By Mary C. Ellison and Kathleen M. Vogel

We see evidence of domestic and foreign sex and labor trafficking victims in Western Hemisphere countries. Some key trafficking trends across the region include: an increase in Venezuelan victims and concerns with other vulnerable migrants, internally displaced persons, indigenous peoples, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) populations. There are also special challenges of child domestic servitude in Haiti (restavek) 1 and Paraguay (criadazgo),2 and increased risk of trafficking in border areas (e.g., Central American countries; the southern and northern borders of Mexico; the Dominican Republic/Haiti border; the tri-border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; the Darién Gap between the Panamanian and Colombian borders; and migrants along Peru’s southern border) due to lack of regulatory and security gaps and insufficient transnational cooperation. Illegal armed groups are involved in the trafficking of children in the Andean Republics. Over the past five years, more cases of forced labor and forced criminality, as well as child sex trafficking in resort and tourist areas by U.S. and European perpetrators have been reported in the Western Hemisphere. Traffickers are using social media recruitment and multiple-destinations across the region to move victims; there remain continuing problems with complicity of government officials.

Washington, DC: William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2020. 30p.

By Jessica Pandian

Despite decades of activism from bereaved people and their supporters, too often the deaths of racialised people in prison have been dismissed, and the role of racism has been overlooked and ignored.

INQUEST’s new report, Deaths of racialised people in prison 2015 – 2022: Challenging racism and discrimination, makes a powerful intervention as it uncovers new data and tells the stories of 22 racialised people and how they died preventable and premature deaths in prison.

The report specifically looks at the deaths of Black and mixed-race people; Asian and mixed-race people; Middle Eastern and mixed-race people; people of Eastern European nationality; White Irish people and White Gypsy or Irish Traveller people.

Through a literature review, an analysis of never before published data on ethnicity and deaths in prison, and an examination of the relevant inquests and investigations, the report evidences the role of  institutional racism in the prison estate.

Key issues include the inappropriate use of segregation, racial stereotyping, the hostile environment, the neglect of physical and mental health, the failure to respond to warning signs, and the bullying and victimisation of racialised people.

London: INQUEST, 2022. 80p.

By Caroline Cawley, Jamila Henderson, Hemal Kanzaria, Johanna Lacoe, Stephen Paolillo, Kenneth Perez, Maria Raven and Alissa Skog

People with multiple, complex health and housing needs frequently receive fragmented care because the providing systems operate independently. Typically, individuals who come into frequent contact with the emergency medical system (e.g., emergency departments; emergency medical services) also interact with other health services and public systems such as psychiatric facilities, substance use treatment centers, shelters, and jails. Cross-sector care coordination is limited, in part, because data systems are not linked across physical health, behavioral health (mental health and substance use), housing, and criminal legal systems. To help San Francisco better serve this high need population, the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley and the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative worked with our partners in San Francisco’s public health and criminal legal systems to link together ten years of data from the physical health, behavioral health, housing, and criminal legal sectors. Using these linked data, we identify individuals with high utilization of the criminal legal system and the medical and behavioral health systems in a single year. High criminal legal utilization is defined as at least three jail bookings in a year, while high healthcare utilization is seven or more urgent/emergent healthcare contacts in a year. To understand trends before and after a year of high utilization, we analyze 5 two cohorts. The 2011 cohort includes 211 people with high utilization of both systems in fiscal year 2011, while the 2020 cohort includes 161 individuals with high utilization of both systems in fiscal year 2020. This allows us to observe patterns of system use before and after years of high utilization. We find: • Almost all the individuals in both cohorts experienced homelessness (98–99%) • High utilization is linked to premature death: more than one quarter of the 2011 cohort is deceased within 10 years • Between 80–90% of individuals in both cohorts have substance use disorders, and many also have co-occurring mental health and physical health disorders • More than 90% of the individuals in both cohorts have been booked into jail for a felony and a misdemeanor • Many of the individuals in the 2020 cohort were in San Francisco and had contact with at least one of these systems in the prior 10 years. For example, 30% of the 2020 cohort was booked into jail in 2011. These findings highlight the need for coordinated, evidence-based interventions to address these individuals’ complex needs, stabilize housing, and prevent poor health outcomes including untimely death.

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab, 2022. 34p.

By J. Russo ; M. Planty; J. Shaffer; M.N. Parsons; J.D. Roper-Miller

Detecting drug contraband smuggled into correctional facilities through the mail is challenging, because drugs can be sprayed onto paper, incorporated into ink, hidden under stamps, and concealed within a piece of correspondence. The methods used to hide the drugs, coupled with the high volume of mail received daily by inmates, increase the difficulty in detecting all drugs by using physical screening. In attempting to address this threat, some correctional facilities are using strategies that replace physical mail with electronic communication or reproductions of originals. Under this technique, all inmate mail is diverted to an offsite mail-processing vendor, who converts the mail to a digital form and transmits the documents to correctional facilities for distribution to inmates via tablets or kiosks. Adopting such a system is most effective when it is part of a “bundled” approach with other inmate services, such as telephone, messaging, video visitation, and electronic books, which are delivered through kiosks or tablets. In most cases, the digitized mail services can be provided at no cost to the agency as part of a comprehensive inmate services platform. 

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2021. 7p.

By Christophe Bellego and Joeffrey Drouard

Using Rio de Janeiro’s slum pacification program initiated in 2008, we study the effect of policies aimed at fighting drug gangs on crime. By combining a proxy variable with a simple structural model, we correct the bias resulting from the increase in unobserved crime reporting. We find that the program decreased the murder and the robbery rates by 7% and 34% respectively. However, the assault and the threat rates increased by 51% and 60% respectively. Absolute and marginal crime deterrence effects and a gang governance effect, namely that gangs can provide security to their turf, explain our results

Unpublished paper, 2019. 84p.

By M.N. Parsons, M. Camello, T. Craig, M. Dix, M. Planty, J.D. Roper-Miller

This technology brief is part of a series of documents that focuses on contraband in corrections. The first brief provides an overview of contraband, including types and associated technologies and products used to detect contraband on people, in vehicles, and in the environment. This brief focuses specifically on strategies to detect and manage drug contraband. The goal of this series is to offer foundational insights from use cases, highlight challenges of contraband detection, compare illustrative products, and discuss the future of contraband detection and management.

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2021. 14p.

By Patrice James, James Kilgore, Gabriela Kirk, Grace Mueller, Emmett Sanders, Sarah Staudt, & LaTanya Jackson Wilson

Across the United States each year, hundreds of thousands of people accused but not yet convicted of crimes are required by the courts to participate in electronic monitoring programs. These people are fitted with a locked, tightened ankle shackle, which often tracks every move they make. 3 Pretrial electronic monitoring programs represent a fast-growing type of incarceration that imposes significant harm and burdens on people who are subject to it. We interviewed people subject to monitoring, program administrators, judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys across select jurisdictions to better understand how pretrial electronic monitoring is used. Pretrial electronic monitoring programs lack transparency and accountability, are punitive in nature, and are unsupported by any research establishing a pattern of successful outcomes.

Chicago: Shriver Center on Poverty Law, 2022. 49p.

By Nichola Cadet  

There is a limited evidence base on the needs and experiences of older people who are on probation. Despite increased recognition of the impact of age on the prison population, this has not yet translated into probation policy and practice. Research is also complicated by a lack of agreement regarding what is meant by ‘older’ in the criminal justice context, with the majority of research conflating ‘offender’ and ‘prisoner’. A systematic review (Merkt et al., 2020) identified that ages 45-65 have been used in research studies for ‘older offenders’, but advocated age 50 as an appropriate age cut off. This is because of ‘accelerated ageing’ experienced by virtue of the prison environment and the lived experiences of many people prior to coming into custody. Cumulative disadvantage across the life course means that, for people in prison, their age can be viewed as ten years older than their chronological age. HM Prison & Probation Service (HMPPS) and HM Inspectorate of Prisons now cite 50 as the age at which people should be defined as older. Despite policy think tanks, campaigning organisations, researchers and the Justice Committee repeatedly calling for a strategy for older offenders, this was only accepted by HM Government in 2020. While the strategy has been prepared by the Ministry of Justice, the emphasis remains on those in custody rather than people across prison and probation, and has yet to be published. This is a missed opportunity. Of course, older people in prison, if released, will be subject to licence supervision, so there are some direct parallels between the prison experiences of older people and those on probation. Age is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, however the issue has faced less attention than other diversity characteristics, such as gender, race and ethnicity, and the intersections across diverse populations. Probation services do have a long history of considering the needs of younger people in the probation system, particularly in terms of their transition from youth to adult services. Therefore, the service is well placed to ensure that measures can be put in place to meet the needs of older people on probation too, and the transitions they may face as they age. We are living in an ageing society, which means that probation services increasingly need to not only consider the needs of people on probation, but the needs of the professional workforce. This paper provides an overview of what the research literature tells us about the needs and experiences of older people in the criminal justice system. Statistics around age/ageing and the numbers of older people on probation are considered, highlighting links with reducing reoffending pathways and how they may be experienced differently by older people. Practical suggestions are made to support practitioners, policymakers and commissioners to develop services to ensure that they are age-inclusive against a backdrop of an ageing workforce and an ageist society.  

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022. 17p. 

By Gabriela Kirk, et al.

Although state statutes often dictate the amount of fines and fees imposed, local courts have significant discretion in how they carry out the laws and there is variation between courts based on localized cultures and interpersonal dynamics in the courts. This article explores how monetary sanctions are imposed and their relationship with the courts’ acquaintance density– familiarity between court actors and residents– across urban, suburban, and rural communities. Using data from ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews from courtrooms across four states, the authors concluded that rural areas have greater acquaintance density, which promotes greater flexibility and individualization for defendants, while workgroups in urban courts lead to routinization when assessing monetary sanctions. Courtroom actors’ familiarity with defendants did not lead to less monetary sanctions imposed, but court actors’ familiarity with each other did allow for better client outcomes.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Vol. 8, Issue 8 1 Dec 2022

By Ray Khalfani

Key Takeaways: • Georgia’s poor governance of fines and fees revenue practices has allowed many economically underperforming localities to over-rely on fines and fees revenue, significantly contributing to Georgia having the highest probation rate in the country. Of the more than 430,000 Georgians who were on probation in 2018, nearly 40 2 percent of them were on probation for misdemeanors or traffic fines. • While the national average among localities’ fines and fees revenue as a share of general revenue was 2 percent, Georgia consistently ranked second-worst among states with localities with fines and fees shares above 10 percent, and second-worst among per capita amounts of fines paid among adult residents in 2018. • Abusive fines and fees practices and lack of protections for Georgians in deep poverty, have disproportionately harmed Black and Hispanic Georgians long before the pandemic and worsened in many localities during a pandemic that has been most unforgiving to low-income communities. Among the 27 Georgia counties that increased their fines and fees share of general revenue from 2019 to 2020, 12 of them had population shares that were higher than 36 percent Black, significantly higher than the overall state, where 33 percent of Georgians are Black.

Atlanta: Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, 2021. 16p.

Edited by James T. Spartz with additional support from Judith Siers-Poisson

Monetary sanctions, also known as legal financial obligations, are state-imposed fines and fees associated with court involvement. These are the financial aspects of the criminal justice system serving variously as punishment for defendants and revenue generation for court jurisdictions. In terms of both frequency and breadth, the rise of courtbased fines and fees is largely invisible to most people but has far-reaching—and long-lasting—effects for court-involved individuals and their kin. The authors contributing to this issue of Focus on Poverty draw on a growing body of scholarship to explore and explain some of the many nuances of monetary sanctions and their effects. We start with Joshua Page and Joe Soss presenting their view on criminal legal systems as mechanisms for racialized resource extraction. Standard practices in court systems throughout the United States act to routinely extract resources from lowincome and communities of color in order to generate revenue for local governments and affiliated private interests. The next two articles both draw from a comprehensive examination of monetary sanctions featured in an edition of The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, published in January 2022. The research of Alexes Harris—e.g., A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as Punishment for the Poor (Russell Sage Foundation, 2016)—has been a catalyst for much of this work. Both Kirk et al. and Boches et al. draw on data procured through the Harris-led Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions project (see www.monetarysanctions.org). Gabriela Kirk, Kristina Thompson, Beth Huebner, Christopher Uggen, and Sarah Shannon explore the construct of acquaintanceship density in rural court systems. They use ethnographic data drawn from interviews of court personnel and courtroom observations in Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri. Similarly, Daniel Boches and co-authors Brittany Martin, Andrea Giuffre, Amairini Sanches, Aubrianne Sutherland, and Sarah Shannon examine the extensive impacts—called symbiotic harms—of legal fines and fees on friends and family of system-involved individuals. Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, and Bruce Western continue the collaborative work started with their late colleague Devah Pager by looking at how court fees criminalize low-income defendants when they are unable to pay. The study profiled here is particularly strong in its assertions about causal relationship.

Focus on Poverty, v, 38, no. 2, 2022. 26p.

By Alexis A. Aronowitz

From the cover: Virtually every country' in the world is affected by the scourge of human trafficking, either as a source, transit, or destination country, or a combination thereof. While countries have long focused on international trafficking, internal movement and exploitation within countries may be even more prevalent than trans- border trafficking. Patterns of trafficking vary across countries and regions and are in a constant state of flux. Countries have long focused on trafficking solely for the purpose of sexual exploitation, yet exploitation in agriculture, construction, fishing, manufacturing, and the domestic and food service industries is prevalent in many countries. Here, Aronowitz takes a global perspective in examining the nefarious underworld of human trafficking, revealing the nature and extent of the harm caused by this hideous criminal practice. Taking a victims-oriented approach, this book focuses on the different groups of victims, as well as the various forms of and markets for trafficking, many of which have been overlooked due to an emphasis on sex trafficking. The author also examines the criminals and criminal organizations that traffic and exploit their victims and explores less-ffequendy-discussed forms of trafficking— in organs, child soldiers, mail-order brides, and adoption, as well as the use of the Internet in trafficking. Drawing on her own field and research experiences in various parts of the world, the author offers real-life context throughout the book through descriptions of a number of cases with which she was involved or learned about in her travels.

Santa Barbara. PRAEGER. An Imprint of ABC-CLIO. 2009. 290p.

Forward by Condoleezza Rice

The Department of State is required by law to submit a Report each year to the U.S. Congress on foreign governments’ efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons. This Report is the eighth annual TIP Report. It is intended to raise global awareness, to highlight efforts of the international community, and to encourage foreign governments to take effective actions to counter all forms of trafficking in persons. The U.S. law that guides anti-human trafficking efforts, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended (TVPA), states that the purpose of combating human trafficking is to punish traffickers, to protect victims, and to prevent trafficking from occurring. Freeing those trapped in slave-like conditions is the ultimate goal of this Report—and of the U.S. government’s anti- human trafficking policy. Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat. It deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, it increases global health risks, and it fuels the growth of organized crime.

U.S. Department Of State Publication 11407 Office Of The Under Secretary For Democracy And Global Affairs And Bureau Of Public Affairs. Revised June 2008. 295p.

Speaking of the years since 1945, the writers of this Report on Torture remark: “Never has there been a stronger or more universal consensus on the total inadmissibility of the practice of torture; at the same time the practice of torture has reached epidemic proportions.” On Human Rights Day, 1972, Amnesty International launched a worldwide campaign against the systematic use of torture by governments.

Report on Torture contains authoritative discus­sions of the history of torture, problems of legal definition, the medical and psychological aspects of torture, legal remedies, and a country-by country inventory of the use of torture by many governments as a means of extracting information and exercising political and social control over their citizens. There is information here on sixty- two countries, including the United States, but Report on Torture stresses that "to criticize one government is not to praise another about which Amnesty has no information.”

NY. Farrar, Straus and Giraux.. 1975. 283p.

By The Global Detention Project

Mexico has one of the largest immigration detention systems in the world, employing several dozen detention centres—euphemistically called estaciones migratorias—and detaining tens of thousands of people every year. Intense pressure from the United States and continuing migration from turmoil-wracked Central America have helped drive up detention numbers, which surpassed 180,000 in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic further stressed the country’s migration response. It temporarily released most detainees after the onset of the pandemic even as the United States continued deporting both Mexican and third-country nationals to Mexico. In late 2020, the country adopted reforms to its migration law prohibiting the detention of all children, though many observers expressed scepticism over whether it would be respected.

Geneva: Global Detention Project, 2021. 37p.

By  Christopher Horwood

Just as the world’s governments have, for some decades, waged war on international drug trafficking, there are increasing signals that global authorities have embarked on a major offensive against the growing phenomenon of migrant smuggling in addition to their existing fight against human trafficking.1 One of the most unambiguous of these signals came in April 2015, when Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Union’s top official for migration,2 told a news conference: “we will take action now. Europe is declaring war on [migrant] smugglers. Europe is united in this effort. We will do this together with our partners outside Europe. We will work together because smuggling is not a European problem — it is a global one.”3 Largely because of its clandestine nature, there is insufficient data available to gauge the global extent of migrant smuggling. Still, existing research offers some hints: according to one recent estimate, some 2.5 million migrants across the world used smugglers in 2016, generating an economic return of at least $5.5 billion dollars.4 ‘Since the migration crisis in 2015 the migrant smuggling business has established itself as a large, lucrative and sophisticated criminal market.’5 This paper, like others before it, argues that the main motivation behind the new offensive against migrant smugglers is not only the much-vaunted concern for the safety and protection of migrants and refugees6 (Avramopoulos prefaced his declaration with the words ‘one more life lost [at sea] is one too many’) but also the fact that migrant smugglers are the main vector and means for irregular migration. Rightly or wrongly, irregular migration is portrayed, even if disingenuously, by governments and many electorates as undesirable from a socio-political, security and economic perspective, and as a potential cause of future social unrest and political disruption.   

Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre, 2019. 78p.

Over the last 30 years, thousands of dead Latino migrant bodies have been found along the United States-Mexico boundary. These casualties are directly related to the Border Patrol’s “prevention through deterrence” (PTD) policing strategy, which funnels crossing migrants into remote and deadly deserts, mountains, and waterways. In response, local residents have created various formal and informal organizations to help provide life-saving aid to vulnerable crossing migrants. However, President Trump and Border Patrol agents have sought to criminalize and stop the work of humanitarian aid volunteers at the border. The data presented in this brief reveal that the American public overwhelmingly (87%) opposes—including the vast majority of Republicans (71%)—the criminalization of humanitarian aid workers at the border. 

Los Angeles: UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, 2020. 6p.

The Trump administration implemented a total of 363 policy changes to interior enforcement with the overarching goal of subjecting all undocumented immigrants to enforcement actions. President Biden assumed office following significant commitments to implement changes to immigration enforcement, to limit enforcement activities, and to reduce the hardship experienced by noncitizens and their families.

This report analyzes some of the most consequential changes to immigration enforcement implemented by the Trump administration, the changes that President Biden committed to making during his campaign and transition, and the progress that his administration has achieved in its first 100 days. The report concludes with recommendations for additional changes that the administration should prioritize in working to create a fairer and more humane system of immigration enforcement.

Washington, DC: American immigration Council, 2021. 33p.

By  Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson 

This policy proposal is a proposal from the author(s). As emphasized in The Hamilton Project’s original strategy paper, the Project was designed in part to provide a forum for leading thinkers across the nation to put forward innovative and potentially important economic policy ideas that share the Project’s broad goals of promoting economic growth, broad-based participation in growth, and economic security. The author(s) are invited to express their own ideas in policy proposals , whether or not the Project’s staff or advisory council agrees with the specific proposals. This policy proposal is offered in that spirit.  

  Immigration is good for the US economy and for the fiscal picture at the federal level, but some local areas experience adverse fiscal impacts when new immigrants arrive. Edelberg and Watson propose a transparent system for redistributing resources from the federal government to these localities. Local areas would receive $2,500 annually for each adult immigrant who arrived to the US within the past five years without a college degree—those more likely to generate negative fiscal flows at the subnational level. The funds would take the form of unrestricted transfers to local educational agencies through the existing Impact Aid program and to Federally Qualified Health Centers. This support would help to offset educational, health, and other costs to local areas associated with immigrant inflows, and more equitably share the overall fiscal and economic benefits of immigration.   

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution and The Hamilton Project , 2022.   26p.

By Kathleen O’Connor, Claire Thomas-Duckwitz, and  Guillermina Gina Nuñez-Mchiri  

The 1951 Refugee Convention of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." Further, the UNHCR is particularly concerned with refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean and uses the term refugee to describe persons fleeing from violence in Central America (U.N. High Commission for Refugees 2014). Thus, in this document, we refer to immigrants detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (“Dilley”), as refugees because they have been persecuted by virtue of their membership in a social group, are outside their country of origin, are fleeing extreme violence, and fear returning to their countries of origin, which provided no protection from violence and persecution. Throughout the report, refugees who agreed to speak with the team and to an assessment of mental health outcomes are also referred to as study participants, participants, or respondents. During fieldwork from July 22 to July 24, 2015, a team of mental and behavioral health specialists collected the following data at Dilley, at the Greyhound Bus Station in San Antonio, and at the Hospitality House, a shelter in San Antonio where refugees are housed temporarily en route to resettlement areas throughout the United States  

 Cambridge, MA: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), 2015. 82p.