By Kesha A. Moore

As the coronavirus continues to spread in the U.S. and surge in an increasing number of states, it is critical that we consider the role of jails in the transmission of the virus. Even with highly effective social distancing outside of the jails, our national rates of COVID-19 deaths are projected to rise by 98% due to infections in jails. Jails act as a revolving door for the spread of COVID-19 in our communities. Inhabitants of the jails — both staff and incarcerated persons — come from our communities and soon return to them. Thus, the strategy of social distancing to limit the spread of COVID-19 can only be effective if it includes jails, which are a primary vector for the infection. 

New York: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2020.

By John J. Dilulio, Jr.

FROM THE COVER: The American prison, in conventional wisdom, 1s doomed to be filthy, violent, and unproductive. It is a breeding ground for crime rather than a punishment for it, an institution where lawless inmates and abusive guards confront each other in riots that erupt in response to oppressive conditions. Now, John J. Dilulio, Jr., already considered one of the most original thinkers about prisons in a generation, challenges all these accepted notions about incarceration. Dilulio argues that-far from necessarily being hellish traps for society's refuse-prisons must and can be safe and humane, despite overcrowding, budget limitations, and racial polarization. The key is good government.

The Free Press. London. NY. 1987. 357p.

By Kevin R. Reitz, Edward E. Rhine, Allegra Lukac, and Melanie Griffith

“Indeterminacy” is the product of uncertainty, after a judge has pronounced a prison sentence, about later official decisions that will influence the actual time served by the defendant. The uncertainty extends over many future decisions, such as good-time awards or forfeitures by prison officials and release or release-denial decisions by parole boards. To the extent these later decision patterns are unpredictable, the judge’s sentence is “indeterminate” on the day of sentencing. When prison sentences are highly indeterminate, many months or years of time-to-be-served can be unforeseeable in individual cases. The mechanics of indeterminacy in prison sentencing vary enormously from state to state, and are not well understood. In many states, time-served policy is largely administered at the “back end” of the sentencing system. If prison policy is aimed toward retribution or public safety, it is back-end officials who ultimately choose how best to achieve those goals. This raises critical questions of whether they are well-positioned to be stewards of the public interest, and whether their procedures are adequate to the task. Such questions are especially urgent in a nation with high incarceration rates. In most American jurisdictions, however, back-end decisionmaking about prison-sentence length has low visibility and is unglamorous. Very few people pay serious attention to its workings. From a systemic perspective, indeterminacy can be seen as the field of play in which back-end officials with time-served discretion exercise their powers. The larger the field—the greater the degree of indeterminacy—the greater the whole-system impact of back-end decisions. Indeterminacy builds up cumulative effects over hundreds and thousands of cases. In systems with high degrees of indeterminacy, a substantial amount of control over prison population size is located at the back end of the system. In many states, back-end officials have more to say about prison numbers than sentencing courts. Yet few people are aware of this.

Minneapolis, MN: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, University of Minnesota, 2022. 145p.