By Lucy Strang, Elle Wadsworth

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice in 2022 to conduct a study exploring the lived experiences of two interventions in prisons in England and Wales: drug testing regimens and incentivised substance free living (ISFL) wings. Mandatory drug testing is routinely conducted in prisons to monitor drug trends, deter drug consumption (through sanctions), and identify individuals in need of further support. ISFLs are dedicated wings for prisoners who want to live in a drug-free environment, whether that be free from the consumption of drugs, the violence related to drugs, or the culture of drug use. Drug testing regimens and ISFLs feed into the delivery of His Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service’s (HMPPS) drug policy for prisons, which is guided by three key aims: restrict supply, reduce demand and build recovery. This study aimed to understand how drug testing regimens are delivered, experienced, and perceived. Findings will shape the ISFL model by understanding the lived experience of staff and prisoners both on existing ISFL wings and elsewhere in the prison. Findings from this report will also be used to inform the design of a randomised controlled trial and process evaluation on ISFLs and a larger qualitative piece of work on implementation of drug testing.

By Taleed El-Sabawi, Shelly Weizman, Regina LaBelle

Civil litigation provides a novel and underutilized source of information about deaths in U.S. jails, particularly when official data are incomplete. This study systematically analyzes verdicts, settlements and judgments to explore patterns in practices linked to preventable mortality in U.S jails. Results: Content analysis of facts alleged in 90 cases filed between 2015 and 2020 revealed thematic patterns related to inadequate or delayed medical care. Alleged facts routinely included observable signs of serious medical need—such as incoherence, convulsions, or pleas for help—followed by failures to provide timely or medically appropriate care. In cases of suicide, allegations commonly describe known mental health conditions, discontinued medication, and lapses in monitoring or suicide prevention protocols. Despite repeated warnings—by the individuals themselves, fellow incarcerated persons, or family members—jail staff frequently failed to act. A small subset of cases resulted in judgments for the defense, often where some care was provided or protocols were followed, even if outcomes were still fatal. Conclusion: These findings suggest that in cases resulting in reported settlements, verdicts or judgments incustody deaths in the U.S. could be prevented through improved intake screening, timely medical monitoring, care coordination, and adherence to established protocols. Litigation records offer important insight into how systemic failures contribute to jail mortality, with implications for policy, public health, and correctional practice.

By Ram Subramanian, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Josephine Wonsun Hahn, Jinmook Kang, Ava Kaufman, and Brianna Seid

Most Americans don’t know what it’s like inside the United States’ 1,664 state and federal prisons. Yet even those who believe the primary purpose of incarceration is to deter crime or to inflict punishment expect that people returning home from prison should be ready to be productive, law-abiding members of their communities. Indeed, a 2025 Brennan Center poll found that more than 80 percent of likely voters think that formerly incarcerated people deserve a second chance and can be prepared to reenter society through rehabilitative, educational, or vocational programs.

Some correctional leaders are recognizing this and implementing innovative programs to set incarcerated people up for success. These reforms improve conditions for the people who live and work in prisons and, if adopted more widely, could also improve public safety.

But most prisons rarely offer such opportunities. Life behind bars is marked by social and physical isolation and punctuated by violence and brutality. People who have regular contact with U.S. prisons — law enforcement officers, correctional staff, lawyers, academics, nonprofit leaders, volunteers, and of course those who have been incarcerated and their loved ones — have referred to them as “warehouses that degrade and brutalize” and places where people have been “thrown away.” Judges have described the conditions in some U.S. prisons as objectively inhumane, with one saying such conditions have “no place in civilized society.” As of February 2026, the Department of Justice had 43 open investigations into jails, prisons, or entire state correctional systems for constitutional violations relating to physical and sexual violence, sanitation problems, staffing deficiencies, inadequate medical and psychiatric care, overuse of solitary confinement, and crowding.6 And as the Correctional Leaders Association has noted, the people who work in these systems suffer themselves.

By: Rob Allen, Independent Researcher, and former Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, King’s College, London

Abstract

The Gauke review was primarily commissioned in response to a crisis in prison capacity. Despite a series of emergency measures to reduce demand for prison places and a planned increase in the supply of those places, the incoming Labour government recognised that future sustainability required a recalibration if not of sentencing, then at least of the way sentences are implemented.

This paper considers the extent to which the review’s core recommendations and the measures proposed in the government’s response are likely to bring about long-term sustainability and efficiency.

It will examine

• the credibility of the impacts on prison numbers made for the four of Gauke’s five

  core recommendations accepted by the government; the reduction of short sentences, extended scope of suspended sentences, earned release provisions and a new model for recall and

• the extent to which the current supply of prison places can be maintained and expanded to the required level.

  It concludes with suggestions about further steps which could be taken to limit the growth of prison numbers and enable investment in more constructive ways of preventing and responding to crime.

  Keywords: Gauke, prison, sentencing; early release, probation.

  Introduction

  In its 2024 election manifesto, under a section entitled A justice system that puts victims first, the Labour Party promised to ‘carry out a review of sentencing to ensure it is brought up to date’ (Labour Party, 2024). But the real driver of the Gauke review was not a desire

for modernisation but the need to address the urgent lack of custodial capacity to meet current and projected demand, something described by incoming Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood as ‘a prison system in crisis, moments from catastrophic disaster’ (Mahmood, 2024a).

When introducing emergency early release measures to avert that disaster, Mahmood confirmed a commitment to longer-term reform and cutting reoffending, and that a forthcoming review would make sure ‘our sentencing is consistent and coherent, and that our sentences do actually work’ (Ibid).

It was only when the Independent Sentencing Review (ISR) was announced in October 2024 that its primary purpose was revealed – ‘ensuring we never run out of prison places again’ (Mahmood, 2024b). Injecting a rare dose of realism into penal policy, the Justice Secretary told MPs that despite the creation of 14,000 new prison places, ‘we cannot build our way out of this crisis. However fast we build, increasing demand will outstrip supply’.

The total adult prison population - 87,294 on 6 October 2025 - is projected to increase steadily to reach between 97,300 and 112,300 prisoners by November 2032, with a central estimate of 104,100 (MoJ, 2024b). The prison expansion programme aims to produce a usable capacity of about 99,000 by 2032 (MoJ, 2024a). To meet the clear objective of balancing supply of and demand for prison places, the ISR was advised that ‘that aiming to reduce demand by 9,500 prison places would help ensure there were sufficient places for the most serious offenders’ (ISR, 2025a).

The final report of the Gauke review, published in May 2025, proposed five core recommendations designed to reduce prison numbers to meet that requirement (ISR, 2025b). Gauke estimated that the combined effect of these would be to reduce the prison population by 9,800. His report also contained a number of other proposals that might lead to reductions in prison numbers but unlike the core recommendations the effects were not specified. Even for the core recommendations, the review provided no details about how the estimated effects had been calculated and failed to indicate over what timescale the reductions would take effect. This is important given the short period in which the demand for prison places is projected to exceed demand, perhaps as early as 2026 (PAC, 2025).

Four of Gauke’s five core recommendations have in large part been accepted by the Government and are contained in a Sentencing Bill published in July 2025 and whose Second Reading was held on 16 September 2025. The Bill’s Impact Assessment (IA) provides lower estimates for the deflationary effects of the Gauke proposals on prison numbers than did the ISR. This reflects the outright rejection of one recommendation - an ‘earned progression’ model for those serving Extended Determinate Sentences (EDS) - and modifications to others. The best estimate for prison place impacts of the Bill’s measures is 7,500 although this figure includes the impact of measures designed to reduce the use of custodial remand which did not emerge directly from the ISR (MoJ, 2025a).

Before assessing these, it is worth noting that the ISR did not consider all of the ways in which pressures on the prison population might be reduced.

First, although the ISR was intended to be a comprehensive re-evaluation of the sentencing framework, arrangements for young people under 18, wholesale reform of sentences for murder and the management of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) were excluded from its scope.

Of these perhaps the most significant in terms of impact on the prison population, albeit indirectly, is the murder sentencing framework. In his preliminary report on sentencing trends, the Gauke review identified the principal cause of the increasing prison population ‘is that prison sentences have been lengthened substantially by successive governments’ (ISR, 2025b). In particular, it concluded that the introduction of statutory starting points for minimum terms for offenders convicted of murder ‘had an impact on wider sentencing and the prison population more broadly, subsequently inflating sentence lengths for other serious offences’ (ibid). Gauke’s terms of references did permit him to consider the impact of sentencing for murder on the wider sentencing framework, but other than recommending that the Law Commission should look at the minimum sentence tariffs for murder, the final report did not propose ways of limiting the effects of increasing sentence lengths for murder on other offences in order to put a brake on sentence inflation.

Indeed, more generally, Gauke’s final report and proposals shied away from addressing head on the reduction of the length of sentences imposed by the courts for example by reducing maximum penalties, or recalibrating sentencing guidelines. Nor did the review make recommendations to remove the minimum sentences for certain offences or the requirements on courts to treat previous convictions as aggravating factors, both of which have contributed to making sentences more severe. Gauke suggests that maximum and minimum penalties should be looked at, but his review itself does little to address the rampant sentence inflation which the first part of his review identified as the main cause of the capacity crisis.

Instead, the review concentrates on how prison sentences are implemented, proposing much greater use of suspension of prison terms so that they are served in the community; a structure for most prison sentences which involves shorter periods in custody; and limitations to the use of imprisonment as a response to failures to comply with post release supervision. While these may prove useful ways of reducing the numbers in prison in the short to medium term, they do not necessarily provide the basis for a proportionate, transparent, and sustainable sentencing framework suitable for a modern liberal democratic state.

This article starts by discussing each of the Gauke proposals which are designed to reduce prison numbers before addressing the overall impact they are likely to have on demand for prison. It continues with an assessment of the supply side of the equation- how more prison places are being created - before concluding with some observations about what further action might be needed to restrain the use of prison in an unpromising political climate.

When a new government was elected in July 2024, they were confronted by a prison capacity crisis in England and Wales. In order to identify long term solutions to this, they established the Independent Sentencing Review (ISR), to be chaired by David Gauke, which was tasked in its terms of reference with ’a comprehensive re-evaluation of our sentencing framework ... to ensure we are never again in a position where the country has more prisoners than prison places‘ (Ministry of Justice, 2024a).

Before that was even launched, however, the Secretary of State for Justice had started discussing the idea of earned release, whereby people in prison could secure earlier release

by participating in education, training or other positive activity. This idea quickly became arguably the most prominent element of the government’s plans for prison reform and central to the ISR.

This article will track the evolution of this policy idea, show how the current plans to implement it constitute a missed opportunity, and look at what would be needed to implement a proper policy of earned release based on participation in education and training.

By  Becky Clarke and Zara Manoehoetoe

The numbers of women in prison in England and Wales has risen once again (Prison Reform Trust, 2023), just as women’s imprisonment globally rises exponentially (Fair and Walmsley, 2022). Can existing ‘community-based alternatives’ shift the stubborn use of prison for girls and women? More importantly, how do such approaches engage with the concept of ‘justice’ for women? This article opens by reflecting on the recent past. What lessons must we learn from the failure of ‘gender-responsive’ policies of the last two decades? (Berman and Fox, 2010). Getting things wrong, trying again, taking risks, and experimenting; these are all principles embedded into the imagining and building abolitionist responses (Kaba, 2021). In the main sections of this article, the authors reflect together on recent attempts to convene spaces to centre women’s experiences of policing, punishment and (in)justice. In coming together in community, we are reminded of the radical roots of resistance to the criminalisation and punishment of girls and women. These collective moments offer opportunities to build new alliances and energy. The BJCJ journal was established with the aim ‘to encourage debate about the contested meanings of the concept of ‘community justice’ (Williams, 2002; p1). Our article reflects on collective spaces exploring (in)justice, in recognition that statutory responses too often fail girls and women, with institutional interventions often adding to the harm experienced by girls and women (Clarke and Chadwick, 2023; Clarke and Leah, 2023). The collective offers an opportunity to move beyond a critique of current approaches (HillCollins, 1998) to explore how grassroots spaces, shaped by abolitionist principles, can contribute to transformative justice for girls and women.

Author(s): Dante BC Hoek, Ard J Barends, Esther FJC van Ginneken
Focus: This explorative qualitative research on prison violence investigates how, and why, potentially violent situations between incarcerated men occur. Through in-depth interviews with imprisoned and formerly imprisoned men, the research explores the situational circumstances of prison violence.
Conclusion: The article identifies three distinct categories of situations where violence can occur: when incarcerated individuals perceive threats to their (1) status, (2) safety and (3) shared interests (or goals). The findings show how these particular threats impact participants’ interactions and interpretations of situations and subsequent potentially violent behaviour. 

By I-An Su, John H. Blume and Stephen J Ceci

More than three decades ago, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that individuals who are not competent (alternatively referred to by the Court as insane) at the time of their scheduled execution cannot be put to death. Despite the years that have passed since the Court's decision and the literal life-or-death stakes involved, competency for execution (CFE) remains underexplored in the psychological, psychiatric, and legal literature. A number of important legal and ethical issues that arise when a person on death row maintains they are not competent to be executed are still unresolved even after the landmark Supreme Court cases such as Ford v. Wainwright (1986), Panetti v. Quarterman (2007), and Madison v. Alabama (2019). In this first-of-its-kind descriptive study, we analyzed the demographic and case characteristics of the 28 successful Ford claimantsindividuals in the United States who have been found to be incompetent to be executed and compared them to the general death row population and homicide cases nationwide. Our findings reveal some similarities but also some differences between these claimants and the general death row population and homicide cases: the successful Ford claimants are exclusively male (in keeping with the general prison population on death row), relatively older, and underrepresented among White and Latinx inmates (i.e., Black claimants are more successful than their White and Latinx counterparts at evading execution). Nearly all (96%) suffer from schizophrenia, with 79% experiencing psychiatric comorbidity, yet only 54% received any significant treatment before or after the criminal offense. The claimants' cases also involve a higher proportion of child victims, male family members, and female non-family member victims, as well as more multiple-victim cases (not indiscriminate) and fewer intraracial homicides. Fewer victims are male, and more are female. However, the cases do not align with typical male-on-male violent crimes or femicide patterns, such as those involving sexual or domestic violence. Additionally, systematic psycho-legal deficiencies are prevalent, including a low rate of mental health evidence (61%) presented at trials and some cases lacking psychiatric involvement in CFE evaluations. Temporal influence and drastic state variations on CFE evaluation are also noted. Although the small sample size limits generalizability, this small-scale descriptive study offers a number of important insights into the complexities of CFE decisions and lays the groundwork for future research and policy development.

By Stephanie Fahy, PhD, Abt Global, LLC Jennifer Bronson, PhD, formerly of Abt Global, LLC Charlotte Lopez-Jauffret, PhD, formerly of Abt Global, LLC Brenda Rodriguez, Abt Global, LLC Allison Ackermann

This third-party report by Abt Global presents findings on the redesign and pretest project for BJS’s Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (SILJ). The report presents Abt Global and BJS’s review of, and recommended revisions to, the existing SILJ instrument.

The SILJ is the only nationally representative survey that collects self-reported, individual-level information on hard-to-reach jail populations, making it a vital resource for policymakers, facilities, government agencies, and researchers. Since the survey was last administered in 2002, the characteristics of jail populations have changed, and new policies and policing reforms have been enacted. Abt Global and BJS entered into a cooperative agreement in 2015 to address gaps in the 2002 version of the instrument with the goal of producing reliable national estimates of local jail populations through the redesigned survey instrument.

Abt Global, 2025. 20p.

By M. D. Vattel. Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

A foundational work of international law, still resonant today.

First published in the eighteenth century and issued in authoritative English editions throughout the nineteenth, The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel shaped how statesmen, jurists, and diplomats understood the rights and duties of sovereign powers. In this monumental treatise, Vattel applies the principles of natural law to the real conduct of nations, addressing war and peace, treaties and alliances, commerce and neutrality, diplomacy, and the limits of lawful power.

Rejecting both utopian idealism and brute realpolitik, Vattel argues that true national interest is inseparable from justice, restraint, and respect for sovereignty. Nations, like individuals, are bound by moral obligations arising from their coexistence in a shared international society. His careful analysis of war, intervention, and treaty obligations established enduring standards that influenced constitutional debates, foreign policy doctrine, and the development of modern international law.

This edition preserves a work that continues to illuminate contemporary conflicts and global challenges. Clear-eyed, systematic, and profoundly influential, The Law of Nations remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how lawful order, moral principle, and power intersect in the affairs of nations.

The theses advanced in The Law of Nations remain strikingly relevant to contemporary international disputes, particularly those involving intervention, recognition of governments, and claims of humanitarian necessity. Vattel’s insistence on sovereignty as the cornerstone of international order places clear limits on the legitimacy of external interference in the internal affairs of states. While he allows that extreme cases—such as manifest tyranny threatening the very existence of a people—may raise difficult moral questions, he consistently warns that powerful states are prone to disguise ambition and interest under the language of justice.

This caution is especially pertinent when considering recent controversies surrounding efforts by the United States to promote regime change in Venezuela, including diplomatic, economic, and political measures aimed at displacing the government of Nicolás Maduro. From a Vattelian perspective, such actions raise fundamental questions about lawful authority, the limits of collective judgment, and the distinction between moral condemnation and legal right. Vattel argues that no nation may unilaterally assume the role of judge over another sovereign without undermining the mutual independence on which international society depends. To do so, he suggests, risks converting international law into a mere instrument of power.

At the same time, Vattel’s framework does not deny the reality of gross misrule or humanitarian suffering. Rather, it demands rigorous scrutiny of motives and means. Economic coercion, diplomatic isolation, and recognition of alternative authorities would, in his analysis, need to be justified not by ideological preference or strategic advantage, but by clear evidence that such measures genuinely serve the common good of nations and do not erode the general security of the international system. His emphasis on proportionality, necessity, and respect for established sovereignty stands in tension with modern practices of intervention that rely on contested doctrines of legitimacy.

Viewed through this lens, contemporary debates over Venezuela illustrate the enduring force of Vattel’s central warning: that the stability of international relations depends less on the moral claims of individual powers than on shared restraint. His work reminds modern readers that the erosion of sovereignty in one case—however rhetorically justified—sets precedents that may ultimately weaken the legal protections upon which all nations, strong and weak alike, rely.

P.H. Nicklitn etc. Philadelphia. 1829. Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026 p.424.

By Clifton P. Flynn

Corporal punishment enjoys strong normative support in American society, even in the face of growing evidence suggesting that it may be potentially harmful. This arti- cle examines Americans' attitudes toward the physical punishment of children. Support for spanking varies along such social categories as race, education, religion, and region. The article concludes by discussing the implications of corporal punishment attitudes for scholars, professionals, and families.

University of South Carolina at Spartanburg, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 47-55, 1996, 9p.

By Sheldon Glueck (Author), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

Sheldon Glueck’s Probation and Criminal Justice (1931), a collection of papers from world wide experts, stands as one of the earliest systematic examinations of probation within the American penal system. Published at a time when probation was still consolidating its place as a regularized judicial practice, the book sought both to describe the institution as it existed and to evaluate its possibilities as a rational and humane alternative to imprisonment. Glueck, already well known as a criminologist and later famed for his longitudinal studies on criminal careers, approached probation with the same empirical rigor and critical balance that defined his scholarship.
The work provides a historical account of probation’s origins, tracing its roots to the nineteenth-century innovations of John Augustus in Boston, and situates its emergence within the broader reform movements of the Progressive Era. By the early 1930s, probation had spread widely across American jurisdictions, yet it lacked the uniformity, resources, and professional standards necessary for consistent success. Glueck’s central argument was therefore twofold: probation held genuine promise as an instrument of rehabilitation and social reintegration, but its potential could only be realized through careful administration, adequately trained personnel, and an honest reckoning with its limitations.
To read Probation and Criminal Justice today is to encounter both a historical document and a surprisingly contemporary critique. The themes Glueck emphasized—the professionalization of probation officers, the dangers of excessive caseloads, the necessity of balancing rehabilitation with accountability—are still at the heart of debates over community supervision. The persistence of these concerns is a testament both to the enduring complexity of probation as a penal tool and to the prescience of Glueck’s analysis.
In this sense, the book is more than a relic of early twentieth-century criminology. It is a reminder that penal reform, however well intentioned, remains fragile unless supported by adequate resources, clear objectives, and sustained public commitment. Probation has advanced since Glueck’s time in terms of reach, sophistication, and legitimacy, yet the paradoxes he identified continue to shape its practice.
For scholars, practitioners, and students of criminal justice, this volume offers not only a window into the early years of probation but also a mirror reflecting ongoing challenges in community-based corrections. Glueck’s careful and critical study thus retains its relevance: a classic text that still speaks to the unfinished project of building a fair, effective, and humane system of criminal justice.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 211 p.

by Marina Duane, Jennifer Yahner, Erica Henderson, Malore Dusenbery, and Natalie Gilbert

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a community with high rates of opioid addiction, a jail in one county in rural Massachusetts showed that treating addiction for people cycling in and out of incarceration can be done better (Partners for a Healthier Community Inc. 2015). In 2020, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) capitalized on its previously built infrastructure and system partners to offer all three federally approved medications for opioid use disorders (MOUDs) and provide therapeutic counseling remotely to incarcerated people as a critical component of treatment. While the majority of jails in the United States do not offer MOUDs as an option to start or continue treatment during incarceration, the FCSO was able to continue offering all three medications (buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone) during the pandemic and to meet diverse clinical needs of people coming into their jail. The FCSO also continued offering individual and group counseling via telehealth throughout the pandemic and shifted to a mix of telehealth and in-person services in 2022. understand what facilitated or hindered its successful application and how clients (that is, incarcerated people) and the professionals supporting them perceived the effects. Our findings fill a critical gap in knowledge about whether counseling can be effectively delivered via telehealth in correctional settings. We hope this brief provides useful knowledge to other jails across the country on how to shift to a treatment philosophy. In addition, we hope it gives other localities some ideas on how to create an infrastructure that is conducive to treating opioid use disorders (OUDs) with the dignity and prowess required to address the complexities of the unaddressed mental health needs that often accompany addiction. The results of this study are promising, as illustrated in the following highlights:  Over a decade ago, FCSO leadership set a vision and a strategy to become a nationally recognized facility that prioritizes high-quality behavioral health treatment rather than simply “warehousing” people. Such transformation took time, but our findings suggest that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, most FCSO staff recognized their important role in curbing high rates of opioid addiction in Franklin County. Staff made significant strides in expanding behavioral health treatment and therapeutic counseling as its critical component.  By 2020, the FCSO was offering all three modalities of federally approved medications to treat opioid use disorders as continuation and induction options. While most jails in the United States still do not offer any MOUD treatment, FCSO provides a range of options to meet the complex needs of people with OUD diagnoses wherever they are in the recovery stage.  Our evaluation demonstrates ways in which the FCSO was able to provide high-quality one-onone counseling remotely at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, out of 31 surveyed clients, 90 percent reported a strong bond with their counselor, also known as therapeutic alliance, and 84 percent rated the quality of telehealth counseling as “good” or “excellent.” Furthermore, 87 percent of respondents said that counseling via telehealth helped them more effectively deal with problems in their lives, including addiction.  Although some FCSO behavioral health staff we interviewed reported it was challenging to do trauma work in jail with people struggling with addiction and who often get released quickly, overall, staff praised the FCSO’s decision to offer high-quality counseling and maximize clients’ time in therapy to address important mental health needs.

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute 2023. 17p.

By Jared Trujillo

The relationship between incarceration and poverty is circular, cyclical, and symbiotic – poverty is a cause of incarceration, and incarceration causes poverty. In the 1970’s and 1990’s, New York led the country in enacting draconian sentencing laws that required judges to sentence children and adults to longer periods of incarceration, while also reducing the ability of incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentences for participation in rehabilitative, vocational, and educational programming. For the past half century, these harsh sentencing laws have been the primary driver of mass incarceration in New York. As a result, generations of families with criminal legal system involvement have been damned to multigenerational poverty. This is most profound in low-income communities, particularly low-income Black and brown communities.

Incarceration often deprives children, partners, and other family members of a breadwinner. Even when breadwinners are released from incarceration, incomes for former imprisoned people are between ten and twenty percent lower than those who were never imprisoned. Even incomes for those formerly incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities are lower than the incomes of those who were not. Further, the children of incarcerated parents suffer from psychological, emotional, and educational trauma. These children are six times more likely to be incarcerated in their lives than their peers who do not have incarcerated parents. Romantic partners and co-parents of incarcerated people often struggle with anxiety, stress, and financial precarity. Mass incarceration in New York continues to be a policy choice, and sentencing reform is an important tool to fight individual and multigenerational poverty.

This article ultimately presents five legislative proposals that would reduce mass incarceration in New York. Repealing the juvenile offender statute will prevent children as young as 13 years old from being given life sentences; the Youth Justice and Opportunities Act would expand, strengthen, and establish alternative sentencing structures for people under 26 years old that would limit the length of incarceration while also sparing young people from the scarlet mark of a permanent criminal conviction; the Eliminate Mandatory Minimums Act would unchain judges from the rigidity and cruelty of New York’s current sentencing paradigm, while requiring them to consider noncustodial sentences and alternatives to incarceration; the Second Look Act would enable those who are already sentenced to long periods of incarceration to apply for a reduced sentence; and the Earned Time Act would enable incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentence for participating in educational, rehabilitative, or vocational programming.

26 CUNY L. Rev. 225 (2023). 42p.