By Tamara Ryan and Cole Anderson   

Upon release, formerly incarcerated people often have few resources to get by while they are seeking employment. They struggle to find work because of criminal stigma, low education levels, and work history gaps. Supporting formerly incarcerated individuals upon their re-entry helps ensure they can take part in the activities needed for employment, such as resume preparation and learning job search skills. One key to improving the likelihood of employment post-incarceration is to ensure returning citizens have adequate financial resources and support to address their immediate needs and allow a focus on gaining employment. Moving more formerly incarcerated people into the workforce presents a massive opportunity for the state. Not having these individuals in the workforce is a lost opportunity for both employers and the state and increases the likelihood they will return to prison or will be rearrested, adding to the cost burden for the state. Key Findings • Formerly incarcerated people are 24% less likely to return to prison when they have acquired new skills and maintained employment during incarceration. • An estimated 6,000 individuals are released from Colorado prisons annually, a number that is roughly equivalent to 20% of the new entrants that are added to the state workforce each year. This number is also 1.5 times larger than Cherry Creek High School, the largest high school in the Denver area. • Breakthrough, a Colorado nonprofit that works with formerly incarcerated individuals, has helped those citizens achieve a 94% employment rate after their release. If Breakthrough’s results could be replicated for all applicable individuals exiting prison, 2,400 more individuals would be employed among each annual prison release cohort. Together those 2,400 individuals would contribute to GDP growth totaling more than $1 billion and a $650 million increase in personal income.  • Colorado’s current 3-year recidivism rate is 28%. Reducing that rate to Breakthrough’s 6% rate would save the state an estimated $55 million annually in recidivism-related costs, realized after the three-year recidivism measurement period. • Inmates working in Colorado’s prisons earn just dollars per day.i Marginally increasing the income inmates can earn while working in prison and on work release programs could help reduce the financial burden to the state through decreased public benefit use and lower recidivism rates. • There is a strong connection between employment and lasting economic benefits for formerly incarcerated individuals. • Colorado currently lacks any data to capture the outcomes, particularly the employment and earnings outcomes, of former inmates. This deficit makes it difficult to gauge the success of post-release programs. • Over the 5-year period prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of those who recidivated went back to prison because of technical violations such as possessing a firearm or failing to report to a parole officer, not commission of new crimes.  Employment for Returning Citizens Employment is a critical component of successful re-entry into the community after release from incarceration. A study by the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government found a lack of employment was one of the most significant risk factors affecting successful re-entry.ii Researchers also found community organizations that offer returning citizens assistance with employment were most successful when they provided a holistic approach that included both training and job placement and emphasized high quality jobs with upward mobility potential. Positive benefits of employment include decreased reliance on state assistance, increased self-esteem, a more positive sense of identity, and a life made more stable because of income. Employers also benefit from successful reentry. Hiring formerly incarcerated individuals expands hiring pools at a time when businesses report difficulty finding talent, provides evidence of nondiscriminatory hiring practices, and creates potential tax credit and free bonding service opportunities. Additionally, employers could reduce training costs by hiring individuals who received training while incarcerated. Unfortunately, research shows a felony conviction or incarceration makes individuals significantly less employable. After release, finding a job can take six months or more.iii Providing resources for released individuals to get and keep a job decreases the risk of recidivism because it ensures these citizens are meeting the requirements of parole, contributing to their households, paying off fines or making restitution, and forming the prosocial connections that discourage re-offending. National data shows more than 27% of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed, a number that is higher than the U.S. unemployment rate at any time in history, including the Great Depression. Unemployment is worse for women than men, particularly for formerly incarcerated black women, whose unemployment rate is 43.6%.iv There is a clear connection between unemployment and likelihood to engage in crime. One study found that, among unemployed men in their 30s, more than half had been arrested or convicted of a crime. Additionally, it is important to remember the unemployment rate only measures people who are actively looking for work and does not include discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs. When these individuals are included in the calculation, the jobless rate reaches closer to 60%.

Greenwood Village, CO: Common Sense Institute, 2025. 18p.

By U.K. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ’s) and HM Prison and Probation Service’s (HMPPS’s) failure to increase prison capacity in line with demand has led to a prison estate in crisis. Their plans to deliver 20,000 additional prison places in England and Wales by the mid–2020s have been delayed by approximately five years until 2031, and will cost at least £4.2 billion more than planned. MoJ’s and HMPPS’s original plans were unrealistic and they did not work effectively with others in Government to address delivery risks. As at September 2024, HMPPS had delivered just 6,518 additional places, and its plans to deliver the remaining 14,000 are still subject to significant risk. The Lord Chancellor, in her December 2024 announcement of MoJ’s 10–year prison capacity strategy, emphasised the continued need for prison places, as it projected the prison population to increase by an average of 3,000 annually over the coming years. As a result of poor planning and delays, the adult male prison estate was operating at 98.0% to 99.7% occupancy between October 2022 and August 2024 and remains alarmingly full. Overcrowding is endemic, staff are overburdened, and access to services and purposeful activity is poor. The current prison system has had to focus on ensuring there are sufficient places to house prisoners. While the efforts of HMPPS staff to avert disaster are admirable, this state of crisis undermines their efforts to rehabilitate prisoners and reduce reoffending. It also represents poor value for money for the taxpayer, with MoJ and HMPPS unable to make sufficient progress on maintaining existing cells, and needing to rent police cells due to a lack of capacity. MoJ and HMPPS have relied on the early release of prisoners to prevent total gridlock in the criminal justice system. Despite releasing thousands of prisoners early, MoJ still forecasts it will run out of capacity by early 2026. It is relying on the ongoing independent Sentencing Review to prevent this. However, any decisions to divert more people from prison will likely increase pressures on other parts of the system, particularly the Probation Service, which already has issues with staff shortages and high caseloads. This Committee has recently reported on the Crown Court backlog, which is significantly delaying access to justice. Courts and prisons cannot be viewed in isolation: creating sufficient capacity in prisons is vital to enabling a reduction in the courts backlog, and in turn if the courts backlog is reduced this will decrease the number of people on remand. If prisons continue to operate at near–full capacity, this will exacerbate the backlog and stymie efforts to improve efficiency in the justice system.  

London: House of Commons, 2025. 27p.

By Andrew Garin, Dmitri K. Koustas, Carl McPherson, Samuel Norris, Matthew Pecenco, Evan K. Rose, Yotam Shem-Tov, and Jeffrey Weaver.

We study the effect of incarceration on wages, self-employment, and taxes and transfers in North Carolina and Ohio using two quasi-experimental research designs: discontinuities in sentencing guidelines and random assignment to judges. Across both states, incarceration generates short-term drops in economic activity while individuals remain in prison. As a result, a year-long sentence decreases cumulative earnings over five years by 13%. Beyond five years, however, there is no evidence of lower employment, wage earnings, or self-employment in either state, as well as among defendants with no prior incarceration history. These results suggest that upstream factors, such as other types of criminal justice interactions or pre-existing labor market detachment, are more likely to be the cause of low earnings among the previously incarcerated, who we estimate would earn just $5,000 per year on average if spared a prison sentence.

Working Paper 32747, ”National Bureau of Economic Research”, July 2024. 77p.

By The Delaware Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. Disabilities Law Program

The Disabilities Law Program (DLP) of Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. (CLASI) serves as Delaware’s Protection and Advocacy (P&A) system, charged with protecting the legal rights of people with physical and mental disabilities. Under federal law, P&A systems have the authority to conduct monitoring and investigative activities in a variety of settings where people with disabilities live and receive services, including correctional facilities. Conditions in correctional facilities are of great concern to CLASI and to other P&A systems around the country, due to the overrepresentation of people with disabilities, including mental illness, in correctional settings. Research also suggests that the experience of incarceration, and of segregation or solitary confinement in particular, can cause mental health problems and also exacerbate existing mental illness. History of CLASI’s Interventions on Behalf of Incarcerated People with Mental Illness Held in Solitary Confinement In 2013, CLASI and the ACLU of Delaware became troubled by reports they were receiving about the placement of individuals with serious mental illness in solitary confinement, meaning that they were confined to cells for at least 22 hours per day, often for extended periods of time. After investigation, in 2015 CLASI, the ACLU, and Pepper Hamilton LLP filed a federal lawsuit, CLASI v. Coupe, against the Delaware Department of Correction (DDOC), which detailed concerns about the treatment of individuals with mental illness placed in restrictive housing environments, including solitary confinement. These concerns included minimal out-of-cell time, lack of access to mental health treatment, and conditions for individuals placed on suicide watch. The parties settled the suit in 2016, and DDOC agreed to make several changes related to the use of restrictive housing. These included: increased mental health staffing; minimum requirements for out-of- cell time; establishing that individuals could not be placed in disciplinary detention for more than 15 consecutive days; requiring a break of at least 15 days between disciplinary detention sanctions; and that no individual classified as seriously mentally ill could be placed in disciplinary detention for any period of time unless they presented an immediate danger and there was no reasonable alternative. The terms of the settlement were effective for five years and concluded in 2021. While the settlement was in effect, CLASI monitored DDOC’s progress by reviewing data, meeting regularly with DDOC leadership, and conducting on-site facility visits with an expert monitor. CLASI’s Recent Monitoring of Correctional Facilities and Treatment of Individuals with Mental Illness In the spring of 2023, CLASI retained two experts to assist its staff in conducting updated monitoring, in order to assess current conditions at DDOC facilities with a specific focus on restrictive housing units, including designated mental health units and units housing individuals in disciplinary detention. CLASI’s monitoring found areas where DDOC appeared to remain in compliance with the policy changes agreed to as part of the CLASI v. Coupe settlement. It also found areas where additional progress had been made, particularly in the implementation of Residential Treatment Units (RTUs) for individuals with mental illness at two facilities. However, the monitoring also identified several major areas of concern. These areas included: suicide prevention practices, the need to expand RTUs, the continuum of mental health services and crisis intervention practices, substance abuse treatment protocols, and the use of punitive point and classification systems and privilege sanctions as “backdoor” methods to restrict and isolate incarcerated individuals, now that more traditional disciplinary detention practices, such as solitary confinement, have been reformed. CLASI is particularly concerned with the need for increased transparency and data sharing to enable it to effectively assess current conditions and carry out its obligations as the P&A. During the monitoring process, DDOC unfortunately denied many of CLASI’s requests for more specific data and information, which made it difficult to assess how DDOC’s current practices compare with those reported while the CLASI v. Coupe settlement was in effect. There is a particular need for more transparency with respect to DDOC’s practices surrounding the use of points-based classification, privilege restrictions, and administrative segregation. CLASI urges DDOC to review the findings and specific recommendations in this report, summarized below, to ensure that incarcerated Delawareans with mental illness are treated fairly and humanely. We also urge DDOC to increase transparency by collecting and making available data regarding the length of restrictions, use of point-based classification, privilege restrictions, and administrative segregation in its facilities.

The Delaware Community Legal Aid Society, Inc, 2024. 25p.

By Christina Emilian, Noura Al-Juffali, Seena Fazel

Prison populations have been increasing worldwide. Previous studies suggest that there is a high burden of psychiatric morbidity in people in prison, but, to our knowledge, the last published meta-analysis of prevalence is more than a decade old. We aimed to describe the pooled prevalence of depression, psychosis, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia spectrum disorders for people who are incarcerated. Methods In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched six databases and grey literature published from database inception until Aug 8, 2024, with no language or geographical restrictions. We included primary quantitative studies that reported the prevalence of depression and psychotic disorders in the unselected prison population, based their diagnoses on clinical examination or from interviews and by the use of validated diagnostic instruments, met standardised criteria of the ICD or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for the diagnoses, and provided pooled prevalences for psychosis in the previous 6 months and clinical depression in the previous 2 weeks to 1 month. We excluded studies that used selected samples or were only qualitative. We investigated bipolar and schizophrenia spectrum disorders as separate diagnostic subcategories. We synthesised studies using random-effects meta-analysis and explored heterogeneity with meta-regression and subgroup analyses. The protocol is registered with PROSPERO, CRD42022378568. Findings We identified 131 publications reporting the prevalence of mental illness in 58838 people in prison in 43 countries. We estimated that the prevalence of depression was 12·8% (95% CI 11·1–14·6) and for any psychosis was 4·1% (3·6–4·7). For diagnostic subcategories, we found that the prevalence of bipolar disorder was 1·7% (1·0–2·6) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders was 3·6% (1·3–7·1). Between-study heterogeneity was substantial for these estimates (I² 69–97%) with few explanations. However, subgroup analyses revealed that people in prison in lowincome and middle-income countries had higher prevalences for depression (16·7% [95% CI 13·6–20·0]) than in high-income countries (10·8% [9·0–13·0]), and that, for people with psychosis who are incarcerated, psychiatrists were less likely to diagnose (3·5% [2·8–4·3]) than were non-psychiatrists (4·7% [3·9–5·5]). Interpretation Our study indicates that the prevalence of severe mental illness in people who are incarcerated worldwide is considerable. Meeting the treatment needs of people in prison who have mental ill health remains an ongoing challenge for public mental health. More evidence on how to improve the assessment, treatment, and linkage to services on release, which will require more research-friendly prison services, is now needed.

Lancet Public Health 2025; 10:, pages 97–110

By David S. Rubenstein & Pratheepan Gulasekaram

The vast majority of detained immigrants are held in facilities operated by private corporations. Over the past decade, academics and dedicated advocates have shed critical light on the structural causes and effects of privatized immigration detention, offering a range of policy prescriptions along the way. Until now, however, federalism has been a virtual blind spot in that reformist agenda. Intervening, this Essay draws federalism into the spotlight.

Stanford Law Review Online Volume 71 (2018-2019), 13p.

By Emily J. Salisbury & Allison Crawford

Over 20 years has passed since the principles of gender-responsive correctional strategies were published in a foundational report in the U.S. These practices acknowledge the unique characteristics and life experiences of justice-involved women, have undergone rigorous empirical testing, and are shown to effectively reduce women’s recidivism. In part, they supported the United Nation’s adoption of minimum human rights afforded to women serving custodial and non-custodial criminal sentences. This paper presents updated research evidence that continues to amplify the need for gender-responsive principles and practices, including the role of victimization in girls’ and women’s offending trajectories and the intersection of relationships, relational identity, and trauma as key drivers for justice involvement. Further, because the perinatal needs of justice-involved women are a frequently overlooked area of inquiry among the gender-responsive literature, this scholarship is also summarized using a reproductive justice framework. Finally, we illustrate the impact of gender-responsive scholarship by sharing some of the practice and technology innovations that have emerged, while acknowledging there is much yet to accomplish.

Health & Justice, Vol. 13 (1) , 1-15,