 28 percent have had at least one negative interaction in the last 6 months."

Thursday, May 30 2019:

  • Policing Women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2019. "Women make up an increasing share of arrests and report much more use of force than they did twenty years ago."

Friday, May 24 2019:

  • Failing to Protect and Serve: Police Department Policies Towards Transgender People, National Center for Transgender Equality. May, 2019. (Only 9 of the 25 departments reviewed include gender identity and/or expression language in their non-discrimination policy, which is the best way to clarify that transgender people are protected.)
  • LGBTQ People Behind Bars: A Guide to Understanding the Issues Facing Transgender Prisoners and Their Legal Rights, National Center for Transgender Equality. October, 2018. "Transgender people are nearly ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general prison population, with an estimated 40% of transgender people in state and federal prisons reporting a sexual assault in the previous year."
  • Road Runners: The Role and Impact of Law Enforcement in Transporting Individuals with Severe Mental Illness, Treatment Advocacy Center. May, 2019. "Approximately one-third of individuals with severe mental illness have their first contact with mental health treatment through a law enforcement encounter."
  • America Under Watch: Face Surveillance in the United States, Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology. May, 2018. "For the millions of Americans living in Detroit and Chicago, face surveillance may be an imminent reality."
  • Racial Disparities in D.C. Policing: Descriptive Evidence From 2013-2017, ACLU of the District of Columbia. May, 2019. "From 2013 to 2017, Black individuals composed 47% of D.C.'s population but 86% of its arrestees. During this time, Black people were arrested at 10 times the rate of white people."
  • When Music Takes the Stand: A Content Analysis of How Courts Use and Misuse Rap Lyrics in Criminal Cases, Erin Lutes, James Purdon, and Henry F. Fradella. May, 2019. "The analyses demonstrate that rap evidence is routinely admitted against defendants in criminal proceedings, even in cases in which the prejudicial effect of such evidence clearly outweighs its probative value."

Thursday, May 2 2019:

  • Criminal Justice Solutions: Model State Legislation, Brennan Center for Justice. December, 2018. "This report offers state lawmakers model legislation based on smart, bold policy solutions that would keep crime low while reducing mass incarceration."
  • Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to Privacy Brennan Center for Justice. December, 2018. "New technologies that extend the power and reach of law enforcement are likely to exacerbate existing biases in policing and add more surveillance to communities that are already extensively policed."
  • Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, African American Policy Forum. July, 2015. (The failure to highlight and demand accountability for the countless Black women killed by police over the past two decades leaves Black women unnamed and thus underprotected in the face of their continued vulnerability to racialized police violence.)

Wednesday, May 1 2019:

  • Can We Downsize Our Prisons and Jails Without Compromising Public Safety? Findings from California's Prop 47, Bradley J. Bartos and Charis E. Kubrin. August, 2018. "Our findings reveal that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary. At the same time, we find that larceny and motor vehicle thefts appear to have increased moderately."
  • Criminal Justice Administrative Fees: High Pain for People, Low Gain for Government, The Financial Justice Project of San Francisco. May, 2018. "Over the last six years, more than 265,000 fines and fees have been charged to local individuals, totaling almost $57 million."
  • Prisoners in 2017 Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2019. "The imprisonment rate for sentenced prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction decreased 2.1% from 2016 to 2017 (from 450 to 440 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents)."
  • Jail Inmates in 2017 Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2019. "County and city jails held 745,200 inmates at midyear 2017."
  • Heat in U.S. Prisons and Jails Corrections and the Challenge of Climate Change, Daniel W. E. Holt. August, 2015. "Correctional departments should consider not only the direct impacts of rising temperatures but also indirect impacts such as greater risks of wildfires and drought, increased burdens on the electric grid, and growing pressures on food and water supplies."
  • The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance, Roseanna Sommers and Vanessa K. Bohns. April, 2019. "This is problematic because it indicates that a key justification for suspicionless consent searches--that they are voluntary--relies on an assessment that is subject to bias."
  • The Prison Industrial Complex: Mapping Private Sector Players, Worth Rises. April, 2019. "More than half of the $80 billion spent annually on incarceration by government agencies is used to pay the thousands of vendors that serve the criminal legal system."
  • Are Private Prisons to Blame for Mass Incarceration and Its Evils? Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, and Public Choice, Hadar Aviram. January, 2015. "Public institutions have privatized so many of their internal functions that they can hardly be differentiated from private ones. Public actors behave in ways as atrocious and neglectful, and they respond to the same market pressure, as private actors."
  • Applying a racial equity lens to fines and fees in the District of Columbia D.C. Policy Center. 2015. "Fixed fines and fees can disproportionately harm families of color, both due to discriminatory practices in issuing fines and fees and in the systemic issues of income and wealth inequities that make it more difficult for these families to pay"
  • The Determinants of Declining Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000-2015 Samuel L. Myers, Jr., William J. Sabol, and Man Xu. December, 2018. "From 2000 to 2016 there was considerable narrowing of the disparity in incarceration rates between black females and white females in America's prisons."
  • Report on the Bronx 120 Mass "Gang" Prosecution Babe Howell and Priscilla Bustamante. April, 2019. "The Bronx 120 indictments appear not only to be overbroad and unfair, but they seem profoundly unwise."
  • Girls in the Juvenile Justice System Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. April, 2019. "More than half of all female delinquency cases involved black or Hispanic youth."

Friday, April 26 2019:

  • Solitary Confinement: Inhumane, Ineffective, and Wasteful, Southern Poverty Law Center. April, 2019. "solitary is disproportionately used for people with mental illnesses, people of color, and people with disabilities."
  • The Next Step: Ending Excessive Punishment for Violent Crimes, The Sentencing Project. April, 2019. "Excessive penalties for violent crimes are not only ineffective--incapacitating people who no longer pose a public safety threat and producing little deterrent effect--they also divert investment from more effective public safety programs."
  • Judged for More Than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty, The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. September, 2018. "We estimate that at least 500 women are currently on death rows around the world"
  • Neither Justice nor Treatment: Drug Courts in the United States, Physicians for Human Rights. June, 2017. "Overall, PHR found that drug courts largely failed at providing treatment to those who truly needed it, and filled up limited treatment spaces with court-mandated patients who didn't always need the care."
  • Reclassified State Drug Law Reforms to Reduce Felony Convictions and Increase Second Chances, Urban Institute. October, 2018. "Reclassifying drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor can reduce the negative impacts imposed on people and communities by felony convictions, reduce imprisonment of people convicted of drug possession, and redirect limited resources to treatment."
  • People in Prison in 2018 Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2019. "Prison incarceration rates fell in 35 states and grew in 15 others."
  • Swept Up in the Sweep: The Impact of Gang Allegations on Immigrant New Yorkers, New York Immigration Coalition. May, 2018. "By broadly casting immigrant Latinx youth as gang members to be targeted for incarceration and deportation, even the outward pretense of basic rights and due process is pushed to the side."
  • Misdemeanors by the Numbers Sandra Mayson and Megan Stevenson. April, 2019. "With a single exception, the per-capita misdemeanor case-filing rate is higher for black people than for white people for every offense type, in every jurisdiction."

Wednesday, April 17 2019:

Monday, April 8 2019:

  • Mass Probation and Inequality: Race, Class, and Gender Disparities in Supervision and Revocation, Michelle Phelps. 2018. "The results suggest that probation supervision contributes to racial disparities in imprisonment, both by diverting more white defendants to probation initially and by revoking black probationers at greater rates."

Friday, April 5 2019:

  • Dirty Data, Bad Predictions: How Civil Rights Violations Impact Police Data, Predictive Policing Systems, and Justice, Rashida Richardson, Jason Schultz, Kate Crawford. March, 2019. "The failure to adequately interrogate and reform police data creation and collection practices can result in skewed predictive policing systems and create lasting consequences that will permeate throughout the criminal justice system."
  • Impact of Risk Assessment on Judges' Fairness in Sentencing Relatively Poor Defendants Jennifer L. Skeem, Nicholas Scurich, and John Monahan. January, 2019. "When risk assessment information was added to these cases, judges were more likely to sentence the relatively poor defendant to incarceration than his more affluent counterpart."

Monday, April 1 2019:

  • A Public Health Strategy for the Opioid Crisis Saloner et al.. November, 2018. "A tough-on-crime approach has a high likelihood of backfiring: overzealous law enforcement can lead fewer people to come forward when their companions are overdosing, thereby increasing health risks."
  • Incarceration as Forced Migration: Effects on Selected Community Health Outcomes, James C. Thomas and Elizabeth Torrone. October, 2006. "High rates of incarceration can have the unintended consequence of destabilizing communities and contributing to adverse health outcomes."
  • Sheriffs Addressing the Mental Health Crisis in the Community and in the Jails, Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. 2015. "This report identifies successful practices that local law enforcement can employ to reduce the arrest and incarceration of people living with mental illness in their jurisdictions."
  • Criminal Justice Debt in the South: A Primer for the Southern Partnership to Reduce Debt, National Consumer Law Center. December, 2018. "The excessive criminal justice debts that burden people leaving prison create a barrier to successful reentry, contributing to cycles of incarceration."
  • The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges, Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang. January, 2018. (We find that pretrial detention significantly increases the probability of conviction, primarily through an increase in guilty pleas. It has no net effect on future crime, but decreases formal sector employment and the receipt of some government benefits.)
  • Evaluation of Pretrial Justice System Reforms That Use the Public Safety Assessment: Effects in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, MDRC. March, 2019. "Mecklenburg County substantially reduced its use of money bail and detained fewer defendants, without sacrificing public safety or court appearance rates."
  • The Unintended Impact of Pretrial Detention on Case Outcomes: Evidence from New York City Arraignments, Emily Leslie and Nolan G. Pope. August, 2017. "Our results indicate a strong causal relationship between pretrial detention and case outcomes. We see consistent evidence that detainees plead guilty more often to more serious offenses and some evidence that they serve longer sentences."
  • Commercialized (In)Justice: Consumer Abuses in the Bail And Corrections Industry, National Consumer Law Center. March, 2019. "The growth of the corrections industry accelerates the trend whereby the costs of our legal system are imposed on low-income, disadvantaged communities least able to shoulder such burdens, rather than shared as a collective public responsibility."
  • A National Survey of Criminal Justice Diversion Programs and Initiatives Center 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 Survey of Prosecutorial Diversion in Illinois Center 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."
  • Criminalization of Self-Induced Abortion in the United States: Report to the U.N. Working Group on Discrimination Against Women, Farah Diaz-Tello and Cynthia Soohoo. June, 2017. "Whether people end their own pregnancies out of preference or necessity, historical and present trends indicate that criminalization is not a deterrent to self-induction."

Friday, March 29 2019:

  • High Time for Criminal Justice Reform: Marijuana Expungement Statutes in States with Legalized or Decriminalized Marijuana Laws, Alana E. Rosen. February, 2019. "States that legalize or decriminalize marijuana should automatically include expungement provisions that dismiss and erase, resentence, or redesignate the records of individuals with previous marijuana-related convictions."
  • No Credit For Time Served? Incarceration and Credit-Driven Crime Cycles, Abhay Aneja and Carlos Avenancio-Leon. February, 2019. "Incarceration significantly reduces access to credit, and that in turn leads to substantial increases in recidivism, creating a perverse feedback loop."
  • What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated?: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey, Enns et al.. March, 2019. "45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated. The incarceration of an immediate family member was most prevalent for blacks (63 percent) but common for whites (42 percent) and Hispanics (48 percent) as well."
  • Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016-2017 Sufrin et al.. March, 2019. "Overall, 1396 pregnant women were admitted to prisons; 3.8% of newly admitted women and 0.6% of all women were pregnant in December 2016."
  • Misdemeanor Disenfranchisement? The demobilizing effects of brief jail spells on potential voters, Ariel White. March, 2018. "Jail sentences arising from misdemeanor cases decrease voter turnout in the next election, especially for black defendants."
  • Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority Youth Joscha Legewie and Jeffrey Fagan. February, 2019. "Aggressive policing can thus lower educational performance for some minority groups, providing evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth."
  • A Proposal to End Regressive Taxation through Law Enforcement The Hamilton Project. March, 2019. "Over the past few decades the directives handed down to the everyday agents of law enforcement have incrementally shifted focus away from public safety and toward public finance."
  • No Right to Rest: Criminalizing Homelessness in Colorado, The Denver Homeless Out Loud Report Team. April, 2015. "In addition to formal citation and arrest, this survey finds evidence of extrajudicial harassment of homeless people. Both police and private security forces commonly harass and enforce punishments on homeless people, even without legal authority to do so"
  • Too High a Price: What Criminalizing Homelessness Costs Colorado, Homeless Advocacy Policy Project. February, 2016. "Cities issue citations to homeless residents at a staggering rate."
  • "Forced into Breaking the Law": The Criminalization of Homelessness in Connecticut, Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. October, 2016. "This cycle of incarceration and homelessness comes at a steep cost to people experiencing homelessness, as well as to taxpayers, all while failing to address the root cause of homelessness: a lack of housing solutions."
  • Towed into Debt: How Towing Practices in California Punish Poor People, Western Center on Law & Poverty. March, 2019. "For many Californians, a vehicle tow means the permanent loss of their car and, along with it, the loss of employment, access to education and medical care, and, for some, their only shelter."
  • Driver's License Suspension in North Carolina Brandon L. Garrett and William Crozier. March, 2019. "We found that there are 1,225,000 active driver's licenses suspensions in North Carolina for non-driving related reasons, relating to failure to pay traffic fines and court courts, and failure to appear in court for traffic offenses."
  • Racial Bias in Bail Decisions David Arnold, Will Dobbie, and Crystal S. Yang. April, 2018. "Estimates from Miami and Philadelphia show that bail judges are racially biased against black defendants, with substantially more racial bias among both inexperienced and part-time judges."
  • Who Pays for Government? Descriptive Representation and Exploitative Revenue Sources, Michael W. Sances and Hye Young You. September, 2016. "We find municipal governments with higher black populations rely more heavily on fines and fees for revenue. Further, we find that the presence of black city council members significantly reduces - though does not eliminate - this pattern."

Tuesday, March 19 2019:

  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2019. "The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people."
  • Criminal Immigrants in 2017: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin, Cato Institute. March, 2019. "Legal and illegal immigrants were less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans in 2017, just as they were in 2014 and 2016."
  • Failure should not be an option: Grading the parole release systems of all 50 states, Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2019. "Parole systems should give every incarcerated person ample opportunity to earn release and have a fair, transparent process for deciding whether to grant it."
  • Reducing Barriers to Reintegration: Fair chance and expungement reforms in 2018, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. January, 2019. "In terms of sheer volume of new laws, 2018 marks the high point of recent state efforts to restore rights and status to people with a criminal record."
  • 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.)
  • Diversion in the Criminal Justice System Michael 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."

Monday, March 18 2019:

  • Reforming Restrictive Housing: The 2018 ASCA-Liman Nationwide Survey of Time-in-Cell, The Association of State Correctional Administrators & The Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School. October, 2018. "Across all the reporting jurisdictions, the median percentage of the population held in restrictive housing was 4.2%; the average was 4.6%."
  • Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime, Paywall :( Patrick Sharkey, Gerard Torrats-Espinosa, Delaram Takyar. October, 2017. "We find strong evidence that establishment of community nonprofits had a substantively meaningful negative effect on murder, violent crime, and property crime."
  • Toward Misdemeanor Justice: Lessons from New York City, Greg Berman & Julian Adler. June, 2018. "This article seeks to articulate a new approach to misdemeanor justice that reconciles the maintenance of public safety with the urgent need to reduce unnecessary incarceration."
  • Criminalization of HIV Transmission and Exposure: Research and Policy Agenda, Zita Lazzarini et al.. August, 2013. "More than half the states have HIV-specific criminal laws, whereas all have traditional criminal provisions. Yet criminal laws have not been shown to be effective in reducing rates of HIV infection."
  • Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans: a population-based, quasi-experimental study, Jacob Bor, Atheendar S Venkataramani, David R Williams, Alexander C Tsai. June, 2018. "Police killings of unarmed black Americans have adverse effects on mental health among black American adults in the general population."
  • Too Poor to Pay: How Arkansas's Offender-Funded Justice System Drives Poverty & Mass Incarceration, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. March, 2019. "In Arkansas, thousands have been jailed, often repeatedly, for weeks or even months at a time, simply because they are poor and cannot afford to pay court costs, fines and fees."
  • How New Orleans Funds Justice Vera Institute of Justice. September, 2018. "New Orleans's criminal justice system has a funding structure that requires the court and other justice system agencies to raise revenues by imposing fees on people who come in contact with the system."
  • Ending Mass Incarceration: A Presidential Agenda, Brennan Center for Justice. February, 2019. (Presidential candidates should commit to tackling some of the most pervasive and damaging parts of our criminal justice system, including overly punitive sentences, bail practices that favor the rich, and drug policies that unfairly target people of color)
  • 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."
  • A New Path to Justice: Getting Women Off Rikers Island, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2018. "The advisory group developed several recommendations for how New York City can embrace a different approach at three critical junctures in the criminal justice system: (1) at arrest; (2) at arraignment; and (3) when women are held at RMSC."

Friday, March 15 2019:

  • Mass incarceration, public health, and widening inequality in the USA Christopher Wildeman, Emily A Wang. April, 2017. "Soaring incarceration since the mid-1970s has profoundly affected health in the USA, especially in poor and minority communities."
  • Exploring Healthcare Experiences for Incarcerated Individuals Who Identify as Transgender in a Southern Jail Erin McCauley et al.. 2015. "Participants experienced high levels of abuse and harassment, solitary confinement, mental health issues, and lack of access to hormone treatment."
  • Consequences of Policing Prostitution: An Analysis of Individuals Arrested and Prosecuted for Commercial Sex in New York City, Urban Institute. April, 2017. "The history of criminalizing prostitution is long, but its modern incarnation in New York City is inextricably intertwined with "broken windows policing," which originated in the early 1990s."
  • A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States Stanford Computational Policy Lab. March, 2019. "Our investigation of nearly 100 million traffic stops across the United States reveals evidence of widespread discrimination in decisions to stop and search drivers."
  • Return to Nowhere: The Revolving Door Between Incarceration and Homelessness, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. February, 2019. "People experiencing homelessness are 11 times more likely to face incarceration when compared to the general population, and formerly incarcerated individuals are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public."
  • No Safe Place: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. July, 2014. "Despite a lack of affordable housing and shelter space, many cities have chosen to criminally punish people living on the street for doing what any human being must do to survive."
  • 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.)
  • Mothers Behind Bars: A state-by-state report card and analysis of federal policies on conditions of confinement for pregnant/parenting women, The Rebecca Project for Human Rights and The National Women's Law Center. October, 2010. "Pregnant women, incarcerated women and their children are subject to federal and state correctional policies that fail to recognize their distinct needs or honor their families."

Wednesday, February 20 2019:

  • Evaluating the Impacts of Eliminating Prosecutorial Requests for Cash Bail Aurelie Ouss and Megan T. Stevenson. February, 2019. "In spite of this large decrease in the fraction of defendants having monetary incentives to show up to court, we detect no change in failure-to-appear in court or in recidivism."
  • Perinatal Needs of Pregnant, Incarcerated Women Barbara A. Hotelling. April, 2008. "Pregnant prisoners have health-care needs that are minimally met by prison systems."
  • The Price They Pay: Protecting the Mother-Child Relationship Through the Use of Prison Nurseries and Residential Parenting Programs, Anne E. Jbara. October, 2012. "Based on the emotional and cognitive benefits for both mothers and babies, the prison nursery program is a worthwhile addition to the prison system in the United States."

Tuesday, February 19 2019:

  • Health Insurance Trends and Access to Behavioral Healthcare Among Justice-Involved Individuals--United States, 2008-2014, Tyler N. A. Winkelman et al.. December, 2016. (High uninsurance rates, lack of care coordination, and poor access to high quality behavioral health treatment are critical public health issues given the prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders among justice-involved individuals.)
  • Release from Prison -- A High Risk of Death for Former Inmates Ingrid A. Binswanger et al.. January, 2007. "During the first 2 weeks after release from the Washington State Department of Corrections, the risk of death among former inmates was 12.7 times that among Washington State residents of the same age, sex, and race."
  • A randomized clinical trial of methadone maintenance for prisoners: Findings at 6 months post-release, Michael S. Gordon et al.. August, 2008. "This study suggests that methadone maintenance treatment, provided to prisoners with histories of heroin addiction, may be an effective intervention for interrupting the cycle of relapse often experienced by individuals with heroin addiction histories."
  • A Study of Methadone Maintenance For Male Prisoners: 3-Month Postrelease Outcomes, Timothy W. Kinlock et al.. July, 2008. "Participants who received prison-initiated maintenance treatment were significantly more likely to enter community-based treatment than were inmates who received either information on how to access drug abuse treatment after release or counseling only"
  • Why It's Inappropriate Not to Treat Incarcerated Patients with Opioid Agonist Therapy Sarah E. Wakeman. 2015. "In addition to not offering treatment initiation for those who need it, most correctional facilities forcibly withdraw stable patients from opioid agonist therapy upon their entry into the criminal justice system."
  • Potential drivers of HIV acquisition in African-American women related to mass incarceration: An agent-based modelling study, Joella Adams et al.. December, 2018. "Using Philadelphia as a case study, we found that the mass incarceration of African American men can substantially increase the number of HIV transmissions to African American women within the community."
  • Jail Inmates in 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics. February, 2018. "At midyear 2016, about 740,700 inmates were confined in county and city jails in the United States."
  • State of Phone Justice: Local jails, state prisons and private phone providers, Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2018. (Charging pretrial defendants high phone rates punishes people who are legally innocent, drives up costs for their appointed counsel, and makes it harder for them to contact family members and others who might help them post bail or build their defense.)
  • The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth: An Overview of the Experiences of LGBT Youth in the Juvenile Justice System, Center for American Progress. June, 2012. "Gay, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth are significantly over-represented in the juvenile justice system--approximately 300,000 gay and transgender youth are arrested and/or detained each year, of which more than 60 percent are black or Latino."
  • The Overrepresentation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Questioning, Gender Nonconforming and Transgender Youth Within the Child Welfare to Juvenile Justice Crossover Population, Angela Irvine and Aisha Canfield. April, 2016. (The experience of crossing from the child welfare system to the juvenile justice system is important to think about because it is a measure of the heightened vulnerability and marginalization of LGBQ/GNCT youth, especially LGBQ/GNCT youth of color.)
  • Confronting California's Continuing Prison Crisis: The Prevalence And Severity Of Mental Illness Among California Prisoners On The Rise, Stanford Justice Advocacy Project. May, 2017. "While the overall state prison population has decreased dramatically, the percentage of state prisoners with mental illness has increased by 77 percent."
  • Every Three Seconds: Unlocking Police Data on Arrests, Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2019. "Across the United States, an arrest occurs every three seconds."
  • Where Pretrial Improvements Are Happening Pretrial Justice Institute. January, 2019. "There are many ways jurisdictions can improve pretrial systems and the outcomes they produce without introducing new laws or amending state constitutions. Simply changing practice within existing legal structures can create immediate and positive results."
  • The Wisconsin Community Corrections Story [PDF] Columbia University Justice Lab. January, 2019. "Wisconsin serves as a good example of a place where parole and probation supervision are contributing to a prison population that is highly racially disparate and growing."
  • Undue Influence: A Prosecutor's Role in Parole Proceeding, R. Michael Cassidy. September, 2018. (Prosecutors should ordinarily refrain from personally testifying at parole hearings, and should submit written comments to the parole board only in rare situations.)
  • 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."
  • Unlocking the Black Box: How the Prosecutorial Transparency Act Will Empower Communities and Help End Mass Incarceration, ACLU. 2015. (We cannot end mass incarceration until we transform the practices of prosecutors. This requires a far more complete picture of how they are making their decisions as well as the direct impact of those decisions on individuals and communities.)
  • Guidelines for Indigent Defense Caseloads: A Report to the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, Public Policy Research Institute. January, 2015. (The problems in providing criminal defense representation for the indigent in state courts are well documented. But of all the difficulties, none has proven more vexing than outrageously high caseloads of public defenders and sometimes private lawyers.)
  • Juvenile Arrests, 2016 Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. December, 2018. "Juvenile arrests have been on the decline for more than a decade, but patterns vary by offense and demographic group."

Wednesday, January 16 2019:

  • To Serve and Collect: The Fiscal and Racial Determinants of Law Enforcement, Michael D. Makowsky, Thomas Stratmann, and Alexander T. Tabarrok. 2015. (This study finds increases in arrest rates of African-Americans and Hispanics for drugs, DUI violations, and prostitution where local governments are running deficits, but only in states that allow police departments to retain seizure revenues.)
  • Driven by Dollars: A State-By-State Analysis of Driver's License Suspension Laws for Failure to Pay Court Debt, Legal Aid Justice Center. September, 2017. "43 states (and D.C.) suspend driver's licenses because of unpaid court debt."
  • Associations between sex work laws and sex workers' health: A systematic review and meta-analysis of quantitative and qualitative studies, Lucy Platt et al.. December, 2018. "The public health evidence clearly shows the harms associated with all forms of sex work criminalization, including regulatory systems, which effectively leave the most marginalized, and typically the majority of, sex workers outside of the law."
  • Mortality After Prison Release: Opioid Overdose and Other Causes of Death, Risk Factors, and Time Trends From 1999 to 2009, Ingrid A. Binswanger et al.. October, 2013. "The leading cause of death in former prisoners was overdose. Pharmaceutical opioids were the most common substances involved in these deaths."
  • 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."
  • Top Trends in State Criminal Justice Reform, 2018 Sentencing Project. January, 2019. (This briefing paper describes key criminal justice reforms undertaken in 2018.)

Tuesday, January 15 2019:

  • Work and opportunity before and after incarceration Brookings Institution. March, 2018. "The combination of high rates of incarceration and low employment rates among exprisoners implies that roughly one third of all not-working 30-year-old men are either in prison, in jail, or are unemployed former prisoners."
  • The Economics of Bail and Pretrial Detention The Hamilton Project. December, 2018. "Pretrial detention has a substantially negative economic impact on individuals, disrupting their labor market activities and causing increased recidivism."
  • Justice Derailed: A case study of abusive and unconstitutional practices in Colorado city courts, ACLU of Colorado. 2015. "Colorado's municipal courts operate with little meaningful statewide oversight or accountability, providing an opportunity for civil liberties violations and other abusive practices to occur unnoticed, unreported, and unaddressed by state agencies."
  • Roe v Wade and the new Jane Crow: Reproductive rights in the age of mass incarceration, [PDF] Lynn Paltrow. January, 2013. "Efforts to establish separate legal"
  • The War on Drugs and the War on Abortion: Some Initial Thoughts on the Connections, Intersections, and the Effects, Lynn Paltrow. May, 2002. (By recognizing the similarity between reproductive rights and the drug war there is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of each issue and a basis for developing analysis and action that can counteract the forces of punishment and prohibition.)
  • Criminalizing Pregnancy: Policing Pregnant Women Who Use Drugs in the USA, Amnesty International. May, 2017. "Often known as "fetal assault", "chemical endangerment" or "personhood" laws, these measures have been used to arrest and prosecute women who experience pregnancy complications and conditions such as drug dependence."
  • How the Criminalization of Pregnancy Robs Women of Reproductive Autonomy Michele Goodwin. November, 2017. "More than one-third of states consider pregnant women's illicit drug use a form of child abuse, resulting in unprecedented forms of criminal and civil punishment"
  • Invisible Women: Mass Incarceration's Forgotten Casualties, Michele Goodwin. June, 2015. "To place this in context, the U.S. jails more women than Russia, China, Thailand, and India combined. Nearly a third of the world's women inmates are incarcerated in the United States."

Thursday, December 20 2018:

  • Crime in 2018: Updated Analysis, Brennan Center for Justice. December, 2018. "This analysis updates the September report and finds that, where data were available, rates of crime, violent crime, and murder in major American cities are estimated to decline through the end of 2018."
  • New York Should Re-examine Mandatory Court Fees Imposed on Individuals Convicted of Criminal Offenses and Violations New York City Bar. November, 2018. "Courts should not prioritize revenue-raising over the successful re-integration of incarcerated persons back into society."
  • Paradox of Probation: Community Supervision in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Michelle Phelps. March, 2013. (The results suggest that across place and time, probation paradoxically exerts both a prison alternative and net-widener effect, with the two forces often cancelling one another out.)
  • Correctional Control 2018: Incarceration and supervision by state, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2018. "An estimated 4.5 million adults are under community supervision, nearly twice the number of people who are incarcerated in jails and prisons combined."
  • The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism Amanda Y. Agan and Michael D. Makowsky. September, 2018. (This report finds that the average minimum wage increase of $0.50 reduces the probability that men and women return to prison within 1 year by 2.8%.)
  • 50-State Comparison Characteristics of Pardon Authorities Collateral 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.)
  • 21 Principles for the 21st Century Prosecutor Brennan Center for Justice. 2015. "Given their powers, prosecutors are well positioned to make changes that can roll back over-incarceration. They can use their discretion to improve the overall fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system."
  • Fact Check: A Survey of Available Data on Juvenile Crime in Baltimore City, Abell Foundation. June, 2018. "While there has been an increase in the number of juveniles charged as adults for serious crimes, the number of these cases remains relatively small--less than 10 percent of all juvenile arrests."

Monday, December 17 2018:

  • The Death Penalty in 2018: Year End Report, Death Penalty Information Center. December, 2018. "The 25 executions carried out in 2018 marked the fourth consecutive year with fewer than 30 executions-something that had not occurred in the United States since 1988-1991."
  • Every Second: The Impact of the Incarceration Crisis on America's Families, FWD.us. December, 2018. "Every second adult in America has had an immediate family member incarcerated."
  • The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility, Opportunity Insights. October, 2018. "Moving to a neighborhood that is just a mile or two away can change children's average earnings by several thousand dollars a year and have significant effects on a spectrum of other outcomes ranging from incarceration to teenage birth rates."
  • Incarceration Incentives in the Decarceration Era Avlana Eisenberg. January, 2016. "The detailed incentives unearthed by this study demonstrate the significant hurdles facing emerging decarceration policies and the urgent challenge of accounting for, overcoming, and co-opting entrenched prison industry stakeholders."
  • Modernizing Parole Statutes: Guidance from Evidence-Based Practice, Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. August, 2018. (This paper's recommendations serve as a starting place for those interested in modernizing parole laws around three areas: the parole decision-making process, the terms/conditions of supervision, and the administration of the paroling authority itself.)
  • Recidivism in Delaware: An Analysis of Prisoners Released in 2011 through 2013, Delaware Criminal Justice Council Statistical Analysis Center. December, 2017. (This report finds in 2011-2013, between 71-78% of people released from prison in Delaware are arrested again within 3 years.)
  • 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."

Tuesday, November 20 2018:

  • Defendants Whose Death Sentences Have Been Reduced Because of a Finding of "Mental Retardation" since Atkins v. Virginia Death Penalty Information Center. July, 2012. "The authors found that states that significantly deviated from accepted clinical methods for determining intellectual disability, such as Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, had the lowest success rates."
  • Improving Parole Release in America Edward E. Rhine, Joan Petersilia, and Kevin R. Reitz. January, 2016. "This article lays out a ten-point program for the improve-ment of discretionary parole-release systems in America."
  • 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."
  • 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.)
  • 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 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."
  • 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.)
  • Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018, Prison Policy Initiative. November, 2018. "Women's incarceration has grown at twice the pace of men's incarceration in recent decades, and has disproportionately been located in local jails."

Tuesday, November 6 2018:

  • Money for Communities, Not Cages: The Case for Reducing the Cook County Sheriff's Jail Budget, Chicago Community Bond Fund. October, 2018. "By re-allocating money from reactionary corrections programs to proactive and preventative community services, Cook County can begin to effectively invest in the communities and people previously neglected and criminalized."
  • Getting Back on Course: Educational exclusion and attainment among formerly incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2018. "This report reveals that formerly incarcerated people are often relegated to the lowest rungs of the educational ladder."
  • Expanding the Vote: Two Decades of Felony Disenfranchisement Reform, Sentencing Project. October, 2018. "More than 6 million citizens will be ineligible to vote in the midterm elections in November 2018 because of a felony conviction."
  • A Failure in the Fourth Degree: Reforming the State Jail Felony System in Texas, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. October, 2018. "This report demonstrates through data and personal interviews with 140 incarcerated individuals the defective nature of Texas' state jail system, and it puts forth actionable policy recommendations for consideration by the 2019 Texas Legislature"
  • Out of Sight: LGBTQ Youth and Adults in Texas' Justice Systems, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. October, 2018. "LGBTQ people are more likely to experience abuse and harassment by staff and others in the correctional facility, improper placement and solitary confinement, and denial of health care and programming."
  • Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2015 Bureau of Justice Statistics. October, 2018. (When police initiated the contact, black and Hispanic residents were more likely to experience the threat or use of physical force than white residents.)
  • Under Pressure: How fines and fees hurt people, undermine public safety, and drive Alabama's racial wealth divide, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. October, 2018. (83% of people surveyed gave up necessities like rent, food, medical bills, car payments, and child support, in order to pay down their court debt.)
  • Philadelphia Bail Watch Report Findings and Recommendations based on 611 Bail Hearings, Philadelphia Bail Fund & Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts. October, 2018. "Philadelphia's preliminary arraignment system disadvantages individuals charged with crimes and, as a result, threatens one of the most sacred principles in our nation's criminal justice system: a person is innocent until proven guilty"
  • The Color of Youth Transferred to the Adult Criminal Justice System: Policy & Practice Recommendations, Campaign for Youth Justice. September, 2018. (Black youth are disproportionately sent to adult court by judges at some of the highest percentages seen in 30 years.)
  • 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 High Costs of Low Risk: The Crisis of America's Aging Prison Population, The Osborne Association. May, 2018.
  • Mandatory Minimum Penalties for Federal Identity Theft Offenses in the Federal Criminal Justice System U.S. Sentencing Commission. September, 2018. (Section 1028A convictions have increased both as a number and as a percentage of cases involving a mandatory minimum penalty since the Commission began collecting data on these offenses.)
  • Electronic Monitoring of Youth in the California Juvenile Justice System UC Berkeley School of Law. July, 2017. "The report demonstrates electronic monitoring programs can impose dozens of strict and inflexible rules on participants. Financial burdens imposed by electronic monitoring programs disproportionately hurt low-income families."

Wednesday, September 19 2018:

  • Decarceration Strategies: How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions, The Sentencing Project. September, 2018. (This report summarizes key strategies and practices used by Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and South Carolina to reduce their prison populations, followed by extensive reviews for each of the five states.)
  • Emerging Issues in American Policing Volume 4, July 2018, Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2018. (This quarterly digest presents innovations in the field of policing from leading academic journals and research publications.)
  • The effect of prison visitation on reentry success: A meta-analysis, Meghan Mitchell and Kallee McCollough. July, 2016. (Results indicate that prison visitation generates modest reductions in post-release offending, which is moderated by gender, visitation type, time at risk, and recidivism measures.)
  • Repairing the Road to Redemption in California Californians for Safety and Justice. September, 2018. (This report highlights the lifetime consequences of having a conviction in California for individuals, families, and communities and includes recommendations to increase legal remedies and remove unnecessary restrictions.)
  • 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.)
  • Exonerations in 2017 The National Registry of Exonerations. March, 2018. "The National Registry of Exonerations has recorded 139 exonerations in 2017."
  • Exonerations in the United States Before 1989 National Registry of Exonerations. March, 2018. "This year we have added stories and data about 369 earlier exonerations, from 1820 through 1988."
  • The Price of Justice: The High Cost of "Free" Counsel for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System, Juvenile Law Center. July, 2018. (The report shows that requiring youth and their families to pay for the cost of court-appointed counsel forces youth deep into the criminal justice system, keeps them under justice system supervision longer, and pushes families deeper into poverty.)

Tuesday, September 18 2018:

  • Officer Health and Wellness: Results from the California Correctional Officer Survey, Amy E. Lerman. November, 2017. (This report summarizes the results from a correctional officer study examining mental and physical wellness; exposure to violence; attitudes towards rehabilitation and punishment; job training and management; work-life balance; and training and support.)
  • The Role of Gun Supply in 1980s and 1990s Youth Violence Alan Bartley & Geoffrey Fain Williams. June, 2015. (This report documents that the positive supply shock increased the availability of guns to criminally active youth and led to higher rates of gun access for young black men.)

Monday, August 27 2018:

  • Full Human Beings: An argument for incarcerated voter enfranchisement, Peoples Policy Project. May, 2018. (This report argues that all US states should allow incarcerated people to vote, something that only Maine and Vermont currently permit.)
  • Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation Jonathan Mummolo. August, 2018. (This article argues that militarized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, they fail to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime, and may diminish police reputation in the mass public.)
  • New York State Parole Board: Failures in Staffing and Performance, The Parole Preparation Project and The Release Aging People in Prison Campaign. August, 2018. (This report examines the status of the New York State Parole Board, finding that severe staffing shortages, unlawful procedures, and unethical behavior threaten the board's integrity and fail both incarcerated people and the public.)

Wednesday, August 22 2018:

Wednesday, August 15 2018:

  • Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2018. "Formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public."

Wednesday, August 8 2018:

  • Reentering Women: The Impact of Social Ties on Long-Term Recidivism, Kelle Barrick, Pamela K. Lattimore, and Christy A. Visher. July, 2014. "Results from this study suggest that in-prison family contact and post-release family support are protective whereas in-prison non-family contact is a risk factor."
  • 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."
  • Young Adults and Community Supervision The Need for a Developmentally Appropriate Approach to Probation, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. August, 2018. "The purpose of this report is to highlight evidence-based probation practices that improve outcomes, strengthening public safety and changing the life trajectory of young adults who might otherwise spend years in prison."

Tuesday, August 7 2018:

Monday, August 6 2018:

  • The Changing State of Recidivism: Fewer People Going Back to Prison, The Pew Charitable Trusts. August, 2018. "The share of people who return to state prison three years after being released dropped by nearly a quarter over a recent seven-year period."
  • Girls Matter: Centering Gender in Status Offense Reform Efforts, Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2018. "This report helps stakeholders analyze how policies and practices may be negatively or differently impacting girls and address disparities that are missed when systems assessment and reform do not include a targeted gender lens."

Thursday, July 26 2018:

Wednesday, July 25 2018:

  • 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.)

Monday, July 23 2018:

  • Reckless Indifference: Deadly Heat in Texas Prisons, Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. March, 2015. (This report highlights the extreme heat conditions in Texas Department of Criminal Justice facilities, the treatment of heat-sensitive individuals, and the failed grievance system employed by the TDCJ.)

Wednesday, July 18 2018:

  • Silent Injustice: Solitary Confinement in Virginia, ACLU Virginia. May, 2018. "This report discusses the negative impacts of solitary confinement as practiced in Virginia."

Tuesday, July 17 2018:

  • Out of Prison & Out of Work: Unemployment among formerly incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative. July, 2018. (This report calculates that 27% of formerly incarcerated people are looking for a job, but can't find one.)

Monday, July 9 2018:

  • The Impact of Early Representation: An Analysis of the San Francisco Public Defender's Pre-Trial Release Unit, California Policy Lab. June, 2018. (In October 2017, the San Francisco Public Defender's Office piloted the Pre-Trial Release Unit (PRU) which doubled the likelihood of release at arraignment - from 14% to 28% - for arrestees who received arrest-responsive interventions from the PRU.)
  • Parole Revocation in Connecticut: opportunities to reduce incarceration, Samuel Jacobs Criminal Justice Clinic. September, 2017. (The Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles revoked parole and imposed a prison sanction in 100% of the hearings observed by the Samuel Jacobs Criminal Justice Clinic in November of 2015.)

Monday, June 25 2018:

  • Texas Custodial Death Report Police, jail, and prison deaths 2005-2015, Texas Justice Initiative. July, 2016. (This report examines who is dying in the Texas criminal justice system and how they are dying.)
  • Officer-involved Shootings and Custodial Deaths in Texas Texas Justice Initiative. June, 2018. (Overall, most deaths that occur in Texas law enforcement custody are due to natural causes, but that nearly half of all deaths of inmates housed alone in a jail cell are suicides.)

Monday, June 18 2018:

  • The New Dynamics of Mass Incarceration Vera Institute of Justice. June, 2018. "Contemporary decarceration exists alongside continuous growth, stagnation, and jurisdictional shifts between prisons and jails, akin to a shell game."

Thursday, June 14 2018:

Tuesday, June 12 2018:

  • 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.)

Friday, June 8 2018:

  • The Company Store: A Deeper Look at Prison Commissaries, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2018. (Incarcerated people spend an average of $947 per person annually through commissaries - mostly to meet basic needs - which is well over the typical amount they can earn at a prison job.)
  • States of Women's Incarceration: The Global Context 2018, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2018. "This report updates how U.S. women fare in the world's carceral landscape, comparing incarceration rates for women of each U.S. state with the equivalent rates for countries around the world."
  • States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2018. "Compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime."
  • Open Roads and Overflowing Jails: Addressing High Rates of Rural Pretrial Incarceration, Right On Crime. May, 2018. (This report examines the contributors to rural pretrial incarceration and makes evidence-based recommendations to improve public safety while reducing the number of defendants held pretrial.)

Tuesday, June 5 2018:

  • Driving on Empty: Payment Plan Reforms Don’t Fix Virginia’s Court Debt Crisis, Legal Aid Justice Center. January, 2018. (After Virginia implemented significant changes to rules governing payment plans for court debt, roughly one in six licensed drivers in Virginia still has their driver’s license suspended, due at least in part to unpaid court debt.)

Monday, June 4 2018:

Thursday, May 31 2018:

  • You Get What You Measure: New Performance Indicators Needed to Gauge Progress of Criminal Justice Reform, Harvard Kennedy School. May, 2018. (This report argues that we need new performance measures that shed light on correctional population composition and recidivism by risk in order to gauge the effectiveness of reform efforts.)

Tuesday, May 29 2018:

  • Rethinking Restrictive Housing Lessons from Five U.S. Jail and Prison Systems, VERA Institute of Justice. May, 2018. (This report examines the use of restrictive housing in five states, documenting important trends in practice, policy, and outcomes.)
  • People in Prison in 2017 Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2018. "The total U.S. prison population dropped below 1.5 million for the first time since 2004. Despite the overall declines, 20 states increased their prison population, leaving 10 states with all-time-high numbers of people in prison."

Wednesday, May 23 2018:

Tuesday, May 22 2018:

Monday, May 21 2018:

  • 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.)

Thursday, May 17 2018:

  • Global Prison Trends 2018 Penal Reform International. May, 2018. (This report analyzes trends in criminal justice and the use of imprisonment, showing that while overall crime rates around the world have declined, the number of people in prison on any given day is rising.)
  • From Bondage to Bail Bonds: Putting a Price on Freedom in New Orleans, The Data Center. May, 2018. (This report examines the extent to which money bail in New Orleans is a descendant of slavery and subsequent practices of racial exploitation.)
  • Workers With Criminal Records Society for Human Resource Management and the Charles Koch Institute. May, 2018. (74 percent of managers and 84 percent of HR professionals nationwide said they were willing or open to hiring individuals with a criminal record.)
  • Because She’s Powerful: The Political Isolation and Resistance of Women with Incarcerated Loved Ones., ESSIE Justice Group. May, 2018. (Mass incarceration is a direct cause of significant to extreme psychological distress and trauma, and a serious obstacle to the financial health and economic agency of women with incarcerated loved ones.)

Thursday, May 10 2018:

Monday, May 7 2018:

  • An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System, Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2018. (This brief presents an overview of the ways in which America’s history of racism & oppression continues to manifest in the criminal justice system, & a summary of research demonstrating how the system perpetuates the disparate treatment of black people.)

Thursday, May 3 2018:

  • 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."

Wednesday, May 2 2018:

  • Cruel and Usual: A National Prisoner Survey of Prison Food and Health Care Quality, Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. April, 2018. (This report examines survey responses from incarcerated people on unsanitary prison conditions, poor food quality, and inadequate health care treatment.)

Tuesday, May 1 2018:

  • Detention of Juveniles in Illinois Recommendations to Right-Size Detention through Reforms and Fiscal Incentives to Develop Community-Based Alternatives., Juvenile Justice Initiative. April, 2018. "This report includes a series of recommendations to "right-size" juvenile detention in Illinois."

Friday, April 27 2018:

Tuesday, April 24 2018:

  • The Prison Industrial Complex Mapping Private Sector Players, Urban Justice Center. April, 2018. "This report exposes over 3,100 corporations that profit from the devastating mass incarceration of our nation’s marginalized communities."
  • An Unsupported Population The Treatment of Women in Texas' Criminal Justice System, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. April, 2018. (This report explores the unique issues facing women impacted by the criminal justice system, including challenges within Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facilities.)

Monday, April 23 2018:

  • Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System The Sentencing Project. April, 2018. "This report chronicles the racial disparity that permeates every stage of the United States criminal justice system, from arrest to trial to sentencing to post prison experiences."
  • 65 Million The Case for Reforming Criminal Background Checks for Employment, The National Employment Law Project. March, 2011. (Too often, employers, staffing firms, and screening firms disregard civil rights and consumer protections, categorically banning people with criminal records from employment.)

Thursday, April 19 2018:

  • The Evolving Landscape of Crime and Incarceration Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. April, 2018. (This report shows that a 67 percent majority agrees that “building more jails and prisons to keep more people in jail does not reduce crime,” including 61 percent of rural Americans.)
  • 2017 Federal Sentencing Statistics United 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."

Tuesday, April 17 2018:

  • Mass Incarceration: A Major Cause of Hunger, Bread for the World Institute. February, 2018. (This paper explains how mass incarceration increases food insecurity.)

Monday, April 16 2018:

  • Injuries associated with bunk beds that occur in jail Randall T. Lodera and Jocelyn Cole Young. October, 2017. "Jails account for 29% of all bunk bed injuries resulting in an ED visit in the USA (for people age 10 and over). Addressing this problem will require a multidisciplinary approach involving medicine, material engineering, and criminal justice."
  • An Overview of Offender Reentry National Institute of Justice. 2018. "The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the offender reentry literature, offender outcomes, and the reentry initiatives that may work to improve public safety."

Friday, April 6 2018:

  • 50-State Report on Public Safety The Council of State Governments. March, 2018. (This report brings together data from all 50 states on crime, recidivism, corrections trends, and key findings from research on what works to guide the design of new public safety efforts.)
  • Integrated Health Care and Criminal Justice Data Viewing the Intersection of Public Safety, Public Health, and Public Policy Through a New Lens: Lessons from Camden, NJ, Harvard Kennedy School. April, 2018. (This study suggests that we should shift from reacting to immediate health & crime crises as distinct events to focusing on holistic approaches that result in better individual outcomes, increased public safety, and reduced system costs.)

Wednesday, April 4 2018:

  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2018. (Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie answers the essential questions of how many people are locked up, where, and why.)
  • Winnable criminal justice reforms: A Prison Policy Initiative briefing on promising state reform issues for 2018, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2017. (This briefing outlines a number of criminal justice policy reforms lawmakers can implement to reduce mass incarceration in 2018.)
  • What "Stop-and-Frisk" Really Means: Discrimination & Use of Force, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2017. "This report analyzes the racially disparate use of force in police stops in New York City in 2011."
  • Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, Prison Policy Initiative. February, 2018. "This report provides an introductory snapshot of what happens when justice-involved youth are held by the state: where they are held, under what conditions, and for what offenses."

Wednesday, March 28 2018:

  • 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."

Tuesday, March 27 2018:

  • The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice Megan T. Stevenson and Sandra G. Mayson. March, 2018. (There are 13.2 million misdemeanor cases filed in the United States each year, but contrary to conventional wisdom, this number is not rising. There are, however, profound racial disparities in the misdemeanor arrest rate for most offense types.)

Monday, March 26 2018:

  • Don't Stop Now: California leads the nation in using public higher education to address mass incarceration. Will we continue?, Corrections to College California. March, 2018. "This publication highlights California's successful efforts to build public higher education access for thousands of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students, both in custody and on college campuses throughout the state."

Thursday, March 22 2018:

  • Confronting Criminal Justice Debt: A Guide for Policy Reform, Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. September, 2016. "By disproportionately burdening poor people with financial sanctions, and by jailing people who lack the means to pay, many jurisdictions have created a two-tiered system of criminal justice."
  • 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.)
  • 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.)
  • Advancing Bail Reform in Maryland: Progress and Possibilities, Baltimore City and Prince George's County Branches of the NAACP. February, 2018. "This report argues that Maryland policymakers should continue to strengthening the alternatives to bail and pretrial detention."
  • Youth Transfer: The Importance of Individualized Factor Review, Campaign for Youth Justice. March, 2018. (This brief discusses the importance of weighing individual factors when judges and prosecutors consider the transfer of youth to the adult system, as well as recent state-level reforms addressing youth transfer.)

Tuesday, March 20 2018:

  • The Detention and Forced Medical Treatment of Pregnant Women: A Human Rights Perspective, American Constitution Society. March, 2018. (This report argues that laws authorizing the detention and forced medical treatment of pregnant women suspected of drug or alcohol abuse violate human rights standards and are a mistaken legal response to address individual and public health issues.)
  • "She Doesn't Deserve to be Treated Like This": Prisons as Sites of Reproductive Injustice, Rachel Roth, The Feminist Press, 2017 (updated). January, 2017. "This essay explores prisons as sites of reproductive injustice by focusing on barriers to abortion and safe childbirth."

Thursday, March 15 2018:

  • Recidivism Reconsidered: Preserving the Community Justice Mission of Community Corrections, Harvard Kennedy School. March, 2018. (This report argues that when recidivism is used as the sole measure of effectiveness, it misleads policymakers & the public, encourages inappropriate comparisons of dissimilar populations, & focuses policy on negative rather than positive outcomes.)
  • The Juvenile Record Myth Joy Radice. March, 2018. (This report illuminates the variety of ways states treat juvenile records — revealing that state confidentiality, sealing, and expungement provisions often provide far less protection than those terms suggest.)

Monday, March 12 2018:

  • 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.)

Thursday, March 8 2018:

Monday, March 5 2018:

  • Louisiana’s 2017 Criminal Justice Reforms: The most incarcerated state changes course, The Pew Charitable Trusts. March, 2018. (On June 15, 2017, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (D) signed the most comprehensive justice reform package in state history, projected to reduce prison & community supervision populations, and save taxpayers $262 million dollars over a 10 year period.)
  • 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.)

Friday, March 2 2018:

  • The State of Justice Reform 2017 Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2018. (This report identifies the major trends & developments in the justice system during 2017, and looks ahead to how this new policy landscape will inform criminal justice reform work in 2018.)
  • An Analysis of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Case Dispositions and Sentencing Outcomes for Criminal Cases Presented to and Processed by the Office of the San Francisco District Attorney, John MacDonald & Steven Raphael. December, 2017. (This study finds substantial racial & ethnic disparities in criminal justice outcomes that disfavor Black people in particular. These disparities are primarily due to case characteristics related to arrest charges, pre-trial detention, & criminal history.)

Tuesday, February 27 2018:

  • Divided Justice: Trends in Black and White Jail Incarceration, 1990-2013, Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2018. (This report looks at incarceration trends from 1990 to 2013, finding that although significant racial disparities still exist between black & white jail incarceration rates, rates for black people are declining while rates for white people are rising.)

Thursday, February 22 2018:

  • A Pound of Flesh The Criminalization of Private Debt, American Civil Liberties Union. February, 2018. "Arrests stemming from private debt are devastating communities across the country, and amount to a silent financial crisis that, due to longstanding racial & economic inequalities, is disproportionately affecting people of color & low-income communities."
  • “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."

Tuesday, February 20 2018:

  • 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."
  • 1844 No More New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. December, 2017. "Rather than strengthen our democracy, New Jersey’s decision to deny the right to vote to people with criminal convictions deprives its most vulnerable communities of valuable voices needed to affect systemic change."
  • Realignment and Recidivism in California Public 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."

Tuesday, February 13 2018:

  • 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.)

Monday, February 12 2018:

  • Social Media Monitoring in Boston: Free Speech in the Crosshairs, ACLU Massachusetts. February, 2018. (From 2014-16 the Boston Police Dept. used a social media surveillance system to gather data irrelevant to law enforcement concerns. It treated ordinary citizens as justifiable targets of surveillance, without deterring or solving serious crimes.)
  • Investing Justice Resources to Address Community Needs [PDF] Urban Institute. February, 2018. (This report provides an overview of a Colorado based program designed to coordinate the flow of resources to community-led organizations providing direct services to formerly incarcerated people navigating the reentry process.)

Monday, February 5 2018:

  • 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.)

Friday, February 2 2018:

  • Too big to succeed: The impact of the growth of community corrections and what should be done about it, Columbia University Justice Lab. January, 2018. (This report discusses the consequences of the tremendous growth in probation and parole supervision in the United States over the past several decades, and argues that the number of people under supervision needs to be cut in half.)
  • Less is More in New York: An Examination of the Impact of State Parole Violations on Prison and Jail Populations, Columbia University Justice Lab. January, 2018. (This research brief examines the decline in the number of people in New York's state prisons and local jails, including Rikers Island, and the simultaneous rise in the number of people incarcerated for state parole violations.)

Monday, January 29 2018:

  • The Effects of Pre-Trial Detention on Conviction, Future Crime, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges, Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang. September, 2017. (Pre-trial detention significantly increases the probability of conviction, primarily through increases in guilty pleas. Pre-trial detention has no net effect on future crime, but decreases employment & the receipt of certain government benefits.)

Wednesday, January 24 2018:

  • Raising the Bar: Reducing Conflicts of Interest and Increasing Transparency in District Attorney Campaign Fundraising, Columbia Law School Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity. January, 2018. (This reports provides recommendations on fundraising policies and procedures that are designed to address conflicts of interest and unconscious bias, that may arise when campaign contributors also have business with a district attorney's office.)
  • Estimating the Effects of Law Enforcement and Public Health Interventions Intended to Reduce Gun Violence in Baltimore Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. January, 2018. "Although surges in arrests for illegal drug distribution may have a very short-term (1-2 months) violence-reducing effect in an area, there appear to be violence-generating effects up to a year after these drug arrest surges."
  • Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. September, 2017. "The results from this study indicate that, over a little less than two decades, states have seen an increase in the number of forensic patients who are present in their state hospitals."
  • Breaking Down Barriers Experiments into Policies That Might Incentivize Employers to Hire Ex-Offenders, RAND Corporation. 2015. (This report argues that employers would be more likely to consider hiring ex-offenders if hiring agencies provided replacement workers, if ex-offenders provided proof of positive work performance histories, and if increased tax credits were available.)

Monday, January 22 2018:

  • Cruel & Usual Punishment: Excessive Use of Force at the Estelle Unit, [PDF] Prison Justice League. February, 2015. (This report reveals countless instances of Estelle correctional officers using excessive force on prisoners, causing serious bodily injuries. It is a pattern apparently well-known to prison officials, but ignored.)
  • A Texas Sized Failure: Sexual Assaults in Texas Prisons, Prison Justice League & the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. November, 2016. "Regardless of claims that PREA standards are being implemented in Texas prisons, reports from prisoners themselves indicate that sexual assaults in Texas correctional facilities remain a serious problem."
  • A "Rigged System": How the Texas Grievance System Fails Prisoners and the Public, Prison Justice League. June, 2017. (Prisoners in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice lack confidence in the available grievance system to adequately address their complaints, noting a range of issues such as delays in receiving a response and concerns about oversight.)
  • 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."
  • Advancing Sensible Justice in Tennessee Beacon Center of Tennessee. January, 2018. (More than 130,000 Tennesseans are behind bars or working through the criminal justice system. This report calls for a sharp change in the state's criminal justice system in order to reduce costs, increase public safety, and prevent recidivism.)
  • Pretrial Detention Reform: Recommendations to the Chief Justice, Judicial Branch of California Pretrial Detention Reform Workgroup. October, 2017. (California's pretrial detention system unnecessarily compromises victim & public safety because it bases a person's liberty on financial resources, not their likelihood of future criminal behavior, exacerbating socioeconomic disparities & racial bias.)
  • 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."

Thursday, January 11 2018:

  • Court Fines and Fees: Criminalizing Poverty in North Carolina, North Carolina Poverty Research Fund. January, 2018. (In recent decades, the North Carolina General Assembly has levied a costly array of fees on low income Tar Heels and their families, creating massive hardships for those caught in webs of criminal justice debt.)

Wednesday, January 10 2018:

  • The Gender Divide: Tracking women's state prison growth, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2018. "This report sheds more light on women in the era of mass incarceration by tracking prison population trends since 1978 for all 50 states."

Monday, January 8 2018:

  • Crime in 2017: Updated Analysis, Brennan Center for Justice. December, 2017. (This report finds that murder rates in major American cities are estimated to decline slightly through the end of 2017.)
  • Access to Health Care and Criminal Behavior: Short-Run Evidence from the ACA Medicaid Expansions, Jacob Vogler. September, 2017. (This research article indicates that state Medicaid expansions have resulted in significant decreases in annual crime by 3.2 percent.)
  • Substance Abuse Treatment Centers and Local Crime Bondurant, Samuel R.; Lindo, Jason M.; and Swensen, Isaac D.. September, 2016. (This report finds that substance-abuse-treatment facilities reduce both violent and financially motivated crimes in an area, and that the effects are particularly pronounced for relatively serious crimes.)
  • Police Employment, Officers Per Capita Rates for U.S. Cities Governing. October, 2016. "In 2016, police departments serving cities with populations exceeding 25,000 employed an average of 16.8 officers and 21.4 total personnel for every 10,000 residents."

Wednesday, January 3 2018:

  • 2017 Police Violence Report Mapping Police Violence. December, 2017. "Compiling information from media reports, obituaries, public records, and databases like Fatal Encounters and the WashingtonPost, this report represents the most comprehensive accounting of deadly police violence in 2017."

Tuesday, December 19 2017:

  • 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."

Monday, December 18 2017:

  • Empire State of Incarceration Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2017. (This report analyzes county-level factors that lead people to jail in New York state, providing a deeper understanding of the drivers of local incarceration.)

Thursday, December 14 2017:

  • Yakima County, Washington Pretrial Justice System Improvements: Pre- and Post- Implementation Analysis, Smart Pretrial Demonstration Initiative. November, 2017. "Jurisdiction can reduce pretrial detention & improve racial/ethnic equity by replacing high use of secured money bail with non-financial release conditions guided by actuarial-risk-based decision making, with no harm to public safety or court appearance."
  • Second Chance Reforms in 2017: Roundup of new expungement and restoration laws, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. December, 2017. "In 2017, 23 states enacted laws aimed at reducing barriers faced by people with criminal records in the workplace and elsewhere."

Wednesday, December 13 2017:

  • OPIOIDS: Treating an Illness, Ending a War, The Sentencing Project. December, 2017. "This report examines the sources of the opioid crisis, surveys health and justice policy responses at the federal and state levels, and draws on lessons from past drug crises to provide guidance on how to proceed."
  • “Not in it for Justice”: How California’s Pretrial Detention and Bail System Unfairly Punishes Poor People, Human Rights Watch. April, 2017. "Nearly every offense in California is bail-eligible, yet many defendants cannot afford to pay. In California, the majority of county jail prisoners have not been sentenced, but are serving time because they are unable to pay for pretrial release."
  • "Don't Look Around": A Window into Inhumane Conditions for Youth at NORCOR, Disability Rights Oregon. December, 2017. "A lack of oversight and accountability has allowed Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facility (NORCOR) to neglect the basic mental health and social development needs of kids in custody."

Tuesday, December 12 2017:

  • “Money Bail”: Making Ohio a More Dangerous Place to Live, The Buckeye Institute. 2015. "Ohio should address the demonstrated shortcomings of the cash bail system by expanding the judiciary’s access to proven risk-assessment tools that can provide a fairer, more efficient way to keep our communities safe and secure."

Thursday, December 7 2017:

  • Policing the Houseless 2.0 Million Dollar Hoods. December, 2017. "This report documents that LAPD arrests of houseless persons continued to climb during the first six months of 2017 and that just five charge categories accounted for the majority of houseless arrests."
  • The Price for Freedom: Bail in the City of L.A., Million Dollar Hoods. December, 2017. (The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), using the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s misdemeanor and felony bail schedules, levied over $19 billion in money bail on persons they arrested between 2012 and 2016.)

Wednesday, December 6 2017:

  • Jails in Indian Country, 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2017. "An estimated 2,540 inmates were held in 80 Indian country jails at midyear 2016, a 1.2% increase from the 2,510 inmates held in 76 facilities at midyear 2015."

Tuesday, December 5 2017:

  • 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.)
  • Prison Health Care: Costs and Quality, [PDF] The Pew Charitable Trust. October, 2017. (This report paint a comprehensive picture of how states fund and deliver prison health care, how they compare with one another, and some reasons for differences.)
  • Born Suspect: Stop-and-Frisk Abuses & the Continued Fight to End Racial Profiling in America, NAACP. 2015. "This report is an analysis of the fight to end racial profiling in New York and the potential for nationwide implementation these efforts in every jurisdiction across the country."
  • Influences of Truth-in-Sentencing Reforms on Changes in States’ Sentencing Practices and Prison Populations William J. Sabol ; Katherine Rosich ; Kamala Mallik Kane ; David Kirk ; Glenn Dubin. July, 2002. (The federal Truth In Sentencing grant program had very limited influence on state decisions to adopt truth in sentencing policies.)

Monday, November 20 2017:

  • Florida Criminal Justice Reform: Understanding the Challenges and Opportunities, The Project on Accountable Justice. November, 2017. (This report is an effort to help Florida’s citizens and policy makers understand the nature of some of the problems found in the criminal justice system, notably resulting in dangerous prisons. It also suggests opportunities for reform.)
  • Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Sentences University 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.)
  • 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.)

Thursday, November 9 2017:

  • 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.)
  • Reforming Criminal Justice: Bridging the Gap Between Scholarship and Reform, Academy for Justice. October, 2017. (This report covers dozens of topics within the areas of criminalization, policing, pretrial and trial processes, punishment, incarceration, and release.)

Thursday, November 2 2017:

  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2017. (Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie answers the essential questions of how many people are locked up, where, and why.)
  • The State of Pretrial Justice in America Pretrial Justice Institute. November, 2017. (This report uses basic indicators to document and grade current pretrial practice in all fifty states.)
  • Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017, Prison Policy Initiative. October, 2017. "This report provides a first-of-its-kind detailed view of the 219,000 women incarcerated in the United States, and how they fit into the even larger picture of correctional control."
  • The Intersection of Juvenile Courts and Exclusionary School Discipline [PDF] National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. October, 2017. (This report provides real-world strategies to reduce the number of youth who unnecessarily come into contact with law enforcement and the juvenile justice system.)

Monday, October 30 2017:

  • Punishment Is Not a “Service”: The Injustice of Pretrial Conditions in Cook County, Chicago Community Bond Fund. October, 2017. "The overwhelming experience of people supported by CCBF shows that pretrial conditions expand and compound the harms of incarceration by denying people access to their jobs, housing, social supports, and even medical care."
  • 50,000 children: The Geography of America's Dysfunctional & Racially Disparate Youth Incarceration Complex, Youth First. October, 2017. "While the US Department of Justice reports that youth incarceration rates have decreased 50% between 1999 and 2013, too many youth are still locked up, and racial disparities among committed youth have widened."

Friday, October 27 2017:

  • Reducing Substance Use Disorders and Related Offending A Continuum of Evidence-Informed Practices in the Criminal Justice System, Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. April, 2017. "By integrating evidence-informed practices, criminal justice agencies and communities can save lives, decrease costs to the criminal justice system, healthcare systems, and taxpayers."
  • Ban the Box and Racial Discrimination Urban Institute. February, 2017. "When information about a person’s criminal history is not present, employers may make hiring decisions based on their perception of the likelihood that the applicant has a criminal history."
  • Addressing the Intersections of Juvenile Justice Involvement and Youth Homelessness Principles for Change, Coalition for Juvenile Justice. February, 2017. "The Principles in this document provide a roadmap for communities to help young people avoid experiencing juvenile justice system involvement and/or youth homelessness."

Wednesday, October 25 2017:

  • Final Implementation Findings from the Responsible Fatherhood Reentry Projects Urban Institute. April, 2017. "Fathers recently released from correctional institutions have significant service needs and can face considerable barriers to meeting those needs as they reintegrate back to their communities."
  • The Use and Impact of Correctional Programming for Inmates on Pre- and Post-Release Outcomes National Institute of Justice. June, 2017. "This paper reviews the available evidence on the impact of institutional programming on pre- and post-release outcomes for prisoners."
  • The Case for Paid Apprenticeships Behind Bars Center for American Progress. April, 2017. "This brief argues that greater access to paid prison apprenticeship programs could effectively improve inmates’ post-release outcomes, particularly for a group of individuals who already face significant barriers to labor market entry."
  • Trends in State Courts Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices--Challenges and Opportunities, National Center for State Courts. July, 2017. "Low-income offenders in many towns and cities are faced with paying fines and fees they simply cannot afford, often leading to even more fees and late charges."
  • Mentoring as a Component of Reentry Practical Considerations from the Field, Council of State Governments Justice Center. June, 2017. "This publication from the National Reentry Resource Center offers five broad, field-based practical considerations for incorporating mentoring into reentry programs for adults."
  • Reducing Recidivism: States Deliver Results, Council of State Governments Justice Council. June, 2017. "This brief from the National Reentry Resource Center profiles seven states in which recidivism has significantly decreased over the last decade according to several different measures."
  • Making People's Transition from Prison and Jail to the Community Safe and Successful A Snapshot of National Progress in Reentry, Council of State Governments Justice Center. June, 2017. "This brief from the National Reentry Resource Center highlights advancements made in state and local governments' approaches to reentry and reducing recidivism since the passage of the Second Chance Act in 2008."
  • Forgiving and Forgetting in American Justice A 50-State Guide to Expungement and Restoration of Rights, Collateral Consequences Resource Center. October, 2017. "This report catalogs and analyzes the various provisions for relief from the collateral consequences of conviction that are now available in each state."
  • Criminal Justice Debt Costs and Consequences, The Fortune Society. October, 2017. "In the United States today, people owe local, state, and federal governments billions of dollars in unpaid debt related to contact with the criminal justice system."
  • One Strike to Second Chances Using Criminal Backgrounds in Admission Decisions for Assisted Housing, Housing Policy Debate. April, 2017. "Many public housing authorities have not updated their admission policies for using criminal backgrounds and still adhere to the one-strike philosophy."
  • Ban the Box and Beyond Ensuring Individuals with a Criminal Record Have Access to the Labor Market, Center for American Progress. July, 2017. "Fair chance hiring policies, including ban the box, can ensure that employers evaluate candidates not on their criminal history but instead on their ability to do their jobs successfully."
  • Nevada's Statewide Approach to Reducing Recidivism and Improving Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System Council of State Government Justice Center. September, 2017. "As a result of participating in Improving Outcomes for Youth: A Statewide Juvenile Justice Initiative (IOYouth), Nevada passed legislation that supports the adoption and implementation of key changes to the state's juvenile justice system"
  • Improving Access to Career Pathways for Philadelphia’s Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice System Involved Youth Juvenile Law Center. August, 2017. "Juvenile Law Center wrote this report to facilitate the expansion of access to career pathway supports for system-involved youth in Philadelphia by analyzing the barriers these youth encounter and offering policy recommendations for reform."
  • Building Communities, Changing Lives The NYC Justice Corps Community Benefit Projects, Prisoner Reentry Institute. June, 2017. "When justice system-involved young adults seek an opportunity to change, too often they expe- rience continued stigmatization, including barriers to education, employment, and housing."

Wednesday, October 18 2017:

  • Targeted Fines and Fees Against Communities of Color U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. September, 2017. (Unchecked discretion or stringent requirements to impose fines or fees can lead to discrimination and inequitable access to justice when not exercised in accordance with … the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.)
  • The Geography of Incarceration in a Gateway City: The Cost and Consequences of High Incarceration Rate Neighborhoods in Worcester, MassINC. September, 2017. (The analysis explores the cost and consequences of high incarceration rates in Worcester neighborhoods, offering vital information for policymakers crafting comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation.)

Thursday, October 12 2017:

  • Native Disparities in Youth Incarceration The Sentencing Project. October, 2017. "Native youth were three times as likely to be incarcerated as white youth, according to data collected in October 2015."
  • Latino Disparities in Youth Incarceration The Sentencing Project. October, 2017. "Latino youth are 65 percent more likely to be detained or committed than their white peers, according to data collected in October 2015."

Wednesday, October 11 2017:

  • Economic Impacts of Cash Bail on the City of Philadelphia City of Philadelphia Office of the Controller. October, 2017. (The City of Philadelphia, by eliminating the cash bail system, could save over $75 million annually and provide a viable alternative to jail for a significant number of those arrested in Philadelphia in a given year.)
  • A Place to Call Home: A Vision for Safe, Supportive and Affordable Housing for People with Justice System Involvement, Prisoner Reentry Institute. October, 2017. (This document makes the case for providing digni ed housing that meets the needs of those with criminal justice histories, and providing it as quickly as possible upon reentry.)
  • Native American Youth and the Juvenile Justice System National Council on Crime and Delinquency. March, 2008. (Juvenile Justice disparities between Native American youth and White youth are alarmingly high and in need of remediation.)
  • 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.)

Tuesday, October 10 2017:

  • The Crisis of Criminalization: A Call for a Comprehensive Philanthropic Response, Barnard Center for Research on Women. September, 2017. (This report is an urgent call for a comprehensive philanthropic response to the growing crisis of criminalization.)

Wednesday, October 4 2017:

  • Opening Doors: How to develop reentry programs using examples from public housing authorities, Vera Institute of Justice. September, 2017. "This guide is designed to support PHAs and other agencies that are beginning to develop new housing strategies and programming to meet the needs of formerly incarcerated people."
  • Reflections on New National Data on LGBQ/GNCT Youth in the Justice System Harvard Kennedy School. September, 2017. (12-13% of boys in the justice system identify as gay, bisexual, questioning, gender nonconforming, or transgender (GBQ/GNCT), while 40% of girls identify as LBQ/GNCT. And, of these LGBQ/GNCT youth, 85% nationally are of color.)

Friday, September 29 2017:

  • The Long Road Home: Decreasing Barriers to Public Housing for People with Criminal Records, Human Impact Partners. May, 2016. (This report assesses the health and equity impacts of public housing admissions screening policies that exclude people with a criminal history from public housing, using the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) in Oakland, California as a case study.)
  • Report to the New York City Housing Authority: Applying and Lifting Permanent Exclusions for Criminal Conduct, Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2017. "The New York Housing Authority has a commitment to maintain the safety of its residents, but must also recognize the important role of families and housing for people involved with the criminal justice system when considering permanent exclusions."
  • Remote Access: Using Video Technology to Treat Substance Users on Probation and Parole in South Dakota, Vera Institute of Justice. October, 2016. "The state worked with local providers to pilot a teleconferencing program aimed at connecting people to community-based services without the cost and barrier of transportation or other access issues."
  • Bridging the Divide: Improving Parole Outcomes for Native Americans in South Dakota, Vera Institute of Justice. October, 2016. "This brief describes the issues that tribal communities face and how they are working together with the state government to provide effective services for Native American people on parole."
  • Public Housing for People with Criminal Histories Vera Institute of Justice. September, 2015. "Cities such as New York City, Oakland, and Chicago have implemented reforms in tenant-selection criteria that ensure a person’s application for housing is not negatively impacted by his or her criminal record."
  • Creating a Culture of Safety: Sentinel Event Reviews for Suicide and Self-Harm in Correctional Facilities, Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2016. "Investigating the feasibility of using a sentinel events approach to review and learn from errors in the criminal justice system such as wrongful convictions, eyewitness misidentifications, or incidents of suicide and self-harm in custody."
  • Partnering with Community Sexual Assault Response Teams: A Guide for Local Community Confinement and Juvenile Detention Facilities, Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2016. "Partnerships with SARTs can help facilities implement coordinated, victim-centered response policies and procedures that meet key requirements of the PREA standards."
  • How Safe are Americans with Disabilities?: The Facts About Violent Crime and Their Implications, Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2017. "This brief provides basic information on disability in the United States. It explores what is known about violent victimization of people with disabilities and the factors that contribute to their higher risk of experiencing violent crime."
  • Tribal Crime Data Collection Activities, 2017 Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2017. "At midyear 2015, an estimated 2,510 inmates were confined in 76 Indian country jails. This was a 5.5% increase from the 2,380 inmates confined at midyear 2014 in 79 facilities."
  • PREA Data Collection Activities, 2017 Bureau of Justice Statistics. June, 2017. "Rates of youth-on-youth sexual assault in female-only juvenile facilities (5.3%) were more than three times greater than those in male-only facilities (1.5%)."
  • Treatment Instead of Prison HIA (Case Story) Human Impact Partners. November, 2012. "Expanding alternatives to incarceration would reduce the prison population, reduce crime, lower recidivism, and strengthen families by keeping up to 1,600 parents a year out of prison each year."
  • Racial Disparity in Marijuana Policing in New Orleans Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2016. "This report illuminates through quantitative analysis the persistent racial disparities in marijuana policing from 2010 - 2015 and discusses the impacts of statutory and policy reforms the city has implemented to date."
  • Bridging the Gap: Improving the Health of Justice-Involved People through Information Technology, Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2015. "Aims to address the problems of disconnected justice and health systems and to develop solutions by describing barriers, benefits, and best practices for connecting community providers and correctional facilities using health information technology (HITs)"
  • Past Due: Examining the Costs and Consequences of Charging for Justice in New Orleans, Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2017. "Past Due, and its accompanying technical report, reveal the costs and other consequences of a system that tries to extract money from low-income people and then jails them when they can't pay."
  • Cost-Benefit Analysis and Justice Policy Toolkit Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2014. "In recent years, policymakers and the public have been asking whether justice policies pass the “cost-benefit test.” Two questions drive this discussion: First, what works to reduce crime? And second, are those programs and policies worth the cost?"
  • Turning on the TAP: How Returning Access to Tuition Assistance for Incarcerated People Improves the Health of New Yorkers, Human Impact Partners. May, 2015. "Expanding access to college education for people in New York prisons would benefit the overall health and well-being of the communities that formerly incarcerated people return to, as well as the individuals who receive the education, and their families."
  • School Discipline and Restorative Justice (Case Story) Human Impact Partners. September, 2014. "If properly implemented, restorative justice could reduce suspensions in the six schools by 20% to 40%. Restorative justice would also lower dropout rates, which in turn would lead to fewer students who end up poor or in prison."
  • Expanding Access to Postsecondary Education in Prison: Fact Sheet for Corrections Leaders, Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2017. "Incarcerated people who participate in prison education programs are 43 percent less likely to recidivate than those who do not."
  • Future Now: A Process and Intermediate Outcomes Evaluation of the NYC GED Preparatory Program, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2015. "Future Now is a GED preparatory program housed at Bronx Community College offering programs tailored to meet each student’s personal and educational needs, prepare them for college, and support students through their first year of enrollment."
  • Keeping Kids and Parents Together: A Healthier Approach to Sentencing in Massachusetts, Human Impact Partners. September, 2017. "Increasing judges' discretion to authorize alternatives to incarceration that include treatment instead of prison or jail where appropriate can keep families intact."
  • Coming Home: An Evaluation of the New York City Housing Authority’s Family Reentry Pilot Program, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2016. "The study revealed that participants reuniting with their families both received support and supported others as they took on familial roles, especially as caregivers for elderly parents."
  • It Take a Village: Diversion for Police and Families, Vera Institute of Justice. June, 2016. "This brief explores the creative, collaborative, and community-focused work being done in Nevada, Connecticut, Nebraska, Michigan, Illinois, and Oregon to find productive responses to youth “acting out.”"
  • Expanding the Reach of Victim Services: Maximizing the Potential of VOCA Funding for Underserved Survivors, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2016. "Too often, victims of crime who are from underserved backgrounds are left out of victim services. With this new infusion of funds, the field can grow to better provide for marginalized people."
  • Family Unity, Family Health: An Inquiry on Federal Immigration Policy (Case Story), Human Impact Partners. June, 2013. "If deportations continue at 2012 levels, tens of thousands of U.S.-citizen children will suffer from poorer health, more behavioral problems, diminished educational achievement, increased poverty, and food insufficiency that may lead to hunger."
  • 23 Hours in the Box: Solitary Confinement in New Jersey Immigration Detention, New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees. June, 2015. "The passage of a bill like NJ S 2588 would mark a dramatic and humane improvement over the current disciplinary system."
  • Locked in the Past: Montana's Jails in Crisis, ACLU of Montana. February, 2015. "Many county detention centers in Montana have severe conditions issues and are underfunded, inadequately staffed, and largely ignored by county commissioners, county law enforcement departments, and the public."
  • Jail in New York City: Evidence-Based Opportunities for Reform, Center for Court Innovation. March, 2017. "The report models the impact of several potential reform scenarios based on risk score including the possible cost savings to the city from downsizing the jail system."
  • Greater Oklahoma City Chamber Criminal Justice Reform Task Force: Report and Recommendations, Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2016. "The Oklahoma County pretrial justice system needs greater collaboration and oversight to ensure that the jail—the county’s most restrictive and most costly criminal justice resource—is being used judiciously."
  • The Human Toll of Jail Fact Sheet Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2016. "Today, about 14.5 percent of men and 31 percent of women in jails have a serious mental illness, compared to 3.2 and 4.9 percent respectively in the general population."
  • Behind the Eleventh Door: Solitary Confinement of Individuals with Mental Illness in Oregon's State Penitentiary Behavioral Health Unit, Disability Rights Oregon. May, 2015. (This report looks at case studies from the Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) of the Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP) to determine the detrimental effects on mentally ill patients in solitary confinement.)
  • Selected Issues in Mental Health and Corrections: A Collection and Summary of Research, Disability Rights Nebraska. 2014. "Although only 7% of inmates were in solitary confinement, they accounted for 53% of acts of self-harm."
  • A Crisis in Search of Data: The Revolving Door of Serious Mental Illness in Super Utilization, Treatment Advocacy Center. April, 2017. "National or state-level data that quantify the role and cost of individuals with serious mental illness on law enforcement, corrections, emergency medical or homelessness services do not exist. "
  • Emptying the 'New Asylums': A Beds Capacity Model to Reduce Mental Illness Behind Bars, Treatment Advocacy Center. January, 2017. "In Texas, reducing the average hospital stay from 189 days to 186 days would reduce forensic bed waits from an average of two months to three days."
  • Overlooked in the Undercounted: The Role of Mental Illness in Fatal Law Enforcement Encounters, Treatment Advocacy Center. December, 2015. "The risk of being killed while being approached or stopped by law enforcement in the community is 16 times higher for individuals with untreated serious mental illness than for other civilians."
  • Police Perspectives Guidebook Series Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2016. "To improve relations between police and the communities they serve, this three-part guide series—written for police, by police—highlights practical, field-informed approaches to building trust with multiracial and multi-ethnic communities."
  • New York City's Pretrial Supervised Release Program: An Alternative to Bail, Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2017. "The supervised release program (SR) in NYC is an example of a new approach to handling cases pretrial. SR gives judges the option to release some defendants who would otherwise be detained due to their inability to make bail."
  • Common Ground: How all of Oregon Contributes to Criminal Justice Reform, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2016. "This brief describes how the state of Oregon worked together with its local community and government partners to address its growing prison population."
  • Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions, Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School. July, 2014. "This report documents the significant human cost of certain counterterrorism practices, such as aggressive sting operations and unnecessarily restrictive conditions of confinement."
  • Excessive Revocations in Wisconsin: The Health Impacts of Locking People Up without a New Conviction, Human Impact Partners. December, 2016. "Revocation -- being incarcerated for breaking the rules of a supervision arrangement (like parole, probation, or extended supervision) -- feeds the mass incarceration cycle in the United States."
  • Parole Perspectives in Maryland: A Survey of People Who Returned to Prison from Parole and Community, Justice Policy Institute. May, 2015. "A new analysis from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) shows the connection between efforts to reduce prison populations, connect people to work, and address the challenges of Baltimore's distressed communities"
  • 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.)
  • A Prosecutor's Guide for Advancing Racial Equity Vera Institute of Justice. March, 2015. "Despite efforts to be fair and equitable, prosecutors may unintentionally contribute to the overrepresentation of minorities in the nation’s courtrooms, prisons, and jails."
  • Reducing Youth Arrests Keeps Kids Healthy and Successful: A Health Analysis of Youth Arrest in Michigan, Human Impact Partners. June, 2017. "We evaluate the health and equity impacts of youth arrest (for kids under the age of 17) in Michigan, with a focus on the city of Detroit, and Wayne and Washtenaw Counties."
  • 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."
  • Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut: How Collaboration and Commitment Have Improved Public Safety and Outcomes for Youth, Justice Policy Institute. February, 2013. "Juvenile Justice Reform in Connecticut highlights the past two decades of Connecticut's successful efforts to improve responses to youth who engage in delinquent behavior and to reduce the number of youth placed into residential facilities"
  • Rising Up, Speaking Out: Youth Transforming Los Angeles County's Juvenille Justice System, Children's Defense Fund - California. January, 2015. "Five young people [...] share their own unique experiences inside probation camps and amplify key recommendations from an important UCLA focus group study on how to improve conditions inside Los Angeles County's camps."

Wednesday, September 27 2017:

  • Drug Use, Dependence, And Abuse Among State Prisoners And Jail Inmates, 2007-2009 Bureau of Justice Statistics. June, 2017. "More than half of state prisoners and two-thirds of sentenced jail inmates met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse...In comparison, approximately 5% of the total general population age 18 or older met the criteria"
  • Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Dependent Children, National Institute of Justice. May, 2017. "It is critical that correctional practitioners develop strong partnerships with law enforcement, public schools, and child welfare agencies to understand the unique dynamics of the family in question and try to ensure a safety net for the child"
  • Trends in U.S. Corrections Sentencing Project. June, 2017. (This fact sheet, updated June 2017, provides a compilation of key developments in the criminal justice system over the past several decades.)
  • The Cost of Crimmigration: Exploring the Intersection Between Criminal Justice and Immigration, Justice Policy Institute. June, 2017. "While costing counties and cities more, immigration enforcement also undermines public safety as residents fear interacting with local law enforcement, and policing resources are deployed away from more effective crime prevention and enforcement"
  • Criminal Background Checks and Access to Jobs: A Case Study of Washington, DC, Urban Institute. June, 2017. "Examining local regulations and DC's labor market reveals that justice-involved people-- whether formally incarcerated or not-- face significant challenges finding work in the city."
  • Indicators of School Crime and Safety Bureau of Justice Statistics. May, 2017. "In 2015, among students ages 12-18, there were about 841,100 nonfatal victimizations at school and 545,100 nonfatal victimizations away from school."
  • Improving Approaches to Serving Young Adults in the Justice System Justice Policy Institute. December, 2016. "Over the past year, a number of different advocates, policymakers, practitioners, funders and directly impacted individuals and families have sought to flesh out what a more effective approach to serving 18 to 24-year-olds"

Tuesday, September 26 2017:

  • The impacts of incarceration on crime Open 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."

Thursday, September 21 2017:

Monday, September 18 2017:

  • 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."

Friday, September 15 2017:

Thursday, September 14 2017:

Wednesday, September 6 2017:

Tuesday, August 29 2017:

  • Less Is More: How Reducing Probation Populations Can Improve Outcomes, [PDF] Harvard Kennedy School. August, 2017. (The decline in the number of people on probation supervision in the U.S. should not only be sustained but significantly increased, with a goal of reducing the number of people under probation supervision by 50 percent over 10 years.)

Monday, August 21 2017:

  • Incarceration Rates and Traits of Sexual Minorities in the United States: National Inmate Survey, 2011-2012, [PDF] Meyer et al. February, 2017. "The incarceration rate of self-identified lesbian, gay, or bisexual persons was 1882 per 100 000, more than 3 times that of the US adult population."
  • Who Does Civil Asset Forfeiture Target Most?: A Review of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Forfeiture Activities for Fiscal Year 2016, [PDF] Nevada Policy Research Institute. August, 2017. "Forfeitures disproportionately target neighborhoods with relatively high levels of minorities and low-income residents."
  • It Matters If You're Black or White: Racial Disparities in the Handling of Complaints against North Charleston Police Officers, [PDF] NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.. July, 2017. "Although 60 percent of the citizen complaints against NCPD officers were filed by Black residents, their complaints were much less likely to be sustained by NCPD than complaints filed by White residents."
  • Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults [PDF] Harvard Kennedy School & National Institute of Justice. 2015. (This report outlines a number of thoughtful recommendations aimed at making our justice system more developmentally appropriate in its response to young adults.)

Tuesday, August 15 2017:

Thursday, August 10 2017:

  • Just Kids: When Misbehaving Is a Crime, [Website] Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2017. "As policymakers and practitioners across the country look to reduce mass incarceration, status offenses demand attention as early and improper points of entry into the juvenile justice system, and potentially the criminal justice system more broadly."

Tuesday, August 8 2017:

  • Juvenile Life Without Parole: An Overview, [Website] 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."

Monday, August 7 2017:

  • Testing The Impact of Criminal Jury Instructions on Verdicts: A Conceptual Replication, [PDF] Columbia Law Review. March, 2017. "Mock jurors who were instructed “not to search for doubt” but instead “to search for the truth” convicted at a significantly higher rate than mock jurors who were properly instructed on reasonable doubt."

Friday, August 4 2017:

Tuesday, August 1 2017:

  • Assessing the Impact of Georgia’s Sentencing Reforms [PDF] Urban 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.)
  • Summary of School Safety Statistics [PDF] National Institute of Justice. July, 2017. "On the national level, crime at K-12 schools in the U.S., including violent crime, decreased from 1992 to 2013. Though violent crime against students increased from 2010 to 2013, the violent crime rate in 2013 was still lower than in 1992."

Thursday, July 27 2017:

  • Freedom To Thrive: Reimagining safety & security in our communities, [PDF] The Center for Popular Democracy, Law for Black Lives, and the Black Youth Project 100. June, 2017. "This report examines racial disparities, policing landscapes, and budgets in twelve jurisdictions across the country, comparing the city and county spending priorities with those of community organizations and their members."

Wednesday, July 26 2017:

Monday, July 24 2017:

  • The Prison Paradox: More Incarceration Will Not Make Us Safer, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2017. "The impact of incarceration on crime is limited and has been diminishing for several years. Increased incarceration has no effect on violent crime and may actually lead to higher crime rates when incarceration is concentrated in certain communities."
  • Measuring Public Safety: Responsibly Interpreting Statistics on Violent Crime, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2017. "With a few exceptions that require targeted attention, violent crime rates are lower today than they have been at any point over the past four decades."

Tuesday, July 18 2017:

Monday, July 17 2017:

  • Unequal & Unfair: New Jersey’s War on Marijuana Users, [PDF] American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. May, 2017. "New Jersey is making more arrests for marijuana possession than ever before."
  • Racial Disparities in Military Justice [PDF] Protect Our Defenders. May, 2017. "For every year reported and across all service branches, black service members were substantially more likely than white service members to face military justice or disciplinary action."
  • Travis County Jail in 2015: Data points to racism and longer confinement of African Americans, [PDF] Grassroots Leadership. July, 2017. "Booking data from the Travis County Jail in 2015 reveals signi cant and persistent discrepancies in the number of days spent in the County jail by people of color, particularly Blacks, as compared to Whites."
  • Orange County Jails [PDF] American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. June, 2017. "Failing to remedy poor conditions of confinement and hold deputies accountable for misconduct, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has implicitly endangered the constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals."
  • Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Use of Restrictive Housing for Inmates with Mental Illness, [PDF] U.S. Department of Justice. July, 2017. "BOP Policies Do Not Adequately Address the Confinement of Inmates with Mental Illness in RHUs, and the BOP Does Not Sufficiently Track or Monitor Such Inmates"

Thursday, July 13 2017:

  • Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, 2009-2015 - Statistical Tables [PDF] Bureau of Justice Statistics. July, 2017. "In 2015, the rate of violent victimization against persons with disabilities (29.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older) was 2.5 times higher than the rate for persons without disabilities (11.8 per 1,000)."
  • A Matter of Time: The Causes and Consequences of Rising Time Served in America's Prisons, [PDF] Urban Institute. July, 2017. (• A growing share of the U.S. prison population has been incarcerated for 10 or more years – and in at least 11 states the number of people in prison for a decade or longer has more than doubled since 2000.)
  • False Hope: How Parole Systems Fail Youth Serving Extreme Sentences, [PDF] 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."

Monday, July 10 2017:

  • Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, [PDF] Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. June, 2017. (Adults view black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers, especially in the age range of 5-14)

Friday, July 7 2017:

  • The Lack of a Relationship between Drug Imprisonment and Drug Problems [PDF] The 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."
  • Racism & Felony Disenfranchisement: An Intertwined History, [PDF] Brennan Center for Justice. May, 2017. "One in every 13 voting-age African Americans cannot vote, a disenfranchisement rate more than four times greater than that of all other Americans."
  • A Federal Agenda to Reduce Mass Incarceration [PDF] Brennan Center for Justice. May, 2017. "Federal funding drives state policy, and helped create our current crisis of mass incarceration. And the federal government sets the national tone, which is critical to increasing public support and national momentum for change."
  • Federal Justice Statistics, 2013-2014 [PDF] Bureau of Justice Statistics. March, 2017. "At fiscal yearend 2014, about 400,000 offenders were under some form of federal correctional control."
  • Public Opinion on Criminal Justice Reform in Massachusetts [PDF] MassInc. June, 2017. (A new MassINC poll shows most people support reforms to both the front and back ends of the system to reduce repeat offending and refocus the system on prevention and rehabilitation.)
  • Raise the Age: 17-Year-Olds in the Criminal Justice System, [PDF] Texas Appleseed. April, 2017. "Texas is one of only seven states in which 17-year olds accused of committing crimes are automatically shuffled into the adult criminal justice system rather than the juvenile justice system, regardless of the crime."

Thursday, July 6 2017:

  • Criminal Background Checks and Access to Jobs: A Case Study of Washington, DC, [PDF] Urban Institute. June, 2017. "Examining local regulations and DC’s labor market reveals that justice-involved people—whether formerly incarcerated or not—face significant challenges finding work in in the city."
  • Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2016, [PDF] National Center for Education Statistics. May, 2017. (This annual report, a joint effort by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics, presents data on crime and safety at school from the perspectives of students, teachers, and principals.)
  • U.S. Prison Population Trends 1999-2015: Modest Reductions with Significant Variation, [PDF] The Sentencing Project. May, 2017. (While the majority of states have at least modestly reduced their prison populations in recent years, 16 states have achieved double-digit rates of decline and the federal system has downsized at almost twice the national rate.)
  • Hate Crime Victimization, 2004-2015 [PDF] Bureau of Justice Statistics. June, 2017. "In 2015, the rate of violent hate crime victimization was 0.7 hate crimes per 1,000 persons age 12 or older."
  • Examining Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes among Indigent Defendants in San Francisco, [PDF] 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."

Wednesday, July 5 2017:

  • Militarization and police violence: The case of the 1033 program, [PDF] Casey Delehanty, Gardner-Webb University. 2015. "We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings across all models."
  • Bail Reform in California [PDF] UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. May, 2017. (This report examines California's system of commercial surety bail, recommending that it be replaced with risk assessment tools and non-bail release to improve predictive accuracy, race neutrality, and other outcomes such as fiscal impact.)
  • The Devil in the Details: Bail Bond Contracts in California, [PDF] UCLA School of Law. May, 2017. "After analyzing the fine print in more than 100 contract documents online corresponding to 10 sureties, we identified 20 problems with bail bond contracts that violate common notions of fairness and justice."

Tuesday, June 27 2017:

  • Criminal, Victim, or Worker?: The Effects of New York's Human Trafficking Intervention Courts on Adults Charged with Prostitution-Related Offenses, [PDF] Red Umbrella Project. October, 2014. (Decreasing the incarceration of people charged with prostitution is a good step forward, but as long as people who are in the sex trades are "rescued" through arrest, they will continue to be re-victimized by the police and the courts.)

Thursday, June 22 2017:

  • Indicators of Mental Health Problems Reported by Prisoners & Jail Inmates: 2011-12, [PDF] Bureau of Justice Statistics. June, 2017. "About 1 in 7 state and federal prisoners (14%) and 1 in 4 jail inmates (26%) reported experiences that met the threshold for serious psychological distress (SPD) in the 30 days prior to a survey that was conducted between February 2011 and May 2012."

Monday, June 19 2017:

  • Unlocking solitary confinement: Ending Extreme Isolation in Nevada State Prisons, [PDF] The ACLU of Nevada, Solitary Watch, Nevada Disability Advocacy & Law Center. February, 2017. "In this report, we found that solitary confinement is, in fact, widely used in the state of Nevada, often for prolonged periods of time, and that many of the people held there are denied basic human needs like daily exercise and sufficient medical care."
  • Geographic Variation in the Cumulative Risk of Imprisonment and Parental Imprisonment in the United States, [PDF] University of California & Cornell University. 2016. (This article reports estimates of the cumulative risk of imprisonment and parental imprisonment for demographic groups in four regions and four states. Findings indicate that there is substantial racial inequality in levels of risk.)

Thursday, June 15 2017:

  • Sense of self and responsibility: a review of learning from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Prison Reform Fellowships – Part 5, Institute for Criminal Policy Research, Birkbeck, University of London. June, 2017. "This report profiles interventions which encourage imprisoned people to develop a positive sense of self and a sense of responsibility for their own lives and towards others."
  • Peer relations: Review of learning from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Prison Reform Fellowships – Part 4, Institute for Criminal Policy Research, Birkbeck, University of London. June, 2017. (This briefing examines the importance of positive peer relations for promoting desistance and providing moral and practical support to people in prison and on release.)
  • Federal Prisons at a Crossroads The Sentencing Project. June, 2017. "The number of people incarcerated in federal prisons has declined substantially in recent years. But recently enacted policy changes at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and certain Congressional proposals appear poised to reverse this progress."

Wednesday, June 14 2017:

  • America's Toxic Prisons: The Environmental Injustices of Mass Incarceration, [Website] Earth Island Journal and Truthout. June, 2017. "The toxic impact of prisons extends far beyond any individual prison, or any specific region in the United States. Mass incarceration in the US impacts the health of prisoners, prison-adjacent communities, and local ecosystems from coast to coast."
  • Back to Business: How Hiring Formerly Incarcerated Job Seekers Benefits Your Company, [PDF] The Trone Private Sector and Education Advisory Council to the American Civil Liberties Union. June, 2017. "Research by economists confirms that hiring people with records is simply smart business. Researchers have found that “employees with a criminal background are in fact a better pool for employers.”"

Tuesday, June 13 2017:

  • Out of Sight: The Growth of Jails in Rural America, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. June, 2017. "America’s 3,283 local jails are the “front door” to mass incarceration, but for too long have grown outside of public view. Our latest analysis reveals an unexpected finding: there has been a dramatic shift in the geography of incarceration."

Friday, June 9 2017:

  • Leading with Conviction: The Transformative Role of Formerly Incarcerated Leaders in Reducing Mass Incarceration, [PDF] Columbia Law School. May, 2017. "This report documents the roles of 48 formerly incarcerated leaders engaged in work related to reducing incarceration and rebuilding communities."
  • Individuals With Serious Mental Illnesses in County Jails: A Survey of Jail Staff’s Perspectives, [PDF] Public Citizen’s Health Research Group and The Treatment Advocacy Center. July, 2016. (This report uses data from 230 sheriff’s departments in 39 states to examine how correctional staffs understand and deal with inmates struggling with serious mental illnesses.)
  • Forfeiting the American Dream: How Civil Asset Forfeiture Exacerbates Hardship for Low-income Communities and Communities of Color, [PDF] Center for American Progress. April, 2016. "The abuse of civil asset forfeiture falls hardest on those who are least able to weather the economic shock of losing a home, car, or financial resources—namely, low-income individuals and people of color."
  • Pretrial Release in California [PDF] Public Policy Institute of California. May, 2015. "This report uses newly available data to provide information about pretrial release in California and to give policymakers a better understanding of the defendants who tend to be released and the form of release they secure."

Wednesday, June 7 2017:

  • Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect, [PDF] Stanford University. June, 2017. "Officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop."

Monday, June 5 2017:

  • Supervision in the Community: Probation and Parole, [PDF] Michelle S. Phelps and Caitlin Curry, University of Minnesota. April, 2017. "In the United States, the number of adults on probation and parole supervision increased from one million in 1980 to a peak of nearly 5.1 million in 2007, more than double the number of inmates in local, state, and federal jails and prisons."

Friday, June 2 2017:

  • Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States, [PDF] 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."

Thursday, June 1 2017:

  • Using Time to Reduce Crime: Federal Prisoner Survey Results Show Ways to Reduce Recidivism, [PDF] Families Against Mandatory Minimums. May, 2017. "An estimated 45 percent of federal prisoners have mental health and behavioral problems...Two-thirds of prisoners who responded to our survey said they had not received mental or behavioral health counseling while in federal prison."
  • Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth, [Website] Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2017. "In most states over the last three decades, the number of people in jails has outpaced population growth by 2, 3 or even 4 times. In 12 states, the jail population has grown more than 3 times faster than the general population."
  • Evaluating the Role of Race in Criminal Justice Adjudications in Delaware [PDF] John 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."

Friday, May 26 2017:

  • The Price of Prisons: Examining State Spending Trends, 2010-2015, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. May, 2017. "Since 2010, 23 states have reduced the size of their prison populations. Vera’s research found that 13 of these states have saved considerably in taxpayer money — $1.6 billion — at the same time."

Friday, May 19 2017:

  • Getting Tough on Spending: An Examination of Correctional Expenditure in Massachusetts, [PDF] MassINC and the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. May, 2017. "DOC [Department of Corrections] and county facilities combined, the state budget allocation per inmate rose 34 percent between FY 2011 and FY 2016. Over this period, education aid per student increased by only 11 percent."
  • When did prisons become acceptable mental healthcare facilities? [PDF] 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."

Monday, May 15 2017:

  • The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S. Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation. October, 2016. "This study estimates the annual economic burden of incarceration in the United States [by including] important social costs...an aggregate burden of one trillion dollars."
  • Selling Off Our Freedom: How insurance corporations have taken over our bail system, [PDF] Color of Change and the American Civil Liberties Union. May, 2017. "Fewer than 10 insurance companies are behind a significant majority of bonds issued by as many as 25,000 bail bond agents."

Thursday, May 4 2017:

  • Capital Punishment, 2014-2015 [PDF] Bureau of Justice Statistics. May, 2017. "Two states accounted for 80% of the executions [in 2016]: Georgia executed nine inmates, and Texas executed seven."
  • Paying More for Being Poor: Bias and Disparity in California's Traffic Court System, [PDF] Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. May, 2017. "The available county-level data shows that African-American people in particular are four to sixteen times more likely to be booked on arrests related to failure to pay an infraction ticket."

Wednesday, May 3 2017:

  • Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences, [PDF] 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."
  • Making Families Pay: The Harmful, Unlawful, and Costly Practice of Charging Juvenile Administrative Fees in California, [Website] Stephanie Campos-Bui, Jeffrey Selbin, Hamza Jaka, Tim Kline, Ahmed Lavalais, Alynia Phillips, Abby Ridley-Kerr, University of California Berkeley School of Law. March, 2017. "[W]e did not find a single county in which fee practices were both fair and cost-effective. Counties either improperly charge low-income families and net little revenue, or they fairly assess families’ inability to pay and net even less."

Monday, May 1 2017:

  • Preventable Tragedies: How to Reduce Mental-Health Related Deaths in Texas Jails, [PDF] The University of Texas School of Law Civil Rights Clinic. November, 2016. "In Texas, state health officials estimate that 30 percent of jail inmates have one or more serious mental illnesses."
  • To Protect and Serve: Trends in State-Level Policing Reform, 2015-2016, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. April, 2017. "Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah and Washington have enacted laws that either limit the use of certain types of force, such as chokeholds, or mandate or strengthen police training on the legal boundaries of justifiable force."

Friday, April 28 2017:

  • Gender and Trauma, Somatic Interventions for Girls in Juvenile Justice: Implications for Policy and Practice, [PDF] Rebecca Epstein and Thalia González, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. April, 2017. "Trauma-informed, gender-responsive, and culturally competent somatic interventions can serve as a critical component of physical and mental health approaches for system-involved girls."

Wednesday, April 26 2017:

  • Designed to Break You: Human Rights Violations on Texas' Death Row, [PDF] Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. 2015. "Every individual on Texas’ death row thus spends approximately 23 hours a day in complete isolation for the entire duration of their sentence, which, on average, lasts more than a decade."
  • The Voting Rights of Ex-Felons and Election Outcomes in the United States [PDF] Tilman Klumpp, Hugo Mialon, Michael Williams. March, 2017. "The changes in felony disenfranchisement laws examined are evidence of a growing consensus that lifelong voting bans are not only ethically problematic, but also stand in the way of efforts to reduce recidivism."

Tuesday, April 25 2017:

  • The steep cost of medical co-pays in prison puts health at risk [Website] Wendy Sawyer, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2017. "In Michigan, it would take over a week to earn enough for a single $5 co-pay, making it the free world equivalent of over $300. In 13 states co-pays are equivalent to charging minimum wage workers more than $200."
  • How much do incarcerated people earn in each state? [Website] Wendy Sawyer, Prison Policy Initiative. April, 2017. "[P]risons appear to be paying incarcerated people less today than they were in 2001. The average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs is now 87 cents, down from 93 cents reported in 2001."
  • Lethally Deficient: Direct Appeals in Texas Death Penalty Cases, [PDF] Texas Defender Service. 2016. "Review by the U.S. Supreme Court was not sought in 34.6% of the cases surveyed, meaning that defense lawyers waived the first opportunity for federal review in more than a third of Texas death penalty cases decided on direct appeal between 2009 and 2015."
  • Locked Up and Locked Down: Segregation of Inmates with Mental Illness, [PDF] Anna Guy, Amplifying Voices of Inmates with Disabilities Prison Project. September, 2016. "[Protection and Advocacy Agencies] have received countless reports of abuse and neglect of inmates in segregation, including prolonged isolation, deplorable conditions, inadequate care, increased self-harm and suicide attempts, and even death."
  • “If They Hand You a Paper, You Sign It“: A Call to End the Sterilization of Women in Prison, [PDF] Rachel Roth and Sara L. Ainsworth, Hastings Women's Law Journal. January, 2015. "[A] number of states allow the sterilization of incarcerated women—flouting important policy norms—and that medical providers and their professional organizations play key roles in sanctioning and carrying out these procedures."
  • Obstructing Justice: Prisons as Barriers to Medical Care for Pregnant Women, [PDF] Rachel Roth, UCLA Women's Law Journal. August, 2010. "Jail and prison staff appear unprepared for pregnancy-related emergencies, and their dismissive attitudes toward pregnant women who say they need medical attention only increase the likelihood of delaying and denying care."

Wednesday, April 19 2017:

  • A Wealth of Inequalities: Mass Incarceration, Employment, and Racial Disparities in U.S. Household Wealth, 1996 to 2011, [PDF] Bryan L. Sykes, University of Washington and Michelle Maroto, University of Alberta. October, 2016. "[A] non-Hispanic white household with an institutionalized member would actually hold more in assets than an otherwise similar black or Hispanic household without an institutionalized member."
  • The Dose-Response of Time Served in Prison on Mortality: New York State, 1989-2003, [Website] Evelyn J. Patterson, University of Vanderbilt. March, 2013. "After controlling for a variety of demographic and offense-related factors...each year in prison increased the odds of death by 15.6% in this 1989 to 1993 parole cohort...an increased odds of death of 78% for somebody who spent 5 years in prison."
  • “She Doesn’t Deserve to be Treated Like This”: Prisons as Sites of Reproductive Injustice, [PDF] Rachel Roth, Center for Women Policy Studies. July, 2012. "[T]he well-established nature of women’s rights has not stopped prison and jail personnel from trying to deny women abortion care, or at least obstruct women’s access to abortion."

Tuesday, April 18 2017:

Thursday, April 13 2017:

  • Bullies in Blue: Origins and Consequences of School Policing, [PDF] American Civil Liberties Union. April, 2017. "[A]t at its origins, school policing enforced social control over Black and Latino youth who could no longer be kept out of neighborhoods and schools through explicitly discriminatory laws."

Tuesday, March 21 2017:

  • Breaking Down the Walls: Lessons Learned From Successful State Campaigns to Close Youth Prisons, [PDF] Youth First Initiative. March, 2017. "No state has completely dismantled the youth prison model that has been the signature feature of juvenile justice since the early 1800s. Yet, successful campaigns have resulted in the closure of dozens of youth prisons in all regions of the country."

Friday, March 17 2017:

  • Women Injustice: Gender and the Pathway to Jail in New York City, [PDF] John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Prisoner Reentry Institute. 2015. "Only 12% to 15% of the average daily population of women at Rikers have been sentenced to jail, as most are detained on pending cases."

Thursday, March 16 2017:

  • Prison: Evidence of its use and over-use from around the world [PDF] Institute for Criminal Policy Research. March, 2017. "Whether you would end up in prison is also affected by who you are. For example, Roma people make up around 40% of Hungary’s prison population, despite representing only 6% of the national population."
  • Ohio's Statehouse-to-Prison Pipeline: 131st General Assembly (2015-2016), [PDF] 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.)

Monday, March 13 2017:

  • How Do People in High-Crime, Low-Income Communities View the Police? [PDF] Urban Institute. February, 2017. "27.8% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that police almost always behave according to the law. Approximately one-third agreed or strongly agreed that police stand up for values that are important to them and often arrest people for no good reason."

Wednesday, March 8 2017:

  • Multi-Site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering [PDF] Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. March, 2016. "Fathers with younger children rated their parental warmth and their relationship quality with their children more highly than did fathers of older children, and they also engaged in more activities with their children."
  • Driving While Black: A Report on Racial Profiling in Metro Nashville Police Department Traffic Stops, [PDF] Gideon's Army. October, 2016. "Between 2011-2015, MNPD (Metro Nashville Police Department) stopped an average of 1,122 per 1,000 black drivers: more black drivers than were living in Davidson County."
  • Exonerations in 2016: The National Registry of Exonerations, [PDF] 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."
  • Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States National 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."
  • Raising The Age: Shifting to a Safer and More Effective Juvenile Justice System [Executive Summary], [PDF] 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."

Tuesday, March 7 2017:

  • Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2017. "[J]ust as it would be wrong to excuse people’s actions simply because they were previously victimized, it is also wrong to ignore someone’s victimization because the person previously broke a law or committed harm in the past."
  • A New Normal: Helping the Criminal Justice System Address Opioid Overdoses, [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2017. "[O]ver the last decade communities and public officials have increasingly called for an approach to drug use that employs harm reduction principles, making the issue a public health concern rather than one to be managed by the criminal justice system."

Friday, March 3 2017:

  • World Pre-trial/Remand Imprisonment List: Third Edition, [PDF] Institute for Criminal Policy Research. 2015. "Close to three million [people are] held in pre-trial detention and other forms of remand imprisonment throughout the world."

Thursday, March 2 2017:

  • Connecticut Employer Survey Practices and Attitudes: The Hiring of Formerly-Incarcerated Persons and Recommendations for Driving Better Outcomes, [PDF] Malta Justice Initiative Inc.. December, 2016. "4 in 10 respondents have no experience in hiring ex-offenders and a quarter say their company has a policy against it. Very few (3%) are actively hiring individuals with a criminal record."

Wednesday, March 1 2017:

  • Voting Rights of Former Felons ACLU of Nebraska. June, 2016. "Disturbingly, a decade after our ex-felon voting rights law was adopted, only half of all counties provided correct and accurate information."
  • Felony Disenfranchisement in the Commonwealth of Kentucky [PDF] League of Women Voters of Kentucky. February, 2017. "[O]ne of every four African American adults in Kentucky cannot vote. This rate (26.2%) is more than triple the national African American disenfranchisement rate (7.44%)."

Tuesday, February 28 2017:

  • Neither here nor there: Incarceration and family instability, [PDF] Kristin Turney, University of California, Irvine. January, 2014. "[F]indings suggest that, regardless of level of relationship commitment, maintaining relationships while one partner is behind bars is difficult."

Wednesday, February 8 2017:

  • Following the Money of Mass Incarceration [Website] Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2017. "In this first-of-its-kind report, we find that the system of mass incarceration costs the government and families of justice-involved people at least $182 billion every year."
  • Punishing Poverty: The high cost of probation fees in Massachusetts, [Website] Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2016. "Despite evidence that many probationers come from the poorest areas of the state, and the court's ability to waive probation fees, the state manages to collect $20 million per year in fees."
  • Reinstating Common Sense: How driver's license suspensions for drug offenses unrelated to driving are falling out of favor, [Website] Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2016. "Our criminal justice system should not set people up to fail. Yet that is exactly what mandatory driver's license suspensions do: they introduce new legal, economic, and social barriers for people who are in the midst of reentry."

Monday, February 6 2017:

  • Sentencing Outcomes in U.S. District Courts: Can Offenders’ Educational Attainment Guard Against Prevalent Criminal Stereotypes?, [PDF] 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."

Thursday, February 2 2017:

  • Mass incarceration and children’s outcomes: Criminal Justice Policy is Education Policy, [PDF] Economic Policy Institute. December, 2016. "It is more common for children of incarcerated parents to drop out of school than it is for children of nonincarcerated parents, controlling for race, IQ, home quality, poverty status, and mother’s education."

Tuesday, January 31 2017:

  • Delaying a Second Chance: The Declining Prospects for Parole on Life Sentences, [PDF] 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."

Thursday, January 26 2017:

  • Building Trust and Legitimacy Within Community Corrections [PDF] Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice. December, 2016. "A shift from incarceration to community corrections could present numerous opportunities for reform of the criminal justice system as well as significant challenges."
  • Shackled to Debt: Criminal Justice Financial Obligations and the Barriers to Re-entry They Create, [PDF] Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice. January, 2017. "[T]his form of sanction can, if left unchecked, have long-term effects that significantly harm the efforts of formerly incarcerated people to rehabilitate and reintegrate..."
  • Community-Based Responses to Justice-Involved Young Adults [PDF] Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice. September, 2015. "[T]oday’s neurobiological and developmental research suggests that young people ages 18-24 are more developmentally akin to juveniles than fully mature adults."

Monday, January 23 2017:

  • Pretrial Justice: How Much Does It Cost, [Website] Pretrial Justice Institute. January, 2017. "The evidence shows that current pretrial practices--especially those that use money bail and over-use jail beds for lower risk people--are needlessly expensive and doesn't produce positive results."

Tuesday, January 17 2017:

  • Declining Drug Enforcement After Proposition 47 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. January, 2017. "The county data suggests [that] Proposition 47 reduced inconsistencies in the classification of drug possession offenses as felonies or misdemeanors."

Friday, January 13 2017:

  • The Death Penalty in Five Florida Counties: Disproportionately Used Against Persons with Significant Mental Impairments, [Website] Fair Punishment Project. January, 2017. "These findings have raised a legitimate question as to whether Florida's capital punishment scheme-even one with a unanimous jury requirement- is capable of limiting application of the death penalty to the most culpable offenders."
  • One Year Later: Race Relations and the Emanuel 9 Shooting, [PDF] University of South Carolina Institute for Public Service and Policy Research. June, 2016. "Among blacks, 30.9% favored the death penalty, while 64.7% believed he should receive life without parole; among whites, 64.2% supported the death penalty if found guilty in this case and 29.7% felt he should be given life without parole."
  • Severe Mental Illness and the Death Penalty [PDF] American Bar Association. December, 2016. "...[N]one of the current legal mechanisms afford adequate protection against the death penalty to those diagnosed with serious mental disorders or disabilities."

Thursday, January 12 2017:

  • Caged In: Solitary Confinement's Devastating Harm on Prisoners with Physical Disabilities, [PDF] American Civil Liberties Union. January, 2017. "In Florida, only 44 of 792 grievances by prisoners with disabilities were resolved from 2013 to 2015."
  • Behind the Badge: How Police View Their Jobs, Key Issues, and Recent Fatal Encounters Between Blacks and Police, [PDF] Pew Research Center. January, 2017. "27% of all white officers but 69% of their black colleagues say the protests that followed fatal encounters between police and black citizens have been motivated at least to some extent by a genuine desire to hold police accountable."

Thursday, January 5 2017:

  • Crime Against Persons with Disabilities, 2009-2014 [PDF] Bureau of Justice Statistics. November, 2016. "40% of violence against persons with disabilities was committed by persons the victim knew well or who were casual acquaintances."
  • Florida: An Outlier in Denying Voting Rights, [PDF] Brennan Center for Justice. December, 2016. "With roots tracing back to Reconstruction and the Jim Crow period, racial discrimination has stifled the right to vote in Florida for hundreds of years."

Wednesday, December 14 2016:

  • Repurposing: New Beginnings for Closed Prisons, [PDF] The Sentencing Project. December, 2016. "Since 2011, at least 22 states have closed or announced closures for 92 state prisons and juvenile facilities, resulting in the elimination of over 48,000 state prison beds and an estimated cost savings of over $333 million."
  • Helping Moms, Dads, & Kids To Come Home: Eliminating Barriers to Housing for People with Criminal Records, [Website] Legal Action Center. December, 2016. "America’s “revolving-door” approach to mass incarceration is inextricably linked to the problem of homelessness."
  • Beyond Bars: Keeping Young People Safe at Home and Out of Youth Prisons, [PDF] The National Collaboration for Youth. December, 2016. "The youth prison is the signature feature of nearly every state juvenile justice system even though it is harmful, ineffective and expensive."
  • Stemming The Rising Tide: Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Youth Incarceration & Strategies for Change, [PDF] 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."

Tuesday, December 13 2016:

Monday, December 12 2016:

  • Health and Prisoner Reentry: How Physical, Mental, and Substance Abuse Conditions Shape the Process of Reintegration, [PDF] Urban Institute. February, 2008. "Nearly all returning prisoners—8 in 10 men and 9 in 10 women—had chronic health conditions requiring treatment or management."
  • How Many Americans Are Unnecessarily Incarcerated? [PDF] 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."
  • Beyond Second Chances: Returning Citizens' Re-Entry Struggles and Successes In The District of Columbia, [PDF] Council for Court Excellence. December, 2016. "The population of D.C. Code offenders is starkly homogeneous. Although slightly fewer than half of all D.C. residents are black, more than 96 percent of D.C. Code offenders incarcerated at BOP facilities are black."
  • How Tough on Crime Became Tough on Kids: Prosecuting Teenage Drug Charges in Adult Courts, [PDF] 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."

Tuesday, December 6 2016:

  • Aiming to Reduce Time-In-Cell: Reports from Correctional Systems on the Numbers of Prisoners in Restricted Housing, [PDF] The Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School and the Association of State Correctional Administrators. November, 2016. "[T]he new 2016 Report found that 67,442 prisoners were held, in the fall of 2015, in prison cells for 22 hours or more for 15 continuous days or more."

Thursday, November 17 2016:

  • Highlights from the U.S. PIAAC Survey of Incarcerated Adults: Their Skills, Work Experience, Education, and Training, [PDF] National Center for Education Statistics. November, 2016. "Around two-thirds of the survey’s respondents reported that they were working prior to their incarceration: about half of them were employed full-time, with another 16 percent working part-time."

Monday, November 14 2016:

  • The Geography of Incarceration: [PDF] Boston Indicators Project, MassINC, and the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. November, 2016. "Many people of color live in Boston neighborhoods with such highly concentrated rates of incarceration that nearly every street—in some cases every other building— contains a resident who has been incarcerated."

Tuesday, November 1 2016:

  • Ban The Box In Employment: A Grassroots History, [PDF] All Of Us or None (Legal Services for Prisoners With Children). October, 2016. "Today, between all of the states and localities that have Ban the Box, over 185 million Americans now live in areas that have adopted fair chance hiring policies."
  • Violent Crime Arrests of Youth in California: Expected to Decline Through 2020, [PDF] Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. October, 2016. "Based on the declining rates of youth arrest over the last several decades, California can expected continued decline and historically low rates of violent felony arrest of youth through 2020."
  • The Prosecution of Youth As Adults in California: A 2015 Update, [PDF] 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."

Friday, October 28 2016:

  • Governments' Management of Private Prisons: [PDF] Abt Associates. September, 2003. "This report examines state and federal governments’ practices of contracting with private firms to manage prisons, including prisons owned by state and federal governments and those owned by private firms."

Thursday, October 27 2016:

  • Correcting Food Policy in Washington Prisons: How the DOC Makes Healthy Food Choices Impossible for Incarcerated People & What Can Be Done, Prison Voice Washington. October, 2016. "When the Department of Corrections turned over responsibility for food services to Correctional Industries (CI)...it substituted 95% industrialized, plastic-wrapped, sugar-filled "food products" for locally prepared healthy food."
  • Moving Beyond Money: A Primer on Bail Reform, [PDF] Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School. October, 2016. "When pretrial detention depends on whether someone can afford to pay a cash bond, two otherwise similar pretrial defendants will face vastly different outcomes based merely on their wealth."

Monday, October 24 2016:

  • Responsible Prison Project: Reshaping The Texas Prison System for Greater Public Safety, [Website] Aaron Flaherty, David Graham, Michael Smith, William D Jones, and Vondre Cash. October, 2016. "It has often been said that those who are closest to a problem are closest to its solution. That is no less true for those who are in prison."
  • The Future of Youth Justice: A Community-Based Alternative to the Youth Prison Model, [PDF] Patrick McCarthy, Vincent Schiraldi, and Miriam Shark. October, 2016. "Closing these failed institutions requires a clear-headed, common-sense, bipartisan policy approach, and a commitment to replace these facilities with effective alternatives that are already available."

Wednesday, October 19 2016:

  • Buying Influence: How Private Prison Companies Expand Their Control of America’s Criminal Justice System, [PDF] In The Public Interest. October, 2016. "In 2014, out of the 30 governors, lieutenant governors, controllers, attorney generals, and legislators that received individual contributions of $5,000 or greater from the corrections industry, 27 won their races."

Tuesday, October 18 2016:

  • Use of Electronic Offender-Tracking Devices Expands Sharply [PDF] The Pew Charitable Trusts. September, 2016. "In 2015, manufacturers reported that about 88,000 GPS units were being used for supervision of accused and convicted offenders, a thirtyfold increase from the roughly 2,900 reported a decade earlier."

Thursday, October 13 2016:

  • Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU. October, 2016. "More than one of every nine arrests by state law enforcement is for drug possession, amounting to more than 1.25 million arrests each year."

Wednesday, October 12 2016:

  • 2010 Inmate Releases: Three Year Post Release Follow-up, [PDF] State of New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. June, 2014. "43% of the offenders released by the Parole Board during 2010 were returned for rule violations within three years and 8% returned for new felonies."

Tuesday, October 11 2016:

  • We are not disposable: The Toxic Impacts of Prisons and Jails, [PDF] Californians United for a Responsible Budget. October, 2016. "Pollution and environmental degradation created by prisons and jails exacerbate public health risks for not only incarcerated people but also for the local communities where detention facilities are sited."
  • Crime in 2016: A Preliminary Analysis [PDF] Brennan Center for Justice. September, 2016. "The data analyzed for this report suggest that most Americans will continue to experience low rates of crime."
  • 6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016, [PDF] The Sentencing Project. October, 2016. "Approximately 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting age population – 1 of every 40 adults – is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction."
  • Defendant Remorse, Need for Affect, and Juror Sentencing Decisions [Website] Emily 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."

Monday, October 3 2016:

  • Demilitarizing America's Police: A Constitutional Analysis, [PDF] The Constitution Project. August, 2016. "The use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement has clear--and serious--constitutional implications."
  • Righting Wrongs: The Five-Year Groundswell of State Bans on Life Without Parole For Children, [PDF] 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."

Friday, September 30 2016:

  • Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community [PDF] Professor Matthew Desmond, Harvard University; Professor Andrew Papachristos, Yale University; Professor David Kirk, University of Oxford. September, 2016. "This study shows that publicized cases of police violence against unarmed black men have a clear and significant impact on citizen crime reporting."

Wednesday, September 21 2016:

  • Juvenile Life Without Parole in Wayne County: Time to Join the National Consensus, [PDF] 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."

Friday, September 9 2016:

  • Right to Counsel in Utah: An Assessment of Trial-Level Indigent Defense Services, Sixth Amendment Center. October, 2015. "Utah’s trial courts do not uniformly provide counsel to indigent defendants at all critical stages of criminal cases as required by the U.S. Supreme Court[.]"

Wednesday, September 7 2016:

Friday, September 2 2016:

  • 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."
  • 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."
  • Debtors' Prison for Kids? The High Cost of Fines and Fees in the Juvenile Justice System, Juvenile Law Center. August, 2015. "Youth who can’t pay for alternative programs may enter the juvenile justice system when a wealthier peer would not."

Friday, August 26 2016:

  • Profit-Driven Prosecution and the Competitive Bidding Process J. 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."
  • The Downstream Consequences of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention University 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."
  • 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."
  • Community Cages: Profitizing community corrections and alternatives to incarceration, American Friends Service Committee. August, 2016. "The profitization of community corrections poses a serious threat to the movement to end mass incarceration."

Tuesday, August 23 2016:

  • 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."

Monday, August 22 2016:

  • Local Justice Reinvestment: Strategies, Outcomes, and Keys to Success, Urban Institute. August, 2016. "Over the past six years, 17 local jurisdictions across the country have worked diligently to implement [Justice Reinvestment Initiative], and it appears these efforts have generally paid off."
  • Unjust: How the broken criminal justice system fails LGBT people of color, Center for American Progress, Movement Advancement Project... August, 2016. "This report focuses on LGBT people of color and their interactions with the criminal justice system."

Thursday, August 18 2016:

  • 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."
  • Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2016. "At this critical moment in jail and local justice system reform, Vera has taken stock of the existing research on women in jail to begin to reframe the conversation to include them."

Wednesday, August 17 2016:

  • A New Era for Expungement Law Reform? Recent Developments at the State and Federal Levels, Temple University, Beasley School of Law. August, 2016. "This article evaluates the recent flurry of state-level legislation relating to expungement remedies for publicly available criminal record information, including both conviction and arrest records."

Tuesday, August 16 2016:

Friday, August 12 2016:

  • Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Contract Prisons U.S. Department of Justice. August, 2016. "We found that, in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP institutions and that the BOP needs to improve how it monitors contract prisons in several areas."
  • Racial Profiling in Hiring: A Critique of New, National Employment Law Project. August, 2016. "Ban-the-box is working, both by increasing employment opportunities for people with records and by changing employer attitudes toward hiring people with records."

Wednesday, August 10 2016:

  • Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. August, 2016. "[T]he Department of Justice concludes that there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law."

Tuesday, August 9 2016:

  • New Orleans: Who's in Jail and Why?, Vera Institute of Justice. August, 2016. "This report aims to advance an important public conversation about how we are using our jail and how it impacts safety in our city."
  • Individuals With Serious Mental Illnesses in County Jails: A Survey of Jail Staff’s Perspectives, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, The Treatment Advocacy Center. July, 2016. "The purpose of our survey was to understand the perspectives of county jail sheriffs, deputies, and other staff with respect to individuals with serious mental illnesses in jails."
  • Justifiable Homicides by Law Enforcement Officers: What is the Role of Mental Illness?, Treatment Advocacy Center, National Sheriff's Association. September, 2013. "The transfer of responsibility for persons with mental illness from mental health professionals to law enforcement officers has brought with it major problems for the latter."
  • Crime Survivors Speak: The First-Ever National Survey of Victims' Views on Safety and Justice, Alliance for Safety and Justice. August, 2016. "Perhaps to the surprise of some, victims overwhelmingly prefer criminal justice approaches that prioritize rehabilitation over punishment and strongly prefer investments in crime prevention and treatment to more spending on prisons and jails."

Wednesday, August 3 2016:

  • Police Body Worn Cameras: A Policy Scorecard, The Leadership Conference, Upturn. August, 2015. "This scorecard evaluates the body-worn camera policies currently in place in major police departments across the country."

Monday, August 1 2016:

  • Global burden of HIV, viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis in prisoners and detainees, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. July, 2016. "The most effective way of controlling these infections in prisoners and the broader community is to reduce the incarceration of people who inject drugs."
  • 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.'"
  • National Survey of Prison Health Care: Selected Findings, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. July, 2016. "This report presents selected findings on the provision of health care services in U.S. state prisons."

Friday, July 22 2016:

  • Is Justice Really Blind? Race and Reversal in US Courts, Journal of Legal Studies. July, 2016. "[B]lack federal judges are consistently overturned on appeal more often than similar white judges."

Thursday, July 21 2016:

  • Disabled Behind Bars: The Mass Incarceration of People With Disabilities in America's Jails and Prisons, Center for American Progress. July, 2016. "This report highlights steps policymakers can take to combat inappropriate and unjust incarceration and criminalization of people with disabilities, as well as steps to ensure appropriate and humane treatment of people with disabilities[.]"
  • The Science of Justice: Race, Arrests, and Police Use of Force, Center for Policing Equity. July, 2016. "[T]he analyses of 12 law enforcement departments from geographically and demographically diverse locations revealed that racial disparities in police use of force persist even when controlling for racial distribution of local arrest rates."

Wednesday, July 20 2016:

  • Making the Grade: Developing Quality Postsecondary Education Programs in Prison, Vera Institute of Justice. July, 2016. "[T]his report compiles lessons from the field, offering implementation guidance to programs seeking to develop, expand, or enhance postsecondary educational programming in corrections settings."

Monday, July 18 2016:

  • Making Hard Time Harder: Programmatic Accommodations for Inmates with Disabilities Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, AVID Prison Project. July, 2016. "This report...aims to highlight the difficulties that inmates with disabilities face as they seek to access programs and services in state prison systems."
  • Indefensible: A Decade of Mass Incarceration of Migrants Prosecuted for Crossing the Border, Grassroots Leadership, Justice Strategies. July, 2016. "The criminal prosecution of migrants crossing our southern border has had profound impacts on the federal courts and federal prisons over the last decade."

Monday, July 11 2016:

Tuesday, July 5 2016:

  • 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."
  • 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."

Thursday, June 30 2016:

  • Overview of Federal Criminal Cases: Fiscal Year 2015, United States Sentencing Commission. June, 2016. "The 71,003 individual original cases reported to the Commission in fiscal year 2015 represent a decrease of 4,833 (6.4%) cases from fiscal year 2014."
  • 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."

Monday, June 27 2016:

  • The Gavel Gap: Who Sits in Judgment on State Courts?, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. June, 2016. "We find that courts are not representative of the people whom they serve -- that is, a gap exists between the bench and the citizens."

Friday, June 24 2016:

  • Raising Cain: The Role of Serious Mental Illness in Family Homicides, Treatment Advocacy Center. June, 2016. "[T]his is the first study of the role of serious mental illness in all family homicides."
  • Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested, U.S. Department of Justice. April, 2016. "This study is a quantitative content analysis of archived news articles and court records reporting on the arrest(s) of law enforcement officers in the United States from 2005-2011."

Wednesday, June 22 2016:

  • Isolated in Essex: Punishing immigrants through solitary confinement, New Jersey Advocates for Immigrant Detainees, American Friends Service Committee, and New York University School of Law Immigrants Rights Clinic. June, 2016. "This report completes the picture by presenting an analysis of previously unavailable data regarding the use of disciplinary solitary confinement ("disciplinary segregation") against immigrant detainees in Essex County Correctional Facility[.]"
  • Recidivism of Offenders Placed on Federal Community Supervision in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010, Bureau of Justice Statistics. June, 2016. "Overall, 35% of these offenders were arrested within 3 years and 43% were arrested within 5 years of placement on community supervision."

Monday, June 20 2016:

  • Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment, Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr. June, 2016. "Our results confirm that criminal records are a major barrier to employment, but they also support the concern that BTB policies encourage statistical discrimination on the basis of race."

Thursday, June 16 2016:

  • States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2016, Prison Policy Initiative. 2016. "[P]lacing each state in a global context reveals that incarceration policy in every region of this country is out of step with the rest of the world."

Tuesday, June 14 2016:

  • Marijuana Legalization in Colorado: Early Findings, Colorado Department of Public Safety. March, 2016. "The total number of marijuana arrests decreased by 46% between 2012 and 2014, from 12,894 to 7,004."

Friday, June 10 2016:

  • Update: Changes in State Imprisonment Brennan Center for Justice. June, 2016. "[This fact sheet] analyzes data from all 50 states on imprisonment and crime from 2006 (as bipartisan criminal justice reforms generally began around 2007) through 2014 (the most recent year of data)."
  • The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in State Prisons, The Sentencing Project. June, 2016. "This report documents the rates of incarceration for whites, African Americans, and Hispanics, providing racial and ethnic composition as well as rates of disparity for each state."

Monday, June 6 2016:

Thursday, June 2 2016:

  • Correctional Control: Incarceration and supervision by state, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2016. "For the first time, this report aggregates data on all of the kinds of correctional control: federal prisons, state prisons, local jails, juvenile incarceration, civil commitment, Indian Country jails, parole and, lastly but importantly, probation."

Wednesday, June 1 2016:

  • Increases in police use of force in the presence of body-worn cameras are driven by officer discretion: a protocol-based subgroup analysis of ten randomized experiments, Journal of Experimental Criminology. May, 2017. "The core of the analysis presented below is to understand what role police discretion plays in the emergent area of police BWCs."
  • Youth in Residential Placement, 2013 U.S. Department of Justice. May, 2016. "This survey details the characteristics of youth held for delinquency and status offenses in public and private residential facilities in every state."

Tuesday, May 31 2016:

  • Degrees of Freedom: Expanding College Opportunities for Currently and Formerly Incarcerated Californians, Renewing Communities Initiative. February, 2015. "Our colleges and criminal justice agencies must break out of their silos and share a commitment to high-quality education for all students whether they are learning in prison, jail, or the community."

Friday, May 27 2016:

  • 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."

Thursday, May 26 2016:

  • Corrections Statistics by State [Website] National Institute of Corrections. February, 2015. "This unique compilation of data provides a visual representation of key statistics for each state as well as a comparison of each state in relation to other states."

Wednesday, May 25 2016:

  • Study of the TDCJ Offender Visitation Policies Texas Department of Criminal Justice. August, 2014. "A temporary online survey was conducted from November 2013 to March 2014 to obtain feedback from the public regarding their past visitation experience."

Monday, May 23 2016:

  • 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."

Thursday, May 19 2016:

  • Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect of California’s Realignment Act on Public Safety, Criminology and Public Policy. May, 2016. "Significant reductions in the size of prison populations are possible without endangering public safety."
  • Protecting Written Family Communication in Jails: A 50-State Survey, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "[W]e find a strong correlation between the states that have strong language protecting letter writing and the states in which no jails are experimenting with banning letters."
  • Assessing the Impact of South Dakota's Sentencing Reforms Urban Institute. May, 2016. "South Dakota’s presumptive probation policy and felony reclassifications played a significant role in averting South Dakota’s prison population growth."

Wednesday, May 18 2016:

  • A Price Too High: US Families Torn Apart by Deportations for Drug Offenses, Human Rights Watch. June, 2015. "[T]he US is deporting a significant number of both permanent residents and undocumented individuals with strong family and community ties to the US, often for minor or old drug offenses."
  • The Heavy Costs of High Bail: Evidence from Judge Randomization, Columbia Law School. May, 2016. "Our estimates suggest that the assignment of money bail causes a 6 percentage point rise in the likelihood of pleading guilty, and a 4 percentage point rise in recidivism."
  • Breaking Promises: Violations of the Massachusetts Pregnancy Standards & Anti-Shackling Law, The Prison Birth Project and Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts. May, 2016. "Far too often Massachusetts prisons and jails violate the law in both policy and practice, undermining the public will and subjecting pregnant women to illegal, unsafe, and degrading treatment."

Tuesday, May 10 2016:

  • Detaining the Poor: How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time, Prison Policy Initiative. May, 2016. "A majority of people unable to meet bail fall within the poorest third of the national income distribution."

Thursday, May 5 2016:

  • Mothers at the Gate: How a Powerful Family Movement is Transforming the Juvenile Justice System, Institute for Policy Studies. May, 2016. "[A] movement of family members — particularly mothers — is developing around the country, a movement that aims to challenge both the conditions in which their loved ones are held and the fact of mass incarceration itself."
  • Chicago Prisoners' Experiences Returning Home Urban Institute. December, 2004. "We present key findings on a range of reentry challenges and describe the factors related to postrelease success or failure[.]"

Friday, April 29 2016:

Wednesday, April 27 2016:

  • Unlicensed & Untapped: Removing Barriers to State Occupational Licenses for People with Records, National Employment Law Project. April, 2016. "[H]aving a conviction record, particularly for people of color, is a major barrier to participation in the labor market."
  • Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System White House Council of Economic Advisers. April, 2016. "[E]conomics can provide a valuable lens for evaluating the costs and benefits of criminal justice policy."
  • San Francisco Justice Reinvestment Initiative: Racial and ethnic disparities analysis for the reentry council, The W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice Fairness & Equity. June, 2015. "Black adults are 7.1 times as likely as White adults to be arrested, 11 times as likely to be booked into County Jail, and 10.3 times as likely to be convicted of a crime in San Francisco."

Tuesday, April 26 2016:

  • A Shared Sentence: the devastating toll of parental incarceration on kids, families and communities, The Annie E. Casey Foundation. April, 2016. "Nationally, the number of kids who have had a parent in jail or prison at some point in their childhood hovers around 5.1 million - a conservative estimate."
  • Health Disparities in Drug- and Alcohol-Use Disorders: A 12-Year Longitudinal Study of Youths After Detention, American Journal of Public Health. December, 2015. "Drug abuse appears to have greater consequences for racial/ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, than for non-Hispanic Whites."

Thursday, April 21 2016:

  • Crime in 2015: A Final Analysis, Brennan Center for Justice. April, 2016. "The data analyzed in this update support the initial report’s conclusion that Americans continue to experience low crime rates."
  • Assessing Inmate Cause of Death: Deaths in Custody Reporting Program and National Death Index, Bureau of Justice Statistics. April, 2016. "The U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has collected data annually on inmates who died in state prison and local jail and the circumstances surrounding these deaths since...2000."
  • 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[.]"

Tuesday, April 12 2016:

  • Stopped, Fined, Arrested: Racial Bias in Policing and Traffic Courts in California, Back on the Road California. April, 2016. "[T]here are dramatic racial and socioeconomic disparities in driver’s license suspensions and arrests related to unpaid traffic fines and fees."

Monday, April 11 2016:

  • Children, Parents, and Incarceration: Descriptive Overview of Data from Alameda and San Francisco County Jails, Alameda County Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership; San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership. March, 2016. "The survey was structured to gather information to inform program and policy decisions in consideration of the children’s well-being when their parents become incarcerated in local jails."

Tuesday, April 5 2016:

  • Get To Work or Go To Jail: Workplace Rights Under Threat, UCLA Labor Center. April, 2016. "The work-or-jail threat adds the weight of the criminal justice system to employers’ power, and turns the lack of good jobs into the basis for further policing, prosecution, and incarceration."

Friday, April 1 2016:

Thursday, March 31 2016:

Wednesday, March 30 2016:

  • Paying the Price: Failure to Deliver HIV Services in Lousiana Parish Jails, Human Rights Watch. 2016. "The state of Louisiana is 'ground zero' for the dual epidemics of HIV and incarceration."
  • Prosecutorial Oversight: A National Dialogue in the Wake of Connick v. Thompson, Innocence 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."

Monday, March 28 2016:

  • 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."

Thursday, March 24 2016:

  • “Do You See How Much I’m Suffering Here?” Abuse against Transgender Women in US Immigration Detention, Human Rights Watch. March, 2016. "[T]his report details the abuses that transgender women suffer in immigration detention and the US government’s inadequate efforts to address them."
  • Punishment Rate Measures Prison Use Relative to Crime The Pew Charitable Trusts. March, 2016. "A more nuanced assessment of punishment than the ratio of inmates to residents is that of inmates to crime- what The Pew Charitable Trusts calls the 'punishment rate.'"
  • A National Picture of Prison Downsizing Strategies The RAND Corporation. February, 2016. "After decades of unprecedented correctional expenditures and prison population growth, many states faced fiscal pressures on their corrections budgets as the country entered a deep recession in 2008."
  • Race, Wealth and Incarceration: Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Race and Social Problems. March, 2016. "[T]he likelihood of future incarceration still was higher for blacks at every level of wealth compared to the white likelihood[.]"
  • The Effects of Changing State Theft Penalties The 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[.]"
  • Pretrial Incarcerated Women: An Analysis of Women in Bristol County Jail, Massachusetts, Wellesley Centers for Women. March, 2016. "This brief policy report examines these women’s demographic and criminal justice characteristics and, focusing particularly on their race and ethnicity, examines the relationships between them."

Monday, March 21 2016:

Friday, March 18 2016:

  • Administrative Segregation in U.S. Prisons National Institute of Justice. March, 2016. "Across the political spectrum, there is growing concern about the efficacy and utility of administrative segregation practices[.]"

Wednesday, March 16 2016:

  • Is Proposition 47 to Blame for California's 2015 Increase in Urban Crime? Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. March, 2016. "There are no obvious effects associated with Proposition 47 that would be expected if the reform had a significant and consistent impact on crime."
  • Adult Sex Offender Management Office 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."

Tuesday, March 15 2016:

  • Evaluation of the Los Angeles Gang Reduction and Youth Development Program: Year 4 Evaluation Report, Urban Institute. September, 2015. "The analyses presented in this report address GRYD’s efforts to impact gang violence at the individual, family, and community levels, paralleling the GRYD program components targeting each of these levels."
  • Children with Incarcerated Parents - Considering Children's Outcomes in the Context of Family Experiences, University of Minnesota. June, 2013. "Given the potential long-term consequences of parental incarceration for child and adult health, targeted, evidence-informed prevention and intervention efforts are sorely needed."
  • Juvenile Court Statistics 2013 National 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."
  • Juvenile Transfer Laws: An Effective Deterrent to Delinquency?, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. June, 2010. "This Bulletin provides an overview of research on the deterrent effects of transferring youth from juvenile to criminal courts[.]"

Monday, March 14 2016:

  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016, Prison Policy Initiative. March, 2016. (The American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people in thousands of facilities, and we go deeper to provide further detail on where and why.)

Thursday, March 10 2016:

  • Criminal (In)justice: A Cost Analysis of Wrongful Convictions, Errors, and Failed Prosecutions in California's Criminal Justice System, The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, Berkeley School of Law. March, 2016. "Criminal (In)justice examines 692 adult felony criminal cases where California missed the mark in public safety by failing to prosecute the right person or by pursuing a flawed or unsustainable conviction."
  • Recidivism Among Federal Offenders: A Comprehensive Overview, United States Sentencing Commission. March, 2016. "This report provides a broad overview of key findings from the United States Sentencing Commission’s study of recidivism of federal offenders."

Wednesday, March 9 2016:

  • InCorrect Care: A Prison Profiteer Turns Care into Confinement, Grassroots Leadership. February, 2016. "This report’s in-depth analysis of GEO Group, GEO Care and now Correct Care Solutions’ involvement in operating mental health hospitals and civil commitment centers exposes serious concerns."
  • Stakeholders' Views on the Movement to Reduce Youth Incarceration National Council on Crime and Delinquency. April, 2014. "From June 2012 through June 2013, NCCD asked juvenile justice stakeholders to describe how youth incarceration was reduced in their jurisdictions."

Tuesday, March 8 2016:

Friday, March 4 2016:

  • A New Role for Technology? Implementing Video Visitation in Prison, Vera Institute of Justice. February, 2016. "This report examines the current landscape of video visitation in prisons nationwide and offers a detailed case study of an early adopter, Washington State."

Thursday, March 3 2016:

  • Under Custody Report: Profile of Incarcerated Offender Population Under Custody on January 1, 2012, State of New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. January, 2012. "This report...presents information on offenders held under Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) custody on January 1, 2012."
  • Under Custody Report: Profile of Inmate Population Under Custody on January 1, 2013, State of New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. January, 2013. "This report...presents information on inmates and incarcerated parolees held under Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) custody on January 1, 2013."
  • Under Custody Report: Profile of Under Custody Population As of January 1, 2014, State of New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. January, 2014. "This report...profiles under custody offenders' demographic and criminal history characteristics."

Wednesday, March 2 2016:

  • Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention, ACLU; Detention Watch Network; National Immigrant Justice Center. February, 2016. "This report examines egregious violations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) own medical care standards that played a significant role in eight in-custody deaths from 2010 to 2012."

Tuesday, March 1 2016:

  • What Do We Know About the Association Between Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Injuries?, Epidemiologic Reviews. February, 2016. "Evidence from 130 studies in 10 countries suggests that in certain nations the simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearms restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths."

Monday, February 29 2016:

  • Jobs After Jail: Ending the prison to poverty pipeline, Alliance for a Just Society. February, 2016. "For the 70 million adults with a serious misdemeanor or felony arrest or conviction record and the hundreds of thousands more each year released from prison, their record can be a life sentence of poverty and low wages."

Friday, February 26 2016:

  • The Truth About Juvenile False Confessions American Bar Association. February, 2016. "People, including judges and juries, are very reluctant to believe that a confession might be false - and the result, too often, can be a wrongful conviction."

Thursday, February 25 2016:

Wednesday, February 24 2016:

Tuesday, February 23 2016:

  • Snapshot of Indigent Defense Representation in Michigan’s Adult Criminal Courts, Michigan Indigent Defense Commission. February, 2016. "The first survey of indigent defense court systems is just one part of an extensive, multipronged data gathering strategy that the MIDC will use to initiate comprehensive system change."

Monday, February 22 2016:

  • Inside the Box: The Real Costs of Solitary Confinement in New Mexico's Prisons and Jails, The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty; The ACLU of New Mexico. October, 2013. "New Mexico urgently needs to reform the practice of solitary confinement in its prisons and jails."

Thursday, February 18 2016:

  • Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect of California’s Realignment Act on Public Safety, Criminology and Public Policy. February, 2016. "Significant reductions in the size of prison populations are possible without endangering public safety."
  • National Survey Key Findings - Federal Sentencing & Prisons The 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."
  • Key findings from statewide surveys in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Kentucky, Missouri, and Wisconsin, Justice Action Network; The Tarrance Group. February, 2016. "[T]here is broad consensus that the federal criminal justice system jails too many non-violent criminals and spends too much on jailing nonviolent offenders."

Wednesday, February 17 2016:

Tuesday, February 16 2016:

  • Special Committee on Re-entry New York State Bar Association. January, 2016. "The cost of re-incarceration and the cost to victims of recidivism are far greater than the cost of providing the programs described in this report."

Friday, February 12 2016:

  • Police Body-Worn Camera Policies Brennan Center for Justice. January, 2016. "To help foster and inform this discussion, we have pulled together body camera policies from many police departments that have made them publicly available, as well as model policies from several organizations."
  • 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."

Thursday, February 4 2016:

  • World Prison Population List (eleventh edition), International Centre for Prison Studies. February, 2015. "This eleventh edition of the World Prison Population List gives details of the number of prisoners held in 223 prison systems in independent countries and dependent territories."
  • First-Episode Incarceration: Creating a Recovery-Informed Framework for Integrated Mental Health and Criminal Justice Responses, Vera Institute of Justice. January, 2016. (This report outlines a new integrated framework that encourages the mental health and criminal justice fields to collaborate on developing programs based on early intervention.)
  • Sexual Offender Laws and Prevention of Sexual Violence or Recidivism American Journal of Public Health. 2010. (Evidence on the effectiveness of sex offender laws suggests that they may not prevent recidivism or sexual violence and result in more harm than good.)
  • 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."
  • Exonerations in 2015 The National Registry of Exonerations. February, 2016. "2015 set a record for exonerations in the United States - 149 that we know of so far, in 29 states, the District of Columbia, federal courts and Guam."
  • A Legislated Study of Raising the Age of Juvenile Jurisdiction in Louisiana The Future of 17-Year-Olds in the Louisiana Justice System, Institute for Public Health and Justice. February, 2016. "Lousiana should strongly consider raising the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to include 17-year-old offenders."

Friday, January 29 2016:

  • Report and Recommendations Concerning the Use of Restrictive Housing U.S. Department of Justice. January, 2016. "At its worst, and when applied without regard to basic standards of decency, restrictive housing can cause serious, long-lasting harm. It is the responsibility of all governments to ensure that this practice is used only as necessary."
  • Sexual Victimization Reported by Juvenile Correctional Authorities, 2007-12 Bureau of Justice Statistics. January, 2016. "In 2012, juvenile correctional administrators reported 865 allegations of sexual victimization in state juvenile systems and 613 in local or private facilities and Indian country facilities."
  • You've Got Mail: The promise of cyber communication in prisons and the need for regulation, Prison Policy Initiative. January, 2016. (There are many benefits to electronic messaging in correctional facilities, but our analysis finds that the technology is primed to be just another opportunity for for-profit companies to exploit families and subvert regulations of phone calls.)
  • Locked Up & Shipped Away: Interstate Prisoner Transfers and the Private Prison Industry Winter 2016 Update, [PDF] Grassroots Leadership. January, 2016. (Since the 2013 release of Locked Up and Shipped Away, the same four states (Vermont, California, Idaho, and Hawaii) continue to house a portion of their prisoners in private prisons out of state. And, a fifth state, Arkansas has also opted to do so.)

Wednesday, January 20 2016:

  • Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June, 2015, Federal Bureau of Investigation. January, 2016. (Preliminary figures indicate that law enforcement agencies throughout the nation showed an overall increase of 1.7 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention for the first 6 months of 2015 when compared with the same time in 2014.)

Friday, January 8 2016:

  • Public Research Universities: Changes in State Funding, American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2015. "In general, state spending on corrections has grown much faster than education spending over the last three decades. In eleven states, corrections has now surpassed higher education as a percentage of funding."
  • Rates of Sexual Victimization in Prison for Inmates With and Without Mental Disorders, Psychiatric services. 2007. "Approximately one in 12 male inmates with a mental disorder reported at least one incident of sexual victimization by another inmate over a six-month period, compared with one in 33 male inmates without a mental disorder."

Thursday, January 7 2016:

  • The Correctional Policy Project: Iowa Prison Population Forecast FY 2015-FY 2025, [PDF] Iowa Department of Human Rights. January, 2015. "Long term projections suggest Iowa's prison population may be expected to increase from 8,188 inmates on June 30, 2015 to about 10,058 inmates on June 30, 2025, or by about 23% over the ten-year period."
  • Tracking Enforcement Rates in New York City 2003-2014 [PDF] Misdemeanor Justice Project at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. December, 2015. "This third report from the Misdemeanor Justice Project documents the changing patterns in felony arrests, misdemeanor arrests, criminal summonses, and stop, question and frisk activities in New York City from 2003-2014."

Tuesday, January 5 2016:

  • Growing Up Locked Down ACLU of Nebraska. January, 2016. "Before they are old enough to get a driver’s license, enlist in the armed forces, or vote, some children in Nebraska are held in solitary confinement for days, weeks--and even months."

Monday, January 4 2016:

  • Developmental Estimates of Subnational Crime Rates Based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2015. "Developmental Estimates of Subnational Crime Rates Based on the National Crime Victimization Survey presents rates of violent and property crime victimization for the 50 states and select metropolitan statistical areas."
  • Correctional Populations In The United States, 2014 Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2015. "The correctional population has declined by an annual average of 1.0% since 2007."
  • Selective Policing: Racially Disparate Enforcement of Low-Level Offenses in New Jersey, [PDF] ACLU of New Jersey. December, 2015. "Racial disparities between Black and White arrests exist in every city studied."

Tuesday, December 22 2015:

  • The Burden of Criminal Justice Debt in Alabama: 2014 Participant Self-Report Survey, [PDF] UAB TASC Jefferson County's Community Corrections Program. 2014. "The purpose of this study was to evaluate the success of this approach and the impact of these policies in Alabama. With the general knowledge that increased court costs have not produced projected revenue, we sought to understand why."
  • The Family And Recidivism [PDF] Vera Institute of Justice. September, 2012. "Among the inmates surveyed, 84 percent reported that their families were supportive during their incarceration."
  • 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."
  • The Conditioning Effects of Race and Gender on the Juvenile Court Outcomes of Delinquent and "Neglected" Types of Offenders, [PDF] Justice Quarterly. November, 2015. (The main inverse effect for status, probation violation, contempt, misdemeanor property, felony property, felony person, drugs, and other offenses with detention, was conditioned by whether the youth was Black.)

Thursday, December 17 2015:

  • Parental Incarceration, Termination of Parental Rights and Adoption: A Case Study of the Intersection Between the Child Welfare and Criminal Justice Systems, [PDF] Justice Policy Journal. 2010. "We found that less than a fifth of all parents, and only two percent with a history of incarceration, attended the dependency court hearings in which their children were detained, reunification requirements imposed, or parental rights terminated."
  • 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."
  • A Profile of Youth in the Los Angeles County Delinquency Prevention Project [PDF] National Council on Crime and Delinquency. December, 2015. (This report outlines how the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services used an actuarial screening assessment to classify youth in the child welfare system by their likelihood of subsequent juvenile justice involvement.)

Wednesday, December 16 2015:

Tuesday, December 15 2015:

  • Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings PLoS ONE. July, 2015. "We find significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incented by similar events in the immediate past. On average, this temporary increase in probability lasts 13 days."
  • In Our Own Backyard: Confronting Growth and Disparities in American Jails, Vera Institute of Justice. December, 2015. "Rather, mid-sized and small counties--which account for the vast majority of jails--have largely driven growth, with local jail populations increasing since 1970 by 4.1 times in mid-sized counties and 6.9 times in small counties."

Monday, December 14 2015:

  • Results from the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: Summary of National Findings, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. September, 2014. "In 2013, an estimated 24.6 million Americans aged 12 or older---9.4 percent of the population---had used an illicit drug in the past month."
  • Overwhelming, Broad, and Extensive Support Across Party, Ideology and Demographics for Criminal Justice Reform in New Louisiana Survey Findings, [PDF] Justice Action Network. November, 2015. "82.6% of Louisiana likely voters support justice reform, including 26.8% who believe the system needs a complete overhaul and 29% who think it needs major reform."
  • Declines in Youth Commitments and Facilities in the 21st Century [PDF] Sentencing Project. December, 2015. "Between 2001 and 2013, the number of juveniles committed to juvenile facilities after an adjudication of delinquency (or, as was the case for 413 juveniles, conviction in criminal court) fell from 76,262 to 35,659."

Friday, December 11 2015:

  • Trends in Unwanted Online Experiences and Sexting: Final Report, [PDF] Crimes Against Children Research Center. February, 2014. "Unwanted sexual solicitations continued in decline -- from 19% in 2000 to 13% in 2005 and 9% in 2010."
  • Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth, [PDF] Crimes Against Children Research Center. June, 2000. "Approximately one in five received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet in the last year."
  • Breaking the Silence: Civil and Human Rights Violations Resulting from Medical Neglect and Abuse of Women of Color in Los Angeles County Jails, [PDF] Dignity and Power Now. August, 2015. "This Report by Dignity and Power Now ("DPN") documents how jail and prison officials violated the rights of seven women of color, and highlights the mental health consequences of the medical neglect and abuse these women suffered."
  • Locked Out: Improving Educational and Vocational Outcomes for Incarcerated Youth, [PDF] Council of State Governments Justice Center. November, 2015. "At least one in three incarcerated youth is identified as needing or already receiving special education services--a rate nearly four times higher than youth attending school in the community."

Wednesday, December 9 2015:

  • Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2015, Prison Policy Initiative. December, 2015. (The U.S. locks up more than 2.3 million people in prisons, jails, and other facilities on any given day.)
  • Census of Jails: Population Changes, 1999-2013, Bureau of Justice Statistics. December, 2015. "From 1999 to 2013, the number of inmates in local jails increased by 21%, from 605,943 to 731,570. During this period, the growth in the jail population was not steady, as the jail confined population peaked in 2008 at 785,533 then declined."
  • Probation in California Public Policy Institute of California. December, 2015. "Probation is the most widely used form of correctional supervision in California."

Friday, December 4 2015:

  • How Judicial Elections Impact Criminal Cases Brennan Center for Justice. December, 2015. "The more frequently television ads air during an election, the less likely state supreme court justices are, on average, to rule in favor of criminal defendants."
  • Investigating Prisoner Reentry: The Impact of Conviction Status on the Employment Prospects of Young Men, [PDF] National Institute of Justice. October, 2009. "Across teams, a criminal record reduced the likelihood of a callback or job offer by nearly 50 percent (28% vs 15%)."
  • 'Redemption' in an Era of Widespread Criminal Background Checks [PDF] National Institute of Justice. June, 2009. "Thus, our analysis showed that the younger an offender was when he committed robbery, the longer he had to stay clean to reach the same arrest rate as people his same age in the general population."

Thursday, December 3 2015:

  • Zero Tolerance: How States Comply With PREA's Youthful Inmate Standard, Campaign for Youth Justice. December, 2015. "Despite evidence based research highlighting the harms of placing youth in adult facilities and the long term costs of incarceration to youth and society, 1200 youth are in state prisons on any given day across the country."

Wednesday, December 2 2015:

  • 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."

Tuesday, December 1 2015:

  • Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis, [PDF] Brennan Center for Justice. November, 2015. "Crime overall in 2015 is expected to be largely unchanged from last year, decreasing 1.5 percent."

Wednesday, November 25 2015:

  • Prison Price Tag: The High Cost of Wisconsin's Corrections Policies, Wisconsin Budget Project. November, 2015. "Wisconsin state and local governments spend about $1.5 billion on corrections each year, significantly more than the national average given the size of our state."
  • From Silo to System: What Makes a Criminal Justice System Operate Like a System?, [PDF] The Justice Management Institute. April, 2015. "JMI conducted in-depth interviews with and collected quantitative and qualitative data from eight county-based criminal justice systems that have been cited over the years as being "highly effective.""
  • Justice in Katrina's Wake: Changing Course on Incarceration in New Orleans, Vera Institute of Justice. November, 2015. "This report documents the groundbreaking reforms that the City of New Orleans has engaged in to safely decrease its use of detention, from reducing the physical size of its jail to implementing risk-based pretrial release practices."

Thursday, November 19 2015:

  • Predicting Crime through Incarceration: The Impact of Rates of Prison Cycling On Rates of Crime in Communities, [PDF] National Institute of Justice. May, 2014. (The study found strong support for the impact of prison cycling on neighborhood crime rates, i.e., when resident removal rates due to incarceration were high, crime rates decreased; when reentry rates were high in a neighborhood, the crime rate increased.)
  • Suspended Childhood: An Analysis of Exclusionary Discipline of Texas' Pre-K and Elementary School Students, Texas Appleseed. November, 2015. "In the 2013-2014 school year, Texas schools issued 88,310 out-of-school suspensions to young children."
  • Hot Spots Policing George Mason University Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. 2015. "Hot spots policing covers a range of police responses that all share in common a focus of resources on the locations where crime is highly concentrated."
  • Evaluation of the Shreveport Predictive Policing Experiment RAND Corporation. 2014. "The program did not generate a statistically significant reduction in property crime."
  • Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations, [PDF] RAND Corporation. 2013. "Predictive policing is the application of analytical techniques--particularly quantitative techniques--to identify likely targets for police intervention and prevent crime or solve past crimes by making statistical predictions."
  • Prison Time