By Danielle Kaeble, BJS Statistician

This report presents national data on adult offenders under community supervision on probation or parole in 2019. It includes characteristics of the population, such as sex, race or Hispanic origin, and most serious offense. The report details how offenders move onto and off community supervision, such as completing their term of supervision, being incarcerated, absconding, or other unsatisfactory outcomes while in the community. Findings are based on data from BJS’s 2019 Annual Probation Survey, Annual Parole Survey, and Federal Justice Statistics Program.

By Danielle Kaeble, BJS Statistician

This report is the 29th in a series that began in 1981. It includes characteristics of the population such as sex, race or ethnicity, and most serious offense of adult U.S. residents under correctional supervision in the community. The report details how people move onto and off community supervision, such as completing their term of supervision, being incarcerated, absconding, or other unsatisfactory outcomes while in the community. Findings are based on data from BJS’s 2020 Annual Probation Survey, Annual Parole Survey, and Federal Justice Statistics Program.

By Danielle Kaeble, BJS Statistician

This report is the 30th in a series that began in 1981. It includes characteristics of the population such as sex, race or ethnicity, and most serious offense of adult U.S. residents under correctional supervision in the community. The report details how people move onto and off community supervision, such as completing their term of supervision, being incarcerated, absconding, or other unsatisfactory outcomes while in the community.

The keynote speech argues that accurate and uniform data on probation and parole must be used to support and argue correctional policy that advocates the rational use of correctional resources, notably to reduce the use of incarceration and increase the use of community supervision. The keynote panel, conforming to the theme of national criminal justice data, discusses how national data should be used, developing effective user services for criminal justice statistical analysis, and eliciting support for data collection and analysis in an era of budget-cutting. In the workshop reports on State responses to prison overcrowding, an overview is given of the problem, and examples of State responses to the problem are presented for Minnesota and California. The panel presentations on setting priorities for national reporting provide the systems and operation view, a judicial and sentencing view, and a legislative and legal view. Staff, speakers, and participant lists are included.

Intended for parole officials, legislators, and researchers in criminal justice, the report profiles the persons paroled in 1977 in terms of commitment offenses, prior prison commitments, type of sentence, type of admission to prison, amount of time served in prison on current conviction, parole status, and recommitments, as well as demographic variables such as sex, age, racial/ethnic origin, and education. Using these variables, the report describes parolees by four broad sets of characteristics: prison commitment, demographic background, parole entry, and parole status. A discussion of longer term tends in 1973-1977 uniform parole reports data concludes the report. Data sources and tables are presented in the appendixes

By The World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe

There are currently a variety of models of prison health accountability across the WHO European Region. The WHO Regional Office for Europe recommends that leadership should come from health ministries if health equity between prisons and the outside community is to be achieved. Most importantly, a whole of-government approach is required to improve the quality of health services in prisons. This policy brief describes the governance and organizational models for prison health adopted by three European countries– Finland, Portugal and England. Each of these has a different arrangement in place, either under the Ministry of Health or under the Ministry of Justice working in partnership with the Ministry of Health. Those that have undergone a change in governance model have done so at different moments and adopted a different approach to implementing the change. Each of the three countries is considered separately, then similarities and differences between them are highlighted. Finally, recommendations are given for countries considering making a transition in the governance model that will improve the health services provided and the health status of people in prison.

Copenhagen, Denmark: World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe, 2020. 44p.

By Rita Komalasaria, Sarah Wilson and Sally Haw

Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT) programmes are regarded as a gold standard treatment for people living with Opioid Use Disorders (OUDs). However, OAT programmes are often unavailable or poorly implemented in prisons, in spite of the large numbers of people living with OUDs and the high risk of HIV transmission in prison settings. Unusually, this systematic review synthesizes qualitative evidence relating to barriers to, and facilitators of, the implementation of OAT programmes in prisons in high- and low/middle-income countries (LMICs) to provide more nuanced, contextualised understandings of how prison stakeholders perceive and/or experience OAT programmes within different prison settings.

International Journal of Drug Policy, January 2021.