By Ryan Shanahan

This report presents the results of a rigorous evaluation of Restoring Promise, which is an initiative that creates prison housing units grounded in human dignity for young adults, ages 18 to 25, that operate with re-trained staff, trained mentors who are older adults serving long- or life-sentences, and developmentally appropriate activities, workshops, and opportunities for young adults. The evaluation reflects two studies: the first is a study of Restoring Promise in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) and the second is a study of Restoring Promise across five housing units in partnership with three corrections agencies. The first study utilizes a randomized controlled trial (RTC) to understand whether and by how much Restoring Promise reduces young adults’ incidences of violence and misconduct, comparing outcomes for two groups of young adults who applied to live on a Restoring Promise housing unit. The second study of Restoring Promise across the five housing units uses latent class analysis (LCA) to compare responses to the Restoring Promise Prison Culture Survey (PCS) from young adults incarcerated in three different corrections agencies, living across five Restoring Process housing units in Connecticut, South Carolina, and Massachusetts. The process of conducting this research provided insights into running an effective and rigorous RCT in a correctional setting. The finding that changing the prison culture led to a reduction in violence fills a gap in the field and provides evidence to support a new, replicable model for improving safety in correctional settings. Findings showed that the results of the RCT are potentially applicable to all young adults; the approach that Restoring Promise uses has several fundamental components that are consistent across locations; and young adults and staff report similarly positive experiences, regardless of location, due to prison culture changes.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 66p.

By Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago

  According to statistics gathered from the 2011-2012 National Inmate Survey administered by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 40 percent of individuals in jail self-reported having at least one disability. 3 Navigating jail with a disability can be complex, overwhelming, and costly. The impact of jailing a person with a disability also impacts their families and communities. The incarceration of one is essentially the incarceration of many. In the United States, the use of jail to confine people with disabilities is closely aligned with efforts to place disabled people in asylums and institutions, similar to the criminalization of black people resulting in mass incarceration following the abolition of slavery. From the end of slavery to today, laws have been enacted to criminalize and devalue both people of color and disabled individuals. These laws further socially justify these populations’ incarceration and further fuel biases and fear towards these groups. 4 Efforts to reduce jail incarceration nationwide have resulted in a range of innovative strategies, such as reducing the use of cash bail5 and the way that prosecutors make decisions about charges. 6 There is certainly a serious effort to shift how jails engage with people who need mental health supports, notably at Cook County Jail. 7 However, despite the general prevalence of disability in jails, there remain a range of under-addressed opportunities to discuss how to further reduce the jail incarceration of people with disabilities overall. A number of disability advocates have been working for many years to bring what is essentially a cross-disability look to criminal justice and restorative justice work; we need to hear and build on these efforts. Moreover, even as the National Inmate Survey showed high rates of self-reported disability status, it also showed that incarcerated people of color tended to underreport disability status.8 This poses a complex challenge to understanding the disability experience in different demographics who are impacted by police contact and jail incarceration. We feel this dynamic is of great note given current national work on reducing racial disparities in arrest trends and jail populations. This is especially important for Access Living, as the majority of people we serve directly are from black and brown neighborhoods in Chicago.  

Chicago: Access Living, 2019. 71p.

By Ashley Nellis

This report documents the rates of incarceration for white, Black and Latinx Americans in each state, identifies three contributors to racial and ethnic disparities in imprisonment, and provides recommendations for reform.

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2021. 25p.

By  Advancement Project National Office, One Voice and Mississippi Votes.

Our Voices, Our Votes: Felony Disenfranchisement and Re-entry in Mississippi, a new report by One Voice Mississippi, Mississippi Votes, and Advancement Project National Office analyzes how Mississippi silences those with prior felony convictions and creates reentry barriers for returning citizens. Using statistics, national data, and personal stories from directly impacted Mississippians, the report shines a light on what people with felony convictions are up against. The report details how the state’s Jim Crow legacy not only fails to assist returning citizens, but permanently disenfranchise them. With this report, organizers hope to bring change to the Mississippi criminal legal system and restore voting rights for all incarcerated citizens who have served their prison term.

Los Angeles: Advancement Project / One Voice / Mississippi Votes, 2021. 29p.

By Laura M. Maruschak, Jennifer Bronson, and Mariel Alper

This brief presents findings based on data collected in the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, a survey conducted through face-to-face interviews with a national sample of state and federal prisoners across a variety of topics, such as their demographic characteristics, socio-economic background, health, and involvement with the criminal justice system. This brief provides demographic information about prisoners who have at least one minor child and the number of minor children reported by parents in prison.

Highlights

• An estimated 684,500 state and federal prisoners were parents of at least one minor child in 2016—nearly half of state prisoners (47%) and more than half of federal prisoners (58%).

• State and federal prisoners reported having an estimated 1,473,700 minor children in 2016.

• Among minor children of parents in state prison, 1% were younger than age 1, about 18% were ages 1 to 4, and 48% were age 10 or older.

• The average age of a minor child among parents in federal prison was 10 years old.

Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics , 2021. 8p.

 By Jacqueline Beard

The Parole Board. The Parole Board is an executive non-departmental public body, responsible for the parole system. The Parole Board carries out risk assessments on these prisoners to determine whether they can be safely released into the community. It is governed by the Parole Board Rules, secondary legislation that sets out the procedures that must be followed when determining parole cases.

Reforms 2018-19: transparency and reconsideration. In 2018-2019 there were reforms to Parole Board procedures, partly in response to the case of John Warboys (now known as John Radford). Rule 25 of the Parole Board Rules was amended in 2018 to allow summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties. Previously Rule 25 had prohibited any release of information about parole proceedings.

Root and branch review 2022. In March 2022 the Government published a root and branch review with plans for further reforms, some of which require legislation. The Government has said it will legislate for those changes which require it as soon as possible.

Most comment regarding the root and branch review focused on the proposal for a Minister to review release decisions where the Parole Board directs the release of a person who is serving a sentence for a ‘top tier’ offence. Organisations such as Justice, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Prison Reform Trust have raised concerns about political interference in legal processes and the possibility of ‘political grandstanding’.....

London: House of Commons Library 2023. 31p.

By Shawn Bushway 

Job training programs for people under supervision have been based on an economic framework that identifies individuals involved in crime as a disadvantaged group with poor human capital. The best available research evidence has not found that these programs consistently improve employment outcomes. This article reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of standard job training programs and then examines new developments in the field that use alternative frameworks for understanding the roles of such programs. The first alternative is signaling: how people under community supervision use the completion of job training to signal to employers and others that the behavior that led to their conviction is either anomalous or no longer representative of them. The second alternative is a model of desistance known as identity change: the ways in which job training can help individuals solidify a new, more prosocial identity. I make sense of extant work and new alternatives and provide a set of recommendations for change in the community supervision system.

  ANNALS, AAPSS, 701, May 2022  

Edited by Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves 

This book provides international perspectives on corrections, correctional treatment, and penitentiary laws. Although its focus is on African and South American countries, the information provided can be easily expanded to North America and Europe. The chapters present legal frameworks and applied research on prisons and their potential to deter crime and reduce recidivism rates. The book puts the human rights agenda at the forefront and is a useful resource for those who work in corrections, including prison, education, and probation officers.

London: InTechOpen, 2023. 146p.

By Susan Howley

  Introduction In Spring 2022, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) launched the Task Force on Long Sentences, a group of 16 experts representing a broad range of experience and perspectives, including crime victims and survivors, formerly incarcerated people, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, courts, and corrections. Its mission is to examine how prison sentences of 10 years or more affect public safety, crime victims and survivors, incarcerated individuals and their families, communities, and correctional staff, and to develop recommendations to strengthen public safety and advance justice. As part of this effort, the Task Force convened nine listening sessions. The sessions were designed to gather input from victims and survivors of crime, including family members of homicide victims, close relatives of people serving long sentences, and individuals who served long prison sentences themselves. The purpose of this analysis is to elevate the perspectives of those individuals closest to long sentences – victims and survivors of serious crime and individuals who served long sentences and their loved ones. The views expressed by participants should be interpreted as direct reflections of their thoughts and feelings rather than as a blueprint for policy reform. Please also note that the opinions presented are not representative of all victims and survivors of serious crime, or all individuals who have served long prison sentences. Two overarching themes emerged from the listening sessions. First, while the sessions were designed to address victims and survivors and formerly incarcerated individuals and their loved ones separately, there was significant overlap in the experiences of participants. Many victims and survivors expressed having experienced the impact of incarceration through a family member and many formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones discussed having experienced serious violence. Although every effort was made to recruit diverse participants, the overlap in experience may be an artifact of how individuals were identified for participation in the listening sessions or may be evidence that there is significant overlap between “victims” and “offenders.” Second, there was broad agreement between victims and survivors and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones on most of the topics explored in the listening sessions and presented below. This brief highlights where the perspectives of listening session participants were in sync-and where they diverged.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2023. 20p.

By Julia Laskorunsky, Gerald G.Gaes and KevinReitz  

When researchers, policymakers, and advocates examine the impact of long sentences, they typically focus on issues such as the statutory lengths of sentences or the roles that prosecutors and judges play in imposing sentences. While analyses of such “front-end” factors are important, they cannot sufficiently explain the role of “back-end” factors, specifically the laws and administrative rules that govern the awarding of different forms of sentence credit and prison release. This constitutes a significant gap in our understanding of how long sentences work. As research by Kevin Reitz and colleagues has documented,1 state prison-release frameworks have far greater discretionary power over the time individuals actually serve-and, by extension, the size of prison populations-than has been previously understood. To assess the impact of the use of long sentences of 10 or more years in the U.S., it is critical to appreciate how the interplay between the laws and administrative rules governing prison release affect the actual length of time individuals spend behind bars. Based on research conducted as part of the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice’s Prison Release: Degrees of Indeterminacy project,2 this brief’s first section provides an overview of the nation’s parole and non-parole prison release systems. This overview sets up an examination of how these systems’ statutory and administrative policy frameworks influence release decisions, sentence credit awards, and the actual time individuals serve against the sentence they receive in court (i.e., the judicial maximum term). In the second section, the brief uses Colorado as a short case-study to show how one state’s back-end laws and policies affect the time individuals serve. Finally, in the concluding section, the brief points to future research and policy work on prison-release decision making including other empirical factors other than statutory and administrative frameworks that influence how much time an individual serves.  

Washington DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2022. 23p.

By Roger Pryzybylski, John Maki, Stephanie Kennedy, AaronRosenthal and Ernesto Lopez

  Long prison sentences—defined here as sentences of 10 years or more—may be imposed for several reasons, including to punish people engaged in criminal behavior, to prevent individuals from committing additional crimes in the future, and to warn the general public about the consequences of violating the law. This literature review explores empirical evidence on the relationship between sentence length and public safety. It synthesizes the best available research on the incapacitation and deterrent effects of prison sentences and examines whether, and to what extent, prison sentences affect individual criminal behavior and overall crime rates. The relationship between long prison sentences and public safety is complex. Although long prison sentences may be warranted in individual cases based on one or more of the varied purposes of sentencing, the imposition of such sentences on a large scale offers diminishing returns for public safety. Research consistently shows that a relatively small percentage of individuals are responsible for an outsized share of crime in their communities. But attempts to use long sentences to selectively incapacitate this population have been unable to overcome competing factors like the “replacement effect,” where the incarceration of one person leads to another individual taking their place, and the “age-crime curve,” the criminological fact that offending typically decreases with age. Since relatively few studies have focused specifically on long prison sentences, this analysis encompasses the broader literature on incarceration and crime. The report concludes with recommendations for future research.  

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2022. 17p.

By Kate K. O’Neill, Tyler J Smith, Ian Kennedy

Although men’s incarceration rates have declined in the United States, women’s have stayed steady and even risen in some areas. At the same time, courts have increased their use of monetary sanctions, especially for low-level offenses. We propose that women’s incarceration trends can be partially explained by county dependence on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue. We suggest that monetary sanctions expose female defendants to processes that increase their likelihood of incarceration, especially in counties more reliant on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue, and where women’s poverty rates are high. Using data from Washington State, we find county dependence on monetary sanctions is positively associated with rates of women sentenced to incarceration. Although rural counties’ rates are higher, they depend on monetary sanctions no more than nonrural counties do.

  RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 157–72. 2022;  

Edited by Janet Weston and Virginia Berridge

This Witness Seminar, held at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in May 2017, brings together some of those involved in influencing and implementing prison policy decisions surrounding HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. AIDS first appeared in Europe in the early 1980s, and prisons were soon identified as sites that would face particular challenges. Injecting drug use was one of the primary modes of HIV transmission, and the large numbers of drug users passing through prisons meant that the prevalence of HIV was feared to be high. Added to this were suspicions about the frequency of risky sexual activity and injecting drug use within prisons. Prisoners were not only thought to be at a higher risk of already having HIV or AIDS, but prisons themselves were seen as an ideal environment for the spread of infection amongst inmates, potentially also from inmates to staff, and ultimately from released prisoners to the wider population. Urgent decisions had to be made about how to minimise disruptions prompted by diagnoses or fears of HIV and AIDS, how to reduce the risks of HIV transmission, and how to look after prisoners already affected. The emergence of HIV and AIDS highlighted many of the existing tensions and problems surrounding healthcare for prisoners. Witnesses described the reluctance of the prison service to acknowledge and tackle difficult issues, but also observed that there did not seem to have been an HIV or AIDS epidemic within prisons in England and Wales. What also emerged was a sense of some of the ongoing difficulties facing the prison service, in terms of lost gains in healthcare services, mounting overcrowding, and a failure to learn the lessons of the past.

London: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2017. 67p.

By  Marcelo F. Aebi Léa Berger-Kolopp Christine Burkhardt Mélanie M. Tiago;  The European Union and the Council of Europe

  Country-based information on penal institutions and prison populations was collected through questionnaires sent to the prison administrations of the member states of the Council of Europe. The information collected was analysed by the authors of the study. This publication is divided into four parts across two volumes. Parts 1 to 3 are presented in this volume. Part 4 (volume 2) presents the data received from the prison administrations of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, as well as the rates, ratios and percentages computed by the authors of this study, which were used to produce the figures included in the present volume. 

Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2019. 366p.

By  William Arbour, Guy Lacroix, Steeve Marchand

Increasing evidence suggests that incarceration can improve inmates' social reintegration under certain circumstances. Yet, the mechanisms through which incarceration may lead to successful rehabilitation remain largely unknown. This paper finds that participation in social rehabilitation programs can significantly reduce recidivism only when inmates are evaluated by an assessment tool which allows to identify their criminogenic needs. This suggests that targeting criminogenic needs is crucial for successful rehabilitation. We also find that inmates with a high risk score or who exhibit procriminal attitudes benefit little from participation. To control for selection, we instrument participation with program availability at the time and place of incarceration. We also use a coefficient stability approach to test for omitted variable biases. Both approaches yield similar results.

Unpublished paper, 2023. 44p.

By Matthew R. Durose and Leonardo Antenangeli

This report presents findings on recidivism of females from BJS’s study on persons released from state prison across 34 states in 2012. It compares females and males by their commitment offenses, recidivism patterns during the 5 years following release (from 2012 to 2017), and post-release offenses.

Washington DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2023. 6p.

By Matthew R. Durose and Leonardo Antenangeli

For the first time, BJS used prison records from the National Corrections Reporting Program and criminal history data to analyze various characteristics and the arrest history of persons admitted to state prison in the United States. The report presents findings on the age at first arrest, number of prior arrests, and length of criminal history of persons admitted to state prison in 2009 and 2014. It also examines the post-prison arrests during the 2 years following their release from prison.

Highlights

• More than 1 in 4 persons admitted to state prison in 34 states in 2014 had been sentenced for a violent offense.

• The 369,200 persons admitted to state prison in 34 states in 2014 had an estimated 4.2 million prior arrests in their criminal histories, including the arrest that resulted in their prison sentence.

• In both 2009 and 2014, persons admitted to prison had a median of nine prior arrests in their criminal histories.

• About 1 in 10 persons admitted in 2014 at age 24 or younger had at least one prior out-of-state arrest, and about 4 in 10 persons admitted at age 40 or older had at least one such arrest.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 2023. 36p.

By Gabriel Tarde. Translated by Rapelje Howell

From the Introduction by Piers Beirne. ”…. Tarde's interventions in criminology are among the most elusive in the discipline. One among several reasons for this is that he was an insular and often bitter antagonist who cultivated neither the allies nor the disciples required of a systematic intellectual legacy. Indeed, almost to the end of his life, Tarde was unique among French academics in that, despising the intellectual domination of the metropolis, he had no secure position within the all-powerful French university system. Tarde's self-imposed isolation has doubtless contributed to the unfortunate fact that his many intellectual, political, and organizational interventions in the formative years of criminology tend nowadays to be relegated to the status of little more than a footnote in intellectual history….”

New Brunswick. Transaction. 2001. 606p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Philip Bean

From the Preface: In 1976 I wrote Rehabilitation and Deviance as an intended polemic against the then prevailing view that rehabilitation was the only acceptable and humanitarian means of dealing with offenders. It brought forth from those who supported rehabilitation a considerable amount of hostility but no real debate. It was almost as if rehabilitation had become a belief system which was open to challenge only from the non-believers. However, in the last f o u ryears the subject matter has movedon a great deal, and it seems now as if the time is right to produce a less polemical and wider view of the issues involved in punishment. What follows therefore i san attempt to examine the major arguments relating to punishment, to show how those arguments relate to justice, and to show how a penal system would operate if any of those argumentsdominated. There is also a concluding chapter on the punishment of children - an area neglected by traditional forms of philosophical inquiry but now assuming increasing importance. The book is written mainly from a philosophical standpoint, for ti seemed to me that criminology must draw on its philosophical foundations fi ti is to continue its development. It also seemed as fi the argument about punishment was a moral one requiring constant justification.

London. Oxford. 1981. 222p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

 By The HM Chief Inspector of Prisons 

Most prisoners in England and Wales are adult men held in prisons, designated according to different security categories: A, B and C in closed sites, and category D prisoners in open prisons (for definitions see Appendix II). The allocation and management of men in the highest security prisons (category A) is the responsibility of a small number of prisons built to a higher security specification, making escape far more difficult. In March 2023, women and children made up less than 5% of the prison population. The small numbers meant women were held in two categories of prison: closed and open. As none of the establishments holding children and women are built to high security specification, additional measures – under the heading ‘restricted status’ – are imposed to minimise the possibility of escape and protect the public from harm. HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) first formalised the restricted status system for women and children in 2010, and although used sparingly, the system is very much informed by the category A model used for men. We believe it fails to reflect the different capabilities, motivation and resources for women and children’s escape potential, not to mention the very different environments and facilities in which they are held. Our thematic review found weaknesses in the assessment of women and children’s specific risks before deciding to apply extensive additional security measures. Oversight of restricted status prisoners, including decisions to remove additional restrictions, was undertaken by the long-term and high security prisons group director through a category A review board, which also managed category A adult male prisoners. Membership of the board did not, however, include leaders from the youth custody service (YCS) or the women’s estate, which would have added expertise and specialist knowledge and helped to deliver a more effective system, tailored to the specific risks posed by women and children. Some children had previously lived in lower security settings – including secure training centres (STCs) and secure children’s homes (SCHs) – where they had no additional security measures applied, despite meeting the restricted status criteria. When they moved to more secure settings, they were subject to far more restrictions, despite the high levels of supervision in children’s YOIs. There was no justification for such anomalies. ...

London: HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2023. 30p,