By The Death Penalty Research Center

In January 2024, Ohio lawmakers announced plans to expand the use of the death penalty to permit executions with nitrogen gas, as Alabama had just done a week earlier. But at the same time the Attorney General and the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association are championing this legislation, a bipartisan group of state legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty based on “significant concerns on who is sentenced to death and how that sentence is carried out.” The competing narratives make it more important than ever for Ohioans to have a meaningful, accurate understanding of how capital punishment is being used, including whether the state has progressed beyond the mistakes of its past.

Early 19th century Ohio Black Laws imposed various legal restrictions on the rights and status of Black people in the state, not dissimilar to what would later become Black Codes in many Southern states. As constitutional historian Dr. Stephen Middleton explains, “Although the penal code of Ohio did not explicitly provide for a dual system for handling criminal cases, the Black Laws naturally made race an element in the criminal justice system.”

Ohio’s 1807 “Negro Evidence Law” prohibited Black people from testifying against white people in court, thus instituting a legal double standard. Articles in African American newspapers from the time reported numerous instances where white assailants attacked Black victims with impunity because there was no legal consequence without a white person who could testify on the victims’ behalf. The state also passed racial restrictions on juries in 1816 and 1831, officially barring Black people from jury service. These laws no longer exist, but modern studies reveal that jury discrimination continues.

One of the most significant ties between historical death sentencing and the modern use of capital punishment is the preferential valuing of white victims. Multiple Ohio-specific studies have concluded that when a case involves a white victim—especially a white female victim—defendants are more likely to receive a death sentence or be executed. A review of all aggravated murder charges in Hamilton County from January 1992 through August 2017 revealed that prosecutors are 4.54 times more likely to file charges with death penalty eligibility if there is at least one white victim, compared to similarly situated cases without white victims. A separate study of Ohio executions between 1976 and 2014 found that homicides involving white female victims are six times more likely to result in an execution than homicides involving Black male victims. DPIC independently analyzed race of victim data for all 465 death sentences in the state and found that 75% of death sentences were for cases with at least one white victim. For context, most murder victims in the state are Black (66%).

Black capital defendants have also faced instances of overt racism from jurors, prosecutors, and even their own attorneys. During closing arguments, the prosecuting attorney in Dwight Denson’s trial suggested that if jurors did not sentence him to death, they might as well rename Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood to “Jungle Land,” adding, “Leave it to Dwight Denson. Leave it to people like him.” An attorney for Malik Allah-U-Akbar (tried as Odraye Jones) reiterated false, racialized testimony from an expert witness during closing arguments: “I think it’s a quarter of the…urban [B]lack American youth come up with antisocial personality disorder…. This isn’t a situation you can treat. … You have to put him out of society until it runs its course.”

As the current debate over the use of the death penalty in Ohio continues, this report provides historical information, context, and data to inform the critical decisions that will follow.

Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2024. 49p.

By Solitary Watch, American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana; Jesuit Social Research Institute/Loyola University New Orleans

The use of solitary confinement in the state of Louisiana has penetrated the broader public consciousness largely through the story of the Angola 3. Over the past decade, the harrowing saga of three African American men—all likely innocent of the prison murders that were used to justify confining them in solitary for up to 43 years—sparked media attention and public outcry as the ultimate expression of harsh, racist, Southern injustice. But there is another story to be told about solitary confinement in Louisiana. Like the story of the Angola 3, it is deeply rooted in the history of racial subjugation and captivity in the South, which begins with slavery and stretches through convict leasing and Jim Crow to the modern era of mass incarceration. However, it extends far beyond the lives of just three men. This is the story of a prison system where, on any given day, nearly one in five people is being held in isolation, placed there by prison staff, often for minor rule violations or “administrative” reasons. When it conducted a full count in the fall of 2017, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LADOC) reported that 19 percent of the men in its state prisons—2,709 in all—had been in solitary confinement for more than two weeks. Many had been there for years or even decades. The Vera Institute of Justice, which released its own report on solitary confinement in Louisiana earlier this year, similarly found over 17 percent of the state’s prison population in solitary in 2016. These rates of solitary confinement use were more than double the next highest state’s, and approximately four times the national average. Given that Louisiana also has the second highest incarceration rate in the United States, which leads the world in both incarceration and solitary confinement use, it is clear that Louisiana holds the title of solitary confinement capital of the world. The state has this dishonorable distinction at a time when a growing body of evidence offers proof of the devastating psychological and social harms caused by prolonged solitary confinement, as well as its ineffectiveness as a tool to reduce prison violence. In 2015, when it revised its Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Mandela Rules), the United Nations acknowledged that solitary confinement of 15 days or more is cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment that often rises to the level of torture. Taken together, these facts indicate that the state of Louisiana is abusing and at times torturing thousands of its citizens for no legitimate purpose whatsoever. The numbers, however, still tell only part of the story. Just as Albert Woodfox’s memoir "Solitary" powerfully conveys what it is like to live for decades in conditions that are designed “to break people,” the words of individuals living in solitary confinement are vital to understanding the reality of what is happening today in Louisiana’s prisons. For this report, we collected information directly from those men and women. The bulk of the report is based on detailed responses from more than 700 lengthy surveys completed by individuals in solitary, whose names and identifying information have been changed to protect their safety and privacy. Their descriptions paint a grim picture of long stretches of time spent in small cells that are often windowless, filthy, and/or subject to extreme temperatures, where they are denied basic human needs such as adequate food and daily exercise, and subject to many forms of abuse as well as to unending idleness and loneliness, resulting in physical and mental deterioration. Since surveys were returned voluntarily, the results cannot be viewed as a comprehensive or representative sampling. Yet with more than 700 responses from all nine of the state’s prisons, which provided personal narratives as well as quantitative data,8 we believe our report complements, builds upon, and adds an even greater sense of urgency to previous recommendations for reform of solitary confinement in Louisiana, including those included in the recent report by the Vera Institute of Justice. At a moment when LADOC has, for the first time, shown willingness to reconsider and reduce its use of solitary confinement, the findings in this report offer vital insights—and illuminate a path toward the sweeping changes that must be made if Louisiana is to create a prison system that succeeds in both advancing public safety and preserving the human rights of incarcerated people. Major findings from this report include the following: • More than 77 percent of respondents said they had been held in solitary confinement for more than a year, and 30 percent said they had been in solitary for more than five years. LADOC has not collected data on duration of time in solitary. Nationally, less than 20 percent of individuals in solitary, on average, have been there for more than one year. The United Nations has called on countries to ban the use of solitary beyond two weeks. • Just over 56 percent of respondents were in Extended Lockdown, which is generally used as punishment for prison rule violations, and which has no maximum duration. This type of segregation violates UN prohibitions on both using isolation for punishment (as opposed to safety) and using it for indefinite periods. • African Americans were over-represented among respondents. This racial disparity is consistent with the Vera Institute’s report, which also found higher percentages of African Americans and lower percentages of whites in solitary than in the general prison population. • More than half of respondents believed their mental health had worsened during their time in solitary. Most others said it had stayed the same or weren’t sure. • Many described psychological problems consistent with research on the negative mental health effects of prolonged solitary confinement. These include anxiety, panic attacks, depression, hopelessness, sensitivity to light and sound, visual and auditory hallucinations, rage, paranoia, and difficulty interacting with others. Some expressed fear that the damage would be permanent, and they would “never be the same again.” • More than one-quarter of respondents reported engaging in self-harm, including cutting and head-banging, while in solitary, while less than 6 percent said they had done so while in general population. More than 66 percent said that they had witnessed others attempting to harm themselves frequently while in solitary. Of those who had harmed themselves, 4 percent said they received counseling in response, while more than 26 percent said they were punished for it. etc.....

New Orleans: Solitary Watch American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana Jesuit Social Research Institute/Loyola University New Orleans. 2019. 135p.

By Becky Feldman

Today, there are nearly two million people in American prisons and jails – a 500% increase over the last 50 years. In 2020, over 200,000 people in U.S. prisons were serving life sentences – more people than were in prison with any sentence in 1970. Nearly one-third of people serving life sentences are 55 or older, amounting to over 60,000 people. People of color, particularly Black Americans, are represented at a higher rate among those serving lengthy and extreme sentences than among the total prison population.

Harsh sentencing policies, such as lengthy mandatory minimum sentences, have produced an aging prison population in the United States. But research has established that lengthy sentences do not have a significant deterrent effect on crime and divert resources from effective public safety programs. Most criminal careers are under 10 years, and as people age, they usually desist from crime. Existing parole systems are ineffective at curtailing excessive sentences in most states, due to their highly discretionary nature, lack of due process and oversight, and lack of objective consideration standards. Consequently, legislators and the courts are looking to judicial review as a more effective means to reconsider an incarcerated person’s sentence in order to assess their fitness to reenter society. A judicial review mechanism also provides the opportunity to evaluate whether sentences imposed decades ago remain just under current sentencing policies and public sentiment.

Second Look Defined

Legislation authorizing judges to review sentences after a person has served a lengthy period of time has been referred to as a second-look law and more colloquially as “sentence review.”

This report presents the evolution of the second look movement, which started with ensuring compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012) on the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole (“JLWOP”) sentences. This reform has more recently expanded to other types of sentences and populations, such as other excessive sentences imposed on youth, and emerging adults sentenced to life without parole (“LWOP”). Currently, legislatures in 12 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government have enacted a second look judicial review beyond opportunities provided to those with JLWOP sentences, and courts in at least 15 states determined that other lengthy sentences such as LWOP or term-of-years sentences were unconstitutional under Graham or Miller.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 42p.

By Judith A. Ryder

The rate of female incarceration continues to surge, resulting in over 714,000 women currently being held behind bars worldwide. Females generally enter carceral facilities with low educational profiles, and educational programming inside is rarely a high priority. Access to education is a proven contributor to women’s social and economic empowerment and can minimise some of the obstacles they encounter after being released from custody. Support for the intellectual potential of incarcerated female ‘students’ can address intersecting inequalities that impede access to social protection, public services and sustainable infrastructure. Policymakers, academics and activists concerned with gender equality must begin by focusing on academic and vocational program development for female prisoners, built through strong community partnerships, and inclusive of trauma informed supports.

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9(1), pp. 139-149. 2020

By Pilar Larroulet, Catalina Droppelm, Paloma Del Villar, et al.

The last decades’ increase in female incarceration has translated into an increasing number of women being released from prison. Understanding their characteristics and criminal trajectories can enlighten us regarding the different needs of women upon re-entering society after incarceration. Drawing on data from the Reinserción, Desistimiento y Reincidencia en Mujeres Privadas de Libertad en Chile study, this article identifies different profiles among a cohort of 225 women who were released from prison in Santiago, Chile, and demonstrates that significant heterogeneity exists among them in terms of their criminal trajectories and the intervention needs to support their transition out of prison.

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 9(1), pp. 112-125. 2020.

By Anna Chalton, Dugan Dallimore and Paul McGorrery

Threat Offences in Victoria examines sentencing outcomes from 2015 to 2019 for five types of threat offences: threat to kill, threat to inflict serious injury, threat to destroy or damage property, threat to commit a sexual offence and threat to assault an emergency worker. It considers the offences co-sentenced alongside threat offences and the prior and subsequent offending rates for people sentenced for threat offending.

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2021. 76p.

By Paul McGorrery and Felicity Stewart

Adjourned undertakings perform a critical role in the Victorian criminal justice system. They are a low-end community order that requires the offender to be of good behaviour for a certain period of time, and they may also require the offender to comply with certain additional conditions, such as making a charitable donation or participating in a rehabilitation program. They are primarily designed to provide a response to less serious offending, to first-time offenders, to vulnerable offenders or even to serious offending if there are extraordinary circumstances. Because of this broad scope, adjourned undertakings are highly prevalent. In 2019 alone, there were over 17,000 adjourned undertakings imposed, mostly in the Magistrates’ Court, making up 18% of all sentencing outcomes in adult courts that year. Yet despite the importance and prevalence of adjourned undertakings, this project has been the first detailed examination of their use since their introduction in 1985. In that context, this report follows the consultation paper we published in August 2022 and presents 26 recommendations for reforms to adjourned undertakings and related orders. Those recommendations are a product of extensive data analysis, legal research and consultation over the last two years. Our overarching aim in making those recommendations is to refine a sentencing order that is already held in high regard by those who work in Victoria’s criminal justice system. Adjourned undertakings are a highly flexible and useful order, and we do not want to fix what isn’t broken or cause unintended consequences. With that in mind, we have grouped our recommendations according to certain themes.

Melbourne: The Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2023. 102p.

By Felicity Stewart, Paul McGorrery

Deferring (or postponing) sentencing for a short time, up to 12 months, is one of the ways that courts can achieve the various purposes of sentencing in Victoria (for example, community protection and rehabilitation) and ensure that judicial officers have all the information they need in deciding an appropriate sentence in a case.

Introduced in the adult criminal jurisdiction in 2002, sentence deferral has evolved into a vital, but potentially under-utilised, part of the Victorian sentencing landscape. Over the last two years, those who work in the criminal justice system have told us that sentence deferral can be a highly effective therapeutic tool. Sentence deferral can support complex and vulnerable offenders in their rehabilitation and can protect the community in the long-term by allowing offenders to participate in programs that reduce their risk of reoffending. In some cases, a person’s progress during the deferral period can make the difference between receiving a prison sentence and receiving a community order.

In this report, the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council makes 10 recommendations for reform that have been informed by their research, data analysis and consultation. In developing these recommendations, they were mindful not to ‘fix what isn’t broken’, in particular, not to disrupt the aspects of sentence deferral that make it work well, especially its flexibility and lack of formality. The Council has only made recommendations where there was strong evidence for change.

Melbourne: The Sentencing Advisory Council, 2024. 115p.

By The Center for Human Rights

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred urgent and growing concerns about the health of immigrants held in detention centers in the United States. In fact, awareness of the problem is not new: in 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general raised deep questions about the agency’s preparedness for a possible pandemic event,[1] concerns that were reiterated last December when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denounced DHS for having medical infrastructure it described as “not sufficient to assure rapid and adequate infection control measures.”[2]

Here in Washington, over the course of recent years, increasing activism by people detained at the Northwest Detention Center[3] (NWDC) and community supporters has spurred pointed criticism by elected officials at the local, state, and national level of conditions within the facility. Sustained media attention and multiple lawsuits have also forced the facility to defend its practices. In March 2020, the Washington State Legislature passed HB 2576, a law mandating inquiries into state and local oversight mechanisms regarding conditions in the NWDC, further underscoring the perceived need to address gaps in understanding regarding the health and welfare of those housed within the facility.

In this context, the UW Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) considers it important to make our ongoing research on conditions within the NWDC available to the public. As part of our longstanding effort to examine the human rights implications of federal immigration enforcement in our state, UWCHR has sought, since 2017, to obtain information about conditions of detention in public and private detention facilities where immigrants are housed in Washington state.[4] While our efforts to obtain information about conditions within the NWDC have been only partially successful due to the lack of transparency surrounding the facility, the information we have obtained is sufficiently concerning, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that we are choosing to share our initial findings with the public even as our collection and analysis of further data continues.

This report will be published as a series discussing areas of human rights concern at the facility, including background, methodology, and relevant human rights standards; sanitation of food and laundry; allegations of medical neglect; use of solitary confinement; COVID-19 and health standards; reporting of sexual assault and abuse; and uses of force and chemical agents. The report includes research updates covering concerns about cleanliness at the detention center going unanswered and a look at the context for Charles Leo Daniel’s death at the NWDC.

The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

By Vera Institute of Justice

Postsecondary education in prison has positive effects for students who are incarcerated, their families and communities, public safety, and safety inside prisons. Research has demonstrated that postsecondary education reduces incarceration, makes prisons safer places to live and work, and improves employment and wages. Nationally, taxpayers also see major benefits, with every dollar invested in prison-based education yielding more than four dollars in taxpayer savings from reduced incarceration costs. Most people in prison are both interested in and academically qualified for postsecondary education (64 percent), yet only a tiny fraction of people in prison completes a credential while incarcerated (9 percent). This gap between educational aspirations and participation is driven largely by a lack of capacity due to limited funding.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 3p.

By Vishal Kamat, Samuel Norris and Matthew Pecenco

The criminal justice system affects millions of Americans through criminal convictions and incarceration. In this paper, we introduce a new method for credibly estimating the effects of both conviction and incarceration using randomly assigned judges as instruments for treatment. Misdemeanor convictions, especially for defendants with a shorter criminal record, cause an increase in the number of new offenses committed over the following five years. Incarceration on more serious felony charges, in contrast, reduces recidivism during the period of incapacitation, but has no effect after release. Our method allows the researcher to isolate specific treatment effects of interest as well as estimate the effect of broader policies; we find that courts could reduce crime by dismissing marginal charges against defendants accused of misdemeanors, with larger reductions among first-time defendants and those facing more serious charges.

Written March 2024. SSRN.

By Paul H. Robinson and Jeffrey Seaman

The decarceration movement enjoys enthusiastic support from many academics and activists who point out imprisonment’s failure to rehabilitate and its potential criminogenic effects. At the same time, many fiscal conservatives and taxpayer groups are critical of imprisonment’s high costs and supportive of finding cheaper alternatives. Yet, despite this widespread support, the decarceration movement has made little real progress at getting offenders out of prison, in large part because community views, and thus political officials, are strongly committed to the importance of doing justice – giving offenders the punishment they deserve – and decarceration is commonly seen as inconsistent with that nonnegotiable principle. Indeed, almost no one in the decarceration movement has attempted to formulate a large-scale decarceration plan that still provides for what the community would see as just punishment.

In this Article, we offer just such a plan by demonstrating that it is entirely possible to avoid the incarceration of most offenders through utilizing non-incarcerative sanctions that can carry a total punitive effect comparable to physical prison. New technologies allow for imposing “electronic prison” sentences where authorities can monitor, control, and punish offenders in a cheaper and less damaging way than physical prison while still doing justice. Further, the monitoring conditions provided in electronic prison allow for the imposition of a wide array of other non-incarcerative sanctions that were previously difficult or impossible to enforce. Even while it justly punishes, electronic prison can dramatically increase an offender’s opportunities for training, treatment, education, and rehabilitation while avoiding the problems of unsupported families, socialization to criminality, and problematic reentry after physical incarceration. And, from a public safety standpoint, electronic prison can reduce recidivism by eliminating the criminogenic effect of incarceration and also provides longer-term monitoring of offenders than an equivalently punitive shorter term of physical imprisonment. Of course, one can imagine a variety of objections to an electronic prison system, ranging from claims it violates an offender’s rights to fears it may widen the net of carceral control. The Article provides a response to each.

Electronic prison is one of those rare policy proposals that should garner support from across the political spectrum due to effectively addressing the complaints against America’s incarceration system lodged by voices on the left, right, and center. Whether one’s primary concern is decarcerating prisoners and providing offenders with needed treatment, training, counseling, and education, or one’s concern is reducing crime, imposing deserved punishment, or simply reducing government expenditures, implementing an electronic prison system would provide a dramatic improvement over America’s current incarceration policies.

Written April 2024. U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 24-20,

Sandra Babcock, Nathalie Greenfield and Kathryn Adamson

This article presents a comprehensive study of 48 persons sentenced to death between 1990 and 2023 who presented as women at the time of their trials. Our research is the first of its kind to conduct a holistic and intersectional analysis of the factors driving women’s death sentences. It reveals commonalities across women’s cases, delving into their experiences of motherhood, gender-based violence and prior involvement with the criminal legal system. We also explore the nature of the women’s crimes of conviction, including the role of male co-defendants and the State’s use of aggravating factors. Finally, we reveal for the first time the extent to which capital prosecutions are dominated by men—including judges, elected District Attorneys, defense attorneys, and juror forepersons—and explain why gender matters in determining who lives and who dies.

We present our data against the backdrop of prevalent theories that seek to explain both the rarity of women’s executions and the reasons why certain women are singled out for the harshest punishment provided by law. We explain why those frameworks are inadequate to understand the role that systemic gender bias plays in women’s capital prosecutions. We conclude by arguing for more nuanced research that embraces the complexities in women’s capital cases and accounts for the presence of systemic and intersectional discrimination.

Cardozo Law Review, Forthcoming (Written April, 2024}.

By Andrew Jordan,  Ezra Karger,  Derek Neal

   We examined 70,581 felony court cases filed in Chicago, IL, from 1990–2007. We exploit case randomization to assess the impact of judge assignment and sentencing decisions on the arrival of new charges. We find that, in marginal cases, incarceration creates large and lasting reductions in recidivism among first offenders. Yet, among marginal repeat offenders, incarceration creates only short-run incapacitation effects and no lasting reductions in the incidence of new felony charges. These treatment-impact differences inform ongoing legal debates concerning the merits of sentencing rules that recommend leniency for first offenders while encouraging or mandating incarceration sentences for many repeat offenders. We show that methods that fail to estimate separate outcome equations for first versus repeat offenders or fail to model judge-specific sentencing tendencies separately for cases involving first versus repeat offenders produce misleading results for first offenders.  

 Working Paper 31939. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2024. 73p.

By Reprieve

Researchers at Reprieve conducted an in-depth comparative study of botched lethal injection executions in the modern era of the U.S. death penalty, cross-referenced against the 1,407 lethal injection executions carried out or attempted during that period. The research found that: • Black people had 220% higher odds of suffering a botched lethal injection execution than white people. • Botched lethal injection executions occurred whether a one-drug or a three-drug protocol was used, and regardless of whether the primary drug was sodium thiopental, pentobarbital or midazolam. • Botched lethal injection executions typically lasted a very long time. Over a third lasted over 45 minutes; over a quarter lasted an hour or more. • The odds of a botched lethal injection execution increased by 6% on average for each additional year of age. • In the state of Arkansas, 75% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 33% of all executions.

In the state of Georgia, 86% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 30% of all executions. • In the state of Oklahoma, 83% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 30% of all executions. • Secrecy and haste were found to be factors contributing to increased rates of botched and prolonged executions.   

New Orleans LA: Reprieve. 2024, 36pg

By Kesha A. Moore

As the coronavirus continues to spread in the U.S. and surge in an increasing number of states, it is critical that we consider the role of jails in the transmission of the virus. Even with highly effective social distancing outside of the jails, our national rates of COVID-19 deaths are projected to rise by 98% due to infections in jails. Jails act as a revolving door for the spread of COVID-19 in our communities. Inhabitants of the jails — both staff and incarcerated persons — come from our communities and soon return to them. Thus, the strategy of social distancing to limit the spread of COVID-19 can only be effective if it includes jails, which are a primary vector for the infection. 

New York: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2020.

By  Sandhya Kajeepeta

After four decades of growth, the size of the U.S. incarcerated population has been declining for the past decade, and racial disparities were beginning to shrink. The start of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered immediate calls for decarceration (i.e., reducing the number of people incarcerated), given the high risk of the virus spreading in congregate settings like jails and prisons and subsequent, inevitable spread to the neighboring community. Although the majority of incarcerated people were left behind bars to face potential illness and death, the U.S. incarcerated population experienced its largest recorded one-year population reduction in U.S. history. This large-scale decarceration undoubtedly saved lives and will have long-term benefits for those who were diverted out of jails and prisons, as well as their families and communities. However, not all benefited from the decarceration equally: racial disparities in jail and prison worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Black people represented a larger percentage of the incarcerated population as it declined. In this brief, we examine the drivers of pandemic-related decarceration, interrogate its impacts on racial disparities, and draw lessons to inform policy recommendations for racially equitable decarceration.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2023. 21p.

By Christina Das and Jackie O’Neil

Across the country, thousands of elected officials wield considerable power over the function and outcomes of the criminal legal system. Each year, in some states and districts, voters elect state attorneys general, district attorneys, sheriffs, state supreme court judges, and trial court judges. These elected officials make choices and take actions that formatively influence the functions of the criminal legal system. For example: district attorneys have considerable discretion when deciding whether to file criminal charges against someone accused of committing a crime, and trial court judges make decisions that significantly impact the outcomes of criminal trials, such as determining what evidence can be shown to a jury. However, millions of Americans who have a vested interest in the fairness of our criminal legal system – those who are detained while awaiting their criminal trial – are denied a meaningful opportunity to vote, despite their right under the law to do so. Most individuals held in city or county jail at any given time have not been convicted of any crime and are awaiting a trial, meaning they retain their legal right to vote, but procedural and logistical barriers make it difficult or impossible for them to do so. Reforms that make it easier to vote from jail, up to and including the establishment of polling locations inside jail facilities, will help eligible incarcerated voters to actualize their right to vote from jail.

New York: NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Educational Fund, Thurgood Marshall Institute, 2023. 15p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Dennis Sullivan

In "The Punishment of Crime in Colonial New York" by Dennis Sullivan, the author delves into the intricacies of the legal system during the colonial period in New York. Sullivan provides a detailed examination of the various forms of punishment meted out to criminals, shedding light on the harsh realities of justice in that era. Through meticulous research and analysis, Sullivan paints a vivid picture of the judicial processes and the societal attitudes towards crime and punishment. Readers are given a glimpse into a time where punishment was often swift and severe, reflecting the values and norms of colonial society. Sullivan's work offers valuable insights into the history of crime and punishment, making it a significant contribution to the study of early American legal systems.

PETER LANG. New York • Washington, D.C./Baltimore • Boston. 1997. 367p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Benedict S. Alper

"PRISONS INSIDE OUT: Alternatives in Correctional Reform" delves into innovative approaches to reforming the traditional prison system. From restorative justice practices to community-based rehabilitation programs, this book explores a range of alternative methods aimed at transforming the correctional system. By highlighting successful case studies and thought-provoking insights, this book challenges conventional norms and offers new perspectives on how we can redefine the purpose and effectiveness of prisons in modern society. Whether you are a policymaker, a criminal justice professional, or simply an interested individual, "PRISONS INSIDE OUT" is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the complexities of correctional reform.

Cambridge Mass. Ballinger Co. 1974.