By Sabrina C. Pearce

The number of people sentenced to life in prison has drastically increased over the last five decades. Of the 194,803 people serving life sentences in 2024, nearly half of them, 97,160 people, were serving parole-eligible sentences. A parole-eligible life sentence is also referred to as life with parole (LWP) or life with the possibility of parole (LWPoP). Parole is the conditional release of an incarcerated individual after spending a portion of their sentence in prison. Its purpose at inception was to serve as a bridge between an incarcerated person and their community, balancing the needs of the individual and the needs of the community, with the aim toward reintegration.

To be eligible for parole, a person sentenced to life must serve a required minimum sentence or reach their “parole eligibility date.” The minimum parole eligibility date is the earliest point at which an incarcerated individual may be considered for parole, minus any time credits earned. Once the required minimum sentence is served, these individuals may re-enter society upon the approval of a paroling authority, most often a parole board. But as this report shows, over the past 50 years legislators across the country have raised the minimum sentence required for parole eligibility, delaying release of millions and significantly transforming the meaning of a life sentence.

In addition, governors have appointed parole commissioners who are reluctant to grant parole. As a result of both factors, newly paroled life-sentenced individuals have served longer prison terms than those in years past. Furthermore, even fewer people are receiving parole hearings in recent years as political, public, and media pressures to adopt more punitive practices continue to rise. The result: increased prison terms and prolonged punishment.

Longer prison sentences are costly and divert important investments away from effective measures to prevent crime and incarceration, such as mental health support, healthcare services, jobs, education, and other resources that produce healthier and safer communities. Lengthy periods of delay can lead to disillusionment and diminish the hope and well-being of those incarcerated as well as their supportive loved ones and communities as they longingly await the day of release. Timeliness in parole hearings is crucial as parole delays interfere with an incarcerated person’s ability to preserve family, friends, community, and other ties, which may present challenges for successful reintegration upon release.

Through in-depth profiles of five states and the experiences of two individuals, this report illustrates the trend toward increasing wait times for initial parole hearings, subsequent rehearings, and sometimes the elimination of parole eligibility entirely for individuals serving parole- eligible life sentences.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2025. 24p.

By Prison Reform Trust

The high level of multiple and often unmet need experienced by many women in the justice system is well documented.1 Many women in prison are victims of more serious crimes than those they are accused of committing.2 The past two decades have seen several key policy developments relating to women’s imprisonment (see Appendix 1). Each of these developments show a trend towards recognising the distinct and specific needs of women in the criminal justice system and call for a reduction in women’s imprisonment. However, the number of women in prison, especially on remand and on short sentences, has remained stubbornly high. Moving beyond this status quo requires bold and creative thinking alongside sustained development and implementation of pre-existing strategies. This briefing sets out key facts and figures relating to women in the criminal justice system and highlights progress to date in implementing an approach which recognises women’s distinct needs.

London: PRT, 2025. 10p.

By Colette Marcellin and Evelyn F. McCoy 

Sexual violence in US correctional facilities is a long-standing problem that has gained increased attention in recent years. Many advocacy, human rights, and research organizations have called for action on this issue for decades, and in 2003, Congress took federal action by passing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). PREA requires nationwide data collection and research about sexual violence in federal, state, and local correctional facilities, and established the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to develop national standards for addressing this issue. Despite PREA’s enactment, PREA standards established in 2012, and growing national discourse about sexual violence in correctional facilities, many challenges persist. As of 2017, 31 states had not yet fully complied with the established PREA standards. Further, survivors of sexual violence, people with behavioral health needs, and people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+) continue to disproportionately experience sexual violence in correctional facilities. Research about PREA’s impact and outcomes, survivors’ experiences with PREA reporting and investigation processes, and experiences with victim services is limited and should specifically examine the experiences of survivors with marginalized identities. Further research on this issue is needed and must incorporate strong protections for participating incarcerated people and participatory approaches that center their experiences and expertise.
Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2021. 17p.

By Julia Burchett, Anne Weyembergh, Marta Ramat (English)

Background Prisons and life inside prisons are often kept out of the public’s sight. Nonetheless, the persistent shortcomings affecting European prisons have gained the ever increasing attention of the European Court of Human Rights and, subsequently, of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In particular, the persistent degrading prison conditions in many EU Member States have recently shown their relevance for the EU legal order. Indeed, not only are they in breach of the rights guaranteed by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, but they also proved a serious obstacle to the smooth functioning of mutual recognition, the cornerstone of judicial cooperation in criminal matters. After numerous calls to action by the European Parliament, on 8 December 2022 the European Commission launched the first instrument laying down common minimum (although non-binding) standards in the field of material detention conditions. The pressing fundamental rights concerns stemming from degrading prison conditions, their detrimental effects on mutual recognition and the recent adoption of an EU Recommendation make the issue of prison conditions particularly topical and worth examining from an EU-law perspective. Aim This study aims to provide the European Parliament with background information and policy recommendations concerning prisons and detention conditions in the European Union, on the basis of European and national regulations, legislation, policies and practices. It should provide a picture of the situation in the EU, based on a range of relevant sources, and assess the initiatives taken at EU level to support effective compliance with existing European standards. The result of this research should bring forth policy inputs and options for the future direction of the EU’s work in this field. Key findings From the first pages, the study attempts to provide an overview of the wide range of problems faced by Member States in relation to detention conditions. In this regard, it became clear during the course of the study that this latter notion should be understood in a broad way, including material detention conditions stricto sensu but also other related issues having a significantimpact on life in detention (e.g. the excessive use and length of pre-trial detention). While this research has identified particularly acute problems affecting many EU countries, this should not overshadow the wide range of issues identified at EU level, the severity of which varies from country to country. As it was not possible to carry out a comprehensive review of all detention issues, the study then focused in depth on two key issues that have gained importance at EU level, namely prison overcrowding and prison radicalisation. Although the scale of the phenomenon of prison overcrowding is widely reported, the lack of common measurement indicators has been identified as an important gap which does not allow for accurate cross-national comparison With regard to prison radicalisation, which is a relatively new issue compared to prison overcrowding, the study found that the challenges posed by radicalisation in prison are receiving considerable attention at EU level. Among the important concerns highlighted by the study are the specific (and usually more restrictive) conditions of detention that apply to this category of detainees. This issue has caught the attention of prison oversight bodies both at European and national levels in view of their potential impact on fundamental rights and has become highly visible in some Member States as illustrated by the case of Belgium and France. Shifting the focus on the cross-border context, the study has sought to assess the concrete impact of poor detention conditions on several mutual recognition instruments involving a deprivation of liberty measure, namely the Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA on the European arrest warrant and the Framework Decision 2008/909 on the transfer of prisoners. In this respect, it was found that considerations of detention conditions do not come into play in the same way in these two instruments. By way of comparison, while the Framework Decision on the transfer of prisoner has led to a very limited body of case-law, the tensions between the principle of mutual recognition and the lack of mutual trust in the detention conditions have become particularly conspicuous in several major preliminary rulings involving the use of the EAW. Moreover, research has shown a greater alignment between the case law of the CJEU and the ECtHR when the issue of prison conditions arises in EAW cases. This is considered beneficial to ensure coherence between the legal systems of the EU and the CoE, but also to avoid messy and inconsistent (non) application of EU law as a result of conflicting obligations deriving from the two jurisdictions. Regarding the concrete implications of the CJEU case-law, the study found that the Court’s jurisprudence had an undeniable effect on EAW proceedings with a varying impact on the practice of national authorities, whether in terms of impact on mutual trust or in terms of the parameters used to assess the real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment resulting from detention conditions in the issuing Member State. While some experts assert that the CJEU’s case-law tends to be increasingly assimilated by practitioners and that many countries develop practices compliant with the Court’s requirements, several remaining difficulties were pinpointed. In addition, despite the fact that many tools are available to help practitioners interpret and apply the case-law of the CJEU, the study identified several areas where EU support could be improved. Among the key findings of the study, it is worth noting the lack of effective implementation of international and European standards governing crucial aspects of detention conditions (e.g. cell-space, access to health care, sanitary conditions, prison monitoring, etc.). This was highlighted in several parts of the study and is widely corroborated by empirical research, by the reports of European and national prison monitoring bodies, but also by the judgments of the ECtHR. Although matters of detention are the responsibility of Member States (in addition to the fact that many standards on prison conditions exist through the CoE and the ECtHR),there seems to be a broad consensus on the need for EU action to secure a higher degree of compliance with these standards. In this respect, the study identified the recent European Commission’s Recommendation ‘on procedural rights of suspects and accused persons subject to pre-trial detention and on material detention conditions’ as a step forward, as it is the first EU instrument (although non-binding) laying down common minimum standards in the two areas concerned. However, its concrete impact remains difficult to gauge and only time will tell if this Recommendation leads to a more effective and convergent application of European standards. The study has also identified several advantages in considering the adoption of EU minimum standards through a legislative instrument. For the sake of completeness, the analysis was extended to alternative measures to detention which, although not intrinsically related to detention conditions, are advocated as an important lever to regulate the flow of incarceration. In a purely domestic context, the study highlighted the wide variety of legal cultures and practices that coexist at EU level as regards both alternatives to pretrial and post-trial detention. Several good practices and possible hurdles to their use were identified. As a general observation, the study found that, although an essential lever for reducing the use of imprisonment, alternative measures are not sufficient on their own to tackle the problem of poor conditions of detention. In order to produce effective results, alternative measures must be accompanied by coherent penal policies, taking into consideration all relevant criminal law measures that have an impact on the flow of imprisonment. In a cross-border context, the study identified a general lack of awareness of several mutual recognition instruments that could be used as alternatives to the EAW to avoid an unnecessary deprivation of liberty measure, namely the Framework Decision 2009/829/JHA (on the European Supervision Order), the Framework Decision 2008/947/JHA (on probation measures and alternative sanctions) and the Directive 2014/41/EU (on the European Investigation Order). The lack of knowledge about these instruments is widely recognized by scholars, and concern not only judges and prosecutors, but also defence lawyers.

European Parliament, Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs Directorate-General for Internal Policies, 2023. 122p.

Edited by Charles Richmond Henderson, Ph.D.

“The chaplain at Sing Sing testified that in eighteen years he had served under nine different wardens. Under the contract system, in the words of Dr. Theodore W. Dwight, "Convict labor becomes substantially slave labor, with many of its concomitant evils. Its rule is the same; the largest amount of work for the smallest return." The objections to that system may be tersely stated, as follows: ( 1) The farming-out of governmental rights and powers to private parties is contrary to public policy. What the government undertakes to do, it alone should do. The presence of the contractor in the prison leads to divided responsibility. (2) The financial interest of the contractor is a selfish interest. The prison wishes to sell its labor at a high rate; the contractor desires to buy it at the lowest possible price. The state wants a fair division of the profits of the establishment; the contractor cares little whether the state makes or loses money on the deal, if he can enrich himself. (3) The political connections and power of the contractor are often such as to enable him to dictate the selection of the managers and warden of the prison.

The Russell Sage Foundation, 1910, 168 p.

Edited by Charles Richmond Henderson, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTORY IN this volume may be found an account by specialists of the institutions of correction through which the criminal law is enforced. The story is not boastful but critical; the weak places of our establishments are as faithfully disclosed as the high aims of the most enlightened administrators are set forth for apprecia­ tion. Of a national "system'' of prisons nothing is said, for none exists. Most of the book is devoted to reformatories and prisons in the northern states of the Union; one paper is devoted to a de­ scription, explanation and criticism of the agencies of punishment of the southern states, and to an acccount of the worthy and hopeful efforts of wise citizens of those districts to correct abuses and improve methods. The warm climate of the South, the predominance of agriculture, and the presence of millions of negroes are facts which must be considered in forming a judgment about these methods. It is manifest that the fundamental and universal principles of correctional methods must there take a very different direction from that which is most reasonable in the North.

Russell Sage Foundation, 1910, 345p.

By Mardet Homans, Denise M. Allen & Yesenia Mazariegos

The use of Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), and specifically buprenorphine, to address opioid use disorder (OUD) is considered the gold standard of care in the community (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), 2023). However, while support of its use in correctional settings is expanding, and there are national promising practice guidelines, it remains underutilized within jails and prisons in the United States (U.S.) (National Commission on Correctional Healthcare (NCCHC), 2018; Friedmann et al., 2012). The efficacy of MAT to reduce opiate withdrawal, curb cravings, and support positive health, behavioral health, and criminal justice outcomes, including reductions in overdose deaths and recidivism, has gained national attention from criminal justice advocacy groups and policymakers. Jails and correctional agencies have been taken to court over the provision of MAT for incarcerated individuals with OUD. And state and federal courts have ruled denial of MAT for incarcerated individuals with OUD violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (LAPPA), n.d.). The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS) are at the forefront of providing MAT in a correctional setting under the Integrated Substance Use Disorder Treatment (ISUDT) Program. The ISUDT Program begins at intake into CDCR with a substance use disorder (SUD) screening and assessment and linkage to behavioral interventions and MAT with a targeted focus on preparing CDCR residents for release. This paper seeks to document the provision of MAT in correctional settings since it is expanding rapidly within the U.S. and there is currently not a national inventory of programs or practices. In addition, this paper aims to document best practices and lessons learned from California and other correctional systems that can be used to guide expansion of MAT to justice-involved populations. Contained in the appendix of this report is a comprehensive review of information regarding the current availability of MAT in U.S. jails and prisons.

Key Findings • According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) less than 1% of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) population received MAT in 2021. • Based on a review of publicly available information, it does appear that five states – Alabama, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming offer MAT in their correctional institutions. • A number of states have or are currently piloting MAT in corrections. • Besides California, only 14 states offer comprehensive MAT services at either intake and/or release in a considerable number of its jails and prisons. • Locating details regarding MAT provision on many state and local correctional websites is difficult or is missing altogether. This may present as a barrier to SUD treatment and discourage justice-involved individuals or their families from seeking MAT. • Overall, there is significant variability among states regarding the provision of MAT to incarcerated individuals.

Irvine, CA: Center for Evidence‐Based Corrections University of California, Irvine 2023. 18p.

By James Hess and Susan Turner

California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) is a self-supporting training and production program currently operating within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). CALPIA provides training, certification, and employment to inmates in a variety of different fields. The goods and services produced by CALPIA are sold to the state and other government entities, which provides an economic benefit to the state. In addition to the vocational and economic aspect of the program, one of CALPIA’s missions is to reduce the subsequent recidivism of their inmate participants. In 2021, the Center for Evidence-Based Corrections prepared a report on the recidivism outcomes for individuals who had participated in CALPIA programs for at least six months (Hess and Turner, 2021). That report examined the effect of participation in CALPIA on the recidivism of CDCR inmates by comparing CALPIA participants with at least 6 months in the program and released between August 2014 and July 2018 with inmates who were accepted into the CALPIA program but were released before they could actively participate (i.e., the “Waitlist” group). That report found that participation in CALPIA was associated with reduced offending. CALPIA individuals had lower rates of arrests, conviction, and incarceration during a three-year follow-up than a Waitlist comparison group. Although the sample size for our analysis of Career Technical Education (CTE) was small, participation in this CALPIA program yielded lower recidivism rates than other CALPIA program participation. This report further analyzes the sample of individuals who participated in CALPIA programs by separating the CALPIA programs into thirteen different groups, placing similar programs together. Thus, it is a comparison within CALPIA programs only. The analysis strategy is the same as used in our previous report: we examine arrest, conviction and return to custody calculated at one-, two- and three-year post release for the individuals. Propensity score analyses were used to adjust for baseline differences in the groups. Our findings suggest that the enterprise programs perform about equally well with the exception of CTE, which appears to do slightly better than other enterprises. We also found a positive effect for CTE in our earlier report. Several other programs show patterns of higher or lower recidivism which are suggestive but not conclusive due to lack of statistical significance. We note that small sample sizes, using propensity score analyses, may have limited our ability to detect significant differences.

Irvine, CA: Center for Evidence‐Based Corrections University of California, Irvine 2023. 20p

By Nancy Rodriguez, H. Daniel Butler, Natasha Frost, Melinda Tasca, and Jillian Turanovic

This policy brief presents the findings of our multi-strategy approach, spearheaded by the Prison Violence Consortium, to examine the sources and consequences of prison violence. We capture prison violence using data on guilty violent infractions, violent incident reports, and interviews with incarcerated persons and correctional employees. We offer solution-driven recommendations to policymakers, institutional leaders, prison researchers, and other stakeholders, aiming to enhance prison safety and more effectively address institutional violence nationwide..

Key Findings ● Perpetrators of Violence & Timing: ● Prison violence was concentrated among a small subset of persons, as 10% of the population accounted for more than 50% of guilty violent infractions. ● Personal characteristics related to guilty violent infractions included younger age at admission, lower education, longer sentences, violent criminal histories, gang affiliations, and greater mental health needs. ● Most people (63%) committed guilty violent infractions within 6-12 months of admission, with fewer than 10% remaining violent throughout their incarceration. ● Common Forms & Situational Factors: ● Most violence (71%) occurred between incarcerated persons, while 29% was directed at staff, according to the incident reports. ● The most prevalent form of violence was fights between persons (38%), followed by assaults on persons (26%), assaults on staff (17%), biohazard incidents (13%), and unwitnessed physical altercations (6%). ● Violence most often occured in cells or housing areas (39%) and common areas (e.g., cafeteria and yard) (31%). ● Weapons and contraband were mentioned in 10% of the incident reports.

Irvine, CA: UC Irvine School of Social Ecology, Prison Violence Consortium, 2024. 23p.

Correctional Association of New York

The Correctional Association of New York (CANY) maintains an extraordinarily deep and broad understanding of New York’s state correctional facilities. This understanding allows for nuanced assessment of the greatest challenges DOCCS faces in safely operating institutions that support rehabilitation, public safety, and human dignity. CANY’s vantage also affords the ability to identify examples of good policy and practice, of which there are many within DOCCS. The following recommendations, which take into consideration both persistent challenges and opportunities to scale up examples of excellence, were submitted to DOCCS for a statutory 60-day review period on October 9, 2024—two months to the day before Robert Brooks was fatally assaulted at Marcy Correctional Facility. These recommendations arise from CANY’s unique historical role as the independent oversight entity for state correctional facilities and activities authorized by Correction Law 146(3), which grants the organization authority “to access, visit, inspect, and examine all state correctional facilities with seventy-two hours advance notice to the department.” In FY24, CANY conducted 19 prison monitoring visits; interviewed more than 1,000 incarcerated individuals and more than one hundred state employees who work in these facilities; received hundreds of phone calls, letters, and website inquiries from or on behalf of incarcerated people seeking assistance; distributed thousands of surveys; and published 15 public-facing work products including reports on monitoring visits, dashboards of processed administrative data, data analysis, and legislative testimony. To inform the discussion about prison closures, CANY published a series of tools that allow stakeholders to view staffing levels by facility: Mapping Closures, Capacity, Staffing, and the

CANY, 2025. 7p.

By Eli Miller, Bryan D. Martin, and Chad M. Topaz

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the release of individuals incarcerated in New York City jails who were at high risk of contracting the disease and at low risk of committing criminal reoffense. Using public information, we construct and analyze a database of nearly 350,000 incarceration episodes in the city jail system from 2014—2020, paying special attention to what happened during the week of March 23—29, 2020, immediately following the mayor’s order. In concordance with de Blasio’s stated policy, we find that being discharged during this focus week is associated with a lower probability of readmission as compared to being discharged during the same calendar week in previous years. Furthermore, comparing the individuals discharged during the focus week of 2020 to those discharged during the same calendar week in previous years, we find that the former group was, on average, slightly older than the latter group, although the difference is not large. Additionally, the individuals in the former group had spent substantially longer in jail than those in the latter group. With the release of long-serving individuals demonstrated to be feasible, we also examine how the jail population would have looked over the past six years had caps in incarceration been in place. With a cap of one year, the system would experience a 15% decrease in incarceration. With a cap of 100 days, the reduction would be over 50%. Because our results are only as accurate as New York City’s public-facing jail data, we discuss numerous challenges with this data and suggest improvements related to the incarcerated individual’s age, gender, race, and more. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our work, highlight some opportunities and challenges posed by incarceration caps, and suggest key areas for reform. One such reform might involve identifying and discharging low-risk individuals sooner in general, which might be feasible given the de Blasio administration’s actions during the early stages of COVID-19.

PLoS ONE 17(1): 2022, 20p.

By Marco Castillo, Sera Linardi, Ragan Petrie:

Many previously incarcerated individuals are rearrested following release from prison. We investigate whether encouragement to use reentry support services reduces rearrest. Field experiment participants are offered a monetary incentive to complete different dosages of visits, either three or five, to a support service provider. The incentive groups increased visits, and one extra visit reduces rearrests three years after study enrollment by six percentage points. The results are driven by Black participants who are more likely to take up treatment and benefit the most from visits. The study speaks to the importance of considering first-stage heterogeneity and heterogeneous treatment effects.

IZA DP No. 17522

Bonn: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, 2024. 46p.

By Hannah Miles Merran McAlister Samantha Bricknell

The National Deaths in Custody Program has monitored the extent and nature of deaths occurring in prison, police custody and youth detention in Australia since 1980. The Australian Institute of Criminology has coordinated the program since its establishment in 1992, the result of a recommendation made the previous year by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. In 2023–24, there were 104 deaths in custody: 76 in prison custody, 27 in police custody or custody-related operations and one in youth detention. In total, there were 24 Indigenous deaths and 80 non-Indigenous deaths in custody. This report contains detailed information on these deaths and compares the findings with longer term trends.

Statistical Report no. 49, Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024. 59p.

By Diane Cheng, Arthur Rizer and Nila Bala

Marcus Bullock was 15 years old when he was sentenced to prison. He struggled with his time behind bars—missing his family, feeling disconnected from the outside world and losing hope. After he became depressed, his mother Sylvia promised to keep in touch daily. Her detailed letters and photos curbed Bullock’s loneliness and helped him envision life after prison. In Bullock’s words: “Little did I know, it would be my mom’s letters that saved my life.” Sylvia’s frequent communications gave him the strength to survive his incarceration, start a successful contracting business and launch Flikshop, a company that uses technology to help inmates stay connected with their families and loved ones. Bullock’s story demonstrates the importance of family connections for people who are incarcerated. In 2018, more than two million individuals were incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States. However, the impact of incarceration is felt by millions more through the children, spouses, siblings, parents and other relatives connected to incarcerated individuals. Recent research suggests that nearly half of adults in the United States have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night in jail or prison. Almost half of the inmates in federal prisons have minor children. Additionally, about one in 25 children (nearly 2.6 million) have a parent in jail or prison. Incarceration separates parents from their children, strains interpersonal relationships, harms mental and physical health and exacts deep financial costs to families. Further, incarceration has a disproportionate effect on communities of color and low income families. For example, Black adults are three times as likely as white adults to have a close family member incarcerated for more than one year. As Bullock’s story shows, positive family connections during incarceration are critical for an inmate’s wellbeing, their likelihood of successful re-entry after time served and the overall strength of their family. Technology can help families stay connected, but the cost, accessibility and quality of current options often pose barriers to meaningful interaction. The COVID-19 pandemic presents further challenges for family connection within correctional facilities, but also an opportunity to improve existing infrastructure via technology. If done right, improvements to both technological and non-technological options for family connection would ultimately benefit incarcerated individuals, their families and their communities at large

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 203 September 2020, 13p.

By James Bargent, et al

Over the last five years, Ecuador has been engulfed in violence and a criminal chaos unprecedented in its modern history. The roots of this security crisis can be traced directly to the country’s prison system and the criminal networks that have evolved inside of it. Shaped by a series of failed reforms and the state’s negligence, corruption, and incapacity, the prisons provided a space for these groups, known in Ecuador simply as “mafias,” to take root and grow. More than that, they also provided an economic base for this growth in the form of multi-million-dollar criminal markets that have turned the prisons into one of the most lucrative criminal economies in Ecuador.

Fueled by these profits, the mafias leveraged the opportunity the prisons provided to make connections to gangs on the streets, facilitating their territorial expansion on the outside, and granting them access to the upper echelons of organized crime, including the booming transnational cocaine trade. Competition to control strategic territories and criminal economies between these mafias have driven soaring murder rates on the streets and a series of prison massacres that have claimed hundreds of lives. These criminal networks have also destabilized the country’s democracy with terror-style tactics and political violence. The security crisis stemming from the prisons has provoked a hard-line response from Ecuador’s government, which declared an “internal armed conflict” with “terrorist” groups and deployed the military to the prisons and the streets. While this has disrupted some mafia operations, there has been little sign of any strategy to tackle the systemic failures that led to their rise. And there are signs that both the mafias and corruption networks are reconstituting and setting the stage for a new cycle of violence and criminal activity. Major Findings

▶ Ecuador’s prisons became the epicenter of organized crime because of years of government failures and half-measures. To begin with, hard-line anti-drug laws filled the prisons beyond capacity. The state’s subsequent struggles to control the overcrowded facilities created vacuums in authority, which were filled by corruption networks and criminal gangs. And, after the construction of a series of “mega-prisons” failed to control the internal chaos, the government slashed the operational budget and dismantled the ministry responsible for running it, providing the catalyst for the total criminal takeover of the system.

▶ The concentration of the population in the mega-prisons increased the profits from internal rackets. This converted the penitentiary system into a multimillion dollar criminal economy based on exploiting the lack of state control and the failure to provide basic services. These markets are run both by gangs and extensive corruption networks, which may work with the gangs or independently. The profits from this economy drove the evolution and expansion of the prison mafias, while providing a powerful incentive for corrupt actors to undermine attempts at reform.

▶ The prison mafias grew quickly by recruiting bands of small-time criminals and youth gangs in the prisons and integrating them into federations of semi-autonomous criminal structures operating both in the prisons and on the streets. The mafia leaders were then able to put these networks at the service of criminal elites. This created a unique role for them, coordinating and connecting the different levels of organized crime.

▶ Through this process, the prison mafias have established themselves as important links in the transnational cocaine supply chain. However, for the most part, they remain at the operational level of trafficking, providing logistical and security services to Mexican, Colombian, European, and individual Ecuadorian drug traffickers.

▶ The ceding of the prisons to the mafias, the growth of the criminal economies that fund them, and the opportunities to access the transnational drug trade led to criminal competition that fuelled high levels of violence inside and outside the prison system that has been difficult to control. The catalyst for this rise in violence was the power vacuum left by the murder of Choneros leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” who had previously limited competition by integrating numerous criminal interests and powers into a single network held together by his individual authority.

▶ While the military intervention in the prisons in 2024 disrupted the mafia’s capacity to operate freely, the evident lack of mid- and long-term strategies to tackle the systemic issues at the heart of the prison crisis or dismantle the prison business makes it highly likely organized crime and corruption networks will reestablish operations within the prisons. Furthermore, the weakening of leadership ties between the prisons and the streets has accelerated a trend towards the atomization of the mafias, leading to increased territorial disputes and predatory criminal activities outside the prisons, principally affecting Ecuador’s most economically deprived and marginalized communities.

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2024. 76p.

By Laurin Bixby, Stacey Bevan, and Courtney Boen

Disabled people are disproportionately incarcerated and segregated from society through a variety of institutions. Still, the links between disability and incarceration are underexplored, limiting understanding of how carceral institutions punish and contribute to the social exclusion of disabled people. Using data from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, we estimated disability prevalence in state and federal prisons, assessing disparities by race, ethnicity, and sex, and we examined inequities in previous residence in other “punitive” and “therapeutic” institutions. Sixty-six percent of incarcerated people self-reported a disability, with Black, Hispanic, and multiracial disabled men especially overrepresented in prisons. Compared with nondisabled incarcerated people, disabled incarcerated people were more likely to have previously resided in other institutions, such as juvenile detention facilities and psychiatric hospitals. Together, our findings advance the understanding of disability in carceral institutions, highlighting the need for policy interventions redressing the mechanisms contributing to the high incarceration risks of disabled people and the disabling nature of prisons and other carceral institutions.

Health Affairs Vol. 41, NO. 10, 2022, 28 p.

By Sarah Waite

This article examines women's experiences of moving from a closed to an open prison in England. Transition to an open prison is often viewed in a positive, reformist light and although androcentric auto-ethnographical work has demonstrated challenges associated with this pivot when serving a long-term sentence, much less is known about the experiences of women. Using interview discussions, this article draws upon the concept of transcarceral habitus to examine experiences of transfer and adaptation to the open prison within the broader context of the lives of criminalised women. By extending our understanding of the women's open prison as a site of punishment and recognising the connections and pluralities of women's carceral experiences, this article seeks to disrupt unhelpful binaries that legitimise the incarceration of women and the open prison estate.

The Howard Journal of Crime and JusticeEarly View, Oct. 2023.

By Penal Reform International

In January 2019, the Central African Republic (CAR) approved a “National Strategy for the Demilitarisation of Prison Establishments“, developed in partnership with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and Penal Reform International (PRI). Following its adoption, the National Demilitarisation Strategy was incorporated into the Justice Sector Policy 2020-2024.

This report presents the results of a study documenting the level of implementation of the National Strategy for the demilitarisation of prisons in all its components, carried out a few months before the end of the implementation cycle. Data collection took place between April and May 2023 to analyse the relevance of the strategy, its degree of implementation, the impact of progress, and any barriers to its implementation.

London: PRI, 2023. 50p.

By Jason S. Sexton

n the aftermath of World War II, eugenics and the pseudoscientific base used to justify its practices are generally understood to have phased off the scene. If, however, eugenics never actually disappeared but has been persistent, and in turn becomes one of the best explanations for mass incarceration today, what role did Christianity—especially Evangelicalism—play in this unprecedented moment of imprisonment? Building on legal scholarship identifying the significant role of eugenic philosophy that manifests in penal policy and an ongoing into the early twenty-first century, this article examines key figures in the backdrop of eugenics’ particular early developments, as well as leading figures—namely, Billy Graham and Prison Fellowship’s Chuck Colson—whose ministries operated in close proximity to the prison during the latter twentieth century and especially over the past fifty years as incarceration rates skyrocketed. After examining several important theological tenets reflected within Evangelicalism that are compatible with eugenic logic, a critical approach is developed drawing from more robust theological considerations that if appropriated earlier might have found evangelicals resisting the mass incarceration building efforts rather than supporting them.

Journal of Law & Religion 39/1 (2024), Forthcoming, 71p.