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 Colleen Chien, Alexandra George, Srihari Shekhar, and Robert Apel

As states pass reforms to reduce the size of their prison populations, the number of Americans physically incarcerated has declined. However, the number of people whose employment and related opportunities are limited due to their criminal records continues to grow. Another sanction that curtails economic opportunity is the loss of one’s driver’s license for reasons unrelated to driving. While many states have “second chance” laws on the books that provide, e.g. expungement or driver’s license restoration, a growing body of research has documented large “second chance gaps” between eligibility and delivery of relief due to the poor administration of second chance relief. This paper is a first attempt to measure the cost of these “paper prisons” of limited economic opportunity due to expungable records and restorable licenses, in terms of annual lost earnings. Analyzing the literature, we estimate the annual earnings loss associated with misdemeanor and felony convictions to be $5,100 and $6,400, respectively, and that of a suspended license to be $12,700.

We use Texas as a case study for comparing the cost (in terms of lost earnings) of the state’s “paper prisons” – living with sealable records or restorable licenses – with the cost of its physical prisons. In Texas, individuals with criminal convictions may seal their records after a waiting period. But analyzing administrative data, we find that approximately 95% of people eligible for relief have not accessed it. This leaves 670,000 people in the “second chance sealing gap” eligible for but not accessing second chance relief, translating into an annual earnings loss of about $3.5 billion. Similarly, people that have lost driver’s licenses are entitled to get their licenses restored under the law (in the form of “occupational driver’s licenses,” or “ODLs”) in order to drive to work or school. But using a similar approach, we find that about 80% of the people that appear eligible for restored driver’s licenses in Texas have not received them. This translates into about 430,000 people who needlessly lack licenses and a lower-bounds earnings loss of about $5.5 billion. Based on these figures, we find the cumulative annual earnings loss associated with Texas’s “paper prisons” of limited economic opportunity due to lost but restorable licenses and convictions records eligible for sealing to be comparable with, and likely more than, the yearly cost to Texas of managing its physical prisons of around $3.6 billion.

64 ARIZ. L. REV. 675 (2022). Santa Clara Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper

By Nicholas Goldrosen, Christian Michael Smith, Maria-Veronica Ciocanel, Rebecca Santorella, Shilad Sen, Shawn Bushway, Chad M. Topaz

Substantial race-based disparities exist in federal criminal sentencing. We analyze 380,000 recent (2006–2019) sentences in the JUSTFAIR database and show that these disparities are large and vary considerably across judges. Judges assign White defendants sentences 13% shorter than Black defendants' and 19% shorter than Hispanic defendants' sentences, on average, conditional on case characteristics and district. Judges one standard deviation above average in their estimated Black-White disparity give Black defendants sentences 39% conditionally longer than White defendants' sentences, vis-à-vis average disparity of 13%. Judges one standard deviation above average in their estimated Hispanic-White disparity give Hispanic defendants sentences 49% conditionally longer than White defendants' sentences, compared to the average disparity of 19%.

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, Volume 179, Issue 1, pages 92–113 (March 2023)

By Anita Knudsen, Lenny Roth

Key points • Overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the NSW criminal justice system continues to worsen. Almost one third of people in prison in NSW are Aboriginal. The increase in imprisonment has been most acute in remand, with almost 40% of Aboriginal people in prison on remand. • Record high numbers of people in prison, and growing awareness of the social and economic costs of prison, have intensified public discussions about alternatives to prison. • The main framework for reducing Aboriginal incarceration nationally and in NSW is the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, which includes a target to reduce the incarceration rate of Aboriginal people by at least 15% by 2031. • The NSW Closing the Gap Implementation Plan 2022–2024 emphasises the need for Aboriginal leadership, expertise and participation in strategies to reduce incarceration. These measures will take different times to mature and scale. • An important consideration identified by stakeholders is the need to consider how criminal justice legislation and policy contributes to increased numbers of Aboriginal people in prison and overrepresentation at every stage of the criminal justice process. • Inquiries and research have proposed a range of actions across prevention, early intervention, diversion from the criminal justice system, non-custodial sentencing options and post-release support specific to Aboriginal people.

Sydney: State of New South Wales through the Parliament of New South Wales, 2023. 44p,

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh

One in five Black men born in 2001 is likely to experience imprisonment within their lifetime, a decline from one in three for those born in 1981. Pushback from policymakers threatens further progress in reducing racial inequity in incarceration

Following a massive, four-decade-long buildup of incarceration disproportionately impacting people of color, a growing reform movement has made important inroads. The 21st century has witnessed progress both in reducing the U.S. prison population and its racial and ethnic disparities. The total prison population has declined by 25% after reaching its peak level in 2009.1 While all major racial and ethnic groups experienced decarceration, the Black prison population has downsized the most. The number of imprisoned Black Americans decreased 39% since its peak in 2002.2 Despite this progress, imprisonment levels remain too high nationwide, particularly for Black Americans.

Reforms to drug law enforcement and to sentencing for drug and property offenses, particularly those impacting urban areas which are disproportionately home to communities of color, have fueled decarceration and narrowed racial disparities.3 These trends have led scholars to declare a “generational shift” in the lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for Black men.4This risk has fallen from a staggering one in three for those born in 1981 to a still troubling one in five for Black men born in 2001.5 Black women have experienced the sharpest decline in their imprisonment rate, falling by 70% between 2000 and 2021.6

But nine years after national protests catapulted the Black Lives Matter movement following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and three years after a national racial reckoning triggered by Minneapolis police officers killing George Floyd, progress in reducing racial disparity in the criminal legal system is incomplete and at risk of stalling or being reversed.

The United States remains fully in the era of mass incarceration. The 25% decline in the total prison population since 2009 follows a nearly 700% buildup in imprisonment since 1972.7 The prison population in 2021 was nearly six times as large as 50 years ago, before the era of mass incarceration, and in 2022 the prison population expanded.8 The prison and jail incarceration rate in the United States remains between five and eight times that of France, Canada, and Germany and imprisonment rates in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma are nearly 50% above the national average.9 The reluctance to fully correct sentencing excesses, particularly for violent crimes as supported by criminological evidence, prolongs the harm and futility of mass incarceration.10

Racial equity in incarceration remains elusive. The lifetime likelihood of imprisonment among Black men born in 2001, although decreased, remains four times that of their white counterparts.5 Black women’s rate of imprisonment in 2021 was 1.6 times the rate of white women.12 These disparities are even more pronounced in certain states, and among those serving the longest sentences.13 In 2021, American Indian and Latinx people were imprisoned at 4.2 times and 2.4 times the rate of whites, respectively.14 Fully uprooting these racial and ethnic disparities requires both curbing disparities produced by the criminal legal system and addressing the conditions of socioeconomic inequality that contribute to higher rates of certain violent and property crimes among people of color.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 16p.

By Jamie Jenkins

The largest book ban in the United States takes place in this country’s prison system. Prison officials can ban any book that threatens the security or operations of the facility. Books about Black people in America and books about the history and politics of prisons are often targeted for their potential to be divisive or incite unrest. The result is that Black people, who are already disproportionately victimized by the criminal punishment system, are prevented from reading their own history and the history of the institution imprisoning them. This Note examines the legal backdrop enabling these draconian book bans to persist today. As an example, it highlights the recent ban of Heather Ann Thompson’s “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy” in Attica Correctional Facility. It situates book bans in prisons alongside the anti-CRT mania plaguing our school systems, and labels both practices as forms of “memory law” meant to stifle the democratic engagement of marginalized groups. Finally, this Note argues for a rebalancing of interests that centers the rights and needs of incarcerated people.

(January 16, 2023). Columbia Law Review, Forthcoming, Available at

By Nicole D. Porter

Between 2000 and 2022, 21 states partially closed or fully closed at least one correctional facility and reduced correctional capacity in the United States by 81,444 prison beds, according to The Sentencing Project’s analysis of state records. …Key to successful prison closure efforts has been the reuse of former correctional facilities for purposes beneficial to communities. A community reinvestment approach redirects funds states spend on prisons to rebuild the social capital and local infrastructure – quality schools, community centers, and healthcare facilities – in high-incarceration neighborhoods. Such an approach acknowledges the collateral impacts of mass incarceration on many overly policed neighborhoods where persons lived prior to their sentencing. Repurposing closed prison facilities helps address how out of step the United States’ scale of incarceration is with the rest of the world and the unacceptable racial bias that dominates criminal legal practices.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 28p.

By Kendra Bradner and Vincent Schiraldi

The scope and conditions of parole supervision in New York have profound impacts for people serving supervision sentences. Numerous conditions are a constraint on their liberty, serve as trip wires to incarceration, and can disrupt the process of community reintegration needed for successful reentry after leaving prison. Parole supervision also fuels mass incarceration everywhere, but particularly in New York, as New York sends more people back to prison for non-criminal, technical parole violations than any state except Illinois (Kaeble 2018, Appendix Table 7). Six times as many people are reincarcerated in state prisons for technical violations – such as missing an appointment, being out past curfew, or testing positive for alcohol – as are reincarcerated for a new criminal conviction (Commission 2019). Moreover, people held on parole violations are now the only population increasing in New York City jails, threatening plans to close the notorious Rikers Island jails complex (Schiraldi and Arzu 2018; Commission 2019). Together, incarceration for technical violations cost New York State and localities over $600 million annually (The Council of State Governments 2019; NYC Independent Budget Office 2019; NYS Bar Association 2019).

New York: Columbia University, Justice Lab, 2020. 24p.

By The Southern Poverty Law Center

The detention of immigrants has skyrocketed in the United States. On a given day in August 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held over 55,000 people in detention – a massive increase from five years ago when ICE held fewer than 30,000 people. Unsurprisingly, the United States has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world. What’s more, the federal government spends more on immigration enforcement than for all principal federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. As of April 2019, Florida had the sixth-largest population of people detained by ICE in the United States, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. On a daily basis, ICE currently detains more than 2,000 noncitizens in the state, mostly in South Florida, which is home to four immigration prisons: Krome Service Processing Center (Krome), owned by ICE; Broward Transitional Center (Broward), operated by GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based for-profit prison corporation; and two county jails, Glades County Detention Center (Glades) and Monroe County Detention Center (Monroe). Despite the fact that immigrants are detained on civil violations, their detention is indistinguishable from the conditions found in jails or prisons where people are serving criminal sentences. The nation’s immigration detention centers are little more than immigrant prisons, where detained people endure harsh – even dangerous – conditions. And reports of recent deaths have only heightened concerns.

Montgomery, AL: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2017. 104p.

By Ying Shi and Maria Zhu

Well-documented racial disparities in rates of exclusionary discipline may arise from differences in hard-to-observe student behavior or bias, in which treatment for the same behavior varies by student race or ethnicity. We provide evidence for the presence of bias using statewide administrative data that contain rich details on individual disciplinary infractions. Two complementary empirical strategies identify bias in suspension outcomes. The first uses within-incident variation in disciplinary outcomes across White and under-represented minority students. The second employs individual fixed effects to examine how consequences vary for students across incidents based on the race of the other student involved in the incident. Both approaches find that Black students are suspended for longer than Hispanic or White students, while there is no evidence of Hispanic-White disparities. The similarity of findings across approaches and the ability of individual fixed effect models to account for unobserved characteristics common across disciplinary incidents provide support that remaining racial disparities are likely not driven by behavior.

Bonn, Germany: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, 2021. 38p.

By William Thomas Root and Giovanni Giardini.

“The report is divided in five sections besides an introductory discussion of the character of the data and the methods used in the survey. In the section on "Race and Crime" there is an extended study of the Italians and with the Negro.”

Pittsburgh, PA: The Board of trustees of the Western penitentiary, 1927. 246p.