By JUSTICE - Chair of the Committee Professor Nicola Padfield QC (Hon)

  Through the parole system, the State exercises one of its most important functions – the protection of the public from serious criminal offending – and also its most coercive power – the deprivation of an individual’s liberty. It is therefore vital that the process operates effectively and that the decision-making body responsible for determining continued detention can carry out its role fairly and independently. The report recognises the range of positive developments and hard work that have gone into improving the parole system over recent years. However, backlogs and delays remain problematic, in part due to changes in sentencing policy which have resulted in lengthier periods in custody and more complex sentencing regimes. As a result, the parole process continues to be difficult for prisoners and victims to understand and to navigate. This raises a multitude of human rights concerns around effective participation and procedural fairness. The report looks both at the Parole Board itself and the roles and responsibilities of the organisations upon which it depends to receive information and make decisions including prisons, the Public Protection Casework Section, which is responsible for ensuring parole timeframes are complied with as well as building the parole dossier, and the Probation Service, which supervises an individual in the community and has the power to initiate the recall of people for breach of licence conditions. Crucially, the report also questions the purpose of the parole system. For too long and for too many people, public protection has been regarded as synonymous with keeping individuals in prison. Yet rehabilitation and the reduction of crime are vital (and statutory) purposes of the penal system. Viewed in this light, outcomes that result in someone’s continued detention or recall should be seen as a possible failure of the system– for the individual prisoner, their victim, and the general public. This report is intended to offer a comprehensive review by a group of experts in the field, who propose a number of practical, achievable, and well-evidenced recommendations to build a parole system that is truly fit for purpose. 

London: JUSTICE, 2022. 154p.

By Ashley Nellis

Louisiana’s share of people serving life without parole (LWOP) ranks highest per capita nationally and in the world. More than 4,000 Louisianans are serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole, amounting to 15% of this state’s prison population. Between 1995 and 2020, the state added an average of 110 people each year to its total count of life-sentenced individuals.  

A major driver behind the large share of people serving LWOP is the state’s automatic imposition of this sentence after conviction for second degree murder, making it one of only two states to impose LWOP in such instances. Louisiana’s second degree murder statute includes felony murder and drug induced homicide offenses; these cases often include instances where the charged individual was not the direct perpetrator of the killing, nor intended to commit it, though they participated in an underlying felony related to the victim’s death. It is important to note that felony murder laws such as that in Louisiana are not associated with a significant reduction in felonies nor have they lowered the number of felonies that become deadly. These crime types are infrequently subject to LWOP sentences elsewhere, much less mandatorily imposed. But in Louisiana, LWOP in response to second degree murder is both authorized and mandatory.  

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 3p.  

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Emma Stammen and Connie Budaci

In San Joaquin County, California in 2010, 19-year-old Emmanuel Mendoza helped lure a robbery victim to a location where a masked accomplice waited with a firearm. When a struggle with the victim over the firearm ensued, Mendoza’s accomplice fired a fatal shot. Although Mendoza did not have a weapon and the killing had not been planned, he was convicted of felony murder with special circumstances, and automatically sentenced to life without parole (LWOP). In prison, he ended his gang affiliation and mentored others to do the same, earned a GED and associate degree, embraced his faith, and has been an active father to his three children. “I understand that at the end of the day someone lost their life,” Mendoza says. “Our plan that night wasn’t to kill anyone. I can’t take it back. But I also feel that it was a huge injustice to not be given an attempt at freedom.” Murder typically refers to an intentional killing. But “felony murder” laws hold people like Mendoza liable for murder if they participated in a felony, such as a robbery, that resulted in someone’s death. These laws impose sentences associated with murder on people who neither intended to kill nor anticipated a death, and even on those who did not participate in the killing. As such, they violate the principle of proportional sentencing, which is supposed to punish crimes based on their severity. These excessively punitive outcomes violate widely shared perceptions of justice. With one in seven people in U.S. prisons serving a life sentence, ending mass incarceration requires bold action to reduce extreme prison terms such as those prescribed for felony murder. These laws run counter to public safety, fiscal responsibility, and justice. Although other countries have largely rejected the felony murder doctrine, 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government still use these laws. The only two states that do not have felony murder laws are Hawaii and Kentucky. Seven other states require some proof of intentionality regarding the killing to consider it murder, though the use of a gun—or mere knowledge of a co-defendant’s gun use—satisfies this requirement in some jurisdictions. In any case, all felony murder laws use the underlying felony to either a) treat as murder a killing that would not have otherwise been considered murder, or b) increase the gradation of murder, such as from second to first degree.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 36p.

By Marie Manikis and Nicholas Doiron

The continuous perpetration of unjustified harms by the carceral state through its use of solitary confinement justifies the creation of a novel process of automatic sentence review. This process is necessary to account for such state-perpetrated harms and communicate censure more accurately. This article proposes the use of a communicative theory of punishment developed in sentencing to characterise and account for the state’s wrongdoing and harms in the context of a sentence that involves solitary confinement. Specifically, it outlines a justification for an automatic review process of the offender’s carceral sentence based on an expanded and relational understanding of censure developed in the literature and proposes a two-step process to implement this review.

(2024) 26:1 Punishment & Society 72-90.

By: Seri Irazola; Jennifer Bronson; Laura M. Maruschak

This report describes the results of a BJS study that assessed the feasibility of collecting data on maternal health and pregnancy outcomes from prisons and jails. It examined the availability and quality of data, the respondent burden, and the challenges of collecting data on the health and health care of pregnant women in custody at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels. BJS will use the findings of this study to help determine the best strategies for implementing national data collections in correctional settings. The study was undertaken in response to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Report 116-455.

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2024. 14p.

By Charlie Brooker and Coral Sirdifield

There are many benefits to making sure that we understand the mental health needs of people on probation and address them. Criminal justice and health agencies need to work together to make sure that people get the support that they need with their mental health. However, currently, the services that are provided are not always suitable to meet this population’s needs, and people on probation can face numerous barriers to accessing care. In this evidence review, Professor Charlie Brooker, honorary professor at Royal Holloway, University of London and Dr Coral Sirdifield, Senior Research Associate at the University of Lincoln, look at: The benefits of focusing on the mental health of people on probation, what we know about the mental health of people on probation, the organisation of mental health care, current initiatives, and challenges to providing high-quality care. Also what good quality care for people on probation looks like and Improving the evidence base and provision of care.

Suffolk, UK: Clinks, 2024. 13p.

By Kelly Lyn Mitchell and Ebony Ruhland

Since 2019, Ramsey County Community Corrections (RCCC) and the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice have collaborated on the Reducing Revocations Challenge, a CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance national initiative supported by Arnold Ventures that is dedicated to understanding the drivers of probation revocations and identifying ways to reduce them when appropriate. This study investigated the underlying causes of failure to maintain contact violations by interviewing individuals on probation in Ramsey County, Minnesota. A significant finding from our research is that "failure to maintain contact" with probation officers, often called "absconding" in other jurisdictions, is a prevalent violation, accounting for 29% of probation violations and 23% of revocations. Additionally, this study sought to understand how people on probation experienced being apprehended on a warrant, the issuance of which was reported to be a frequent response for failure to maintain contact violations. On the surface, the reasons for failure to maintain contact seemed straightforward. However, individual stories revealed much more complex situations, including struggles with substance abuse, lack of basic needs, and missteps by the probation department. This study also revealed several potential areas for improvement that could reduce failure to maintain contact violations in the future, such as assessing and addressing basic needs to increase compliance and reestablishing communication with individuals who are unresponsive but not necessarily hiding.

Minneapolis: Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, University of Minnesota, 2023. 38p.

By Kevin Ball, Avtar Singh and Trevor Worsfold

Probation services in England and Wales supervise over 240,000 people sentenced by the courts or after they have left prison; around one in eight of these people are from a nonwhite ethnic minority (Ministry of Justice, 2022). Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation recently published their inspection report on the experiences of ethnic minority people on probation and staff. From fieldwork across five areas, the inspectors found significant problems in the quality of relationships between probation workers and ethnic minority people on probation, and reported significant gaps in the availability of services and interventions. This article will review the policy landscape of probation provision for ethnic minorities, summarise the inspection findings and official data, and provide an analysis of the narrative data collected in the fieldwork with probation staff and people on probation. We will analyse the narratives of those involved in probation provision for ethnic minorities through the lens of procedural justice, which encompasses the elements of understanding the process taking place; having a voice in that process; feeling that you have been treated with respect; and having trust in the fairness of the process (Hunter et al., 2020).

Manchester, UK: British Journal of Community Justice, 2023, 19p.

By John Wainwright, Lol Burke, Steve Collett

In 2021, HM Inspectorate of Probation published a long awaited and highly critical report – Race equality in probation: the experience of black, Asian and minority ethnic probation service users and staff. The inspection upon which it was based was conducted in the Autumn of 2020 and was therefore set against the background of the death of George Floyd in the United States, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement worldwide. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement laid down a challenge on many levels, stating that black, Asian and minority ethnic people must be accepted and respected as equal citizens and nowhere is this more urgently needed than within the operation of the criminal justice system. However, its follow up report (HM Inspectorate of Probation 2023) reported being disappointed in the lack of progress made by the Probation Service in addressing the issues raised in its earlier report. The article seeks to move beyond the conclusions and recommendations of the Inspection report using the lens of Critical Race Theory to engage in a discussion of systemic racism in society. To do this we have used three levels of analysis – macro, meso and micro – to situate contemporary probation within the wider structures of a post-colonial society.

Liverpool, UK: Probation Journal, 2024, 23p.

By  HM Inspectorate of Probation (UK)

A thematic inspection led by HM Inspectorate of Probation investigated the effectiveness of the arrangements to support Senior Probation Officers (SPOs) working in sentence management and in court teams. The report also focuses on management oversight, the processes taken by SPOs to make sure that probation work is undertaken to the required standard. The Probation Service lacks a comprehensive strategy for delivering effective management oversight. The inspection found the management oversight frameworks that have been implemented are used inconsistently by probation staff. Only 39 per cent of SPOs believed the current policies relating to management oversight meet the needs of the probation caseload. This inspection found: The current management structure and arrangements for the delivery of sentence management do not enable effective management oversight. A significant amount of time is currently being spent by SPOs on tasks unrelated to service delivery. Sixty-two per cent of SPOs said they had dealt with issues such as broken toilets or damaged windows within the last month. Staff in Wales have responded positively to the introduction of a new structure which has resulted in a less frenetic working culture. Morning check-in meetings and protected hours for probation practitioners to consult with SPOs have reduced anxiety levels, fostering a more considered approach to decision-making. An accompanying effective practice guide has been produced alongside this report, highlighting the good practice observed during this inspection. This report makes six recommendations, including to design and implement a comprehensive induction and development programme for all SPOs and to review business support functions in relation to facilities management and human resources.

Manchester, UK: The Inspectorate, 2024. 36p.

By Connie Utada, Rebecca Smith,  April Rodriguez

Adults on probation—supervision imposed by the court generally in lieu of incarceration—are more than twice as likely to have a serious or moderate mental illness as those in the general public, according to analysis of federal data from 2015 to 2019 by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This translates into over 830,000 adults with a mental illness who are on probation at any given time each year, or almost a quarter of all those on probation. Most of these individuals also have a co-occurring substance use disorder, with the rate of adults on probation with both a mental illness and substance abuse disorder over five times that of adults in the public. A recent survey of probation agencies nationwide conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in partnership with Pew and the American Probation and Parole Association indicated that although agencies were aware that 20% to 25% of people under their supervision had mental health issues, most agencies did not have specialized mental health approaches and provided their officers with limited training related to mental health. Some officers who were interviewed said that they lacked the tools needed to successfully supervise people with a mental illness on probation, and that many people with a mental illness are placed on probation because other alternatives that don’t involve the justice system—such as diversion to treatment—aren’t being used or aren’t available.1 This lack of resources may be contributing to poorer criminal justice outcomes for people with a mental illness who are on probation, such as an increased likelihood of being arrested or going to prison. Some of the research’s key findings: People with a mental illness are more likely to be on probation than those without, and this disparity was even more pronounced for women and those with a co-occurring substance use disorder. Analysis of data from 2015 to 2019 showed that: Almost 3.5% of adults with a mental illness were on probation annually, compared with 1.7% of all adults. Among adults with co-occurring disorders, 8.5% were on probation annually. Women with a mental illness on probation were overrepresented relative to men. While 21% of all people on probation had a mental illness, the share of women on probation with a mental illness (31%) was almost twice that of men (16%). Many people on probation with a mental illness have more criminal justice contacts than those on probation without a mental illness. Adults with a mental illness who reported being on probation at some point during the year were more likely to be arrested during that year than those without a mental illness. ° Individuals with a mental illness who were on probation were more likely to go to prison for a new offense or for violating probation terms than those without a mental illness. Among people who were sent to prison from probation, those with a mental illness reported being arrested more often, going to prison more often, and being on probation more times than those without a mental illness. Many probation agencies lack the tools to support officers in supervising people with a mental illness, such as specialized approaches, staff training, and flexibility in setting supervision conditions. Among all responding agencies, 41% indicated they had a specialized mental health approach; among rural agencies, this dropped to 26%. 

North Carolina: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2024, 28p.

By The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General

Our inspection identified several serious operational deficiencies at FCI Tallahassee. Among the most concerning were the alarming conditions of its food service and storage operations. Specifically, on our second day at the institution, we observed inmates being served moldy bread and vegetables rotting in a refrigerator in a food preparation area at the female prison. We also observed in food storage warehouses likely evidence of rodent droppings and rodents having chewed through boxes of food, as well as bags of cereal with insects in them and warped food containers. Within 24 hours of the OIG alerting institution management of our findings, they and other staff removed large volumes of food from the storage warehouses. We also identified in the female prison serious infrastructure problems that created unsanitary and potentially unsafe conditions. Inside communal inmate bathrooms, we observed a shower in which discolored water had pooled, a shower that flooded when used, and an inoperable toilet. We also found that female housing unit roofs routinely leak and that all five general population housing unit roofs need to be replaced. Many female inmates live in housing units in which water frequently leaks from ceilings and windows on or near their living spaces. We observed housing areas in which feminine hygiene products were being used to absorb water from leaking windows, an electrical outlet that appeared to have fire damage, a sink that was detached from the wall, and a black substance on walls and ceilings. Additionally, we observed worn bedding, rusted inmate storage lockers, and unlocked supply closets. Most staff and inmates reported feeling safe and did not believe that sexual abuse was widespread at FCI Tallahassee. We nonetheless identified serious issues affecting inmate safety, including Correctional Officer shortages, a lack of supervisory oversight at the male detention center, and operational deficiencies in core inmate management and security functions, such as weaknesses with inmate search procedures and limited security camera coverage. Staff and inmates also told us that staff do not always enforce rules consistently, and inmates believed that certain staff took retaliatory measures against them. Additionally, inmates reported that some Correctional Officers use offensive language when speaking with them. We found that, collectively, these issues have adversely affected the trust inmates have in Correctional Officers, which can cause some inmates to be unwilling to report staff and inmate misconduct due to fear of reprisal. We also found that FCI Tallahassee’s Health Services Department is experiencing significant staffing shortages, with 38 percent of its positions vacant, which is consistent with challenges associated with hiring healthcare professionals across the BOP. While we found that Health Services Department staff work hard to complete many of the core tasks within timeframes set by BOP policy, staff shortages have negatively affected healthcare treatment, including causing staff to modify the time of day it distributes insulin and drugs to female inmates, which may limit the therapeutic benefit of these drugs for certain inmates. Separately, we observed a healthcare provider failing to ask required questions during inmate intake screenings and not informing inmates how to access healthcare services. We note that many of the issues we detail in this report were longstanding and that much of FCI Tallahassee’s executive leadership team is new to the institution. For example, the Warden reported for duty there in January 2023. He and the leadership team were aware of many of the issues detailed in the report and at the time of our inspection had been taking steps to address them. We appreciated the full cooperation they and their staff provided to the OIG team during the inspection. 

Washington, DC, U.S. Department of Justice. 2023, 49pg

By Graham Durcan

Nine out of ten prisoners have at least one mental health or substance misuse problem. Commissioned by NHS England, this report compares current levels of need with prison mental health provision. Centre for Mental Health conducted a survey of current English prison mental health caseloads, staffing, skills, gaps in need and processes. With the support of regional commissioners and local leads, this involved the distribution of three surveys to all English prisons, young adult Young Offender Institutions (for over 18-year-olds) and Young Offender Institutions (for under 18s) in the summer of 2021. 

Just over three-quarters of England’s prisons and Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) returned at least one of the survey forms. This exercise followed on from a consultation and evidence gathering review on the future of adult prison mental health care, also commissioned by NHS England. 

United Kingdom, Centre for Mental Health. 2023, 55pg

By Thomas Guiney and Henry Yeomans

This article seeks to explain the persistence of high incarceration rates in England and Wales. Building upon recent theoretical work on path dependence, we identify prison population forecasting as a poorly understood positive feedback mechanism that helps to determine the overall scale, scope and reach of the prison estate by connecting capital expenditure decisions with ‘business as usual’ planning cycles that assume considerable policy continuity with the past. We illustrate this point with reference to recent controversies over women's imprisonment where the everyday, routinised working practices of the penal system have played an important role in sustaining prison expansionism long after the initial conditions that fuelled the mid-1990s prison boom have faded. Disrupting these self-fulfilling logics will not be easy and we conclude this article with a call for a more deliberative democratic politics that confronts penal momentum and invites greater consideration of the many possible futures of penal policy.

United Kingdom, Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 2022, 16pg

By Cat Jones and Clare Lally

England and Wales have the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe. In October 2023, over 88,000 people were imprisoned, in an estate with a maximum capacity of 88,890. This was the highest number recorded. 94% of people in prison are adult men and the adult male prison estate is almost full. The prison estate is operating at 99% of its usable operational capacity and over 60% of prisons are overcrowded. Drivers of the current prison population growth include changes in sentencing policy (including increased sentence lengths). Other factors include remand, recall, reoffending and policing. The number of people given immediate custodial sentences has fallen from 98,044 in 2012, to 67,812 in 2022. This suggests that the prison population increase is not driven by more convictions. Nearing capacity can have negative implications for the safe operation of prisons, and for the health, wellbeing and rehabilitation of people in prison. Government action to avoid exceeding capacity includes expanding the prison estate and releasing some prisoners up to 18 days early. As of December 2023, three relevant bills are progressing through Parliament: the Sentencing Bill 2023, the Criminal Justice Bill 2023, and the Victims and Prisoners Bill 2023. Each contains a range of measures, with some likely to reduce the prison population and others likely to increase it. Various stakeholders have proposed additional policy options, such as the greater use of non-custodial sentences, and interventions to reduce the remand and recall populations. Some experts in this field have highlighted the role of public opinion in relation to sentencing policy and the relationship between prisons and the wider justice system. Evidence suggests that the public generally overestimate crime rates and underestimate sentence lengths, and that better-informed members of the public are less likely to view sentences as lenient. More high-quality research is needed to better understand the drivers of increased sentence length and to evaluate health and rehabilitation programmes in the prison context.  

United Kingdom, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. 2024, 33pg

By Andrea Armstrong

This latest report in a series continues to examine deaths among incarcerated people in Louisiana. From 2015 to 2021, at least 1,168 incarcerated people died behind bars in prisons, jails, and youth detention centers across Louisiana. Since our last report analyzing deaths 2015-2019, an additional 375 incarcerated people have died behind bars.

Approximately 86% of known deaths behind bars were of people serving a sentence for conviction of a crime. Deaths of people being held pre-trial, i.e. had not yet had a trial on their criminal charges, constituted 13.44% of all known deaths.

New Orleans, Loyola University College of Law. 2023, 75pg

By Rebecca Tublitz

After four decades of explosive growth in the number of people arrested, jailed, and imprisoned in the United States, a growing consensus about the overreach of mass incarceration and unjust systems of punishment has emerged in the 21st century. Seeking to raise national attention to the problem of overuse and misuse of incarceration in local jail systems and to catalyze innovation and reform at the local level, in 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (MacArthur Foundation) launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC). In its eighth year, the SJC now supports a diverse network of more than 57 cities, counties, and states across the country in developing and implementing decarceration strategies and represents an ambitious effort to generate transformative change in how localities conceive of and use jail incarceration.

Data, measurement, and evaluation has been pivotal in guiding this initiative—for identifying drivers of the jail population, designing innovative decarceration strategies, monitoring progress, and evaluating and understanding performance. CUNY ISLG plays a leading role in these data collection and analysis activities across the SJC, serving as a central liaison between local jurisdictions, external researchers, technical assistance providers, and the MacArthur Foundation.

This report focuses on the role that local data has played in the SJC initiative and CUNY ISLG’s work to develop and support the SJC model of data-driven reform. The report details:

• The collection of data and how data were used by many stakeholders across the initiative;

• The build-out of CUNY ISLG’s data repository;

The development and use of standardized performance measures for reporting site progress towards reducing

• Jail populations and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities; and

• Lessons learned from working with cross-agency administrative data to drive reform and evaluate policy change.

New York: CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance —————— Safety and Justice Challenge. 2024. 36p.

By John Clegg, Sebastian Spitz, Adaner Usmani, and Annalena Wolcke

The literature on the prevalence and causes of punishment has been dominated by research into the United States. Yet most of the world's prisoners live elsewhere, and the United States is no longer the country with the world's highest incarceration rate. This article considers what we know about the prevalence and causes of incarceration around the world. We focus on three features of incarceration: its level, inequality, and severity. Existing comparative research offers many insights, but we identify methodological and theoretical shortcomings. Quantitative scholars are still content to draw causal inferences from correlations, partly because (like qualitative scholars) they are often limited to studying the present and the developed world. More data will allow better inferences. We close by defending the goal of building precise and generalizable theories of punishment.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 211 - 231

By Christian Dippel and  Michael Poyker

Using a newly constructed complete monthly panel of private and public state prisons, we ask whether the presence of private prisons impact judges’ sentencing decisions in their state. We employ two identification strategies, a difference-in-difference strategy that compares only court-pairs that straddle state-borders, and an event study using the full data. We find that the opening of a private prison has a small but statistically significant and robust effect on sentence length, while public prisons do not. The effect is entirely driven by changes in sentencing in the first two months after prison openings. The combined evidence appears inconsistent with the hypothesis that private prisons may directly influence judges; instead a simple salience explanation may be the most plausible. 

The Journal of Law and Economics, Volume 66, Number 3, 2023. 52p

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Celeste Barry, and Luke Trinka

As noted in the first installment of this One in Five series, scholars have declared a “generational shift” in the lifetime likelihood of imprisonment for Black men, from a staggering one in three for those born in 1981 to a still troubling one in five for Black men born in 2001. The United States experienced a 25% decline in its prison population between 2009, its peak year, and 2021. While all major racial and ethnic groups experienced decarceration, the Black prison population has downsized the most. But with the prison population in 2021 nearly six times as large as 50 years ago and Black Americans still imprisoned at five times the rate of whites, the crisis of mass incarceration and its racial injustice remain undeniable What’s more, the progress made so far is at risk of stalling or being reversed. This third installment of the One in Five6 series examines three key causes of racial inequality from within the criminal legal system. While the consequences of these policies and issues continue to perpetuate racial and ethnic disparities, at least 50 jurisdictions around the country—including states, the federal government, and localities—have initiated promising reforms to lessen their impact.

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2023. 34p