By Mark A. Motivans

This report provides national statistics on the federal response to crime for fiscal year 2023 and some statistics on changes over time. It describes case processing in the federal criminal justice system, including investigations by U.S. attorneys, prosecutions and declinations, convictions and acquittals, sentencing, probation and supervised release, and imprisonment. It also includes a new section detailing the federal criminal justice system’s response to immigration violations. This is the 37th report in an annual series based on data from BJS’s Federal Justice Statistics Program, which began in 1979. 

Highlights

During fiscal year (FY) 2023, 94,411 suspects were arrested by federal law enforcement and booked by the U.S. Marshals Service, a 3% decrease from 96,857 in FY 2022. 

Of the 25,110 Drug Enforcement Administration arrests in FY 2023, the most common type of drug involved was methamphetamine (7,381 arrests), followed by other opioids (6,688 arrests), which includes fentanyl. 

The median number of days from the receipt of an investigation to the decision by a U.S. attorney to prosecute or decline a matter was 61 days in FY 2023, similar to FY 2022. 

U.S. attorneys prosecuted 61% of suspects in matters concluded in FY 2023. The percentage of suspects prosecuted was highest in immigration (70%), drug offenses (70%), and weapons offenses (68%).

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,  Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2025. 37p.

By the United States Sentencing Commission

  This is the twenty-ninth edition of the United States Sentencing Commission’s Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics. This Sourcebook contains descriptive statistics on the application of the federal sentencing guidelines and provides selected district, circuit, and national sentencing data. The volume covers fiscal year 2024 (October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024, hereinafter “2024”). This Sourcebook, together with the 2024 Annual Report, constitutes the annual report referenced in 28 U.S.C. § 997, as well as the analysis, recommendations, and accounting to Congress referenced in 28 U.S.C. § 994(w)(3). The Commission received documentation on 61,678 federal felony and Class A misdemeanor cases involving individuals sentenced in fiscal year 2024.1 The Commission coded and edited information from the sentencing documents in these cases into its comprehensive, computerized data collection system. The Commission first released sentencing data in its 1988 Annual Report and reported this data annually until 1996. That year, the Commission compiled sentencing data into a new publication, the Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics. In 2019, the Sourcebook edition reporting fiscal year 2018 data was substantially revised and expanded. Existing tables were revised to reflect current sentencing practices. Many figures were updated to make them easier to understand and were presented in color while others were removed and the data on them presented in new ways. Additional analyses regarding drug and immigration crimes were added, and new sections on firearms and economic offenses were included. Trend analyses were added to each of the major sections to show how sentencing patterns had changed over the last ten years. The section on Sentenced Organizations was also expanded. Finally, Appendix B, which provides sentencing data for each judicial district, was completely redesigned to reflect current sentencing practices. Beginning with that 2018 Sourcebook, the Commission made important methodological changes in the way the data was presented. Principal among them was the way cases were assigned to a “type of crime” (previously called offense type). Beginning with fiscal year 2018 data, the guideline (or guidelines) that the court applied in determining the sentence determines the crime type category to which a case is assigned. Also, the names of some of the crime type categories were revised and some outdated categories were removed from the tables and figures. Another important methodological change was that sentences were capped at 470 months for all analyses. Additionally, cases involving the production of child pornography were reassigned to the sexual abuse crime type. Previously, these cases were assigned to the child pornography offense type in the Sourcebook. Finally, beginning with the 2018 Sourcebook, the methodology used to analyze the sentence imposed relative to the sentencing range for the case as determined under the Commission’s Guidelines Manual was substantially revised. Sentences now are grouped into two broad categories: Sentences Under the Guidelines Manual and Variances. The former category comprises all cases in which the sentence imposed was within the applicable guideline range or, if outside the range, where the court cited one or more of the departure reasons in the Guidelines Manual as a basis for  the sentence. Variance cases are those in which the sentence was outside the guideline range (either above or below) and where the court did not cite any guideline reason for the sentence. Data for important subgroups within these two categories are also reported. Because of these methodological changes, direct comparisons between data for Sourcebooks from fiscal year 2018 and later years cannot always be made to data reported in the Sourcebooks for years before fiscal year 2018. This year, the Commission has made substantial revisions to the section on sentencing appeals. Beginning with 2024 data, the Commission is no longer collecting information about the guideline forming the basis for reversal or remand in sentencing appeals, or the reasonableness issues appealed in cases where the original sentence was reversed or remanded. Tables providing that information have been removed from the 2024 Sourcebook. Also beginning with 2024 data, the Commission has changed the way it categorizes appeals cases in which a brief was submitted by counsel for the defendant pursuant to the Supreme Court decision in Anders v. California, 386 U.S. 738 (1967). Previously, “Anders Brief” cases were reported as a type of appeal. Beginning with the 2024 data, the Commission has sought to determine the type of appeal involved in an Anders Brief case (e.g., an appeal of the sentence only) and, when that information was available, has classified the case accordingly. Cases in which an Anders brief was filed, but where the sentencing documentation did not indicate the type of appeal, now are classified as “Unknown” types of appeals and are excluded from the data reported on Figure A and the remaining tables. Also, this year the Commission is providing new information in the sentencing appeals section. New Figure A-2 reports additional information on the type of sentence that was appealed. Sentences are classified into three categories: appeals of the original sentence, appeals of an order deciding a motion for a resentencing or other modification of sentence, and appeals of a revocation of probation or supervised release. In appeals of an order deciding a motion for a resentencing or other modification of sentence, the Commission reports the basis asserted in the motion. Additionally, while the Commission has always reported the disposition of sentencing appeals of the original sentence on Table A-2, the Commission now is reporting information on the disposition of post-sentencing motion appeals on Table A-2A. New Figure A-3 provides information about the type of crime involved in appeals of original sentences. While this data was previously available on another table, and continues to be reported on Table A-5, new Figure A-3 presents this information graphically. New Table A-6 reports data on the position of the sentence relative to the guideline range in original sentencing appeals, using the Commission’s standard classifications found on Table 29 of the Sourcebook for original sentences. Finally, the numbers and titles of the remaining tables in the section were revised for clarity.   

Washington, DC: USSC, 2025. 201p.

By Catalina Franco Buitrago, David J. Harding, Shawn D. Bushway, and Jeffrey D. Morenoff

We find that people involved in low-level crime receiving a prison sentence are more likely than those with non-prison sentences to be re-imprisoned due to technical violations of parole, rather than due to new crimes. We identify the extent and cost of this incapacitation effect among individuals with similar criminal histories using exogenous variation in sentence type from discontinuities in Michigan Sentencing Guidelines. Technical violations disproportionately affect drug users and those first arrested as juveniles. Higher re-imprisonment adds one-quarter to the original sentence’s incapacitation days while only preventing low-severity crime, suggesting that prison is cost-ineffective for individuals on the margin.

NHH Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper No. 03/2022, 79p.

By Ellen R Gutowski, Lisa A Goodman

Intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors seeking safety and justice for themselves and their children through family court and other legal systems may instead encounter their partners' misuse of court processes to further enact coercive control. To illuminate this harmful process, this study sought to create a measure of legal abuse. We developed a list of 27 potential items on the basis of consultation with 23 experts, qualitative interviews, and existing literature. After piloting these items, we administered them to a sample of 222 survivor-mothers who had been involved in family law proceedings. We then used both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Rasch analysis (RA) to create a final measure. Analyses yielded the 14-item Legal Abuse Scale (LAS). Factor analysis supported two subscales: Harm to Self/Motherhood (i.e., using the court to harm the survivor as a person and a mother) and Harm to Finances (i.e., using the court to harm the survivor financially). The LAS is a tool that will enable systematic assessment of legal abuse in family court and other legal proceedings, an expansion of research on this form of coercive control, and further development of policy and practice that recognizes and responds to it.

J Fam Violence. 2023;38(3):527-542

By Octavian Simu, Paul McGorrery, Melanie Hull

This report to the Victorian Government makes 12 recommendations for reform to the sentencing of occupational health and safety (OHS) offences in Victoria. The recommendations are grouped in relation to victims and other affected persons, changes in sentencing practices, and fine payment and distribution.

Key findings

People injured in workplace incidents, people exposed to risks in workplaces, and the families of deceased workers are not always able to fully and meaningfully participate in sentencing proceedings for OHS offences.

Currently, sentencing practices for OHS offences are not aligned with community expectations, are not aligned with recent changes to penalties in the model work health and safety laws (‘model laws’), are not consistent with sentencing practices in other regulatory contexts, and are not capable of adequately achieving the purposes of sentencing.

Every year, there is almost $2.5 million in unpaid court fines for OHS offences.

State of Victoria, Sentencing Advisory Council, 2025, 218p.

By Roger Bootle, David Spencer, Ben Sweetman and James Vitali 

Securing the safety of the public is the foremost duty of government. But we are witnessing acute growth in a range of highly visible crimes. This is undermining the very legitimacy of the British state. • Police recorded shoplifting is up 51% relative to 2015 and is at its highest level in 20 years. Police recorded robberies and knife crime offences are up 64% and 89% respectively over the same period. Public order offences are up 192%. The cost of fraud in the benefits system has increased almost eightfold since 2006. • These areas of acute growth in criminal incidents are obscured by the aggregate downward trend in crime since 1995 reported by the Crime Survey of England and Wales. Although this is a reputable source, it excludes many types of serious crime. • Alongside rising crime rates, the criminal justice system is failing. Prisons have reached capacity, and thousands are being released early as a result. As of September 2024, there were 73,105 outstanding crown court cases, 31,000 of which have been outstanding for over 6 months, both numbers being the highest ever. The ratio of police personnel to the population is down 12% from 2010. • The proliferation of crime is an evil in and of itself. But it also significantly diminishes the prosperity of the British people. Crime has direct costs - the damage to, or loss of, property, the cost of insurance, medical bills, the cost of funding the criminal justice system etc. • But some of the greatest costs imposed by crime are indirect and hard-to-measure. They relate to the behavioural changes undertaken by individuals and businesses in response to the expectation of crime. • Order and the rule of law are necessary prerequisites for prosperity. They generate confidence that contracts will be upheld, property will not be stolen or damaged, and that individuals and businesses will enjoy the proceeds of their labour and industry, rather than being deprived of it by criminals. And the converse is true too; when the rule of law is breached with impunity, economic activity suffers. • In the context of increased crime, both businesses and individuals try to protect themselves by undertaking various preventative measures and taking out insurance. But this also drives up their  costs and thereby diminishes the living standards of law-abiding people. • Crime thus harms the profitability of businesses and they will tend to pass on the increase in their costs to their customers. • Moreover, the prevalence of crime and the apparent toleration of it corrode the bonds that hold a society together, damaging the trust in other people and institutions which is essential to the functioning of free markets. In undermining a sense of security, it also increases societal risk aversion. • We believe the tangible costs of crime in the UK to amount to almost £170 bn per annum, or about 6.5% of GDP. Of these costs, about £38bn are inflicted on businesses, £31bn on the public sector, and about £63bn against individuals. • But this is an incomplete estimate of the total costs, because it fails to account for the intangible effects on behaviour that derive from the fear of crime. Although these effects are extremely difficult to estimate, they are probably very large. Incorporating them would probably push the total costs of crime to over £250bn, or 10% of GDP. • Fortunately, the cost of crime to society is a problem with a clear solution. We must ditch the permissive paradigm that dominates our present approach to crime, and shift the balance in policymaking back towards the interests of the law-abiding majority. We lay out here a series of measures that could substantially reduce the prevalence of crime and hence its cost to society. • Our policy proposals are based around five key themes: delivering a dramatic expansion of the prison estate; taking back the streets; promoting smarter policing; and reforming sentencing and our courts system – and providing more funding while demanding more accountability. • Much of this programme can be delivered without any increase in funding. It will yield a return for little or no cost. The organisation of policing needs to be radically restructured to focus on the deterrence of crime and the catching of criminals. There needs to be a clear-out of senior members of the prison service and the Ministry of Justice. • Over and above this, however, there is a need for more funding. More resources need to be ploughed into the police and justice system to permit the recruitment of more police officers and staff, build more prisons and improve the functioning of the courts. • It may seem paradoxical that a programme to reduce the incidence of crime and its costs to society should include spending more public money. But this extra money can bring a significant return to society and a stronger economy. It should be regarded as a form of public investment. • Nevertheless, in these straitened times there is no scope to increase overall government spending financed by borrowing, and the burden of taxation is surely at the limits of what the economy can bear. • Meanwhile, given the global threats faced by the United Kingdom, the defence of the realm requires more funding. This must come at the top of the list of priorities. • So any increase in funding to finance our proposals must come from reductions in other sorts of public spending. While this paper does not seek to lay out in detail what other sorts of spending ought to be cut, with government spending as a share of GDP at a post-war high, there is ample scope for savings. Civil service manning levels, the benefits bill, overseas aid and the regime for uprating pensions will all have to be reviewed. • There are two reasons why our proposals should rank highly in the list of spending priorities alongside the need to spend more money on defence. First, by reducing the cost of crime and bringing about a stronger economy, our proposals will eventually enable the provision of more resources for other spending – including defence. • Second, the external threat to the United Kingdom is no longer purely from conventional warfare. It is hybrid and includes the sponsorship of terrorism, cyber warfare, attacks on critical infrastructure, and campaigns to widen divisions in our society – all activities which undermine the public’s confidence in the nation’s security at home. Maintaining a strong criminal justice system is fundamental to British interests and countering the threats to the nation which originate both at home and abroad. • If we are to take a less permissive approach to policing, we need to put more people behind bars. And to do this, we recommend the construction of 43,000 additional prison places and the phasing out of prison over-crowding by building a further 10,000 prison cells. • Police forces need to take control of the streets and give them back to the law-abiding majority, returning to a version of neighbourhood policing which has community orderliness and security at its heart. • Policing needs to be smarter, both tactically and strategically, making better use of technology. And it needs to neutralise the threat posed by hyper prolific offenders – the 9% of criminals who commit over half of all crime. • There also needs to be a major increase in prison sentences for the most serious crimes. The simple fact is that in our society, the chances of being caught are very low and if and when a criminal is caught and convicted the punishment is often laughably lenient. • This means that for those individuals inclined this way, crime pays. The system needs to be radically redesigned so that it doesn’t.  

London: Policiy Exchange, 2025. 91p.

By The Domestic Violence Pretrial Practices Working Group

The Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity-Today Act (SAFE-T Act) established the Domestic Violence Pretrial Practices Working Group, a group comprised of diverse Illinois criminal justice and victim service stakeholders. Their final report makes eight recommendations for evidence-based improvements to court procedures. Recommendations included strengthening the collection of risk and lethality assessment indicators by law enforcement responding to domestic violence calls and increasing criminal justice stakeholders’ utilization of these indicators in their pretrial decision-making. Other recommendations emphasized the crucial role that domestic violence victims should have in shaping information gathering practices and the value of expanding promising local and regional domestic violence-related initiatives. Implementation of this working group’s recommendations has the potential to improve not only domestic violence pretrial practice court procedures but also to increase domestic violence victims’ safety.

Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. 2024. 18p.

 By Ruth Armstrong and Shona Minson

  In this report, Drs Ruth Armstrong and Shona Minson explore the development and evaluation of women’s problem-solving courts (WPSC) in the UK and internationally. Drawing on a detailed review of existing literature, evaluations, and court observations, alongside interviews with practitioners and participants, the report examines how these courts address the unique challenges faced by women in the criminal justice system. It highlights the aspects of problem-solving courts that contribute to their effectiveness, many of which reflect principles of systemic thinking, even if not explicitly designed as systems change initiatives. This executive summary draws out the lessons from this report to consider: 1. The criminal justice problems WPSC aim to address. 2. The approaches these courts take to problem-solving. 3. What makes these approaches effective, according to current evaluations? 4. What further research and practice developments are needed to enhance outcomes and mitigate challenges. The review of WPSC literature offers insights into how justice systems can better serve all populations by addressing systemic inequities and focusing on holistic, relational approaches.  

London: Clinks, 2025. 32p.

By Rachel Monaghan and Bianca Slocombe 

  : Few studies have examined the sentencing outcomes of individuals convicted of terrorism or violent extremism-related offences in the United Kingdom (UK). Home Office data can tell us the number of persons arrested for terrorist-related activity and subsequent outcomes, such as charges and convictions by legislation, but this data does not provide a complete picture of the prosecution landscape for extremist actors in the UK. This is due in part to the existence of three distinct legal jurisdictions (England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) and also to differences in the types of data collected and counting practices in operation. Moreover, the official data available publicly are only summary statistics, with no separate data for Scotland. This article addresses this research gap in our knowledge of the prosecution landscape for extremist actors in the UK by utilising data from an original dataset compiled by the research team from open sources on the sentencing outcomes of individuals (n=809) convicted of terrorism, terrorism-related, and violent extremism offences over a 21- year period (April 2001-March 2022). The analysis of this dataset has allowed us to test a range of hypotheses in relation to not only motivation but also offence type, gender, age, co-defendants and having multiple counts (i.e. facing multiple charges). Limitations of the study are also discussed.  

Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume XVIII, Issue 4 December 2024  

By CFE Research and Revolving Doors

  Intensive Supervision Courts (ISCs) are a problem-solving approach that diverts offenders with complex needs away from short custodial sentences and into enhanced communitybased sentences which aim to address underlying issues linked to offending. The ISC pilot is testing a model of community sentence management between probation and the courts, for certain individuals who receive a high-end Community Order (CO), or Suspended Sentence Order (SSO). Orders managed under the ISC comprise both rehabilitative and punitive measures, are delivered by a multi-agency team and are overseen by a single judge who can apply incentives to reward engagement and sanction those who are non-compliant. Key partners include the judiciary, court staff, probation, treatment providers, police, local authority, and women’s services. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) fund the pilot; most of the funding is allocated to dedicated ISC probation resource, the addition of a court co-ordinator role, and a dedicated “privilege and enabler” fund to support and recognise compliance. Privileges are intended to be flexible and creative in order to be individualised to the person on the ISC. The pilot currently comprises two substance misuse (SM) courts in Liverpool and Teesside Crown Courts, and a women’s ISC in Birmingham Magistrates’ Court, and is set to run between June 2023 and December 2024. A third SM court operating in Bristol Crown Court launched in June 2024 after this report was written. This is the interim report of an independent process evaluation of the pilot. It covers the implementation period of the pilot covering elements of best practice, challenges and early findings. It draws on evidence gathered through a survey of pilot staff and stakeholders, in-depth interviews with staff, stakeholders, and individuals on the ISC, observations of ISCs and related activities, and analysis of monitoring data.   

London: Ministry of Justice, 2025. 90p.

By Maximilien Roche  

  This paper provides an analysis of national laws relevant to whistle-blowers in the public sector across 67 ILO Member States. It studies each national law through a selection of indicators derived from reference frameworks and guidance by inter-governmental organizations (e.g. UNODC, OECD) and global civil society organizations (e.g. Transparency International, the International Bar Association). It aims at drawing a picture of each studied member state’s approach to specific questions such as which public sector employees should benefit from a statutory whistle-blower protection, under which conditions and what such protection entails. The study concludes by observing that although enacting national laws protecting whistle-blowers is a relatively recent trend, such laws present a broad diversity of approaches which contrasts with the relative consistency of institutional recommendations.  

  ILO Working Paper 135, Geneva: International Labour Organization (ILO), 2025. 65p.

By The International Labour Organization (ILO)

X Executive summary Access to labour justice is out of reach for most migrant workers who experience human and labour rights violations. The intersection of a migrant worker’s immigration status with their employment causes heightened vulnerability and an increased likelihood that a migrant worker will not be able to seek or obtain justice for the labour violations they have suffered. This can happen because of formal exclusion from labour protection or practical difficulties in accessing labour complaints mechanisms. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has long recognized the fundamental role that access to labour justice plays in protecting the rights of workers, including migrant workers. Access to labour justice is a key principle in many international labour standards, notably those on migrant workers. Furthermore, access to justice is embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international human rights treaties and is recognized by the United Nations as integral to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), including economic growth and the commitment to leave no one behind. The difficulties that migrant workers experience in accessing justice in the country of employment, including the impossibility for workers to remain in the country of employment to pursue complaints upon leaving an abusive employer, have led to increased attention on cross-border or transnational access to justice for migrant workers. In the context of this report, cross-border or transnational access to justice includes a worker’s ability to file a claim or continue with a claim in the country of employment after a worker has left (either back to their country of origin or to a third country) or to file a claim in the country of origin (for example, against the recruitment agency) for violations that have occurred or are occurring in the country of employment. Trade unions, civil society organizations and lawyers are currently assisting migrant workers with cross-border claims on an ad-hoc basis. In addition to this ad-hoc support, transnational organizations with a presence in more than one country and with a specific mandate to support migrant workers, lodge cross-border claims, operate in several migration corridors. These organizations have developed innovative models to provide legal representation and assistance to migrant workers through partnerships in the country of origin and country of employment. They have also conducted strategic litigation in response to the legal and procedural issues that prevent migrant workers from seeking justice from abroad, including by launching test cases to expand and leverage.

Geneva: ILO, 2024. 74p.  

by Carmen Robin-D’Cruz, Stephen Whitehead, Bami Jolaoso, and Lucy Slade

Women represent a relatively small proportion of people who commit crimes in England and Wales, and they tend to commit less-serious crimes and pose a lower risk of harm to the public than men.1 2 In 2021 they accounted for only 14% of those arrested and 5% of those in prison.3 However, women who offend can also be some of the most vulnerable in society. As the 2018 Ministry of Justice Female Offender Strategy notes, “Many experience chaotic lifestyles involving substance misuse, mental health problems, homelessness, and offending behaviour – these are often the product of a life of abuse and trauma.”4 Moreover, we know that criminalising women can make it harder for them to access routes out of the issues driving their offending, creating barriers to them finding or maintaining employment and accommodation and pushing them towards crisis. This is why pre-court diversion, which seeks to offer a swift and meaningful response to offending while reducing or avoiding harmful criminal justice system involvement,5 has been recognised as crucial for this cohort. As Baroness Corston observed in her landmark review of women in the justice system, women are different from men in terms of both the factors that cause them to offend and their paths to desistence.6 This means that, to effectively meet women’s needs – and to reduce the number of women entering the criminal justice system, which is the first priority of the Female Offender Strategy7 – a gender-specific approach to pre-court diversion for women is essential. This briefing aims to support practitioners seeking to develop or improve gender-specific pre-court diversion schemes. It will: • Lay out the policy landscape around women’s diversion; • Outline the evidence on why diversion is especially important for women, including: i) the need for a gender-specific approach given women’s distinct offending patterns and needs, ii) effective practice for working with women who offend and iii) outcomes from existing schemes; • Provide a case study of a current successful diversion scheme tailored for women; and • Distil this into overarching best practice principles for pre-court diversion for women. 

London: Centre for Court Innovation, 2025. 13p.  

By Naomi Delap and Liz Hogarth,

Our justice system, designed for men, is not working for women. Our prisons are full of trauma: over 60 per cent of women in prison have experienced domestic violence and more than half have experienced abuse as a child. Our prisons are bad at rehabilitating and deterring women from further offending; instead, they actively harm them and their children. Racially minoritised women are further disadvantaged: overrepresented at every point in the system and more likely than white women to be remanded and receive a sentence in the Crown Court. The human and financial cost of the system’s failure is significant.

The Labour government has announced a bold approach to respond to these issues. The creation of a Women’s Justice Board and its new strategy will, it is stated, reduce the number of women in prison and tackle the root causes of women’s offending by driving early intervention, diversion and alternatives to custody. If these outcomes are achieved, there will be less crime and fewer victims; and women, their families and their communities will benefit.

This new direction is a cause for celebration. If the initiative is to work, however, it is imperative we learn from the lessons of the past in order to avoid making the same mistakes; and look to other models for solutions in order to deliver, finally, a justice system that works for women.

London; Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, 2025. 24p.

By Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Maria Jung, Firdaous Sbaï, Andrew S. Wilton, and Fiona Kouyoumdjian

Racially disaggregated incarceration data are an important indicator of population health and well-being, but are lacking in the Canadian context. We aimed to describe incarceration rates and proportions of Black people who experienced incarceration in Ontario, Canada during 2010 using population-based data. We used correctional administrative data for all 45,956 men and 6,357 women released from provincial correctional facilities in Ontario in 2010, including self-reported race data. Using 2006 Ontario Census data on the population size for race and age categories, we calculated and compared incarceration rates and proportions of the population experiencing incarceration by age, sex, and race groups using chi-square tests. In this first Canadian study presenting detailed incarceration rates by race, we found substantial over-representation of Black men in provincial correctional facilities in Ontario. We also found that a large proportion of Black men experience incarceration. In addition to further research, evidence-based action is needed to prevent exposure to criminogenic factors for Black people and to address the inequitable treatment of Black people within the criminal justice system.

Race and JusticeVolume 13, Issue 4, October 2023, Pages 530-54

By Barbara O'Brien & Catherine M. Grosso,

Race has long had a pernicious role in how juries are assembled in the United States. Racism—intentional, implicit, and structural—has produced disparities in how jury venires are selected, whom the court excuses for cause, and how lawyers exercise their peremptory strikes. We are, however, at a moment of reform in the United States. We see courts, legislatures, and citizens looking for opportunities to make our criminal legal system fairer.1 One aspect of the system receiving attention is jury selection, specifically race discrimination in the selection process.2 Efforts to counter discrimination range in scope from creating commissions to study the issue, to implementing rules to address Batson’s shortcomings, to outright abolishing the use of peremptory strikes.3 Much of the research on racial discrimination in jury selection has focused on lawyers, particularly their use of peremptory strikes. But the process that produces racial disparities involves multiple steps and players. Judges, in particular, play a vital role in ensuring that voir dire is conducted in a way that produces a diverse and competent jury. Fortunately, significant research on best practices in jury selection provides practical guidance to judges overseeing the jury selection process. To demonstrate how these best practices play out in the real world, this article examines two high-profile cases in light of what researchers have learned about maximizing the effectiveness of voir dire and, in particular, minimizing racial bias in jury selection. We take advantage of the live broadcasting of jury selection in two notorious cases during these times of crises and change to look closely at ways courts can mitigate racial bias in jury selection and, in the process, further the educational and information-gathering objectives of voir dire.5 In Part I, we review the research on practices that can enhance the effectiveness of voir dire and counter racial bias in jury selection, with a particular focus on the role of judges and on recent efforts to reform jury selection in several states. In doing so, we broaden the focus beyond how lawyers’ behavior in exercising peremptory strikes contributes to racial discrimination to the role of judges. In Part II, we present a brief overview of the main actors, as well as the legal and social context for our two cases: the prosecution of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis for killing George Floyd, and the prosecution of Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and William Bryan in Georgia for killing Ahmaud Arbery. In Part III, we draw on that research to examine the jury selection processes in the Chauvin and McMichael/Bryan cases. We compare the processes by which those juries were selected and the judges’ approaches to voir dire by identifying attributes or initiatives that render voir dire more or less effective.

98 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 111 (2024), 25p.

By The Council on Criminal Justice

As cities across the nation grapple with effective responses to increases in violent crime, a task force co-chaired by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy today released a report outlining a comprehensive approach for the use of lengthy prison sentences in the United States.

The report, How Long is Long Enough?, presents 14 recommendations to enhance judicial discretion in sentencing, promote individual and system accountability, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, better serve victims of crime, and increase public safety. Defining long sentences as prison terms of 10 years or longer, the panel’s proposals include:

Shifting savings from reductions in the use of long prison sentences to programs that prevent violence and address the trauma it causes individuals, families, and communities (Recommendation 1).

Allowing judges to consider all relevant facts and circumstances when imposing a long sentence, and requiring that sentencing enhancements based on criminal history are driven by individualized assessments of risk and other factors (Recommendations 6 and 8)

Providing selective “second look” sentence review opportunities and expanding access to sentence-reduction credits (Recommendations 11 and 12)

Focusing penalties in drug cases on a person’s role in a trafficking organization, rather than the amount of drug involved, (Recommendation 7)

Reducing recidivism by providing behavioral health services and other rehabilitative living conditions and opportunities in prison (Recommendations 3 and 13)

Strengthening services for all crime victims and survivors by enforcing victims’ rights, removing barriers to services, and creating restorative justice opportunities (Recommendations 2, 4, and 9)

“Some may wonder, why would we even discuss the nation’s use of long prison sentences now, amid a rise in homicide rates and legitimate public concern about public safety? Because this is exactly the time to examine what will actually make our communities safer and our system more just,” Yates and Gowdy said in a joint statement accompanying the report. “When crime rates increase, so do calls for stiffer sentencing, often without regard to the effectiveness or fairness of those sentences. Criminal justice policy should be based on facts and evidence, not rhetoric and emotion, and we should be laser-focused on strategies that make the most effective use of our limited resources.”

The report is the product of a year-long analysis by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) Task Force on Long Sentences, which includes 16 members representing a broad range of experience and perspectives, from crime victims and survivors to formerly incarcerated people, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, courts, and corrections. The panel examined the effects of long sentences on the criminal justice system and the populations it serves, including victims as well as people in prison, their families, and correctional staff.

Drawing on sentencing data and research, including a series of reports prepared for the Task Force, the sweeping recommendations offer a comprehensive blueprint for action on a complex and polarizing topic. According to an updated analysis by CCJ, 63% of people in state prison in 2020 were serving a sentence of 10 or more years, up from 46% in 2005, a shift due largely to a decline in people serving shorter terms. During the same period, the gap between Black and White people receiving long terms widened, from half a percentage point to 4 percentage points. Though murder defendants were the most likely to receive a long sentence, drug offenses accounted for the largest share (20%) of those admitted to prison to serve 10 or more years.

“Our nation’s reliance on long sentences as a response to violence requires us to wrestle with highly challenging questions about the relationship between crime, punishment, and public safety,” Task Force Director John Maki said. “Through their painstaking deliberations, our members rose to the challenge and produced a set of recommendations that recognize our need to advance public safety while respecting the humanity of those most affected by long prison terms.”

Washington DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2023. 39p.

By The Center for Justice Innovation

In May 2024, the New York State Unified Court System, with the Center for Justice Innovation (the Center), and in partnership with the Office of the Governor of the State of New York, launched the Family Justice Initiative: Court and Community Collaboration (FJI or the Initiative). Building on the reports and analyses that have documented statewide challenges across all case types in Family Court to date, the Initiative seeks to forge a fair, equitable, and sustainable path forward for the Court and its system partners to better serve all New Yorkers. The Initiative is solutions-focused, prioritizes areas for improvement, identifies promising programs, and explores new ideas to strengthen families, reduce unnecessary system involvement, and break intergenerational cycles of trauma. The Center’s role is to support a strategic planning process to develop a broad vision for what makes an effective family-serving system, as well as a comprehensive plan to support that vision. The goal for the initial phase was to begin to develop a shared vision and objectives for the Initiative and identify concrete solutions ready for immediate implementation. This report lays out the values and goals articulated by Initiative partners to date, and the specific recommendations that emerged from extensive discussions facilitated across New York State in the first phase of the project. It also provides a preview of the next phase of work, which will include the development of working groups to pursue longer-term areas for improvement while continuing to identify concrete opportunities for investment along the way.   

New York: Center for Justice Innovation, 2025. 31p.

By Sarah Picard, Leah Nelson, Rae Walker, Ellie Wilson

Every year, courts across the United States impose millions of dollars in fines, fees, and restitution charges on people adjudicated guilty of traffic violations, misdemeanors, and felonies. In theory, these assessments are intended to punish and deter unlawful behavior and compensate victims for financial losses incurred as the result of a crime. Despite their near ubiquitous use in criminal legal systems throughout the country, there is surprisingly little evidence that these financial penalties and assessments, collectively known as legal financial obligations (LFOs), deter criminal conduct, enhance public safety, or result in victims being compensated for their losses. In fact, some analyses indicate excessive fines and fees can have detrimental effects, eroding community trust in law enforcement, exacerbating hardships faced by individuals and families, undermining public safety and court legitimacy, and saddling community members with debt many will never be able to pay.

The Jefferson County Equitable Fines and Fees (JEFF) Project—a research–practice partnership among MDRC, the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Tenth Judicial Circuit Court of Alabama—uses five years of longitudinal, case-level data and qualitative research to explore how Alabama’s fines and fees system plays out in Jefferson County, Alabama. This brief presents early results from analysis of the quantitative data collected. 

The preliminary findings highlight inequities in how LFOs are assessed and distributed and the inefficacy of LFOs as a revenue source. Analyses showed that indigent individuals across all charges were assessed higher financial penalties and paid less toward their debt than those who could afford private representation. In addition, across groups, most people did not satisfy their balances over the five-year period, and many incurred a “restitution recovery fee” due to missed payments. Furthermore, the research depicts a system in which restitution often goes unpaid because of the state’s priority disbursement schedule, which compensates law enforcement agencies that collect debt before funding victim restitution

New York: MDRC, 2024. 9p.

By Karin D. Martin

The core of the access-to-justice problem is widespread unmet civil legal needs coupled with general disuse of the civil legal system. This Essay posits that monetary sanctions are an important contributing factor to the problem of access to justice. First, monetary sanctions and the unpaid criminal legal debt they produce are engines of “legal hybridity” in people’s lives in a way that impedes access to justice by generating unmet legal needs. They conflate the criminal and civil legal systems in many people’s lives, thereby reducing access to recourse in either system. Second, by subverting the principles of proportionality, specificity, and finality, monetary sanctions structurally deprive people of just solutions and condition them to not expect justice from legal institutions

widespread disuse of the civil legal system to help solve civil legal problems lies at the core. Regardless of whether the crisis is conceptualized as people having insufficient legal assistance, legal information, or access to civil courts, a through line is the failure of people to make use of the benefits ostensibly available to them through the civil legal system. Here, “access to justice” is conceived of in terms of widespread unmet legal needs with an accompanying paucity of just solutions. Theories about the source of this deficit of just resolutions for people with civil legal problems include lack of legal knowledge and knowhow, underfunded courts, and too few lawyers.cal and structural aspects of monetary sanctions, explained in detail below, this Essay argues that it is time to include monetary sanctions as a contributing factor to the problem of access to justice.

Monetary sanctions are the fines, fees, surcharges, restitution, or any other financial liability imposed in the criminal legal system. Three factors make it easy to overlook the role of these sanctions in the access-to-justice problem: (1) Monetary sanctions originate in the criminal legal system; (2) Some people can pay them without difficulty; and (3) They are a less severe sanction than incarceration. Nevertheless, the ubiquity of monetary sanctions and the unpaid criminal legal debt they produce are engines of “legal hybridity” in people’s lives in a way that harms access to justice by giving rise to unmet legal needs. Specifically, this legal hybridity amplifies the potential for extraction in both the criminal and civil legal systems and hinders the potential for resolution in each. Further, monetary sanctions are structured in a way that violates key principles of justice, which inhibits the pursuit of just solutions. This Essay thus argues that failing to consider the role of monetary sanctions in the access-to-justice crisis will stymie efforts to solve it.

This Essay proceeds as follows. Part I explores how monetary sanctions conflate the criminal and civil legal systems in many people’s lives, thereby reducing access to recourse in either. The idea of legal hybridity is offered as a way to conceptualize this phenomenon. While both the criminal and civil legal systems ostensibly offer remedies for all manner of problems, legal hybridity highlights how they also both have the capacity to be extractive—of time, of money, of property, and of liberty. Monetary sanctions should be a point of focus because they often tilt the balance toward extraction, rather than toward recourse. Part II discusses how monetary sanctions undermine central tenets of justice: proportionality, finality, and specificity in punishment. By subverting these principles, monetary sanctions structurally deprive people of just solutions and condition them to not expect justice from legal institutions. Although these principles are typically of concern in the criminal legal setting, the aforementioned legal hybridity underscores the need to consider them more broadly, particularly in the domain of monetary sanctions.

Stanford Law Review Online , Vol. 75, June 2023, 15p.