By: Matt Davis, Desiree L. Fox, Ciara D. Hansen,, Ann M. Miller

Native people are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States. Several factors contribute: a history of federal oppression and efforts to erode Native culture, a series of federal laws that rejected tribal justice systems in place long before European contact, historical trauma that has a lasting impact on the physical and mental well-being of Native people, a complicated jurisdictional structure that pulls Native people further into justice involvement, and a deficiency of representation for the accused in tribal courts. Although people accused of crime in tribal courts are afforded the right to counsel, tribal governments are not constitutionally required to provide appointed counsel for the indigent. As a result, there are uncounseled convictions in tribal courts used against Native people in state and federal systems.

There are 574 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, each with its own culture, sovereign government, justice system, and historical relationship with the United States government. For this reason, interventions meant to address over-incarceration of Native people should start at the tribal level. Tribes could impact disparity on a national level by providing supportive and restorative services for those involved in their own justice systems. Tribes could impact disparities by providing public defender services, in particular, holistic public defense that employs a restorative approach. A holistic model of public defense addresses the issues that contribute to people’s involvement in the criminal justice system and the collateral consequences to criminal charges and convictions. Providing services that address underlying needs results in improved life outcomes that predictably result in less criminal justice involvement. This article highlights the Tribal Defenders Office (TDO) for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes that has implemented holistic defense in a tribal setting.

Initially modeled after the Bronx Defenders, the Tribal Defenders holistic defense practice aligns with tribal values by going beyond the criminal case to view the accused as a whole person with a range of legal and social support needs that if left unmet will continue to push them back into the criminal justice system. Over the years, the Tribal Defenders’ team has worked to integrate into the community, listen to feedback from clients and the community, and refine the program accordingly. Through twelve years of integrated practice, TDO staff learned several lessons that have shaped their success: services come first, invest in culturally relevant research and services, listen to clients and the community, and adhere to cultural safety.

Although the article promotes holistic defense to the indigent as a solution to inequities facing justice-involved Native people, it also highlights other promising practices. Tribal systems have access to national organizations that support their efforts to address criminal justice challenges. There are tribal courts, victim services, probation departments, and reentry programs that have taken traditional, restorative principles and applied them in innovative ways to promote healing, wellness, and community safety.

United States, Safety & Justice Challenge. 2023. 23pg

By Michelle S. Phelps, H. N. Dickens, De Andre’ T. Beadle

Advocates for reform have highlighted violations of probation and parole conditions as a key driver of mass incarceration. As a 2019 Council of State Governments report declared, supervision violations are “filling prisons and burdening budgets.” Yet few scholarly accounts estimate the precise role of technical violations in fueling prison populations during the prison boom. Using national surveys of state prison populations from 1979 to 2016, the authors document that most incarcerated persons are behind bars for new sentences. On average, just one in eight people in state prisons on any given day has been locked up for a technical violation of community supervision alone. Thus, strategies to substantially reduce prison populations must look to new criminal offenses and sentence length.

United States, Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. 2023, 3pg

By Jacqueline Beard

In March 2020 the Justice Secretary told the Justice Committee that the pressure on prisons in England and Wales due to coronavirus was acute.“a potential hotbed for viral transmission”, stating that “they are overcrowded, understaffed and often dirty”.2 The Head of the Prison Governors Association told the Guardian: 1 The Chair of the Justice Committee described prisons as a combination of prison overcrowding, prisoner lockdown and staff shortages as a result of prison workers needing to isolate themselves meant that the system was facing unprecedented pressure.3 The physical health of the prison population, across a broad range of conditions, is much poorer than that of the general population.4 The proportion of prisoners aged over 50 increased from 7% in 2002 to 16% in March 2019.5 Living conditions across much of the prison estate are poor. As at February 2020, 60% (70) of prison establishments were crowded.6 These 70 prisons accommodated around 60,000 prisoners or 71% of the total prison population. On 27 April 2020 the Justice Secretary said that the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths in prisons were lower than had been originally predicted and that “while we are not out of woods”, prisons were coping and dealing well with the threat of covid-19. 7  A press release from the Ministry of Justice on the 28 April 2020 said that “jails are successfully limiting deaths and the transmission of the virus within the estate”.8 As of 12 May, 404 cases had been confirmed amongst prisoners. 21 prisoners and 7 members of prison staff had died.9  Public Health England (PHE) reported on 24 April 2020 that data it had collected “suggests that the ‘explosive outbreaks’ of COVID19 which were feared at the beginning of the pandemic wave are not being seen. Instead, there is evidence of containment of outbreak”.10 PHE’s report stated that because access to testing for prisoners has been limited and variable, the number of confirmed cases reported “does not represent the true burden of infection in the prison system”. It states that in addition to the 304 laboratory-confirmed cases in prisoners in England and Wales (at the time the report was written) data showed there had been also over 1,783 possible/probable cases. 

London, House of Commons Library. 2020. 10pg

By Emily Richards

Welcome to the first edition of The Cheal report - Understanding prisoners abroad. This report, compiled using the data that Prisoners Abroad has access to, aims to bring together important insights into the number and characteristics of British people that are detained in prisons overseas, their family and friends, and those that return to the UK. This inaugural report is named after one of Prisoners Abroad’s founders, Chris Cheal. Chris had been in prison in the 1970’s when he was visited by Joe Parham on behalf of the drugs charity Release. A few years later, after his release, Chris and Joe, along with Craig Feehan, decided to “start something new”, which went on to become Prisoners Abroad. When the charity started in 1978, it was not possible for a person to request to transfer to serve their sentence in the UK. Chris worked hard with a group of lawyers to draft a Bill for Parliament that led to the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentences which made such transfers possible. The tremendous impact of Chris’ work is still being felt today and, over 45 years later, we hope he would be proud of what Prisoners Abroad has become. In what we hope will be an annual publication, we look at how the numbers and characteristics are changing over time, and identify trends and challenges, across three key groups of people: (1) People in prison overseas, (2) Families and friends, and (3) People returning to the UK. The number of people we supported last year saw a gradual increase during the year and we expect numbers to continue to rise. Of the 1,170 people in prison overseas that we supported, significant numbers face isolation. Of those in non-English speaking countries, almost three-quarters do not speak the language of the country where they are imprisoned. Six in every ten people (61%) in prisons overseas do not receive any visits, 59% were not resident in the country of their detention prior to their arrest, and nearly a third (31%) do not receive any money or financial support from anyone outside the prison. 35% of people said they were not able to take part in any activities (e.g. education, sport) and only 29% said they had some form of work opportunity in the prison where they were detained. British people are facing acute health issues too. 38% of people in prison overseas reported to us that they had physical health issues, 24% had mental health issues, and 13% had substance abuse issues. We suspect these are an under-estimate as some people will be reluctant to tell us through prison communications, and we know that a significant number of people are experiencing a combination of these - for example, 105 clients report both physical and mental health issues, and 64 clients report experiencing all three. Of those returning to the UK, an increasing proportion are returning with health issues, with 35% reporting substance abuse issues (compared to 35% two years ago) and 47% reporting mental health issues (compared to 30% two years ago). In this first edition, all of the data we have drawn on is what we have collected. As part of our strategic objective to ensure that all British citizens in prisons overseas are aware of what we do and are able to access our support, we are looking at what more can be done to better understand the total number of British citizens in prison overseas and where they are, and we hope that in the next edition there will be more data of this type.

United Kingdom, Prisoners Abroad. 2023, 20 pg