By Kelly Lyn Mitchell, Lily Hanrath, Erin Harbinson

Ramsey County Community Corrections (RCCC) and the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice partnered to participate in the Reducing Revocations Challenge, a national initiative of Arnold Ventures and the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance dedicated to understanding the drivers of probation revocations and identifying ways to reduce them when appropriate. The study involved two broad questions. First, what is the pathway to revocation for people on probation in Ramsey County? Second, what are the drivers of revocations in Ramsey County? Drawing from three sources of information—a legal and policy review, data regarding a cohort starting probation in 2016, and interviews with criminal justice system stakeholders—the primary goals were to identify the factors driving revocations and to collaborate with other stakeholders and members of the community to identify changes in policy and practice that can reduce probation revocations and lead to better outcomes for individuals on probation while protecting public safety

St. Paul, MN: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Minneapolis, MN2022. 70p.

By Sara Rahman

LCM is a multiagency approach to offender management where the Department of Communities and Justice, the NSW Police Force and NSW Health work in partnership to provide tailored case management and wraparound support to offenders under Community Corrections supervision. This support may include referrals to housing services, disability services, health and mental health services, drug and alcohol services, victim services, and relationship services in addition to any rehabilitation programs.
We study whether LCM is associated with changes in four outcomes: any reoffending, serious drug, violent, and property reoffending, domestic violence reoffending, and return to custody, each within 12 months of referral.
To do this, we compare reoffending rates of LCM offenders with reoffending rates of a matched control group.
We supplemented this analysis with an event study analysis comparing offending before and after referral to LCM versus a matched group with similar community order start dates.
Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB257

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2023. 37p.

By The Crime and Justice Institute

In 2015, the Oklahoma County Detention Center (OCDC) was facing an overcrowding crisis.i This was compounded by a deteriorating facility, high incidences of violence within the jail, several high-profile lawsuits, and an overall lack of public trust in the county’s justice system. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) in collaboration with community leaders created the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Reform Task Force (Task Force) to assess the county’s criminal justice system and make recommendations to safely reduce the jail population and create a more effective justice system. The assessment, conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice, culminated in six recommendations for the county to responsibly reduce the jail’s population and promote public safety. These included the following, as well as several sub-recommendations within each broader category: Executive Summary In August 2022, the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council (CJAC) requested a follow-up study to identify what recommendations the county has and has not fully implemented as well as what further improvements in the system are necessary to achieve the Task Force’s goals. To conduct this analysis, CJAC sought assistance from the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI), which analyzed data from the OCDC, reviewed state statutes and agency policies, and interviewed numerous system stakeholders. The result of this assessment included seven findings about the county’s criminal justice system identified within this report. Overall, the county has achieved its primary goal of reducing its population to address overcrowding, as the population is down 46 percent since its peak in 2015. Despite this success, the analysis yielded three main challenges that persist in the county’s criminal justice system that will require the county’s attention to resolve. First, while the overall jail population has decreased since 2015, including the total number of individuals detained pretrial, the ratio of sentenced individuals to pretrial individuals has remained steady. Looking at the composition of this population, a measurable number of individuals are being held for low-level offenses or violations such as traffic offenses. Second, Oklahoma has made significant progress in establishing diversion programs 1. Create oversight and accountability mechanisms for the local justice system; 2. Reduce jail admissions for municipal violations and low-level misdemeanors; 3. Create a fair and efficient pretrial release process that safely reduces unnecessary pretrial incarceration; 4. Identify and address district court case processing delays that increase jail admissions and length of stay; 5. Expand meaningful diversion program options, focusing on those with mental illness and substance use disorder; and 6. Reduce the impact of justice system fines and fees as a driver of jail growth and recidivism. by creating partnerships in the community to move individuals to treatment and supervision instead of custodial settings. However, procedural hurdles continue to delay the assessment and placement of individuals in noncustodial settings leading to increased length of stays for individuals in jail longer than 48 hours. And third, a closer examination of the jail data shows that while admissions overall have decreased, the percentage of Black individuals admitted to OCDC has increased. Although the overall population has declined, white admissions have declined at a faster rate than Black admissions (50% v 37%), increasing the overrepresentation of Black individuals admitted to the jail. In sum, Oklahoma County made measurable progress since 2016 in addressing the jail population crisis at the time. This progress was driven by a combination of leaders in county government and the criminal justice system and was supported by community-based stakeholders who contributed greatly to components of the implementation plan. The county’s interest in assessing how effective its efforts have been as well as understanding areas that remain problematic is commendable and the next steps toward expanding the progress made will require similar commitment from leaders and partners throughout the system.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2023. 37p.

By Molly Robustelli; Colby Dawley; Molly Buchanan.; Carrie Chapman; Maura McNamara; Amanda Coscia; and Christian Schiavone

Across the United States, the majority of people under correctional supervision serve their sentence on probation or parole. As of 2020, data show that while just under 2 million people are incarcerated in either prison or jail, about 3.9 million individuals are on probation or parole.1 Of the 1.8 million individuals who exit probation or parole annually, almost half do not successfully complete supervision. Of those who do not complete their supervision, 211,000 will return to prison or jail.2 This has made revocation from probation or parole a leading driver of incarceration in the United States.3 Florida has one of the largest community supervision populations in the country. By the end of 2020, the state had 183,900 individuals on community supervision. Florida ranks fifth highest in the nation for its probation population in the same period, while the state’s parole population is ranked 32nd highest at just over 4,000 individuals. 4 The impact of revocations on the state’s prison population is significant. Florida corrections leaders recognize this challenge and have been working to identify and implement strategies that reduce revocations from community supervision. Despite previous reform efforts, thousands of individuals continue to enter Florida’s prisons due to a revocation of community supervision.5 In January of 2019, the Florida Department of Corrections requested assistance from the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) in analyzing the factors driving revocation trends in an effort to reduce revocations and recidivism while strengthening community supervision practices. Over 18 months, CJI assessed Florida’s community supervision system, analyzing individual-level and case-level data, reviewing the administrative and legal frameworks governing community supervision, conducting focus group interviews with stakeholders across the state, and disseminating a survey to understand practices on the ground. Through this assessment, CJI found that: • Florida’s revocation rate has consistently hovered near 48 percent since 2012; • Among all revocations from 2010 to 2019, 57 percent were due to technical violations; • Revocation rates are highest for those on three types of supervision: community control, drug offender probation, and felony probation; • Six of the top 10 violations linked to revocations in 2019 were for technical violations; • Nearly one in three revocations resulted in state prison time, but the use of jail has increased over the past decade; • There have been efforts to implement an alternative approach to responding to violations, but responses vary by judicial circuit, limiting the effectiveness and equitable use of these practices; and • A number of barriers impacted individuals’ success on supervision, including limited resources in the community to respond to the needs of individuals on community supervision and a misalignment between the conditions ordered and the areas that should be targeted to reduce recidivism. Based on these findings, CJI identified 14 potential opportunities to safely reduce revocations and improve community supervision outcomes in Florida. These opportunities fall into three overarching goals, which include, addressing barriers to success, focusing resources on the highest-risk population, and ensuring sustainability of evidence-based practices.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2022. 39p.

By Katrina Morrison*, Kirstin Anderson, Emma Jardine, Matthew Maycock, Richard Sparks

This is the final report from the project ‘A Review of Interventions, Innovation, and the Impact of Covid-19 in the Scottish Prison System within a Comparative Analytical Framework’ for the Scottish Government Coronavirus (Covid-19) Learning and Evaluation Oversight Group. This project was funded by the Scottish Government in 2022 with the aim of uncovering what occurred in prisons in Scotland and throughout the rest of the world during the Covid-19 pandemic. This project falls under the following three call themes: Theme 2: international pandemic recovery strategies Theme 3: learning from public service innovation and creativity Theme 4: inequalities and human rights The aims of the project are: i) To review evidence from Scotland and beyond on experiences of Covid-19 in prisons and identify transferable learning to inform Scotland’s Covid Recovery Strategy ii) To focus on innovations in prison policy and practice that may prove valuable for the future of imprisonment in Scotland, as well as those that may have wider resonance across the public sector (e.g., those in other long-term confined spaces such as retirement complexes and care homes) iii) To identify gaps in current evidence and develop plans for future comparative research on impacts of Covid-19 in prisons This study was undertaken in accordance with the methodological framework outlined in the Joanna Briggs Institute’s Manual for Evidence Synthesisi,ii. Academic and grey literature databases were searched between May and August 2022 with no new sources added after August 31st, 2022. It should be noted this report reflects the literature uncovered during searches using these criteria; it does not claim to uncover everything that happened in prisons across the world at this time. The world-wide Covid-19 pandemic presented numerous challenges to penal policy and especially to people living and working in prisons. High prison populations, often limited healthcare, the proximity of many people living closely together in small spaces and the movement of people (staff and visitors) in and out of prisons which can also lead to the virus having the potential to spread to local communitiesiii,iv - all led to urgent challenges. Another key consideration when considering the impact of Covid-19 on people in custody is their ‘increased prevalence of underlying health conditions’v,vi making them more vulnerable to Covid-19 than the general populationvii. The health of people in prisons is a public health concern and six months before the first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in China, it was argued that overcrowding in prisons and its subsequent health risks was a ‘global time bomb.

Edinburgh: The Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research 2023. 39p.

By RAND Europe

As part of their nationwide 'stability maintenance' strategy, they are detaining, persecuting and convicting Tibetans for non-violent forms of protest and other expressions of dissent such as assisting or supporting self-immolations and carrying pictures of the Dalai Lama.

The precise workings, nature and scale of the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to imprison and detain Tibetans, however, remain poorly understood.

In contrast with the body of knowledge on the detention and imprisonment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, the Tibetan detention system is still very much a black hole to the international community. The lack of evidence on many issues, especially on the so-called 'vocational training centres' and detention through the criminal justice system, is not evidence of the absence of repression. Rather, it highlights a need for further research to address many of the research gaps and to better understand the situation.

This study therefore aimed to build on the scant available evidence and leveraged an innovative method — night-time lighting data — to shed light on the prisons and detention facilities in Tibet.

Measured on a daily basis using satellite-based sensors, night-time lighting data represent an equilibrium measure of electricity consumption at night at specific locations over time. Aggregated into monthly trends, these data can help illuminate potential changes in the construction, growth or decline in the use of specific detention facilities across Tibet that may not be visible using overhead satellite imagery alone.

Cambridge, UK: RAND Europe, 2023. 8p.

By Sarah Hean, Siv Elin Nord Sæbjørnsen, Trude Fløystad Eines & Cecilie Katrine Utheim Grønvik

Abstract Many organisations offer mentoring schemes to support people leaving prison and resettle back into the community. Mentorship relationships are complex but despite this, there remains limited theoretical and/or research informed tools to guide mentorship practices and hereby the success of ex-prisoner mentorship. The aim of the paper is to contribute to this shortfall by presenting a theoretically informed framework to assist reflection on mentorship practices and the mentorship relationship: the Recognition Reflection Framework (RRF). The framework has potential to provide mentors with a tool to reflect on ex-prisoners´ need for recognition of worth if they are to desist from crime. The paper describes the theoretical development and preliminary validation of this reflection framework, underpinned by a strengths-based mentoring approach, and developed through the merger of concepts from recognition theory, person centred care and therapeutic alliances. We present this framework as a means through which mentors can reflect on how they may specifically contribute to secondary and tertiary desistance, as well as reflect on ways they can personally develop a constructive mentor-client relationship.

British Journal of Community Justice. 26/07/2023.

By Lily Robin, Arielle Jackson, and Erica Henderson

This report summarizes findings from the Urban Institute’s national scan of juvenile probation policies and practices which involved a scan of literature and nationwide surveys of state and local juvenile probation agencies. The goal of the scan was to understand and document variation in probation policy and practice within and across states and to offer recommendations and considerations for key stakeholders in juvenile probation policy and practice.

The findings span different parts of juvenile probation, including the purpose of juvenile probation, diversion, disposition, supervision, fines and fees and restitution, data collection and sharing, partnerships, and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings indicate much variation in juvenile probation policies and practices across states, within regions, and within states. There also seems to be disagreement between state and local juvenile probation agencies regarding how much oversight states have of different juvenile probation policies.

Our findings suggest that delays implementing policies and pilot programs and resource constraints at the state and local levels could be driving variation and disagreement within states. This variation limits understanding of local policies and practices at the state level. This inhibits wide use of evidence-informed policies and practices in juvenile probation; it also inhibits states’ ability to implement and oversee policies at the local level and to provide localities the resources they need. Based on these findings, we offer considerations for federal, state, and local stakeholders seeking to improve juvenile probation policy and practice.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center, 2023. 63p.

By Rochisha Shukla, Ammar Khalid and Arielle Jackson

Through its participation in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, Pima County, Arizona, strengthened its transitional housing program as part of a multifaceted approach to address housing instability among people with histories of criminal legal system involvement, including people serving probation. As part of this program, Pima County’s Adult Probation Department provided referrals and financial assistance to people on probation in need of immediate housing. In this study, the Urban Institute assessed the effects of receiving transitional housing support on people serving probation, especially in terms of jail incarceration.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Housing instability, especially chronic homelessness, has been found to have strong links to jail incarceration. Not only are people with histories of criminal legal system involvement at higher risk of facing homelessness, but homelessness can be a major cause of further system involvement. This is particularly true for people serving probation, whose probation conditions require them to report and maintain a valid address, a violation of which can result in jail incarceration.

WHAT WE FOUND

Our main takeaways include the following:

The Adult Probation Department prioritized people with higher risk and needs when making decisions about funding for transitional housing. Accordingly, people who received financial support from the department to access transitional housing were more likely to have been charged with a felony at the time of original sentencing, more likely to be classified as higher risk based on criminogenic risk scores, generally had more formal violation petitions filed against them, were more likely to be on the Intensive Probation Supervision caseload than the Standard Probation Supervision caseload, and were more likely to have sentences entailing incarceration and probation terms.

The odds of a probation termination to jail were not significantly different for people who received APD funding for transitional housing and those who did not. These null effects, however, could owe to the program being in its early stages, which translated to small number of people served and limited data available on people who received transitional housing support.

Although we did not observe that transitional housing support had any effects on the odds of being incarcerated in jail, interviewed stakeholders perceived this support for people on probation to be a crucial stabilizing force and extremely meaningful to their well-being.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center, 2022. 18p.

By Robin Olsen, Ammar Khalid, Ashlin Oglesby-Neal, Tessa Upin

Many states have enacted comprehensive justice system reforms to reduce the use of incarceration and community supervision with the aim of focusing resources on people at higher risk of reoffending and investing in strategies to achieve better outcomes for people and communities. In 2015, Nebraska and Utah passed legislation to create a structured approach for responding to supervision violations. This included the use of time-limited incarceration stays that are shorter than full revocations of supervision. We conducted interviews with stakeholders and analyzed administrative data in both states to examine the implementation and effects of the reform to community supervision incarceration responses. Our analysis found that violation responses have changed in both states, moving from revocations or other prereform incarceration sanctions toward structured, short jail stays or incarceration caps. Additionally, while overall incarceration stays associated with supervision violations increased in both states after the reforms, the number of full revocations from felony probation decreased in Nebraska and the proportion of violations that received an incarceration response decreased in Utah. The analysis also showed that successful completions for both states’ supervision systems either increased immediately after reforms were implemented or increased after a brief decrease. However, the analysis found that the use of time-limited incarceration responses did not make successful supervision completion more likely for particular cases in Nebraska, and in Utah, cases that received time-limited incarceration responses had higher recidivism rates than similar cases that did not. This brief offers recommendations that Nebraska, Utah, and other jurisdictions considering similar policies can consider to build on these pieces of legislation, including closely tracking both system-level and individual outcome metrics, establishing policies and practices that meet the goals of their approaches to supervision violation responses, and limiting the overall use of incarceration because of its potential criminogenic impact.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2022. 53p.

By Julia Laskorunsky

Kelly Lyn Mitchell and Sandy Felkey Mullins

This report examines the challenges and opportunities that states faced in deciding whether to release people from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the legal mechanisms available to jurisdictions and the factors that influenced whether they were willing or able to use those mechanisms to release people from prison. Our goal is to illuminate whether back-end release mechanisms can be used to reduce prison populations that have been bloated by the policies of the mass-incarceration era or whether relief from mass incarceration must take some other form. The report presents case studies of six states—Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington—to gain a more in-depth view of how events unfolded during the pandemic. Overall, our study found that the number of individuals released early from prisons during the pandemic was limited due to a variety of factors, including politics, risk-averse decision-making, shifting external pressures, the limited scope of compassionate and medical release statutes and the use of discretion to deny release. In addition, few changes to policy or practice that occurred during the pandemic had a lasting impact on back-end release practices. We conclude that the back-end release mechanisms offer only a modest opportunity to reduce mass incarceration, and the current system is unlikely to make a substantial difference in addressing mass incarceration due primarily to risk aversion. Instead, state-level carceral policies that focus on diffusing responsibility for back-end release and that reduce incarceration in the first place have the greatest chance of achieving long-term reductions in prison populations.

.St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, 2023. 73p.

By Michelle S. Phelps

Between 1980 and 2007, probation rates in the United States skyrocketed alongside imprisonment rates; since 2007, both forms of criminal justice control have declined in use. Although a large literature in criminology and related fields has explored the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, very little research has explored the parallel rise of mass probation. This review takes stock of our knowledge of probation in the United States. In the first section, I trace the expansion of probation historically, across states, and for specific demographic groups. I then summarize the characteristics of adults on probation today and what we know about probation revocation. Lastly, I review the nascent literature on the causal effects of probation for individuals, families, neighborhoods, and society. I end by discussing a plan for research and the growing movement to blunt the harms of mass supervision.

Annual Review of Criminology, Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2020. 3:261–79

By Kevin R. Reitz and Edward F. Rhine

Decisions tied to parole release, supervision, and revocation are major determinants of the ebb and flow of prison populations across two-thirds of US states. We argue that parole release, as an institution, has been an underacknowledged force in American incarceration and reincarceration policy and an important contributor to the nation's buildup to mass incarceration. In paroling states, no court or state agency holds greater power than parole boards over time actually served by the majority of offenders sent to prison. We examine the leverage exercised by parole boards through their discretionary release decisions and their powers to sanction violators of parole conditions. We note the state-by-state diversity and complexity associated with parole-release decisions and the absence of successful state systems that might serve as a model for other jurisdictions. We highlight the procedural shortfalls universally associated with parole decision-making. We discuss the long reach of parole supervision and the pains it imposes on those subject to its jurisdiction, including the substantial financial burdens levied on parolees. We then turn to the prospects for parole reform and outline a comprehensive blueprint for improving parole release in America.

Annual Review of CriminologyVol. 3:281-29, 2020.

By Edward E. Rhine, Kelly Lyn Mitchell, and Kevin R. Reitz

Paroling authorities play an important, if often unrecognized role, in American prison policies. Discretionary parole processes decide the actual release dates for most individuals subject to confinement in 34 states. Additional leverage over time served is exercised through parole boards’ revocation and re-release authority. The degree of discretion these back-end officials exert over the dosage of incarceration is vast, sometimes more than that held by sentencing courts.

Any comprehensive program to change American prison policy must focus to a significant degree on prison-release discretion, where it exists, and its relationship to time served. During the buildup to mass incarceration, many parole boards became increasingly reluctant to grant release to eligible prisoners. Today, if it were possible to reverse this upward driver of prison populations, parole boards could be important contributors to a new evidence-based status quo of lower prison rates in many states. Reasonable objectives of reform include policy-driven increases in the likelihood of parole release, and more rational decision making overall about time served.

This report describes twelve “levers of change,” each associated with potential reforms in the realm of discretionary parole release. The reforms are called “change levers” because, once a lever is pulled, it is designed to impact prison populations by altering parole grant rates and durations of time served. The report identifies 12 areas of innovation that, to some degree, have already been tried by a number of states. In most cases, from a distance, it is impossible to evaluate the quality of each state’s implementation of one or more change levers, or the results that have been achieved. But the fact that states have begun to experiment in specific areas shows that there is an appetite for reform. In addition, actual experimentation indicates that some of the groundwork has been laid for evaluation, improvement, and dissemination of promising ideas to many additional states.

Some levers have become embedded in the decision protocols of parole boards over the past 20 years and more, while others have emerged only recently. One of the goals of this report is to demonstrate how combining the levers is key to reform. This report maps the terrain of the 12 identified change levers, to the degree permitted by available information. The map shows a huge amount of state-by-state variation, even without hands-on study of each system. The report further classifies individual levers based on the number of jurisdictions in which they have been identified, and their potential impact on states’ prison populations.

St. Paul, MN: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, 2022. 36p.

By Kelly Lyn Mitchell, Lily Hanrath, Erin Harbinson

Ramsey County Community Corrections (RCCC) and the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice partnered to participate in the Reducing Revocations Challenge, a national initiative of Arnold Ventures and the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance dedicated to understanding the drivers of probation revocations and identifying ways to reduce them when appropriate. The study involved two broad questions. First, what is the pathway to revocation for people on probation in Ramsey County? Second, what are the drivers of revocations in Ramsey County? Drawing from three sources of information—a legal and policy review, data regarding a cohort starting probation in 2016, and interviews with criminal justice system stakeholders—the primary goals were to identify the factors driving revocations and to collaborate with other stakeholders and members of the community to identify changes in policy and practice that can reduce probation revocations and lead to better outcomes for individuals on probation while protecting public safety

St. Paul, MN: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice,

Minneapolis, MN2022. 70p.

By Shannon Dodd · Emma Antrobus · Michelle Sydes

Corrective service agencies worldwide have started to introduce body-worn cameras (BWCs) in prisons as part of correctional ofcers’ personal protective equipment. Like the policing context, this technology is often introduced in haste, with little consideration of the privacy and ethical concerns that may be raised through this more intensive form of prisoner surveillance. No studies to date have explored the decision-making of correctional ofcers around BWCs. Thus, this article details a mixed-methods study of correctional officers' use of BWCs in Queensland, Australia. This study demonstrates how correctional ofcers exercise their discretion around BWC use, including how and in what situations they activate their camera and the ways they navigate the use of this technology amidst prisoner privacy and security concerns.

Security Journal, May, 2023.

By Brittany C. Cunningham; Daniel S. Lawrence; Michael D. White; Bryce E. Peterson; James R. Coldren, Jr.; Jennifer Lafferty; Keri Richardson

his final research report presents an evaluation of body-worn cameras (BWCs) in the Loudoun County, Virginia, Adult Detention Center. The goal of this study was to conduct a rigorous process and impact evaluation of BWCs in a correctional setting to inform researchers and practitioners about the implementation and potential impacts of BWCs on critical correctional outcomes. To achieve this goal, the study team implemented a 12-month, clustered, randomized controlled trial, and collected data using a mixed-method design. Primary data sources included the following: surveys of deputies; interviews of jail leaders, deputies, and external jail stakeholders; a focus group with deputies who serve on the Special Weapons and Tactics team; observations of jail operations and BWC trainings; review and analysis of jail administrative data, including response to resistance (RTR) events and resident injuries; and review and analysis of data collected from stationary cameras and BWC footage. Research findings suggested that BWCs have potential for improving the safety and security of correctional facilities by reducing RTR events and preventing injuries to incarcerated residents. However, findings from deputy surveys raised questions about the potential impact of BWCs on deputy-resident relations. The study also addressed one of the primary points of contention about implementing BWCs in correctional environments: that they are superfluous to the existing network of stationary cameras. This study found limitations with both types of cameras, as well as areas where they can complement one another to help overcome those limitations. The study team made several recommendations for policy and disseminated the research through both academic and practitioner conferences and publications.

Alexandria, VA: CNA Analysis & Solutions, 2023. 26p

By Ashley Nellis, Ph.D. and Liz Komar

In 2018, Congress passed and then-President Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan First Step Act, a sweeping criminal justice reform bill designed to promote rehabilitation, lower recidivism, and reduce excessive sentences in the federal prison system. Lawmakers and advocates across both political parties supported the bill as a necessary step to address some of the punitive excesses of the 1980s and 1990s.

The First Step Act includes a range of sentencing reforms which made the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactive,I enhanced judicial discretion, created earned time credits, increased good time credits, reduced certain mandatory minimum sentences, and expanded the safety valve that allows persons with minor prior convictions to serve less time than previously mandated.

The First Step Act also seeks to expand opportunities for people in federal prisons to participate in rehabilitative programming to support their success after release. The law aims to produce lower odds of recidivism by incentivizing incarcerated individuals to engage in rigorous, evidence-based rehabilitation and education programming. In exchange and based on a favorable assessment of risk to the community, they may earn an earlier opportunity for release to community corrections.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) reports promising results thus far. The recidivism rate among people who have benefitted from the law is considerably lower than those who were released from prison without benefit of the law. Among the nearly 30,000 individuals whose release has been expedited by the First Step Act, nearly nine in every 10 have not been rearrested or reincarcerated. This 12% recidivism rate lies in stark contrast to the more typical 45% recidivism rate among people released from federal prison.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 9p.

By Natasa Mavronicola

This open access book theorises and concretises the idea of ‘absolute rights’ in human rights law with a focus on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It unpacks how we might understand what an ‘absolute right’ in human rights law is and draws out how such a right’s delimitation may remain faithful to its absolute character. From these starting points, it considers how, as a matter of principle, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment enshrined in Article 3 ECHR is, and ought, to be substantively delimited by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Focusing on the wrongs at issue, this analysis touches both on the core of the right and on what some might consider to lie at the right’s ‘fringes’: from the aggravated wrong of torture to the severity assessment delineating inhumanity and degradation; the justified use of force and its implications for absoluteness; the delimitation of positive obligations to protect from ill-treatment; and the duty not to expel persons to places where they face a real risk of torture, inhumanity or degradation. Few legal standards carry the simultaneous significance and contestation surrounding this right. This book seeks to contribute fruitfully to efforts to counter a proliferation of attempts to dispute, circumvent or dilute the absolute character of the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and to offer the groundwork for transparently and coherently (re)interpreting the right’s contours in line with its absolute character. Winner of the 2022 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.

London: Bloomsbury/Hart, 2022. 221p.

Edited by Bev Clucas, Gerry Johnstone, and Tony Ward

Not so long ago, the only respectable question for philosophical, legal, and political scholars to ask about torture was how to ensure its effective legal prohibition. Recently, however, some leading lawyers and legal theorists have challenged those who are absolutely opposed to torture, arguing that, in some circumstances, torture may be morally permissible or even required. This has provoked a range of responses, from outraged dismissal to cautious concessions that the law has to adjust to new realities. This volume contains writings by some of the leading contributors to these debates. Distinctively, it supplements the discussion about the morality of torture - and the morality of discussing torture - with essays which provide important legal, sociological, and historical analyses of this appalling human practice and of the attempts to control it. With an international and interdisciplinary authorship, Torture: Moral Absolutes and Ambiguities will be essential reading for legal and political theorists, philosophers, sociologists, historians, and indeed anybody interested in serious and informed thinking about this most disturbing phenomenon.

Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2009. 215p/