By The Justice Policy Institute

In January 2019, the District of Columbia government enlisted the Justice Policy Institute to explore the feasibility of restoring local control of parole and make recommendations for how release decision-making can be transferred from the federal government to the DC government. Transferring supervision responsibilities and parole decision-making from the federal government back to the District is an ambitious, complicated undertaking. Fortunately, local leadership can draw on a wealth of data, evidence, and experience from other jurisdictions as they evaluate how best to move forward. This new report highlights the best available research and practice in the parole field, provides 22 recommendations for parole decision-making and supervision, and outlines three options for restoring local control of release decision-making. JPI undertook a series of activities to produce this report. These included:

• Interviewing District and federal officials to understand how the current system functions and how best to build upon its strengths.

• Speaking with attorneys who handle parole applications to the United States Parole Commission.

• Attending community speak-out events and local criminal justice coalition meetings to solicit input from a wide range of community and system stakeholders, including currently and formerly incarcerated people with experience in the District’s parole system.

• Consulting with experts from multiple organizations that provide technical assistance to help states improve their parole practice, including attending the 2019 Association of Paroling Authorities International Chairs Meeting and Annual Training Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

• Examining a broad array of research in academic peer-reviewed journals, technical white papers, and state agency reports.

The recommendations outlined in this report should guide the development and staffing of a new parole board, the criteria for release decision-making, and how individuals are supervised in the community. If the District follows this plan, we believe it has the opportunity to serve as a model jurisdiction for other states. We also hope the report can be useful for jurisdictions currently considering reforms to their parole systems.

 Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute, 2019. 97p.

By Nicole Gelinas

Six months before the Covid-19 epidemic spread across New York City in early March, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council approved a plan to spend nearly $9 billion over the next half-decade to build four jails, one each in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. The completion of the new jails, in turn, would allow the city to close Rikers Island, home to most existing jail facilities. The mayor and the council are right in one respect: the jail facilities on Rikers are deficient. One way or another, New York must invest billions to make good on its promise to treat detainees—most of whom have not yet been convicted of any crime—with compassion and dignity. But there are major flaws in the city’s plan. The construction of four new jails in dense urban neighborhoods, at enormous expense and risk to the city’s fiscal health, does not guarantee inmates the better care that the city has promised. By concentrating on location rather than on deeper-seated problems, the city may simply replicate Rikers’ problems elsewhere. Indeed, should the city fail to successfully execute its borough-based jails plan, it would even fall short of its ultimate, symbolic goal: closing Rikers. The coronavirus crisis puts these flaws into sharper relief. At present, the city faces the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions—if not tens of billions—in tax revenue, and significant uncertainty over when recovery will begin and how strong it will be. As a result, New York simply has far less room for error than it did last fall, when it approved its plan to build new jails. There is a better alternative: rebuild Rikers. This 400-acre island is an optimal location for multiple, well designed, low- to mid-rise jail facilities. Rikers is also New York’s only remaining open space near enough to the courthouses in all five boroughs to be a practical location for housing inmates in a sprawling setting—but far away enough from the general population to serve as a secure location. Figure 1 is a sketch of what a rebuilt Rikers Island might look like.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2020. 16p.

By Sunny K. Frothingham

In October 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) announced a $6 million settlement with JPay, a leading provider of financial services in prisons and jails. The consent order detailed how JPay’s prepaid debit cards took advantage of justice-involved people as they were released from carceral facilities. As the CFPB’s first enforcement action under Director Rohit Chopra, the action signaled the Bureau’s concern about incarcerated people’s unique vulnerabilities to exploitative financial products.   When someone is released from prison or jail, release funds may include any wages earned during their incarceration, any remaining balances in their prison accounts, or any “gate money” benefits.6 Gate money programs aid re-entry by providing people with modest funding to cover basic transportation, housing, and food expenses in the first hours after release. While these release funds were traditionally available by cash or check, in the mid-2000s many departments of corrections started contracting with financial technology companies to offer prepaid debit cards. Over time, some departments of corrections eliminated the cash or check options and started to require that incarcerated people receive funds on prepaid debit cards. As part of a CFPB rulemaking process that culminated in a final rule on prepaid cards in 2016, a variety of civil rights organizations raised concerns about the predatory nature of prepaid cards in American prisons and jails. In response, the CFPB’s final rule noted that certain  prison release cards were already subject to consumer financial protection laws about prepaid cards, and stated that the CFPB was “continuing to monitor financial institutions’ and other persons’ practices relating to consumers’ lack of choice.” A few years later, this commitment to monitor prison release cards came to fruition in the 2021 enforcement action targeting JPay, which identified a variety of consumer protection law violations. According to the CFPB, JPay’s prison release cards took advantage of incarcerated people in several ways, including “[i]llegally requir[ing] consumers in certain states to receive protected government benefits on debit release cards,” “abus[ing] its market dominance,” “[c]harg[ing] fees without authorization,” and “[m]isrepresent[ing] fees to consumers.” The bulk of the violations involved either prohibitions on forcing consumers to use specific financial products to receive wages or government benefits, or prohibitions against unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices. While the order was specific to JPay’s conduct, it significantly clarified legal limits on prepaid debit release cards and can be seen as one step in a broader effort to develop the CFPB’s ability to hold companies accountable for abusive conduct that takes advantage of vulnerable consumers, especially justice-involved consumers. This Note proceeds in six parts and examines how the JPay consent order fits into broader CFPB efforts to protect justice-involved people from predatory financial products. Part II provides context for how preloaded debit cards fit into the broader landscape of prison banking. Part III assesses the statutory and regulatory landscape that applies to prepaid debit cards, including the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (“EFTA”), its implementing rules under Regulation E, and the CFPB’s standard for assessing unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices. Part IV explores the steps that the CFPB has taken under President Biden to expand protections for justice-involved people using existing statutes and regulations. Part V suggests potential next steps for protecting the rights of justice-involved consumers. Part VI summarizes and concludes this Note. 

28 N.C. BANKING INST. 227 (2024).

By The John Howard Association of Illinois (JHA, founded in 1901), The Pennsylvania Prison Society (The Society, founded in 1787) and The Correctional Association of New York (CANY

This report documents the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the response in prisons in Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania – the only three states in the country with non-governmental oversight bodies. It is based on publicly available information as well as information collected directly by these oversight agencies: The John Howard Association of Illinois (JHA, founded in 1901), The Pennsylvania Prison Society (The Society, founded in 1787), and The Correctional Association of New York (CANY, founded in 1844). It provides data unavailable in states lacking similar independent oversight, and it tells a story of very different responses to comparable challenges and a lack of transparency on the details of the crisis and policies developed in response. This report was made possible through the support of Arnold Ventures. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. (Published December 2021)

The Authors: 2021. 79p.

By Human Impact Partners

This report — informed by public health research alongside interviews and survey responses from people currently and formerly incarcerated in women’s prisons — exposes the catastrophic health harms of incarceration in women’s prisons and provides evidence in support of investments in health-promoting social determinants of health instead of incarceration.

From Crisis to Care outlines how incarceration worsens health via multiple pathways: 

• Medical neglect — including failure to provide medical examinations, stopping needed prescriptions, and long delays in treatment — is common in prison.

• Alongside the violence of the criminal legal system itself, people incarcerated in women’s prisons also experience and witness high rates of interpersonal physical, emotional, and sexual trauma and violence.

• Environmental conditions in prisons seriously endanger the health of incarcerated people, by exposing them to infectious diseases, extreme heat and cold, inadequate food, foodborne illness, mold, toxic drinking water, and more.

• The use of solitary confinement can lead to increased psychological distress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, paranoia, agitation, sleep deprivation, and prescription of sedative medications, alongside physical ailments.

• Separating people from their families and communities has destructive and far-reaching consequences that harm health.

The state of California invests $405 million a year in its women’s prisons. Instead of perpetuating a system that overwhelmingly works against public health, the state has the opportunity to invest that money in health-promoting support systems that people can access in their communities. These public safety investments would not only support reentry after incarceration, but they would also help to prevent harm from occurring in the first place, creating the conditions that would make women’s prisons obsolete.

Oakland, CA: Human Impact Partners, 2023. 41p.

By Anna Anderson

This National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) report provides an overview of the carceral medical debt problem and policy recommendations and solutions to address the issue. The report provides background on the nature of the carceral medical debt, including the complex healthcare needs of people who are incarcerated, what fees are assessed and why, how these fees impact health outcomes and lead to medical debt, how carceral medical debt affects families and reentry, and private equity and for-profit contractors’ roles in this problem. The report includes an extensive review of the common sources of medical debt and how these debts are collected. It details recent policy victories in the effort to eliminate carceral medical debt, as well as some troubling setbacks. The report concludes with consumer-focused policy reforms to address medical debt related to incarceration.

Boston: National Consumer Law Center, 2024. 46p.

By Antje du Bois-Pedain

The prevalent criminal justice practices in the U.S. have produced levels and patterns of incarceration that fewer and fewer politicians, scholars, and citizens care to support. There seems to be widespread consensus that the system is indicted as unjust by its outcomes no matter how these outcomes came about. But if that is so, how can it be turned back? Who should be eligible for release, and on what grounds? This article addresses the position of black prisoners serving very long sentences. Many of these prisoners are at risk of missing out under current legislative and administrative proposals designed to reduce overall levels of imprisonment. Partly this is because the wrong of mass incarceration is often understood as a wrong suffered at the collective level by what has come to be referred to as “overpunished communities.” It is unclear how the existence of that collective wrong affects the permissibility of continued punishment at the individual level. This article develops an argument that, at the individual level, being a black prisoner serving a very long sentence gives rise to a moral entitlement for a review of the need and justification for continued incarceration. The article outlines the basic shape of a clemency scheme devised especially for these prisoners as a moral imperative for a reform process intended to remedy penal injustice.

New Criminal Law Review (2021) 24 (4): 655–688.

By Brandon L. Garrett & Lee Kovarsky

The COVID-19 pandemic blighted all aspects of American life, but people in jails, prisons, and other detention sites experienced singular harm and neglect. Housing vulnerable detainee populations with elevated medical needs, these facilities were ticking time bombs. They were overcrowded, underfunded, unsanitary, insufficiently ventilated, and failed to meet even minimum health-and-safety standards. Every unit of national and sub-national government failed to prevent detainee communities from becoming pandemic epicenters, and judges were no exception. This Article takes a comprehensive look at the decisional law growing out of COVID-19 detainee litigation and situates the judicial response as part of a comprehensive institutional failure. We read hundreds of COVID-19 custody cases, and our analysis classifies the decision-making by reference to three attributes: the form of detention at issue, the substantive right asserted, and the remedy sought. Several patterns emerged. Judges avoided constitutional holdings whenever they could, rejected requests for ongoing supervision, and resisted collective discharge—limiting such relief to vulnerable subpopulations. The most successful litigants were detainees in custody pending immigration proceedings, and the least successful were those convicted of crimes , 

110 California L. Rev 117 (2022)   

By Sheena Liberator and Maria Jose (MJ) Vides

In March 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (BOS) unanimously adopted the “care first, jails last” vision, a transformative framework for safety grounded in support and services as alternatives to incarceration or bail.1 Three years have passed and people of color, people experiencing homelessness, and those with unmet mental health needs continue to languish in county jails.2 County staff attribute implementation delays to a shortage of community-based behavioral health workers. The Vera Institute of Justice’s (Vera’s) conversations with community-based providers—detailed in this brief—document how the COVID-19 pandemic, long-standing difficulties with contracting, and chronic underinvestment in infrastructure have resulted in the current workforce shortage. To effectively implement a “care first” vision and meet the demand for community-based pretrial services, Vera recommends immediate action steps to remedy ongoing issues with the county’s contracting processes, lower barriers to entry for small providers, and invest in urgent capacity-building and workforce development beginning this budget cycle.  

To effectively implement a “care first” vision and meet the demand for community-based pretrial services, Vera recommends immediate action steps to remedy ongoing issues with the county’s contracting processes, lower barriers to entry for small providers, and invest in urgent capacity-building and workforce development beginning this budget cycle.

Publication Highlights

• Local providers across the spectrum of services and service planning areas are experiencing staffing shortages resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and competition with Los Angeles County.

• Capacity-building support is needed to strengthen community-based service providers, as are changes to contracting, billing, and reporting procedures.

• To expand capacity, Los Angeles County should, among other things, implement pretrial services by increasing budgetary allocations for community-based service providers and restructuring county contracting processes and technical assistance programs.

To effectively implement a “care first” vision and meet the demand for community-based pretrial services, Vera recommends immediate action steps to remedy ongoing issues with the county’s contracting processes, lower barriers to entry for small providers, and invest in urgent capacity-building and workforce development beginning this budget cycle.

Publication Highlights

• Local providers across the spectrum of services and service planning areas are experiencing staffing shortages resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and competition with Los Angeles County.

• Capacity-building support is needed to strengthen community-based service providers, as are changes to contracting, billing, and reporting procedures.

• To expand capacity, Los Angeles County should, among other things, implement pretrial services by increasing budgetary allocations for community-based service providers and restructuring county contracting processes and technical assistance programs.To effectively implement a “care first” vision and meet the demand for community-based pretrial services, Vera recommends immediate action steps to remedy ongoing issues with the county’s contracting processes, lower barriers to entry for small providers, and invest in urgent capacity-building and workforce development beginning this budget cycle.

Publication Highlights

• Local providers across the spectrum of services and service planning areas are experiencing staffing shortages resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and competition with Los Angeles County.

• Capacity-building support is needed to strengthen community-based service providers, as are changes to contracting, billing, and reporting procedures.

• To expand capacity, Los Angeles County should, among other things, implement pretrial services by increasing budgetary allocations for community-based service providers and restructuring county contracting processes and technical assistance programs.

 New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 8p.

By Maria Rafael

The United States’ criminal legal system is often described as a two-tiered system that treats people differently based on their social status, wealth, and power.1 In a two-tiered criminal legal system, those with money, social connections, or political influence may receive preferential treatment in the form of lighter sentences, leniency with respect to court-ordered obligations, or even freedom.2 Meanwhile, people without those advantages are likely to face harsher punishments, limited access to legal resources or representation, and even mistreatment from system actors.3 In the context of fines and fees, having the resources to settle court-imposed charges can make the difference between a quick resolution of a case or an extended entanglement with the criminal legal system. Those who struggle to pay their debt extend the length of time of their involvement with and obligations to the courts, which can require regular payments, court appearances, community service, and even incarceration. All of this creates chances for people to fail at meeting these obligations, which can trigger a host of legal and collateral consequences that extend the period of surveillance further still. In short, those without money have far more punitive experiences than those who have the resources to quickly pay off their debts 

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2024. 37p.

By The U.S. National Institute of Justice 

Title I of the First Step Act of 2018 (FSA) required the Attorney General, in consultation with the Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), to develop and implement a risk and needs assessment system. In 2020, the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs (PATTERN) was developed and implemented, with the intent of assessing recidivism risk and determining eligibility for early release time credits outlined by the FSA. Also mandated was the development of a dynamic needs assessment system. Utilizing existing and validated assessment items and scales, the FBOP created Standardized Prisoner Assessment for Reduction in Criminality (SPARC-13), which consists of 13 domains: Anger/Hostility, Antisocial Peers, Antisocial Cognition, Education, Family/Parenting, Finance/Poverty, Medical, Mental Health, Recreation/Leisure/Fitness, Substance Use, Trauma, Work, and Dyslexia (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022). Section 3631 of Title I of the FSA requires that both the PATTERN and SPARC-13 be reviewed and validated on an annual basis. To help fulfill these requirements of the FSA, NIJ announced a competitive Consultant Statement of Work (SOW) and selected three consultants to conduct the annual review and revalidation of the SPARC-13. NIJ contracted with Dr. Grant Duwe, Dr. Zachary Hamilton, and Dr. Alex Kigerl to review and revalidate the SPARC-13. This report reviews and validates the SPARC-13 by conducting analyses relating to internal content, convergent/divergent, latent structure, and concurrent validity. It also presents the results from a process evaluation of the FBOP’s development and implementation of the SPARC-13.

Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2024. 69p.