By Joe Russo, Samuel Peterson, Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

Racial and ethnic disparities are pervasive in the U.S. criminal justice system. These disparities often compound as an individual progresses through each stage of the justice system, beginning with police contact and continuing through prosecution and correctional control. Not surprisingly, people of color are overrepresented in the probation and parole population, yet relatively little attention has been paid to disparate treatment and outcomes at this stage.

Probation and parole staff and other system actors exercise considerable discretion in responding to technical violations. Technical violations are instances of noncompliance with the conditions of supervision — such as failing to report to the supervising officer, leaving the jurisdiction without permission, and testing positive on a drug test—that, while not criminal, can lead to severe consequences for justice-involved individuals. The spectrum of responses to technical violations can range from a warning all the way up to a recommendation to revoke supervision. Evidence suggests that technical violations are an important driver of incarceration.

The handling of technical violations may be influenced by a variety of factors, including officer judgment and jurisdictional policy, and there is evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in how they are handled. Ultimately, disparities in the processing of technical violations can exacerbate and perpetuate existing disparities in incarceration and undermine the legitimacy of the justice system. This report presents findings and recommendations from an expert panel that explored challenges and opportunities associated with reducing disparities at the technical violation decision point.

Key Findings

• The lack of evidence on the sources of disparities in community supervision contributes to a lack of known approaches for responding to them.

• The working relationship between an officer and a supervisee is critical to successful outcomes.

• A lack of diversity or cultural sensitivity among officers and supervisee perceptions of justice system illegitimacy can be barriers to forming quality relationships of trust.

• Research is needed to determine the impacts of (1) such factors as the working relationship between and officer and a supervisee, a lack of diversity or cultural sensitivity among officers, and supervisee perceptions of justice system illegitimacy on supervisee violation behaviors, (2) responses to these behaviors, and (3) disparities.

• Supervisees of color often have inequitable access to resources, which can be a barrier to successful completion of supervision and a contributing factor in disparate outcomes.

• Information management tools are needed to increase transparency about and accountability for disparities.

• Jurisdictions would benefit from developing data dashboards to help track, analyze, and display key metrics so that progress may be measured — and corrective actions taken as needed — at the officer and agency levels.

  Recommendations

• Develop best practices for the use of technology to eliminate barriers to compliance. Evaluate pros, cons, and impacts of these approaches on outcomes and disparities.

• Develop best practices and strategies to directly provide resources (e.g., food pantries, clothing, transit vouchers) to disadvantaged supervisees and/or coordinate with community resources to provide these services. Explore the feasibility of monetary assistance for sustenance and/or emergency support.

• Conduct research into supervisee perceptions of the justice system’s legitimacy along racial and ethnic lines and the impact of these perceptions on compliance and outcomes.

• Conduct research to determine whether the use of credible messengers improves relationships with supervisees and to examine the impact of this practice on supervision outcomes.

• Study jurisdictions that have reduced disparities to better understand the dynamics associated with successful outcomes and to develop an evidence base of effective strategies.

• Conduct research to determine the impacts of more-general system reforms (e.g., caps on probation sentences, reductions in the number of technical violations) on disparities in technical violation behaviors, responses, and outcomes.

• Develop management tools (e.g., dashboards) to track disparity metrics, in near real time, at the agency, supervisor, and officer levels to promote transparency and accountability and to identify patterns to be investigated and addressed (e.g., coachable moments for staff, policy or program review).

• Reinforce supervision practices in which staff actively engage in barrier-reduction strategies to "meet supervisees where they are" in terms of appropriate accommodations and service delivery that do not compromise public safety.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 32p.

by Phil Bowen

This data review is a quantitative analysis of Citizens Advice data for clients who faced fine arrears between 2019 and 2023. It sits within our research project looking at the impact of court fines on people on low incomes, alongside our report, 'Where the hell am I going to get that money from?: The impact of court fines on people on low incomes'. It specifically seeks answers to the following questions: How has the court fine been used over the past five years?; Which offences do people get fined for?; Who gets fined and what are the demographics of those individuals who receive fines?; And what are the outcomes associated with fines, specifically repayment rates, re-offending rates and imprisonment for fine default?

London: Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024. 37p.

by Lucy Slade

Despite court fines being the most used sentence in the English and Welsh criminal justice system, it is rare that they feature in the discussion of justice reform engaged in by policymakers, academics and the third sector. To shine a light on this important, but under examined, area of our justice system, the Centre has undertaken a research project looking specifically what is the impact of their use. It is the first of its kind to look at what ought to happen— and what actually does. As part of this project, we have reviewed the literature of court fines and financial impositions in the criminal courts of England and Wales. This is accompanied by our report, which brings together the findings of our review of publicly available data, and qualitative interviews with people in low-incomes who have received a fine.

London: Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024. 11p.

by Lucy Slade and Stephen Whitehead

Almost everyone who is convicted in a court in England and Wales leaves with a bill to pay. Yet there is a striking gap in our knowledge on the most common sentencing outcome handed down by our courts: the court fine. A new report by the Centre for Justice Innovation published today (16 May 2024) seeks to address this knowledge gap. The report is called: “Where the hell am I going to get that money from?” The impact of court fines on people on low incomes.

The research, specifically conducted during this cost of living crisis, suggest that the impacts of getting a court fine are often highly disproportionate: while better off people experience only minor hardships, such as forgoing a holiday,for a significant number of those on the lowest incomes paying their court fine pushed them deeper towards unmanageable debt, destitution and significant levels of anxiety and mental anguish.

The research highlights that, contrary to the sentencing objectives of the court fine, the financial impact of fines and charges are not experienced equally by people with different levels of means. The research also found major gaps on the data collected, especially on the socio-economic status of those who are fined, meaning there is not a clear picture of who gets fined, who pays and who doesn’t (and why).

The research. The research is a comprehensive study based on a wide range of sources including interviews with 56 people with experience of fines who live on a low income; a literature review; analysis of public data on court fines; and of Citizens Advice data for clients who faced fine arrears between 2019 and 2023; and focus groups with 14 magistrates.

Findings from the data review:

• Men received the majority of fines (2,534,714, 64%), with women receiving 944,547 (24%), and a further 474,557 fines issued where sex was not recorded (12%). This is in keeping with the preponderance of men in the sentencing and the criminal justice caseload more generally.

• Women were proportionally more likely to receive fines than men (85% compared with 73%), in part, because they are more likely to commit the less serious offences, which result in a fine.

• Of the ten offences for which fines are most often issued, women receive the majority of fines for only one of these, TV licence evasion, where they represent three quarters of people whose gender is recorded.

Key findings

Almost everyone who is convicted of a crime in a court in England and Wales leaves with a bill to pay. Over 75% of people convicted each year are sentenced to a fine. Yet while many of the offences for which fines are given are deemed “minor,” the research suggests that, for people on low incomes, the impact of fines is anything but.

• A large number of the offences for which court fines are imposed are strongly linked to people’s pre-existing poverty, such as TV licence evasion.

• Many of the 56 interviewees reported that the financial burdens placed on them by the court had pushed them further into debt, with some pushed into destitution and into further offending to pay off the court fine.

• For some, the financial burdens took a severe toll on their mental and physical health, particularly where they faced prolonged payment periods in a never-ending cycle of payments.

• While fine amount

  • are meant to be determined by an individual’s financial circumstances, this system did not seem to work effectively in practice.

  • The imposition of other non means-tested financial charges alongside the fine, such as prosecution costs, often pushed the total amount owed to the court up from something affordable to an amount that felt impossible to pay in the time allowed.

  • Court fine enforcement action (which is subject to less regulation than commercial credit recovery), particularly the threat of bailiffs, added further financial and wellbeing strains, especially for those already struggling to make insufficient household budgets last.

  • Magistrates suggested that they often felt their hands were tied, leaving them to sentence people on low incomes to fines, the magistrates knew they could not pay.

  • Many interviewees felt that a fine was, in theory, an appropriate punishment for the offence they committed, but the confusing processes of the current system often meant that the total amount they eventually needed to pay was seen as excessive

London: The Centre for Justice Innovation, 2024, 41p.

By The Death Penalty Research Center

In January 2024, Ohio lawmakers announced plans to expand the use of the death penalty to permit executions with nitrogen gas, as Alabama had just done a week earlier. But at the same time the Attorney General and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association are championing this legislation, a bipartisan group of state legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty based on “significant concerns on who is sentenced to death and how that sentence is carried out.” The competing narratives make it more important than ever for Ohioans to have a meaningful, accurate understanding of how capital punishment is being used, including whether the state has progressed beyond the mistakes of its past.

Early 19th century Ohio Black Laws imposed various legal restrictions on the rights and status of Black people in the state, not dissimilar to what would later become Black Codes in many Southern states. As constitutional historian Dr. Stephen Middleton explains, “Although the penal code of Ohio did not explicitly provide for a dual system for handling criminal cases, the Black Laws naturally made race an element in the criminal justice system.”

Ohio’s 1807 “Negro Evidence Law” prohibited Black people from testifying against white people in court, thus instituting a legal double standard. Articles in African American newspapers from the time reported numerous instances where white assailants attacked Black victims with impunity because there was no legal consequence without a white person who could testify on the victims’ behalf. The state also passed racial restrictions on juries in 1816 and 1831, officially barring Black people from jury service. These laws no longer exist, but modern studies reveal that jury discrimination continues.

One of the most significant ties between historical death sentencing and the modern use of capital punishment is the preferential valuing of white victims. Multiple Ohio-specific studies have concluded that when a case involves a white victim—especially a white female victim—defendants are more likely to receive a death sentence or be executed. A review of all aggravated murder charges in Hamilton County from January 1992 through August 2017 revealed that prosecutors are 4.54 times more likely to file charges with death penalty eligibility if there is at least one white victim, compared to similarly situated cases without white victims. A separate study of Ohio executions between 1976 and 2014 found that homicides involving white female victims are six times more likely to result in an execution than homicides involving Black male victims. DPIC independently analyzed race of victim data for all 465 death sentences in the state and found that 75% of death sentences were for cases with at least one white victim. For context, most murder victims in the state are Black (66%).

Black capital defendants have also faced instances of overt racism from jurors, prosecutors, and even their own attorneys. During closing arguments, the prosecuting attorney in Dwight Denson’s trial suggested that if jurors did not sentence him to death, they might as well rename Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood to “Jungle Land,” adding, “Leave it to Dwight Denson. Leave it to people like him.” An attorney for Malik Allah-U-Akbar (tried as Odraye Jones) reiterated false, racialized testimony from an expert witness during closing arguments: “I think it’s a quarter of the…urban [B]lack American youth come up with antisocial personality disorder…. This isn’t a situation you can treat. … You have to put him out of society until it runs its course.”

As the current debate over the use of the death penalty in Ohio continues, this report provides historical information, context, and data to inform the critical decisions that will follow.

Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2024. 49p.

By Solitary Watch, American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana; Jesuit Social Research Institute/Loyola University New Orleans

The use of solitary confinement in the state of Louisiana has penetrated the broader public consciousness largely through the story of the Angola 3. Over the past decade, the harrowing saga of three African American men—all likely innocent of the prison murders that were used to justify confining them in solitary for up to 43 years—sparked media attention and public outcry as the ultimate expression of harsh, racist, Southern injustice. But there is another story to be told about solitary confinement in Louisiana. Like the story of the Angola 3, it is deeply rooted in the history of racial subjugation and captivity in the South, which begins with slavery and stretches through convict leasing and Jim Crow to the modern era of mass incarceration. However, it extends far beyond the lives of just three men. This is the story of a prison system where, on any given day, nearly one in five people is being held in isolation, placed there by prison staff, often for minor rule violations or “administrative” reasons. When it conducted a full count in the fall of 2017, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LADOC) reported that 19 percent of the men in its state prisons—2,709 in all—had been in solitary confinement for more than two weeks. Many had been there for years or even decades. The Vera Institute of Justice, which released its own report on solitary confinement in Louisiana earlier this year, similarly found over 17 percent of the state’s prison population in solitary in 2016. These rates of solitary confinement use were more than double the next highest state’s, and approximately four times the national average. Given that Louisiana also has the second highest incarceration rate in the United States, which leads the world in both incarceration and solitary confinement use, it is clear that Louisiana holds the title of solitary confinement capital of the world. The state has this dishonorable distinction at a time when a growing body of evidence offers proof of the devastating psychological and social harms caused by prolonged solitary confinement, as well as its ineffectiveness as a tool to reduce prison violence. In 2015, when it revised its Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Mandela Rules), the United Nations acknowledged that solitary confinement of 15 days or more is cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment that often rises to the level of torture. Taken together, these facts indicate that the state of Louisiana is abusing and at times torturing thousands of its citizens for no legitimate purpose whatsoever. The numbers, however, still tell only part of the story. Just as Albert Woodfox’s memoir "Solitary" powerfully conveys what it is like to live for decades in conditions that are designed “to break people,” the words of individuals living in solitary confinement are vital to understanding the reality of what is happening today in Louisiana’s prisons. For this report, we collected information directly from those men and women. The bulk of the report is based on detailed responses from more than 700 lengthy surveys completed by individuals in solitary, whose names and identifying information have been changed to protect their safety and privacy. Their descriptions paint a grim picture of long stretches of time spent in small cells that are often windowless, filthy, and/or subject to extreme temperatures, where they are denied basic human needs such as adequate food and daily exercise, and subject to many forms of abuse as well as to unending idleness and loneliness, resulting in physical and mental deterioration. Since surveys were returned voluntarily, the results cannot be viewed as a comprehensive or representative sampling. Yet with more than 700 responses from all nine of the state’s prisons, which provided personal narratives as well as quantitative data,8 we believe our report complements, builds upon, and adds an even greater sense of urgency to previous recommendations for reform of solitary confinement in Louisiana, including those included in the recent report by the Vera Institute of Justice. At a moment when LADOC has, for the first time, shown willingness to reconsider and reduce its use of solitary confinement, the findings in this report offer vital insights—and illuminate a path toward the sweeping changes that must be made if Louisiana is to create a prison system that succeeds in both advancing public safety and preserving the human rights of incarcerated people. Major findings from this report include the following: • More than 77 percent of respondents said they had been held in solitary confinement for more than a year, and 30 percent said they had been in solitary for more than five years. LADOC has not collected data on duration of time in solitary. Nationally, less than 20 percent of individuals in solitary, on average, have been there for more than one year. The United Nations has called on countries to ban the use of solitary beyond two weeks. • Just over 56 percent of respondents were in Extended Lockdown, which is generally used as punishment for prison rule violations, and which has no maximum duration. This type of segregation violates UN prohibitions on both using isolation for punishment (as opposed to safety) and using it for indefinite periods. • African Americans were over-represented among respondents. This racial disparity is consistent with the Vera Institute’s report, which also found higher percentages of African Americans and lower percentages of whites in solitary than in the general prison population. • More than half of respondents believed their mental health had worsened during their time in solitary. Most others said it had stayed the same or weren’t sure. • Many described psychological problems consistent with research on the negative mental health effects of prolonged solitary confinement. These include anxiety, panic attacks, depression, hopelessness, sensitivity to light and sound, visual and auditory hallucinations, rage, paranoia, and difficulty interacting with others. Some expressed fear that the damage would be permanent, and they would “never be the same again.” • More than one-quarter of respondents reported engaging in self-harm, including cutting and head-banging, while in solitary, while less than 6 percent said they had done so while in general population. More than 66 percent said that they had witnessed others attempting to harm themselves frequently while in solitary. Of those who had harmed themselves, 4 percent said they received counseling in response, while more than 26 percent said they were punished for it. etc.....

New Orleans: Solitary Watch American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana Jesuit Social Research Institute/Loyola University New Orleans. 2019. 135p.

By Judith A. Ryder

The rate of female incarceration continues to surge, resulting in over 714,000 women currently being held behind bars worldwide. Females generally enter carceral facilities with low educational profiles, and educational programming inside is rarely a high priority. Access to education is a proven contributor to women’s social and economic empowerment and can minimise some of the obstacles they encounter after being released from custody. Support for the intellectual potential of incarcerated female ‘students’ can address intersecting inequalities that impede access to social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure. Policymakers, academics and activists concerned with gender equality must begin by focusing on academic and vocational program development for female prisoners, built through strong community partnerships, and inclusive of trauma informed supports.

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9(1), pp. 139-149. 2020

By Paul McGorrery and Paul Schollum

When sentencing someone for criminal offending, courts can select from a number of possible sentencing orders, such as imprisonment, a drug and alcohol treatment order, a community correction order (CCO), a fine, an adjourned undertaking, or a dismissal with or without conviction. Courts can also often impose a combination of these sentencing orders if doing so would be appropriate in the circumstances of the case. The focus of this report is a particular combination of sentencing orders imposed in the same case: imprisonment with a CCO (a combined order). A CCO is a sentencing order that an offender serves in the community while subject to various mandatory conditions as well as at least one optional condition. When courts impose a combined order, the offender commences their CCO on release from prison. Aim and research questions The aim of this report is to present a statistical profile of combined orders of imprisonment with a CCO in the 9 calendar years from 2012 to 2020.

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2023. 28p.

By Anna Chalton, Dugan Dallimore and Paul McGorrery

Threat Offences in Victoria examines sentencing outcomes from 2015 to 2019 for five types of threat offences: threat to kill, threat to inflict serious injury, threat to destroy or damage property, threat to commit a sexual offence and threat to assault an emergency worker. It considers the offences co-sentenced alongside threat offences and the prior and subsequent offending rates for people sentenced for threat offending.

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2021. 76p.

By Paul McGorrery and Zsombor Bathy

This report reviews 20 years of data in our Sentencing Snapshots to identify changes in sentencing practices in the higher courts for a select number of offences:

• murder, manslaughter and culpable driving causing death

• various cause injury offences

• drug trafficking and cultivation offences

• rape, incest and a number of child sex offences.

It outlines offender numbers, imprisonment rates, imprisonment lengths and non-parole periods for each offence.

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2022. 24p.

By Paul McGorrery and Zsombor Bathy

An aggregate prison sentence involves a court imposing a single prison sentence on multiple criminal offences rather than a separate prison sentence on each offence. Table 1 illustrates the difference between aggregate and non-aggregate prison sentences. In the first example, the offender has received a single aggregate prison sentence of two years for aggravated burglary and theft. And in the second example, the offender has received separate non-aggregate prison sentences for the same two offences. The end result in both examples is identical – a two-year total sentence – but the method of arriving at that total sentence differs.

There are a number of advantages to aggregate sentencing. It can significantly improve court efficiency, especially in cases with a large number of charges. It can avoid the impression of ‘artificiality’ in the sentencing process, particularly if there is an impression that the court has determined the most appropriate total effective sentence that is proportionate to the overall offending, but then has adjusted the various charge-level sentences and cumulation orders to achieve that result. It can also reduce calculation errors that may occur when charge-level sentences are made wholly or partly cumulative or concurrent, again especially in cases with a large number of charges. Aggregate sentencing can also, however, reduce transparency in sentencing, limit courts’ ability to assess current sentencing practices and, as this paper shows, result in some offences receiving sentences in excess of their maximum penalty. There has, to date, been no examination of Victorian courts’ use of aggregate prison sentences since their introduction in 1997. The aims of this paper are to utilise court data to review trends in the use of aggregate prison sentences in Victoria, and to then consider issues arising from their use.

Melbourne: Advisory Sentencing Council (VIC), 2023. 28p.

By Vera Institute of Justice

Postsecondary education in prison has positive effects for students who are incarcerated, their families and communities, public safety, and safety inside prisons. Research has demonstrated that postsecondary education reduces incarceration, makes prisons safer places to live and work, and improves employment and wages. Nationally, taxpayers also see major benefits, with every dollar invested in prison-based education yielding more than four dollars in taxpayer savings from reduced incarceration costs. Most people in prison are both interested in and academically qualified for postsecondary education (64 percent), yet only a tiny fraction of people in prison completes a credential while incarcerated (9 percent). This gap between educational aspirations and participation is driven largely by a lack of capacity due to limited funding.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 3p.

By Benjamin van Rooij, Malouke Esra Kuiper, and Alexis Piquero

Legal punishment, at least in part, serves a behavioral function to reduce and prevent offending behavior. The present paper offers an integrated review of the diverse mechanisms through which punishment may affect such behavior. It moves beyond a legal view that focuses on just three such mechanisms (deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation), to also include other socializing, delegitimizing, compliance obstructing, and offence adapting mechanisms in how punishment may influence offending. The paper assesses the quality of existing empirical knowledge about the different effects of punishment and the conditions under which these effects exist. It concludes that punishment has at least thirteen different influences on crime prevention, five positive and eight negative. It shows that such effects are conditional, depending on the offender, offence, punishment, and jurisdiction. Furthermore, it shows that the effects vary in their directness, proximity, onset and longevity. It concludes that our current empirical understanding does not match the complex reality of how punishment comes to shape crime. In light of this, the paper develops a research agenda on the integrated effects of punishment moving beyond limited causal mechanisms to embrace the fuller complexity of how sanctions shape human conduct by adopting a complexity science approach.

UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper Forthcoming.Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2024-13. Center for Law & Behavior Research Paper No. 2024-01

By Vishal Kamat, Samuel Norris and Matthew Pecenco

The criminal justice system affects millions of Americans through criminal convictions and incarceration. In this paper, we introduce a new method for credibly estimating the effects of both conviction and incarceration using randomly assigned judges as instruments for treatment. Misdemeanor convictions, especially for defendants with a shorter criminal record, cause an increase in the number of new offenses committed over the following five years. Incarceration on more serious felony charges, in contrast, reduces recidivism during the period of incapacitation, but has no effect after release. Our method allows the researcher to isolate specific treatment effects of interest as well as estimate the effect of broader policies; we find that courts could reduce crime by dismissing marginal charges against defendants accused of misdemeanors, with larger reductions among first-time defendants and those facing more serious charges.

Written March 2024. SSRN.

By Paul H. Robinson and Jeffrey Seaman

The decarceration movement enjoys enthusiastic support from many academics and activists who point out imprisonment’s failure to rehabilitate and its potential criminogenic effects. At the same time, many fiscal conservatives and taxpayer groups are critical of imprisonment’s high costs and supportive of finding cheaper alternatives. Yet, despite this widespread support, the decarceration movement has made little real progress at getting offenders out of prison, in large part because community views, and thus political officials, are strongly committed to the importance of doing justice – giving offenders the punishment they deserve – and decarceration is commonly seen as inconsistent with that nonnegotiable principle. Indeed, almost no one in the decarceration movement has attempted to formulate a large-scale decarceration plan that still provides for what the community would see as just punishment.

In this Article, we offer just such a plan by demonstrating that it is entirely possible to avoid the incarceration of most offenders through utilizing non-incarcerative sanctions that can carry a total punitive effect comparable to physical prison. New technologies allow for imposing “electronic prison” sentences where authorities can monitor, control, and punish offenders in a cheaper and less damaging way than physical prison while still doing justice. Further, the monitoring conditions provided in electronic prison allow for the imposition of a wide array of other non-incarcerative sanctions that were previously difficult or impossible to enforce. Even while it justly punishes, electronic prison can dramatically increase an offender’s opportunities for training, treatment, education, and rehabilitation while avoiding the problems of unsupported families, socialization to criminality, and problematic reentry after physical incarceration. And, from a public safety standpoint, electronic prison can reduce recidivism by eliminating the criminogenic effect of incarceration and also provides longer-term monitoring of offenders than an equivalently punitive shorter term of physical imprisonment. Of course, one can imagine a variety of objections to an electronic prison system, ranging from claims it violates an offender’s rights to fears it may widen the net of carceral control. The Article provides a response to each.

Electronic prison is one of those rare policy proposals that should garner support from across the political spectrum due to effectively addressing the complaints against America’s incarceration system lodged by voices on the left, right, and center. Whether one’s primary concern is decarcerating prisoners and providing offenders with needed treatment, training, counseling, and education, or one’s concern is reducing crime, imposing deserved punishment, or simply reducing government expenditures, implementing an electronic prison system would provide a dramatic improvement over America’s current incarceration policies.

Written April 2024. U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 24-20,

By Andrew Jordan,  Ezra Karger,  Derek Neal

   We examined 70,581 felony court cases filed in Chicago, IL, from 1990–2007. We exploit case randomization to assess the impact of judge assignment and sentencing decisions on the arrival of new charges. We find that, in marginal cases, incarceration creates large and lasting reductions in recidivism among first offenders. Yet, among marginal repeat offenders, incarceration creates only short-run incapacitation effects and no lasting reductions in the incidence of new felony charges. These treatment-impact differences inform ongoing legal debates concerning the merits of sentencing rules that recommend leniency for first offenders while encouraging or mandating incarceration sentences for many repeat offenders. We show that methods that fail to estimate separate outcome equations for first versus repeat offenders or fail to model judge-specific sentencing tendencies separately for cases involving first versus repeat offenders produce misleading results for first offenders.  

 Working Paper 31939. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2024. 73p.

By Reprieve

Researchers at Reprieve conducted an in-depth comparative study of botched lethal injection executions in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty, cross-referenced against the 1,407 lethal injection executions carried out or attempted during that period. The research found that: • Black people had 220% higher odds of suffering a botched lethal injection execution than white people. • Botched lethal injection executions occurred whether a one-drug or a three-drug protocol was used, and regardless of whether the primary drug was sodium thiopental, pentobarbital or midazolam. • Botched lethal injection executions typically lasted a very long time. Over a third lasted over 45 minutes; over a quarter lasted an hour or more. • The odds of a botched lethal injection execution increased by 6% on average for each additional year of age. • In the state of Arkansas, 75% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 33% of all executions.

In the state of Georgia, 86% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 30% of all executions. • In the state of Oklahoma, 83% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 30% of all executions. • Secrecy and haste were found to be factors contributing to increased rates of botched and prolonged executions.   

New Orleans LA: Reprieve. 2024, 36pg

by Osborne Jackson

This paper examines the short-run and long-run effects of felony conviction on crime using increases in felony larceny thresholds as an exogenous, negative shock to felony conviction probability. A felony larceny threshold is the dollar value of stolen property that determines whether a larceny theft may be charged in court as a felony rather than a misdemeanor. Felony larceny threshold policy helps states govern felony convictions, thereby regulating punishment severity.

The author focuses on the theft value distribution between old and new larceny thresholds. In theory, this “response region” is where, following enactment of a higher threshold, the incentives to commit larceny of a given stolen value amount increase the most, because that crime switches from being a felony to a misdemeanor.

Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. 2020, 80pg

By Aaron Littman

The machinery of mass incarceration in America is huge, intricate, and destructive. To understand it and to tame it, scholars and activists look for its levers of power—where are they, who holds them, and what motivates them? This much we know: legislators criminalize, police arrest, prosecutors charge, judges sentence, prison officials confine, and probation and parole officials manage release.

As this Article reveals, jailers, too, have their hands on the controls. The sheriffs who run jails—along with the county commissioners who fund them—have tremendous but unrecognized power over the size and shape of our criminal legal system, particularly in rural areas and for people accused or convicted of low-level crimes.

Because they have the authority to build jails (or not) as well as the authority to release people (or not), they exercise significant control not merely over conditions but also over both the supply of and demand for jail bedspace: how large they should be, how many people they should confine, and who those people should be. By advocating, financing, and contracting for jail bedspace, sheriffs and commissioners determine who has a say and who has a stake in carceral expansion and contraction. Through their exercise of arrest and release powers, sheriffs affect how many and which people fill their cells. Constraints they create or relieve on carceral infrastructure exert or alleviate pressure on officials at the local, state, and federal levels.

Drawing on surveys of state statutes and of municipal securities filings, data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, case law, and media coverage, this Article tells overlooked stories—of sheriffs who send their deputies out door knocking to convince voters to support a new tax to fund a new jail, and of commissioners who raise criminal court fees and sign contracts to detain “rental inmates” to ensure that incarceration “pays for itself.” It also tells of sheriffs who override the arrest decisions of city police officers, release defendants who have not made bail, and cut sentences short—and of those who would rather build more beds than push back on carceral inertia.

A spotlight on jails and the officials who run them illuminates important attributes of our carceral crisis. The power and incentives to build jail bedspace are as consequential as the power and incentives to fill it. Expanding a county’s jailing capacity has profound ramifications across local, state, and federal criminal legal systems. Sheriffs have a unique combination of controls over how big and how full their jails are, but this role consolidation does not produce the restraint that some have predicted. Their disclaimers of responsibility are a smokescreen, obscuring sheriffs’ bureaucratic commitment to perpetuating mass incarceration. State courts and federal agencies have increasingly recognized and regulated public profiteering through jail contracting, and advocates have begun to hold jailers accountable, challenging expansion in polling booths and budget meetings.

74 Vanderbilt Law Review 861 (2021)

By Switchback

The report focuses on prison-leavers’ mental health. We know that the experience of prison-release can cause high levels of anxiety. At the same time mental health care in prison and especially after release is minimal and worsening.

Meanwhile at Switchback, over the last two years we have seen a 15% rise in the number of our Trainees with identified mental health needs (from 29% to 44%).

This report highlights the urgent need for us to reshape the way we release people from prison. We are calling for better mental health support for people leaving prison and for a prison release system that responds to the emotional challenges that people leaving prison are facing. A system that supports people to live life differently.

The experiences included within the report demonstrate inequities in access to care for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, with 90% of Switchback Trainees being from an ethnic minority background. Importantly mental health was a repeated topic of discussion in our Experts by Experience meetings, and together we decided we wanted to do something about it.

London: Switchback, 2024. 24p.