Fighting Jail Expansion Webinar

January 10, 2023

Across the country, communities are fighting against efforts to expand the carceral system and build new jails. In this webinar we brought together activists who have pushed back against jail expansion to discuss strategies they employed to prevent new jails from being built and give an overview of the tools and support that Prison Policy Initiative can provide to support these efforts.

The Real News Network has also created a transcript of the webinar, available here. The transcript may contain errors.

Webinar Resources

The resources below were curated and shared by the Prison Policy Initiative and our webinar panelists from Building Justice in Berks, Families for Justice as Healing, and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. We hope they will be useful in your follow-up work fighting jail expansion projects in your communities.

• Arguments against jail expansion (Prison Policy Initiative)
• A how-to guide: Critically reviewing a jail assessment calling for a bigger jail (Prison Policy Initiative)
• Does our county really need a bigger jail? A guide for avoiding unnecessary jail expansion (Prison Policy Initiative)
• Smoke and Mirrors: A cautionary tale for counties considering a big, costly new jail (Prison Policy Initiative)
• A guide to public records requests for advocates seeking reform of the criminal legal system (Prison Policy Initiative)
• Winnable criminal justice reforms in 2023 (excerpt): Establish moratoriums on jail and prison construction (Prison Policy Initiative)
• Incarceration Trends: a data tool from the Vera Institute of Justice
• Empty MCI-Framingham, close it forever; and never build another prison in Massachusetts, by Andrea James (Boston Globe)
• Inside the battle over a new women’s prison for Massachusetts, by Dan Atkinson (Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism)
• Follow up: Mass is still ignoring public input and trying to build a new women’s prison, by Dan Atkinson (DigBoston)
• Massachusetts organizers call for no new women’s prisons and an end to their construction, by Tamar Sarai (Prism)
• Stop Building Prisons (podcast) with Sashi James, Maggie Luna, and Avalon Betts-Gaston (Failed Architecture) (featuring members of the National Council)
• See also: The Free Her Institute and No New Women’s Prison webpages from Families for Justice as Healing and the National Council
• A Co-Governance Success Story (Berks County)
• Building Justice in Berks says jail decision premature without additional analysis
• Criminal justice group calls for limiting pretrial detention on eve of final film in series (Berks County)
• CGL response to community questions about jail assessment (Berks County)
• Berks needs new jail with nearly 1K beds, assessment says (This article includes Building Justice in Berks’ critique of the assessment), by David Kostival and Jaccii Farris (Berks Regional News)