By Rebecca Roberts, Claire Campbell and Deborah Coles

Every four days a person takes their life in prison, and rising numbers of ‘natural’ and unclassified deaths are too often found to relate to serious failures in healthcare. The lack of government action on official recommendations is leading to preventable deaths.

Deaths in prison: a national scandal exposes dangerous, longstanding failures across the prison estate and historically high levels of deaths in custody and offers unique insight and analysis into findings from 61 prison inquests in England and Wales in 2018 and 2019.

The report details repeated safety failures including mental and physical healthcare, communication systems, emergency responses, and drugs and medication. It also looks at the wider statistics and historic context, showing the repetitive and persistent nature of such failings.

With case studies of deaths and inquest findings, it tells the harrowing human stories behind the statistics (see page 9). INQUEST also details the experiences of bereaved families who struggle to access minimal legal aid for inquests, while prisons automatically receive millions in public funding.

London: INQUEST, 2020. 20p.

By Caitlyn Norman

Prisoners have significantly greater levels of drug use than the general population, which is related to many adverse outcomes both during and post-imprisonment. Reducing the availability of drugs in prison can lead to a reduction in the drug use of prisoners but requires knowledge of the different drug smuggling routes and the implementation of effective security measures. The main smuggling routes identified in the literature are through visitors; mail; prisoners on reception, remand, or work release; staff; and perimeter throwovers, but they differ between prisons depending on various contextual factors and security measures in place. Based on a total of 81 studies from 22 different countries, the average prevalence of drug use during incarceration is 32.0% with a range from 3.4% to 90%. The types of drugs used in prisons vary among geographical regions, countries, and even regions within countries. The most common drug reported to be used by prisoners in most studies was cannabis, except in South Asia and Scotland, where heroin was more prevalent. The drugs used in prison tend to reflect the prevalence of drugs in the local community, except where a drug has advantages unique to use in prison. It is vital to examine the prevalence of drug use and different types of drugs used during incarceration to help inform drug treatment services, assist prison staff in identifying potential drug use or intoxicated prisoners, and advise prisons about the most prevalent drug smuggling routes so new security measures can be considered.

WIREs Forensic Science, e1473. 

By MichaelSherman and Gordon Hawkins

From the cover: Throughout the nation, federal and state legislators are debating a deceptively simple question: “Should we build more prisons?” Their answers could cost tens of billions of tax dollars and may have major implications for crime control, prisoners’ rights, and other vital areas of public policy. Yet the current debate is too often shallow and partisan. The right says, “Just build”; the left says, “Don’t build”; and thoughtful lawmakers feel caught between two uncompromising positions. Moreover, they are being pressed to decide in a crisis atmosphere in which only current facts are considered. This book integrates elements of liberal and con­servative views and shows that a broader, reasoned approach is necessary. The prison construction debate, Sherman and Hawkins maintain, must be seen in a broad context. Affected by deep traditions of the past, current decisions will in turn have far- reaching consequences in the future. Nor can the debate be conducted as a purely technical exercise. The authors write, “To see the prison crisis exclu­sively as a problem of crowding and conditions is positively dangerous. It addresses effects while ignoring causes. ... It may aggravate the very problem it purports to solve.”

Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1981. 187p.

By Robert Johnson

From the Preface: Hard Time is a book about prisons.The focus is on men, but core concerns of women are considered as well. The book explores what I believe are basic human dimensions of prison life and adjustment, and closes with an inclusive, person-centered vision of prison reform. Firsthand testimony and observations drawn from people who live or work in prisons are highlighted and specially marked with black squares (H) throughout the book. Most of the people we send to prison are men, roughly 94 percent. Most prisoners serve time in prisons that are, as living environments if not in terms of strict classification criteria, maximum-security institutions.1 The maximum- security prison for men has served as the explicit or implicit model—the point of departure if not the template—for virtually all men’s prisons and many women's prisons as well. Life in these prisons is depriving and painful. On that score at least, prisons vary in degree, not kind. The inhabitants of every prison serve hard time. Nothing can change this basic and enduring fact. That hard time can also be constructive time is, in my view, the key to understanding and reforming the prison.

Belmont, CA. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.2001. 356p.

By Andrew Von Hirsch

Report of the Committee for the Study of Incarceration. Preface by Charles E. Goodell, Chairman. Introduction by Willard Gaylin And David J. Rothman.

From the preface: “In early 1971, the Field Foundation asked me to chair this study. There was growing disenchantment with prisons, and with the disparities and irrationalities of the sentencing process. Yet reformers lacked a rationale to guide them in their quest for alternatives, save for the more-than-century- old notion of rehabilitation that had nurtured the rise of the penitentiary. The purpose of our study was to consider afresh the fundamental concepts concerning what is to be done with the offender after conviction. The members of the Committee were chosen from a wide variety of disciplines, extending well beyond traditional correctional specialties. The project was staffed and organized during the spring and summer of 1971, and began its deliberations that fall…..What emerges from our study is a conceptual model that differs considerably from the dominant thinking about punishment during this century. The conventional wisdom has been that theT sentence should be fashioned so as to rehabilitate the offender and isolate him from society if he is dangerous. To accomplish that, the sentencer was to be given the widest discretion to suit the disposition to the particular criminal. For reasons which this book explains, we reject these notions as unworkable and unjust. ..”

NY. Hill And Wang •A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1976. 200p.

Edited by Kenneth C. Haas and Geoffrey P Alpert

From the preface: Our purpose in bringing together the readings in the third edition of The Dilemmas of Corrections (entitled The Dilemmas o/Punishment in its first edition) is to present a timely, issue-oriented perspective on corrections. From the vast number of articles and reports on corrections, we have chosen forty-one that demonstrate what Shaw noted so many years ago: there have been recurring attempts to reform shabby prison operations; there have been recurring attempts to find simple answers for complex penal problems; and more and bigger prisons have been constructed. ..A close analysis of the literature on corrections reveals a tendency to criticize each and every aspect, What is written about jails and prisons tends to leave the reader with the impression that practitioners do nothing at all, or actively and maliciously oppress a selected segment of society. While it may be a trend to damn every aspect of corrections, it is in many ways unfair. As we read these articles, we [must] keep in mind that most administrators and line staff want to do what is right and what is decent. Unfortunately, the political and budgetary restraints placed upon correctional officials make it extraordinarily difficult to manage prisons and other correctional programs effectively.”

Prospect Heights. Illinois. Waveband Press. 1986.619p.

By Kenneth C. Haas and Geoffrey P. Alpert

From the Preface: “Prisons, as they were established in the United States, were to be positive contributions to the New World. They were to be institutions in which the idle, the unmotivated, the hooligans, and the cruel were sent to be transformed into active, energetic, useful, and kind members of our society. Somehow, somewhere, something went wrong. Critics have offered too few constructive solutions for change and too many quick- fixes……

Prospect Heights, Illinois. Waveland Press, Inc. 1986. 422p.

By Lane Nelson and Burk Foster

From the cover: Death Watch Is a topical, up-to-date collection of death penalty journalism and personal essays. Drawing on the experiences and perspectives of Lane Nelson, a former death row inmate and current staff writer for "The Angolite," Louisiana's award winning prison news magazine, and Burk Foster, a University of Louisiana-Lafayette criminal justice professor and jail and prison expert witness, Death Watch looks at the death penalty as a legal process, a social reality, and a fundamental issue of public policy. The topics covered in this volume include: ♦  how capital cases are different in the legal process ♦  how death penalty offenders are selected ♦  the selective application of the death penalty to women and juveniles ♦  problems in providing competent counsel to death penalty defendants ♦  medical issues related to organ donation and physician participation in executions ♦  the execution of blacks for rape in the South ♦  how the death penalty was imposed and carried out in the past ♦  reflections on death row life by inmates under death sentence ♦  the last words of men and women before execution ♦  the dilemma of defending the innocent on death row ♦  feature articles on two Louisiana inmates, Antonio James and John A. Brown, Jr., executed in 1996 and 1997. ♦  the ethics of the death penalty today.

Upper Saddle River New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 2001. 307p.

By Ernest van den Haag and John P. Conrad.

From the cover: Never before has there been such a vigorous point- by-point debate in a book on so explosive a topic as the death penalty. Here Ernest van den Haag—a re­nowned conservative—and John P. Conrad—a re­spected liberal—debate with wisdom, sharpness, and vigor yet, in Arthur Goldberg's words, “with scholar­ship, civility, and passion” all questions pertaining to capital punishment. The debaters are well known for their meticulous scholarship and for their distinct compelling styles. Ernest van den Haag is the author of such works as The Jewish Mystique and Punishing Criminals. John P. Conrad's books include Justice and Consequences and In Fear of Each Other. Their debate will provoke the reader with hard-hitting and original arguments for and against the death penalty. Aside from the timeliness of the topic, this book will be appreciated for the sheer excitement of witnessing the ingenious interplay between two brilliant minds.

NY. Plenum. 1983. 302p.

Edited by Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Rebecca Adams, Carol A. Heimer, Kim Lane Scheppele, and Tom W. Smith
D. Garth Taylor.

From the cover: In the past thirty-five years, Americans have become more fearful of crime and more punitive toward criminals—at least in the sense of being more favorable toward capital punishment and other harsh penal­ties. But at the same time they have become more tolerant regarding a whole series of social and civil liberties issues generally associated with a more humane attitude toward criminals. This new book analyzes survey data collected over the years, especi­ally from the Gallup polls and the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Surveys, in order to explore various aspects of these contradictory developments. The authors consider the hypothesis that rising crime rates cause increased fear of crime and that this in turn causes people to become more punitive. They find that exposure to high crime rates does cause in­creased fear but that fearful people are only slightly more punitive than other people. Furthermore, white people who live in high crime areas are no more punitive than peo­ple living in safer areas, and black people (who tend to live in high crime areas) are less punitive than people living in safer areas. To determine why the liberalization of public opinion on issues of race and civil liberties has not led to more tolerant atti­tudes on questions of crime and punish­ment, the authors examine in detail the relationship between general liberalism in regard to racial or civil liberties and more humane attitudes toward criminals. They also consider why increased fear of crime has not led to increased support for gun registration. This study breaks new ground by using recent innovations in the techniques of sur­vey analysis to study trends in public opin­ion and to analyze the causes of those trends. It thus represents a contribution to the lit­erature on subjective social indicators as well as a model for further explorations of the reasons for change in public opinion over time.

San Francisco, Josses-Bass Inc. Publishers. 1980. 168p.

Edited by Rudolph J. Gerber and Patrick D. McAnany, editors. Foreword by Norval Morris

From the cover: Contemporary Punishment provides a comprehensive and thoughtful overview of the criminal justice system. The authors present the various arguments for the justification of punishment and in the concluding section attempt to reconcile the discrepancies among the competing views. When the question is asked why society punishes criminals, the answer touches the foundations of our political, social and moral life. We have spent centuries dis­cussing how the coercive power of society will be applied to those who break the rules. As Max Weber has said; "It is a fact that most 'fundamental' questions are often left unregulated by law even in legal orders which are otherwise thor­oughly rationalized." This implies that each generation must wrestle with the problem and fashion an answer which satisfies its sense of justice.

London. University of Notre Dame Press. 1972. 263p.

By David J. Rothman

From the cover: This book makes a unique and significant Contribution to American social history and so­cial policy. It explores, as no other work has done, the origins and consequences of the pro­grams that have dominated criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health in the twen­tieth century. David Rothman combines his skills as a historian with his knowledge of con­temporary social problems to interpret the practices of probation, parole, and indetermi- late sentences; the juvenile courts; the outpa­tient clinics; and the contemporary design of the penitentiary, the reformatory, and the men­tal hospital. Conscience and Convenience is a worthy suc- jessor to David Rothman’s prizewinning and uglily influential book. The Discovery of the \syhnn. Just as that volume analyzed the ori­gins of institutions for* the deviant and the de­pendent, so this study casts new light on the modern effort to reform the asylum and devise ilternatives for it. And once again, his appraisal urthers our understanding of the fundamental character of social order and disorder in the Jnited States.

The title points to the dynamic that is at the core of the book. Progressive-Era men and ,vomen of good conscience introduced the mea­sures mentioned above with the intention of iroviding individualized cure and treatment or the deviants and thereby solving the prob- ems of crime and mental illness. But to appre­ciate the fate of these reforms, one must reckon .vith convenience. Administrators, from war- lens to judges to mental hospital superin- endents, turned these procedures to their pwn advantage. The result was a hybrid pro­gram whose flaws we are only beginning to Imderstand.

Boston. Little, Brown and Co. 1980. 459p.

By Jan Gorecki

From the Preface: Capital punishment is today among the most controversial prob­lems in America. On the one hand, the heat of the controversy exceeds the weight of the problem; as is pointed out in this book, it is not the presence or absence of capital punishment but other legal reforms that are essential for effective functioning of the criminal justice system in this country. On the other hand, how­ever, whether we send criminals to the gallows presents a moral dilemma of utmost importance. Owing to the heat of the controversy, recommendations abound both for and against retaining the death penalty. This book does not explicitly support either of these stands; the pur­pose here is to understand rather than to recommend. More specifically, the purpose is to analyze and explain what has oc­curred to the death penalty in the United States and to anticipate cautiously what may occur in the future. This does not, how­ever, mean that the book is void of practical implications. If a reader accepts the analysis and explanation to be offered, he may, and probably will, be aided in accepting a stand on what the legal system should do—abolish the death penalty or retain it.

The book starts with a brief analysis of the law of capital pun­ishment. It is a vacillating and confused law, recently shifting from near-abolition to retention. Its development is influenced by a clash of two conflicting forces—the general tendency of social evolution toward milder criminal sanctions and the in­creasingly punitive attitudes in America today. These two forces are scrutinized and accounted for in the second and third parts of the book. The scrutiny not only explains the development of the law but also throws some light on the future of the death penalty in America.

NY. Columbia University Press. 1983. 163p.

By B. F. Skinner

In this profound and profoundly challenging book, the great behaviorist B. F. Skinner, re­garded by many as the most influential and con­troversial living psychologist, author also of the celebrated utopian novel Walden Two, makes his definitive statement about man and society. Insisting that the frightening problems we face in the world today can be solved only by dealing much more effectively with human be­havior, Skinner argues that our traditional con­cepts of freedom and dignity must be sharply revised. They have played an important histori­cal role in man’s struggle against many kinds of tyranny, he acknowledges, but they are now re­sponsible for the futile defense of a free and worthy autonomous man; they are perpetuating our use of punishment and are blocking the de­velopment of more effective cultural practices. Basing his arguments on the massive results of the experimental analysis of behavior in which he pioneered, he rejects traditional explanations of behavior in terms of states of mind, feelings, and other mental attributes in favor of expla­nations to be sought in an individual’s genetic endowment and personal history. He tells why, instead of promoting freedom and dignity as personal attributes, we should direct our atten­tion to the physical and social environments in which people live. It is the environment that must be changed rather than man himself if the traditional goals of the struggle for freedom and dignity are to be reached.

Alfred Knopf. 1971, 293p.

By Erving Goffman

“Asylums is an analysis of life in “total institutions”—closed worlds like prisons, army training camps, naval vessels, boarding schools, monasteries, and old folks’ homes—where the inmates are regimented, surrounded by other inmates, and unable to leave the premises. It describes what these institutions make of the inmate, and what he can make of life inside them. Special attention is focused on mental hos­pitals, drawing on the author’s year of field work in a large American institution. It is the thesis of this book that the most important facto." in forming a mental-hospital patient is his institution, not his illness, and that his reactions and adjustments are those of inmates in other types of total insti­tutions as well.”

NY. Anchor Books. 1961. 382p.

Edited by Kenneth E. Kerle, American Jail Association

“People familiar with the American jail scene realize that jails rank at the bottom of the criminal justice hierarchy in influence. Courts, prosecuting attorneys, police, and even probation and parole offi­cials exert more political clout than jail administrators. Jail popu­lation figures have nearly doubled in a decade, and now more than 300,000 ADP (average daily population) are found in the 3,338 jails in the 3,000 plus counties and cities that operate these institutions of incarceration. During 1987, there were more than 17 million ad­missions and releases from county and city jails. These local gov­ernment agencies serve as the dumping grounds for the arrested criminal, the chronic drunk, the DWI (driving while intoxicated), the mentally ill, the homeless, and juveniles ranging from the run­away to the amoral killer.”

Nelson-Hall. 1991. 299p.

By Sarah Armstrong, Linda Allan, Deborah Cairns, Stuart Allan and Betsy Barkas  

This briefing addresses dying in prison in Scotland, including information about the numbers and circumstances of deaths. Even when presenting statistical data, we never forget that these numbers represent individual people who were part of families and communities, and that their loss is deeply felt. Our motivations for doing this work are to raise awareness of deaths in custody and to provide rigorous evidence about this issue. Ultimately, we aim to prevent deaths and reduce the number of families and friends who are exposed to the often traumatising experience of a fatal accident inquiry on top of their bereavement.   

Glasgow: Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, 2022. 26p.

By Joanna Weill, Amanda Cissner, and Sruthi Naraharisetti

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, with a rate of 537 of every 100,000 U.S. residents behind bars by the beginning of 2021.  Nearly one-third of those incarcerated are held in local jails, most during the pretrial period, before they have been convicted of any crime. In 2019, local jails across the U.S. held an average of 734,500 individuals each day.  The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 intensified calls to reduce jail populations, since the frequent turnover and commonly cramped communal living conditions proved ideal for spreading the virus. Accordingly, the spring of 2020 saw a dramatically declining jail population for the first time in a decade—the result of both fewer new admissions and expedited release for those already detained.  Still, more than half a million individuals were held in local jails by mid-2020,  and evidence suggests that the early COVID-generated reductions have not been sustained. By the latter half of 2020, jail populations had crept back up, nearing pre-pandemic levels.  Racial and ethnic disparities in jail populations are well-established. While Black individuals comprised 13% of the total U.S. population in 2019, they accounted for a third of those in jail (34%). Racial disparities permeate every step of the criminal justice process: Black individuals are more likely than White individuals to be arrested and detained awaiting trial;  those who are held pretrial are then more likely to be convicted.  Once convicted, Black individuals receive longer jail and prison sentences than White individuals. Declining jail incarceration…..

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  early into the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing racial disparities; incarceration rates among Black individuals declined 22% from 2019 through mid-2020, while those for Whites declined 28%; rates for Latinx and Asian individuals decreased 23% and 21% respectively.  This trend underlines the reality that without strategies deliberately tailored to address racial disparities, general efforts to reduce jail populations will not necessarily lead to greater racial and ethnic equity.  

New York: Center for Court Innovation, 2022. 34p.

By Helen Fair and Roy Walmsley

This fifth edition of ICPR’s World Female Imprisonment List shows the number of women and girls held in penal institutions in 221 prison systems in independent countries and dependent territories. The figures include both pre-trial detainees/remand prisoners and those who have been convicted and sentenced. The List also shows the percentage of women and girls within each national prison population and the number of imprisoned women and girls per 100,000 of the national population (the female prison population rate). The information is the latest available at the beginning of August 2022. In addition, this edition includes information about trends in female prison population levels since about 2000

London: Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), 2022. 14p.

By Justice Policy Institute and Prison Policy Initiative

One of the most important criminal legal system disparities has long been difficult to decipher: Which communities throughout the state do incarcerated people come from? Anyone who lives in or works within heavily policed and incarcerated communities intuitively knows that certain neighborhoods disproportionately experience incarceration. But data have rarely been available to quantify how many people from each community are imprisoned with any real precision. But now, thanks to a redistricting reform that ensures incarcerated people are counted correctly in the legislative districts they come from, we can understand the geography of incarceration in Maryland with up-to-date data. Maryland is one of over a dozen states that have ended prison gerrymandering, and now count incarcerated people where they legally reside — at their home address — rather than in remote prison cells for redistricting purposes. This type of reform, as we often discuss, is crucial for ending the siphoning of political power from disproportionately Black and Latino communities to pad out the mostly rural, predominantly white regions where prisons are located. And when reforms like Maryland’s are implemented, they bring along a convenient side effect: In order to correctly represent each community’s population counts, states must collect detailed state-wide data on where imprisoned people call home, which is otherwise impossible to access. Using this redistricting data, we found that in Maryland, incarcerated people come from all over the state, but are disproportionately from Baltimore…..

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  City. Looking at local data, we also find that some areas of the state — like the southern Eastern Shore and Hagerstown — are also disproportionately affected by incarceration. While Maryland incarcerates a smaller share of its residents than all but 13 U.S. states, examining these data by county, city, and even neighborhood reveals surprising and troubling patterns of high incarceration in both specific communities within Baltimore and also the smaller and historically under-resourced Eastern Shore communities. In addition to helping policy makers and advocates effectively bring reentry and diversion resources to these communities, this data has far-reaching implications. Around the country, high imprisonment rates are correlated with other community problems related to poverty, employment, education, and health. Researchers, scholars, advocates, and politicians can use the data in this report to advocate for bringing more resources to their communities.

Washington, DC: Justice Polilcy Institute, Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2022. 13p.