By Creasie Finney Hairston

What is it like to grow up with a parent in prison? What are the immediate and long-term effects of parental incarceration on children? How can we best serve the needs of these children and ensure that they receive the support they need to thrive under challenging circumstances? These are questions that still need to be answered. Research that focuses on children whose parents are incarcerated has been quite limited, despite the growing numbers of children who are affected by the imprisonment of their mother or father. Over 1.5 million children in the United States have a parent who is in prison. Several million more have grown up with a parent in prison during some part of their formative years. The children of incarcerated parents have long been an almost invisible population, but in recent years, they have begun to receive attention from public policymakers, traditional social service providers and academic researchers. Some, concerned about the rapidly growing correctional population of more than two million people, fear that these children are at a higher risk to become incarcerated themselves as adults. Others are motivated by a desire to better understand and promote the well-being of children living in challenging life circumstances. This overview is based primarily on research published during the last 20 years, though some earlier works are included. It also draws on several years of consultation on programs and research involving prisoners and their families.

Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2007. 44p.

By Ivan G. Goldman

In America, 2.3 million people—a population about the size of Houston’s, the country’s fourth-largest city—live behind bars. Sick Justice explores the economic, social, and political forces that hijacked the criminal justice system to create this bizarre situation. Presenting frightening true stories of (sometimes wrongfully) incarcerated individuals, Ivan G. Goldman exposes the inept bureaucracies of America’s prisons and shows the real reasons that disproportionate numbers of minorities, the poor, and the mentally ill end up there. Goldman dissects the widespread phenomenon of jailing for profit, the outsized power of prison guards’ unions, California’s exceptionally rigid three-strikes law, the ineffective and never-ending war on drugs, the closing of mental health institutions across the country, and other blunders and avaricious practices that have brought us to this point. Sick Justice tells a big, gripping story that’s long overdue. By illuminating the system’s brutality and greed and the prisoners’ gratuitous suffering, the book aims to be a catalyst for reform, complementing the work of the Innocence Project and mirroring the effects of Michael Harrington’s The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), which became the driving force behind the war on poverty.

Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013. 256p.

By Mark Dow

American Gulag takes us inside prisons such as the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, the Corrections Corporation of Americas Houston Processing Center, and county jails around the country that profit from contracts to hold INS prisoners. It contains disturbing in-depth profiles of detainees, including Emmy Kutesa, a defector from the Ugandan army who was tortured and then escaped to the United States, where he was imprisoned in Queens, and then undertook a hunger strike in protest. To provide a framework for understanding stories like these, Dow gives a brief history of immigration laws and practices in the United States—including the repercussions of September 11 and present-day policies. His book reveals that current immigration detentions are best understood not as a well-intentioned response to terrorism but rather as part of the larger context of INS secrecy and excessive authority.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. 429p.

By Ann M. Nurse

Crime and young fatherhood have generally been viewed as separate social problems. Increasingly, researchers are finding that these problems are closely related and highly concentrated in low-income communities. Fatherhood Arrested is an in-depth study of these issues and the difficulties of parenting while in prison and on parole. By taking us inside the prison system, Nurse shows how its structure actively shapes an inmate's relationship with his children. For example, visitation is sometimes restricted to blood relatives and wives. Because relationships between unmarried men and the mothers of their children are often strained, some mothers are unwilling to allow their children to go to the prison with the inmate's family. Or the father may be allowed to receive visits from only one "girlfriend," which forces a man with multiple relationships, or with children by different women, to make impossible choices. Special attention is paid to the gendered nature of prison, its patriarchal and punitive structure, and its high-stress environment. The book then follows newly paroled men as they are released and return to their children. The author spent four years doing research at the California Youth Authority, during which time she surveyed 258 paroled fathers. The group included young white, black, and Latino men, ages sixteen to twenty-five. She conducted in-depth interviews with men selected from this group, participated in forty parenting class sessions, and observed visiting hours at three different institutions. The data provide fascinating information about the characteristics of the men, their attitudes toward fatherhood, and the ways they are involved with their children. The diversity of the fathers allows for an analysis of racial and ethnic variation in their attitudes and involvement. The study concludes with a series of policy suggestions, especially important in light of the large number of fathers now living under the care and control of the juvenile justice system.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. 176p.

Edited by Shlomo Giora Shoham, Ori Beck and Martin Kett

The first comparative study of this increasingly integral social subject, International Handbook of Penology and Criminal Justice provides a comprehensive and balanced review of the philosophy and practicality of punishment. Drawn from the expertise of scholars and researchers from around the world, this book covers the theory, practice, history, and empirical evidence surrounding crime prevention, identification, retribution, and incarceration. It analyzes the efficacy of both traditional methods and thinking as well as novel concepts and approaches. The book evaluates arguments regarding the world-wide abolition of capitol punishment from moral, utilitarian, and practical positions. It examines non-incarcerative and alternative punishments such as financial restoration and restrictions of liberty, as well as the positive effects of Victim Offender Mediation. It also considers several methods aimed at achieving measurable crime prevention including identifying at-risk juveniles and minimizing crimes of opportunity, as well as the pros and cons of employing the coercive power of police. Further essays consider subjects such as international policing, the roles of prosecution and defense attorneys, current discretionary sentencing practices, and the role and treatment of victims. The volume concludes with two chapters of case studies that provide a "hands-on" feel for the interplay of the concepts discussed.

Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2008. 802p.

By Bruce A. Arrigo and Dragan Milovanovic

Revolution in Penology is a thoroughly original and thought-provoking critique of penal harm, the recursive pains of imprisonment cycle, and the normalization of violence. Relying on selected insights derived from continental philosophy, cultural studies, and chaos theory, internationally renowned social theorists, Bruce A. Arrigo and Dragan Milovanovic, deconstruct the human agency/social structure duality that sustains the prison form, its parts and segments understood as correctional principles/practices, and the prison industrial complex that is informed by and stands above them all.

Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. 237p.

By Gresham M. Sykes

The Society of Captives, first published in 1958, is a classic of modern criminology and one of the most important books ever written about prison.

Gresham Sykes wrote the book at the height of the Cold War, motivated by the world’s experience of fascism and communism to study the closest thing to a totalitarian system in American life: a maximum security prison. His analysis calls into question the extent to which prisons can succeed in their attempts to control every facet of life — or whether the strong bonds between prisoners make it impossible to run a prison without finding ways of “accommodating” the prisoners.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958. 168p.

By Maxim Ananyev and Michael Poyker

We investigate whether prisons contribute to homophobia in the general population given that inmates’ informal code often ascribes low status to persons perceived as ``passive’’ homosexuals. First, using Australian longitudinal survey data, we establish that prison experience prompts a higher level of anti-gay sentiments among males and their families, even though no discernible difference exists before incarceration. Second, to explore the transmission of anti-gay sentiments to the population, we use the Soviet amnesty of 1953, which released 1.2 million prisoners. We find that the municipalities in Russia more exposed to the influx of released individuals have more anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes, homophobic slurs on social media, and discriminatory attitudes in representative surveys. We offer suggestive evidence for the mechanisms by showing that in the aftermath of the amnesty more exposed locations had a larger increase in the number of thieves-in-law, career criminals upholding the inmate code, and descendants of Gulag prisoners have higher levels of anti-gay attitudes. Our results demonstrate a previously under-emphasized cost of mass incarceration: a higher level of homophobia.

Melbourne: University of Melbourne - Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research; Nottingham, UK: University of Nottingham, School of Economics, 2022. 110p.

By Juditih Resnik, Skylar Albertson, Skylar Grace Li and Jennifer Taylor

Time-In-Cell 2021 is the only comprehensive, current national data on the number of prisoners in solitary confinement — or what prison directors call restrictive housing — and the length of time prisoners are housed under these conditions. As of the summer of 2021, an estimated 41,000 to 48,000 prisoners in the United States were held in isolation for an average of 22 hours a day for 15 days or more. Moreover, three states reported holding no one in that form of isolation in July 2021; two other states reported fewer than ten people in solitary; and ten states reported not using solitary in any of their women’s prisons. In contrast, as documented in the study published in 2014, every jurisdiction reported using solitary confinement, and an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people were in solitary confinement in prisons throughout the United States.

This research intersects with efforts around the country—spearheaded by people in confinement, by communities, by many organizations including of correctional leaders, and by legislators—to limit or end the use of isolation in prison. National campaigns (“Unlock the Box,” “Stop Solitary”) have brought attention to the harms, as has the recent death of Albert Woodfox, author of Solitary, who spent more than forty years in isolation at Louisiana’s Angola prison before he was released in 2016. Time-in-Cell also examined the demographics of people held in isolation, including its continued use for people whom their own jurisdiction defines as having “serious mental illness.” Moreover, the number of Black women held in solitary was higher than the number of white women.

New Haven, CT: Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, 2022. 307p.

By Penal Reform International and Thailand Institute of Justice

Global Prison Trends 2022 is Penal Reform International’s annual flagship report, published with the Thailand Institute of Justice, identifying the key trends and challenges in prison systems worldwide.

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, despite repeated calls to reduce prison populations since the onset of the crisis, the global prison population has reached an all-time high. Global Prison Trends 2022 exposes that, rather than a decrease in prison numbers, many governments are instead increasing prison capacity, with a significant expansion in the global prison estate in the past year.

London: PRI and Thailand Institute of Justice 2022. 64p.

By UNODC, WHO, UNAIDS, UNDP, PRI

Transgender people often experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including in criminal justice systems. Evidence indicates that such marginalisation, criminalisation and discrimination can lead to greater vulnerability to and risk of long-term mental and physical health issues, including increased risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and experience of sexual assault.

This technical brief sets out guiding principles and targeted interventions aimed at supporting countries in reducing the risk of HIV infection and transmission among, and ensuring adequate and accessible health care for, transgender people deprived of liberty by State authorities in prisons and other closed settings. Policymakers and prison authorities should understand the needs of transgender people and incorporate the proposed evidence- and human rights-based interventions and international standards into their prison policies and strategies, applying them to all people in prison.

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2022. 12p.

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 Mackenzie Buday and Ashley Nellis

Private prisons incarcerated 99,754 American residents in 2020, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 14%. Harmful crime policies of the 1980s and beyond fueled a rapid expansion in the nation’s prison population. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the modern emergence of for-profit prisons in many states and the federal system. Of the 1.2 million people in federal and state prisons, 8%, or 99,754 people, were in private prisons as of year-end 2020.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 3p.

By The Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform and Columbia University Justice Lab

New York State sends more people to prison for parole rules violations than any other state in the country. In 2019, 40 percent of the people sent to New York prisons were incarcerated not for a new felony conviction, but for parole violations such as not reporting to a parole officer, living at an unapproved residence, missing curfew, or failing drug or alcohol tests. Black and Latinx people are significantly more likely than white people to be incarcerated for parole violations. The fiscal impact on New York state and local taxpayers is enormous. In 2019, New York’s state and local governments collectively spent $683 million to incarcerate people on parole for rules violations, without evidence that this massive expenditure of resources meaningfully contributed to public safety. New York State spent $319 million in 2019 to incarcerate people for parole rule violations in state prisons. New York counties—excluding the five counties in New York City—collectively spent more than $91 million to jail people who were accused of technical violations ƒ New York City spent $273 million to jail people accused of technical violations

New York: Columbia University, Justice Lab, 2021. 23p.

By Caitlin Curry

Scholars have sought to understand the problem of racial disproportionality in U.S. imprisonment rates for over four decades, but current research has yet to identify the specific correctional mechanisms that exacerbate racial differences in incarceration (Garland, 2013). The rate of parole revocations increased markedly in the 1990s and 2000s, contributing to the growth in imprisonment in the US. Likewise, some research also finds that the likelihood of parole revocation varies by race, but we know little about the effect of parole revocations on imprisonment disparity (Huebner and Bynum, 2008). This study uses a sample of 24 states over a twenty year period (1990-2009) to test the hypothesis that parole revocation admissions contribute to disparity in imprisonment by race. Specifically, this study employs multilevel modeling to assess the extent to which parole revocations account for race differences in prisons admissions, when controlling for individual characteristics as well as state structural factors and policies

Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, 2016. 76p.

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 European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA): Linda Montanari, Luis Royuela, Ines Hasselberg and Liesbeth Vandam

This European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Insights report provides a comprehensive overview of the current knowledge and latest developments in the field of drug use and prison in the 30 countries reporting to the EMCDDA up to the end of 2020: the 27 EU Member States, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom. It also identifies important gaps in our knowledge, challenges for better provision of interventions and implications for policy and practice. The report provides an overview of the current situation in the field of drugs and prison in the following areas: drug use and drug-related problems among the prison population; the availability of drug-related services in prison; the evidence available for effective interventions in the prison setting; drug supply and supply reduction interventions; and future challenges relating to prison and drugs.

People in prison report high levels of lifetime prevalence of substance use before imprisonment and increased levels of consumption, especially of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, compared with the general population. Although many people will stop injecting drugs when they enter prison, for those that continue, the use and reuse of contaminated equipment is not uncommon, contributing to an increased risk of transmission of infectious diseases in these settings.

Lisbon: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), 2022. 124p.

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 The American Civil Liberties Union

Today, the United States has just 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. But it has not always been this way. Thanks to the “War on Drugs,” irrationally harsh sentencing regimes, and a refusal to consider evidence-based alternatives, the U.S. prison population grew by more than 700% between 1970 and 2009—far outpacing both population growth and crime rates.1 In the past decade, the growing criminalization of immigration has further contributed to this mass incarceration crisis. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) now refers more cases for federal criminal prosecution than the FBI.2 Nationwide, more than half of all federal criminal prosecutions initiated in fiscal year 2013 were for unlawfully crossing the border into the United States—an act that has traditionally been treated as a civil offense resulting in deportation, rather than as a criminal act resulting in incarceration in a federal prison.3 This is dramatically changing who enters the federal prison system.4 The tipping point came in 2009, when more people entered federal prison for immigration offenses than for violent, weapons, and property offenses combined—and the number has continued to rise each year since.5 The criminalization of immigration also enriches the private prison industry. Once prosecuted, noncitizen federal prisoners are mostly segregated into thirteen “Criminal Alien Requirement” (CAR) prisons. The CAR prisons are unusual in three respects: they are some of the only

New York: ACLU,, 2014. 104p.