By Anna Harvey, Orion Taylor and Andrea Wang

This report, updating the September 2020 Impact Report on COVID-19, Jails, and Public Safety, draws on a sample of approximately 19 million daily individual-level jail records collected by New York University's Public Safety Lab between Jan. 1, 2020 and Oct. 22, 2020. We explore how bookings, releases, and rebooking rates changed during the pandemic, relative to the pre-pandemic period. + Jail populations in the sample decreased by an average of 31% over the six weeks following the March 16 issuance of the White House "Coronavirus Guidelines for America," which expired on April 30. Jail populations then increased and have since recovered half of these decreases, despite explosive COVID-19 case growth in many of the counties in the sample. Counties with higher countywide COVID-19 case growth between March 1 and Oct. 22 have not seen larger reductions in jail populations. The decreases in jail populations after the issuance of the White House Guidelines on March 16, and the lack of responsiveness of jail populations to local COVID prevalence after those guidelines expired, suggest the importance of clear policy directives for reducing disease transmission risk within county jails. + Jail bookings dropped sharply in mid-March and remain on average 36% below pre-pandemic levels. As bookings declined, the characteristics of those booked into jails shifted. Those booked into jails between mid-March and late October were booked on more charges on average, were more likely to be booked on felony charges, and were less likely to be booked on lesser charges like…..

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  failure to appear, than those booked into jails prior to this period. + Although jail bookings dropped after mid-March, those booked into jails were detained for longer periods of time. Average detention duration increased sharply after mid-March, doubling from about 15 to 30 days, and remains nearly twice as high as the pre-pandemic average detention duration. This increase has offset reductions in admissions, and contributed to rebounding jail populations observed since mid-March. + Parallel to trends in daily bookings, daily releases dropped sharply in mid-March and remain approximately 40% below baseline levels. Those released from jails between mid-March and late October had been booked on more charges on average, were more likely to have been booked on felony charges, and were less likely to have been booked on lesser charges such as failure to appear, than those released from jails prior to mid-March.  The rate at which those released from detention are rebooked into jail following release is one possible measure of the public safety risk of jail releases. To date, 30-, 60-, 90-, and 180-day rebooking rates among those released during the pandemic have remained 13% - 33% below pre-pandemic rebooking rates. To the extent that rebooking rates measure the average public safety risk of releasing individuals from jail, this risk remains lower now than prior to the pandemic. + While the proportion of Black individuals among daily jail admissions did not change appreciably during the pandemic, the proportion of Black people among those released from jails during the pandemic decreased by approximately 5% relative to the pre-pandemic period. As a result, the proportion of jail populations composed of Black individuals rose during the pandemic.   

Washington, D.C.: Council on Criminal Justice, December 2020. 27p.

BySchnepel, Kevin T., Joanna Abaroa-Ellison, et al.

Across the country, the coronavirus pandemic has had taken a heavy toll on incarcerated populations. High infection and mortality rates stem largely from the crowded conditions and shifting populations within prisons, along with the challenges of implementing effective mitigation strategies, such as physical distancing. This report explores the potential relationship between COVID-19 testing rates and COVID-19 infection and mortality outcomes across the 32 state prison systems where information necessary to conduct such an analysis was publicly available. The report also describes how four states (Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, and Vermont) conducted mass testing, and details outcomes for their incarcerated populations. Approximately half of the departments in the U.S. attempted to test all individuals in their prisons through some form of mass, or universal, testing program. This report draws on data available as of February 16, 2021.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2021. 21p.

By Matt Tidmarsh

The meaning of terms like ‘profession’, ‘professional’, and ‘professionalism’ are disputed. In a probation context, however, such contestation is seldom acknowledged; when mentioned, debates on ‘professionalism’ typically refer to what the service has allegedly lost. This literature typically draws on the ideal-typical tenets of professional status to highlight attempts to change probation’s ideology of service (Robinson and Ugwudike, 2012); erode its knowledge, education, and training (Farrant, 2006); and constrain its autonomy over work (Fitzgibbon, 2007). The alleged demise of ‘professionalism’ was crucial to the mobilisation of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms to probation in England and Wales. Professionalism in probation, it was argued, had been stifled by government interference; restoring it by establishing markets for low-to-medium risk offenders was vital to attempts to create an efficient, cost-effective service (Ministry of Justice [MoJ], 2010, 2013). However, the detrimental impact of Transforming Rehabilitation on probation has been widely observed (e.g. HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2020a; National Audit Office [NAO], 2019; Tidmarsh, 2021a). For example, then-Chief Inspector of Probation Dame Glenys Stacey described how a transactional model of probation was ‘fundamentally flawed’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a: 89). Indeed, the manner in which Transforming Rehabilitation ‘downgraded’ and ‘diminished’ the profession (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a) influenced the decision to return probation services to the public sector, in June 2021

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  (HM Prison and Probation Service [HMPPS], 2021). A commitment to enhancing ‘professionalism’ by improving the skills, knowledge, and standards of the workforce is, once again, a central theme in yet more probation restructuring (HMPPS, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). This Academic Insights paper, therefore, reviews the academic literature on ‘professionalism’ and applies it to probation. In particular, it highlights the opportunities provided by probation unification to better embed professionalism within the service.    

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022. 18p.

By Kendra Bradner, Vincent Schiraldi, Natasha Mejia, and Evangeline Lopoo

This research brief offers an initial analysis of newly-released data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which report on the number of people under probation and parole supervision in 2017 and 2018. This brief seeks to put the data into the context of historical and international community supervision trends and to examine supervision rates through a racial equity lens. The authors find that, while there has been an observable decline in the number of people under community supervision, the United States continues to maintain high rates of community supervision compared to historic rates, as well as compared to European rates. Further, community supervision is still marked by significant racial disparities and “mass supervision” continues to be a major contributor to mass incarceration. Finally, from 2008 to 2018, the decline in the number of people on probation has failed to keep pace with the decline in arrests, resulting in an increase in the rate of probation, per arrest. The authors recommend that policymakers address points of racial and ethnic disparity, shorten parole supervision periods and allow people to reduce their supervision periods through compliant behavior, eliminate incarceration as a response to non-criminal technical violations, and invest savings in initiatives co-designed with impacted communities.

New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2020. 25p.

By Kelly Roberts Freeman, Ammar Khalid, Lily Robin, Rochisha Shukla, Paige Thompson and Robin Olsen

Probation revocation to jail or prison can result when a person is arrested for a new crime or is in violation of their probation conditions. The nature of probation supervision and how these violations relate to revocation varies depending on individual factors and the local context. Through the Reducing Revocations Challenge, the Urban Institute partnered with the Adult Probation Services Division of the Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts and the Pima County Adult Probation Department to shed light on the revocation pathways in Pima County and to identify policy solutions to address them. Specifically, this mixed-methods study aimed to examine 1) the types of noncompliance that occur (i.e., new crimes and technical violations); 2) probation officer and judicial responses to noncompliance; and 3) the role of client, caseload, and supervision characteristics on formal violations and revocation. This report presents our analysis of administrative probation data contextualized by a qualitative assessment of state and local policies, probation client case files, and interviews with probation officers, judges, and community providers. This allowed us to explore in-depth the factors, circumstances, and behaviors that drive both petitions for revocation and revocation outcomes. We provide policy implications based on these findings to safely reduce revocations and maximize supervision success.

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2021. 55p.

By Briana Hammons

Considerable research has uncovered the financial burden and unintended consequences wreaked on the people charged with paying fines and fees. But there has been little, if any, investigation into how much court debt is outstanding or delinquent nationwide. Understanding the full scope of our nation’s criminal justice debt problem is vital to the task of creating an equitable justice system. In an effort to obtain this critical information, the Fines and Fees Justice Center contacted judicial offices and government agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that might have data related to outstanding court debt. We chose to focus our investigation on court debt because courts keep a record of every case, and those records should specify the amount of fines and fees imposed at conviction. We assumed that courts routinely aggregated this data, allowing them to determine the amount of fines and fees assessed. We also assumed that courts would track how much of those fines and fees were actually collected. But for half the country, that is not the case. What this means is that the full extent of our nation’s problem with court debt is shockingly untraceable and unknown. Reliable and current data is necessary to develop informed and effective public policy, and it is a vital tool to accurately judge the efficacy of a particular program and existing practices. In order to intelligently assess policy solutions, we need a complete view of every state’s court debt including, the total amount of fines and fees imposed, assessed, collected, and outstanding and data about the people who owe

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  fines and fees, including eligibility for a public defender or public benefits and charges for which the debt was imposed.

New York: Fines & Fees Justice Center, 2021. 34p.

By M. G. Neithercutt, William H. Mosely and Ernst A. Wenk

From the summary: “At the request of the leading parole organizations which sponsor the National Probation and Parole Institutes program, the Uniform Parole Reports project was initiated in October 1964. An initial Feasibility Study was completed through the collaboration of 24 state parole agencies. This work resulted in a rant award by the National Institute of Mental Health for a three year pilot study to further develop the reporting system. A three year continuation grant followed that and since March 1972 the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration has provided the necessary support. The program is aimed at the development of a nationwide system of uniform parole reporting to provide reliable, comparable data by which paroling authorities may evaluate their policies and programs on an interstate  

National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Unpublished Report. March 1975. 73p.

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, and Ashley Nellis

Over 260,000 people in U.S. prisons had already been incarcerated for at least 10 years in 2019, comprising 19% of the prison population. Nearly three times as many people—over 770,000— were serving sentences of 10 years or longer. These figures represent a dramatic growth from the year 2000, when mass incarceration was already well underway. Based on criminological evidence that criminal careers typically end within approximately 10 years and recidivism rates fall measurably after about a decade of imprisonment, The Sentencing Project recommends taking a second look at sentences within 10 years of imprisonment. This research brief presents state-level analysis revealing a common growing trend of lengthy sentences, as well as significant geographic variation. The analysis also addresses racial disparities in long sentences. Because racial disparities are even starker here than among those serving shorter prison terms, focusing reform efforts on sentences of 10 years or more can accelerate racial justice. Finally, the brief presents the criminological and legal foundations for sentencing reform and offers recommendations for policymakers.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 16p.

By Bree Carlton and Emma K. Russell

This book explores the dramatic evolution of a feminist movement that mobilised to challenge a women’s prison system in crisis. Through in-depth historical research conducted in the Australian state of Victoria that spans the 1980s and 1990s, the authors uncover how incarcerated women have worked productively with feminist activists and community coalitions to expose, critique and resist the conditions and harms of their confinement. Resisting Carceral Violencetells the story of how activists—through a combination of creative direct actions, reformist lobbying and legal challenges—forged an anti-carceral feminist movement that traversed the prison walls. This powerful history provides vital lessons for service providers, social justice advocates and campaigners, academics and students concerned with the violence of incarceration. It calls for a willingness to look beyond the prison and instead embrace creative solutions to broader structural inequalities and social harm.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 268p.

By Meghan McCormick, Bright Sarfo and Emily Brennan

Over 5 million American children under the age of 18 years, a disproportionate number of whom are Black or Latino, have had a residential parent jailed or incarcerated. While a number of existing studies identify parental incarceration as a key risk factor for poor child and family outcomes, there is more limited information describing programs that aim to promote positive outcomes for children with parents involved in the criminal justice system. This literature review analyzes published studies about family strengthening programs that seek to maintain and build healthy relationships between parents who are incarcerated and their children. The review is organized by six key areas of programmatic focus that the research team identified based on an initial scan of the literature, consultations with experts and programs in the field, and guidance from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2021. 61p.

By Jessica Meyerson and Christa Otteson

To incorporate the broad and diverse range of research that speaks to families affected by incarceration, the remainder of this literature review is organized into three sections:  A brief review of the service needs of families affected by incarceration  A review of the most widely agreed upon research-based “practices” related to families affected by incarceration  An inventory of specific evidence-based programs, service models, and curricula that have been used to provide supportive services to incarcerated parents, their children, and their children’s caregivers

Stt. Paul, MN: Wilder Research, 2009. 40p.

By The Council on Crime and Justice

In 2003 the Council on Crime and Justice (CCJ) received funding from the U.S. Department of Justice to study racial disparities in the Minnesota criminal justice system. Seven studies were conducted in total. Some of these studies were aimed at defining racial disparities within the criminal justice system, while others examined the collateral effects of such disparities. The following study fell into the latter category. The purpose of this study was twofold: first to examine the effects of imprisonment on the family relationship from the perspective of the fathers, along with these men’s strengths and struggles during incarceration and reentry into the community; and second to examine the community dynamics and resources within a neighborhood experiencing a high concentration of prison mobility (i.e. residents either leaving for or returning from prison). The Hawthorne neighborhood in North Minneapolis was chosen for our study because of its racial diversity and high prisoner mobility. An analysis of the neighborhood was conducted from the resident’s perspective in order to better understand the physical and social environment to which many previously incarcerated fathers return.

Minneapolis: Council on Crime and Justice, 2006. 81p.

By Amy Dworsky, et al.

This brief describes the results of a project undertaken by a team of researchers from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. The purpose of the project was to inform the development and implementation of gender responsive policies and practices that will address the needs of incarcerated mothers in the Illinois Department of Corrections and reduce the impact of incarceration on their children.

Chicago, IL: Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, 2020. 38p.

Edited by Julie Poehlmann-Tynan and Danielle H. Dallaire

This Brief focuses on mothers in the U.S. criminal justice system and their children. After decades of mass incarceration, the United States now incarcerates more women than any other country in the world, and the vast majority of incarcerated women are mothers of minor children. The growing involvement of mothers in all forms of the criminal justice system, including arrest, incarceration, reentry, and community supervision, requires a better understanding of how such involvement impacts children and families. This Brief presents six new empirical studies, most of them longitudinal, designed to address gaps in our knowledge base about maternal criminal justice involvement and maternal and child well-being. We apply an intergenerational lifespan developmental perspective and discuss the attachment-related themes of separation, loss, and reunion in the introductory chapter and throughout the volume. In addition, issues related to prevention and intervention, gender-responsive programs, and themes of trauma, addiction, child welfare involvement, low resource environments, and resilience are integrated throughout and highlighted in the concluding chapter. The Brief closes by presenting policy and practice implications of the research for mothers involved in the criminal justice system and their children and families.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2021 167p.

By Sarah Schirmer, Ashley Nellis and Marc Mauer

Mass incarceration has had significant and long-lasting impacts on American society, and particularly on communities of color. There is now a growing awareness that parents who go to prison do not suffer the consequences alone; the children of incarcerated parents often lose contact with their parent and visits are sometimes rare. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to drop out of school, engage in delinquency, and subsequently be incarcerated themselves.1 In 2007 there were 1.7 million children in America with a parent in prison, more than 70% of whom were children of color. Children of incarcerated parents live in a variety of circumstances. Some were previously in homes of two-parent families, where the non-incarcerated parent can assume primary responsibility for the children. Many children, especially in cases of women’s incarceration, were in single-parent homes and are then cared for by a grandparent or other relative, if not in foster care. And in some cases, due to substance abuse and other factors, incarcerated parents had either not lived with their children or not provided a secure environment for them. Following release from prison both parents and children face challenges in reuniting their families. Parents have to cope with the difficulty of finding employment and stable housing while also reestablishing a relationship with their children.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2009. 14p.

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.