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  Paul H. Robinson and  Jeffrey Seaman

Few claims have won such widespread acceptance in legal academia as the “mass incarceration” narrative: the idea that the rise in America’s prison population over the last half century was fueled largely by the needless and unjust imprisonment of millions of criminal offenders due to punitive changes in sentencing. To many academics and activists, the question is not how accurate the mass incarceration narrative is, but how mass incarceration can be ended. This Article argues the “mass incarceration” narrative is based on a series of myths and, as a result, many proposed reforms are based on a misunderstanding of America’s past and present carceral practices. A more accurate understanding is needed to produce effective reform.The central myth of the mass incarceration narrative is that exceptional and unjustified punitiveness largely explains America’s significant increase in prison population since the 1960s. This explanation overlooks the numerous non-sentencing factors that increased incarceration: a near doubling in U.S. population, higher crime rates, increased justice system effectiveness, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, new and tightened criminalizations, worsening criminal offender histories, and more. While this Article makes no attempt at statistical precision, these non-sentencing factors can easily explain most of America’s elevated incarceration compared to the 1960s—a fact in direct conflict with the mass incarceration narrative. Additionally, while some punishments have increased in severity since the 1960s, most of these increases are likely to be seen as moving sentences closer to what the community – and many incarceration reformers – would believe is appropriate and just, as in cases of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, human trafficking, firearm offenses, and child pornography, among others.Comparing America’s prison population to foreign countries, as the mass incarceration narrative often does, similarly overlooks the contributions of many of these non-sentencing factors and incorrectly assumes that a higher American per capita incarceration rate always reflects a problem with American, instead of foreign, practice. While America can certainly learn from foreign countries, the reality is that many foreign sentencing practices have sparked chronic and widespread dissatisfaction abroad. It may be that the dispute over incarceration practices is more a dispute between the elites and the community than a dispute between the U.S. and other democracies’ populations.While all decarceration reformers should welcome a clearer picture of America’s incarceration practices, it is hard not to conclude that many mass incarceration myths were created deliberately by those who oppose not only incarceration but punishment generally. For these activists, the mass incarceration narrative is primarily a means toward eliminating punishment, a goal that is difficult to pursue directly because it is so contrary to the views of the general population and even a majority of academia.This Article is not pro-incarceration. It subjects the mass incarceration narrative to much needed scrutiny precisely because reforming incarceration practices is necessary. The criminal justice system should strive to deliver just punishment in the most societally beneficial way, which we believe means increasing the use of non-incarcerative sanctions. The myths of the mass incarceration narrative frequently lead activists to overlook non-incarcerative reforms that deliver just punishment—a tragic failure because such reforms would have much stronger popular support than the anti-punishment or unsophisticated anti-prison reforms now pushed by the mass incarceration narrative.Part I of the Article describes the mass incarceration myths that have become so broadly accepted. Part II reviews the facts of American incarceration practice, which contradict many, if not most, aspects of the narrative. Part III offers our reform proposals, which we believe more accurately address the problems in current incarceration practice. Central to those proposals are the use of creative non-incarcerative sanctions that still deliver punishment proportional to a nuanced assessment of each offender’s moral blameworthiness

U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 24-04

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  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 David H. Cloud, Ilana R. Garcia-Grossman,  Andrea Armstrong, and Brie Williams

Mass incarceration is a socio-structural driver of profound health inequalities in the United States. The political and economic forces underpinning mass incarceration are deeply rooted in centuries of the enslavement of people of African descent and the genocide and displacement of Indigenous people and is inextricably connected to labor exploitation, racial discrimination, the criminalization of immigration, and behavioral health problems such as mental illness and substance use disorders. This article focuses on major public health crises and advances in state and federal prisons and discusses a range of practical strategies for health scholars, practitioners, and activists to promote the health and dignity of incarcerated people. It begins by summarizing the historical and sociostructural factors that have led to mass incarceration in the United States. It then describes the ways in which prison conditions create or worsen chronic, communicable, and behavioral health conditions, while highlighting priority areas for public health research and intervention to improve the health of incarcerated people, including decarceral solutions that can profoundly minimize—and perhaps one day help abolish—the use of prisons.   

United States, Annual Review Public Health. 2023, 29pg

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   E. Ann Carson, Lauren Beatty and Stephanie Mueller

This is the fifth report as required under the First Step Act of 2018 (FSA; P.L. 115-391). It includes data on federal prisoners for calendar year 2022 provided to BJS by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). As required by the FSA, this report details select characteristics of persons in prison, including marital, veteran, citizenship, and English-speaking status; education levels; medical conditions; and participation in treatment programs. It also includes statistics BJS is required to report at the facility level, such as the number of assaults on staff by prisoners, prisoners’ violations of rules that resulted in time credit reductions, and selected facility characteristics related to accreditation, on-site health care, remote learning, video conferencing, and costs of prisoners’ phone calls.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2023. 26p

By: Matt Davis, Desiree L. Fox, Ciara D. Hansen,, Ann M. Miller

Native people are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States. Several factors contribute: a history of federal oppression and efforts to erode Native culture, a series of federal laws that rejected tribal justice systems in place long before European contact, historical trauma that has a lasting impact on the physical and mental well-being of Native people, a complicated jurisdictional structure that pulls Native people further into justice involvement, and a deficiency of representation for the accused in tribal courts. Although people accused of crime in tribal courts are afforded the right to counsel, tribal governments are not constitutionally required to provide appointed counsel for the indigent. As a result, there are uncounseled convictions in tribal courts used against Native people in state and federal systems.

There are 574 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, each with its own culture, sovereign government, justice system, and historical relationship with the United States government. For this reason, interventions meant to address over-incarceration of Native people should start at the tribal level. Tribes could impact disparity on a national level by providing supportive and restorative services for those involved in their own justice systems. Tribes could impact disparities by providing public defender services, in particular, holistic public defense that employs a restorative approach. A holistic model of public defense addresses the issues that contribute to people’s involvement in the criminal justice system and the collateral consequences to criminal charges and convictions. Providing services that address underlying needs results in improved life outcomes that predictably result in less criminal justice involvement. This article highlights the Tribal Defenders Office (TDO) for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes that has implemented holistic defense in a tribal setting.

Initially modeled after the Bronx Defenders, the Tribal Defenders holistic defense practice aligns with tribal values by going beyond the criminal case to view the accused as a whole person with a range of legal and social support needs that if left unmet will continue to push them back into the criminal justice system. Over the years, the Tribal Defenders’ team has worked to integrate into the community, listen to feedback from clients and the community, and refine the program accordingly. Through twelve years of integrated practice, TDO staff learned several lessons that have shaped their success: services come first, invest in culturally relevant research and services, listen to clients and the community, and adhere to cultural safety.

Although the article promotes holistic defense to the indigent as a solution to inequities facing justice-involved Native people, it also highlights other promising practices. Tribal systems have access to national organizations that support their efforts to address criminal justice challenges. There are tribal courts, victim services, probation departments, and reentry programs that have taken traditional, restorative principles and applied them in innovative ways to promote healing, wellness, and community safety.

United States, Safety & Justice Challenge. 2023. 23pg

By Michelle S. Phelps, H. N. Dickens, De Andre’ T. Beadle

Advocates for reform have highlighted violations of probation and parole conditions as a key driver of mass incarceration. As a 2019 Council of State Governments report declared, supervision violations are “filling prisons and burdening budgets.” Yet few scholarly accounts estimate the precise role of technical violations in fueling prison populations during the prison boom. Using national surveys of state prison populations from 1979 to 2016, the authors document that most incarcerated persons are behind bars for new sentences. On average, just one in eight people in state prisons on any given day has been locked up for a technical violation of community supervision alone. Thus, strategies to substantially reduce prison populations must look to new criminal offenses and sentence length.

United States, Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. 2023, 3pg

By Jacqueline Beard

In March 2020 the Justice Secretary told the Justice Committee that the pressure on prisons in England and Wales due to coronavirus was acute.“a potential hotbed for viral transmission”, stating that “they are overcrowded, understaffed and often dirty”.2 The Head of the Prison Governors Association told the Guardian: 1 The Chair of the Justice Committee described prisons as a combination of prison overcrowding, prisoner lockdown and staff shortages as a result of prison workers needing to isolate themselves meant that the system was facing unprecedented pressure.3 The physical health of the prison population, across a broad range of conditions, is much poorer than that of the general population.4 The proportion of prisoners aged over 50 increased from 7% in 2002 to 16% in March 2019.5 Living conditions across much of the prison estate are poor. As at February 2020, 60% (70) of prison establishments were crowded.6 These 70 prisons accommodated around 60,000 prisoners or 71% of the total prison population. On 27 April 2020 the Justice Secretary said that the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths in prisons were lower than had been originally predicted and that “while we are not out of woods”, prisons were coping and dealing well with the threat of covid-19. 7  A press release from the Ministry of Justice on the 28 April 2020 said that “jails are successfully limiting deaths and the transmission of the virus within the estate”.8 As of 12 May, 404 cases had been confirmed amongst prisoners. 21 prisoners and 7 members of prison staff had died.9  Public Health England (PHE) reported on 24 April 2020 that data it had collected “suggests that the ‘explosive outbreaks’ of COVID19 which were feared at the beginning of the pandemic wave are not being seen. Instead, there is evidence of containment of outbreak”.10 PHE’s report stated that because access to testing for prisoners has been limited and variable, the number of confirmed cases reported “does not represent the true burden of infection in the prison system”. It states that in addition to the 304 laboratory-confirmed cases in prisoners in England and Wales (at the time the report was written) data showed there had been also over 1,783 possible/probable cases. 

London, House of Commons Library. 2020. 10pg

By Michele Cadigan and Gabriela Kirk

Research on court-imposed monetary sanctions has not yet fully examined the impact that processes used to manage court debt have on individuals’ lives. Drawing from both interviews and ethnographic data in Illinois and Washington State, we examine how the court’s management of justice-related debt affect labor market experiences. We conceptualize these managerial practices as procedural pressure points or mechanisms embedded within these processes that strain individuals’ ability to access and maintain stable employment. We find that, as a result, courts undermine their own goal of recouping costs and trap individuals in a cycle of court surveillance.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences March 2020, 6 (1) 113-131; DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.202

By Johann D. Gaebler ,Phoebe Barghouty,Sarah Vicol,Cheryl Phillips,Sharad Goel

In almost every state, courts can jail those who fail to pay fines, fees, and other court debts—even those resulting from traffic or other non-criminal violations. While debtors’ prisons for private debts have been widely illegal in the United States for more than 150 years, the effect of courts aggressively pursuing unpaid fines and fees is that many Americans are nevertheless jailed for unpaid debts. However, heterogeneous, incomplete, and siloed records have made it difficult to understand the scope of debt imprisonment practices. We culled data from millions of records collected through hundreds of public records requests to county jails to produce a first-of-its-kind dataset documenting imprisonment for court debts in three U.S. states. Using these data, we present novel order-of-magnitude estimates of the prevalence of debt imprisonment, finding that between 2005 and 2018, around 38,000 residents of Texas and around 8,000 residents of Wisconsin were jailed each year for failure to pay (FTP), with the median individual spending one day in jail in both Texas and Wisconsin. Drawing on additional data on FTP warrants from Oklahoma, we also find that unpaid fines and fees leading to debt imprisonment most commonly come from traffic offenses, for which a typical Oklahoma court debtor owes around $250, or $500 if a warrant was issued for their arrest.

PLoS One. 2023; 18(9): e0290397.

By Colleen Chien, Alexandra George, Srihari Shekhar, and Robert Apel

As states pass reforms to reduce the size of their prison populations, the number of Americans physically incarcerated has declined. However, the number of people whose employment and related opportunities are limited due to their criminal records continues to grow. Another sanction that curtails economic opportunity is the loss of one’s driver’s license for reasons unrelated to driving. While many states have “second chance” laws on the books that provide, e.g. expungement or driver’s license restoration, a growing body of research has documented large “second chance gaps” between eligibility and delivery of relief due to the poor administration of second chance relief. This paper is a first attempt to measure the cost of these “paper prisons” of limited economic opportunity due to expungable records and restorable licenses, in terms of annual lost earnings. Analyzing the literature, we estimate the annual earnings loss associated with misdemeanor and felony convictions to be $5,100 and $6,400, respectively, and that of a suspended license to be $12,700.

We use Texas as a case study for comparing the cost (in terms of lost earnings) of the state’s “paper prisons” – living with sealable records or restorable licenses – with the cost of its physical prisons. In Texas, individuals with criminal convictions may seal their records after a waiting period. But analyzing administrative data, we find that approximately 95% of people eligible for relief have not accessed it. This leaves 670,000 people in the “second chance sealing gap” eligible for but not accessing second chance relief, translating into an annual earnings loss of about $3.5 billion. Similarly, people that have lost driver’s licenses are entitled to get their licenses restored under the law (in the form of “occupational driver’s licenses,” or “ODLs”) in order to drive to work or school. But using a similar approach, we find that about 80% of the people that appear eligible for restored driver’s licenses in Texas have not received them. This translates into about 430,000 people who needlessly lack licenses and a lower-bounds earnings loss of about $5.5 billion. Based on these figures, we find the cumulative annual earnings loss associated with Texas’s “paper prisons” of limited economic opportunity due to lost but restorable licenses and convictions records eligible for sealing to be comparable with, and likely more than, the yearly cost to Texas of managing its physical prisons of around $3.6 billion.

64 ARIZ. L. REV. 675 (2022). Santa Clara Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper

By Nino C. Monea

ABSTRACT In 1776, only two states offered constitutional protections against imprisoning people for debt. Today, forty-one states do. This Article traces that history. It begins by examining how debtors’ prisons operated in early America, and then divides analysis between three phases of state constitutional activity. In so doing, it looks at the arguments that won over states to protect debtors, the state constitutional conventions that enacted protections, and the failure of the federal government to address the issue. The Article concludes by noting that despite the success of adopting constitutional protections, courts have allowed debtors’ prisons to resurge in modern times.

DREXEL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 14:1, 2022.

By Lindsay Bass-Patel and Angie Weis Gammell

Courts across the country, including those in North Carolina, impose financial obligations on people when they are convicted of a crime or infraction. These court imposed financial obligations include fines, a form of financial punishment, and fees, which fund government services. North Carolina has increased its reliance on fines and fees as a revenue source over the past 20 years. 1 This practice harms many North Carolinians and is also an inefficient financial strategy for the state. In the past decade, other states have begun to reevaluate their use of fines and fees. North Carolina can find guidance from states like Louisiana, which has eliminated fees for juveniles, and Georgia, which has enacted guidelines to determine a person’s ability to pay before imposing fines or fees. Fines and fees disproportionately impact poor people and people of color, and in so doing, burden them with paying for government services that support all members of society. North Carolina courts often impose fines and fees without considering a person’s ability to pay them. When a person does not have the financial means to pay, they face difficult, perilous choices. These choices result in some people paying fines or fees rather than buying groceries or medicine; some people losing their driver’s license for not paying the fines or fees; and some people being taken to jail for failing to pay even when the original infraction had no risk of jail time. 2 Furthermore, fines and fees are an unreliable and ineffective revenue source. The time and resources spent trying to collect court fines and fees can cost more than the money collected. 3 The North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (“AOC”) does not publicly share information on the total amount of fines and fees imposed or outstanding. Instead, the publicly shared financial data shows the amount people pay to the Clerks of Superior Court. According to this information, the state recouped $204.9 million in fiscal year 2020-2021 from fines and fees in criminal cases, which constituted only 0.3% of the state’s revenue for that year. 4 North Carolina must examine its use of fines and fees, including the harm it has on residents, their families, and their communities; eliminate fees; and reduce fines imposed in criminal court.

Durham, NC: Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, 2023. 36p.

By The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

This report focuses on an ongoing crisis in many of America’s jails and prisons: the near total denial of medication for addiction treatment (MAT) for people with opioid use disorder (OUD). Despite a crisis of overdose deaths, which have spiked further in the wake of COVID-19, many jails and prisons are ignoring a vital public health tool that is proven to curb the deadly effects of the opioid epidemic. MAT is basic healthcare for individuals with OUD. There are three MAT medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone. Methadone and buprenorphine are proven to be effective, while the evidence supporting the effectiveness of naltrexone is more limited. In far too many jails and prisons around the country, none of these medications are available to incarcerated people with OUD, or only naltrexone is available. OUD is common in jails and prisons, affecting nearly a quarter of the incarcerated population. This denial of treatment leaves people with OUD at a much higher risk of relapse and overdose upon release from incarceration. MAT is a practical solution to this problem. MAT reduces the risk of death from any cause by 85%, and the risk of death from an overdose by 75% in the weeks following release.5 As discussed herein, there is a growing consensus among policy makers, medical professionals, and corrections officials that MAT is appropriate for incarcerated people with OUD. And many of the jails and prisons that have implemented MAT programs report that it is affordable and can be safely administered.

New York: ACLU, 2021. 32p.