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PUNISHMENT

PUNISHMENT-PRISON-HISTORY-CORPORAL-PUNISHMENT-PAROLE-ALTERNATIVES. MORE in the Toch Library Collection

Expanding Supervised Release in NYC: An Evaluation of June 2019 Changes

By Joanna Weill

New York City jails held an average of 5,468 individuals a day in 2021, 1 far below the peak incarceration of over 20,000 in the early 90s, 2 but above the City’s stated aim of 3,300.3 In working towards this goal, New York City expanded its Supervised Release Program (SRP). Through SRP, individuals awaiting trial are released under community supervision to ensure their return to court, rather than having bail set and/or being detained in jail. The program includes phone and in-person check-ins and connections to voluntary services. More recent iterations of the program have allowed judges to set mandatory programming as a condition of release for participants in SRP. This brief looks at the impact of one SRP expansion implemented in June 2019.  

New York: Center for Court Innovation, 2022. 15p.

Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration: report and recommendations

By Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration

Michigan’s jail population has tripled from 1975 to 2016. To learn what led to this dramatic increase and identify alternatives, state and county leaders launched the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration in the spring of 2019. The Task Force examined 10 years of arrest data gathered from more than 600 law enforcement agencies across the state, 10 years of court data collected from nearly 200 district and circuit courts, and three years of individual-level admission data from a diverse sample of 20 county jails. This report includes key findings and 18 recommendations for state lawmakers to help reduce jail admissions.

Ann Arbor: State of Michigan, 2021. 47p.

Captive Labor Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers

By The American Civil Liberties Union and The University of Chicago Law School, Global Human Rights Clinic

Our nation incarcerates over 1.2 million people in state and federal prisons, and two out of three of these incarcerated people are also workers. In most instances, the jobs these people in prison have look similar to those of millions of people working on the outside: They work as cooks, dishwashers, janitors, groundskeepers, barbers, painters, or plumbers; in laundries, kitchens, factories, and hospitals. They provide vital public services such as repairing roads, fighting wildfires, or clearing debris after hurricanes. They washed hospital laundry and worked in mortuary services at the height of the pandemic. They manufacture products like office furniture, mattresses, license plates, dentures, glasses, traffic signs, athletic equipment, and uniforms. They cultivate and harvest crops, work as welders and carpenters, and work in meat and poultry processing plants. But there are two crucial differences: Incarcerated workers are under the complete control of their employers, and they have been stripped of even the most minimal protections against labor exploitation and abuse.  From the moment they enter the prison gates, they lose the right to refuse to work. This is because the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which generally protects against slavery and involuntary servitude, explicitly excludes from its reach those held in confinement due to a criminal conviction. More than 76 percent of incarcerated workers report that they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence…..

  • and loss of family visitation, or the inability to pay for basic life necessities like bath soap. They have no right to choose what type of work they do and are subject to arbitrary, discriminatory, and punitive decisions.

The American Civil Liberties Union and The University of Chicago Law School, Global Human Rights Clinic, 2022. 149p.

Locked In and Locked Down: Prison Life in a Pandemic: Evidence from ten countries

By Catherine Heard

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020 the need for rapid action in prisons to avert a public health disaster was clear. There were warnings of the risks to prisoners, prison staff and others coming into contact with them, if outbreaks occurred in prisons. The pandemic emerged at a time when most countries’ prison systems were running above their official capacity, after decades of rising prisoner numbers in much of the world. Risks were especially high in countries with overcrowded prisons because of cramped accommodation, low staffing levels, and poor sanitation and healthcare standards. In this report we present evidence of how life in custody changed as a result of the global health emergency, drawn from over 80 interviews with prisoners, ex-prisoners and their loved ones, which we and our research partners conducted before and during the pandemic.   

London: Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research, 2021. 27p.

COVID-19, Jails, and Public Safety December 2020 Update

By Anna Harvey, Orion Taylor and Andrea Wang

This report, updating the September 2020 Impact Report on COVID-19, Jails, and Public Safety, draws on a sample of approximately 19 million daily individual-level jail records collected by New York University's Public Safety Lab between Jan. 1, 2020 and Oct. 22, 2020. We explore how bookings, releases, and rebooking rates changed during the pandemic, relative to the pre-pandemic period. + Jail populations in the sample decreased by an average of 31% over the six weeks following the March 16 issuance of the White House "Coronavirus Guidelines for America," which expired on April 30. Jail populations then increased and have since recovered half of these decreases, despite explosive COVID-19 case growth in many of the counties in the sample. Counties with higher countywide COVID-19 case growth between March 1 and Oct. 22 have not seen larger reductions in jail populations. The decreases in jail populations after the issuance of the White House Guidelines on March 16, and the lack of responsiveness of jail populations to local COVID prevalence after those guidelines expired, suggest the importance of clear policy directives for reducing disease transmission risk within county jails. + Jail bookings dropped sharply in mid-March and remain on average 36% below pre-pandemic levels. As bookings declined, the characteristics of those booked into jails shifted. Those booked into jails between mid-March and late October were booked on more charges on average, were more likely to be booked on felony charges, and were less likely to be booked on lesser charges like…..

  • failure to appear, than those booked into jails prior to this period. + Although jail bookings dropped after mid-March, those booked into jails were detained for longer periods of time. Average detention duration increased sharply after mid-March, doubling from about 15 to 30 days, and remains nearly twice as high as the pre-pandemic average detention duration. This increase has offset reductions in admissions, and contributed to rebounding jail populations observed since mid-March. + Parallel to trends in daily bookings, daily releases dropped sharply in mid-March and remain approximately 40% below baseline levels. Those released from jails between mid-March and late October had been booked on more charges on average, were more likely to have been booked on felony charges, and were less likely to have been booked on lesser charges such as failure to appear, than those released from jails prior to mid-March.  The rate at which those released from detention are rebooked into jail following release is one possible measure of the public safety risk of jail releases. To date, 30-, 60-, 90-, and 180-day rebooking rates among those released during the pandemic have remained 13% - 33% below pre-pandemic rebooking rates. To the extent that rebooking rates measure the average public safety risk of releasing individuals from jail, this risk remains lower now than prior to the pandemic. + While the proportion of Black individuals among daily jail admissions did not change appreciably during the pandemic, the proportion of Black people among those released from jails during the pandemic decreased by approximately 5% relative to the pre-pandemic period. As a result, the proportion of jail populations composed of Black individuals rose during the pandemic.   

Washington, D.C.: Council on Criminal Justice, December 2020. 27p.

COVID-19 Testing in State Prisons

BySchnepel, Kevin T., Joanna Abaroa-Ellison, et al.

Across the country, the coronavirus pandemic has had taken a heavy toll on incarcerated populations. High infection and mortality rates stem largely from the crowded conditions and shifting populations within prisons, along with the challenges of implementing effective mitigation strategies, such as physical distancing. This report explores the potential relationship between COVID-19 testing rates and COVID-19 infection and mortality outcomes across the 32 state prison systems where information necessary to conduct such an analysis was publicly available. The report also describes how four states (Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, and Vermont) conducted mass testing, and details outcomes for their incarcerated populations. Approximately half of the departments in the U.S. attempted to test all individuals in their prisons through some form of mass, or universal, testing program. This report draws on data available as of February 16, 2021.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2021. 21p.

Professionalism in Probation

By Matt Tidmarsh

The meaning of terms like ‘profession’, ‘professional’, and ‘professionalism’ are disputed. In a probation context, however, such contestation is seldom acknowledged; when mentioned, debates on ‘professionalism’ typically refer to what the service has allegedly lost. This literature typically draws on the ideal-typical tenets of professional status to highlight attempts to change probation’s ideology of service (Robinson and Ugwudike, 2012); erode its knowledge, education, and training (Farrant, 2006); and constrain its autonomy over work (Fitzgibbon, 2007). The alleged demise of ‘professionalism’ was crucial to the mobilisation of the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms to probation in England and Wales. Professionalism in probation, it was argued, had been stifled by government interference; restoring it by establishing markets for low-to-medium risk offenders was vital to attempts to create an efficient, cost-effective service (Ministry of Justice [MoJ], 2010, 2013). However, the detrimental impact of Transforming Rehabilitation on probation has been widely observed (e.g. HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2020a; National Audit Office [NAO], 2019; Tidmarsh, 2021a). For example, then-Chief Inspector of Probation Dame Glenys Stacey described how a transactional model of probation was ‘fundamentally flawed’ (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a: 89). Indeed, the manner in which Transforming Rehabilitation ‘downgraded’ and ‘diminished’ the profession (HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2019a) influenced the decision to return probation services to the public sector, in June 2021

  • (HM Prison and Probation Service [HMPPS], 2021). A commitment to enhancing ‘professionalism’ by improving the skills, knowledge, and standards of the workforce is, once again, a central theme in yet more probation restructuring (HMPPS, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). This Academic Insights paper, therefore, reviews the academic literature on ‘professionalism’ and applies it to probation. In particular, it highlights the opportunities provided by probation unification to better embed professionalism within the service.    

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2022. 18p.

More Work to Do: Analysis of Probation and Parole in the United States, 2017-2018

By Kendra Bradner, Vincent Schiraldi, Natasha Mejia, and Evangeline Lopoo

This research brief offers an initial analysis of newly-released data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which report on the number of people under probation and parole supervision in 2017 and 2018. This brief seeks to put the data into the context of historical and international community supervision trends and to examine supervision rates through a racial equity lens. The authors find that, while there has been an observable decline in the number of people under community supervision, the United States continues to maintain high rates of community supervision compared to historic rates, as well as compared to European rates. Further, community supervision is still marked by significant racial disparities and “mass supervision” continues to be a major contributor to mass incarceration. Finally, from 2008 to 2018, the decline in the number of people on probation has failed to keep pace with the decline in arrests, resulting in an increase in the rate of probation, per arrest. The authors recommend that policymakers address points of racial and ethnic disparity, shorten parole supervision periods and allow people to reduce their supervision periods through compliant behavior, eliminate incarceration as a response to non-criminal technical violations, and invest savings in initiatives co-designed with impacted communities.

New York: Columbia University Justice Lab, 2020. 25p.

Revoked: How Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States

By Allison Frankel

Probation and parole in the United States are promoted as alternatives to incarceration that help people get back on their feet. But in reality, arbitrary and overly harsh supervision regimes are driving high numbers of people into jail and prison—feeding mass incarceration. Given generations of structural racism, Black and brown people are disproportionately subjected to supervision and incarcerated for violations. Based on 164 interviews and new data analysis, this joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) documents the tripwires that lead people from supervision to incarceration in three US states where the problem is particularly acute: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Revoked: How Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States finds that supervision systems in the three states impose wide-ranging and unnecessarily onerous conditions, and in large part fail to connect people with the resources they need to comply. As a result, many people wind up incarcerated for violations involving drug use, failing to report address changes, and public order offenses like disorderly conduct. At root, these violations often stem from poverty and a lack of support to address underlying health, housing, or other problems. Incarceration is a grossly disproportionate response, and further upends their lives. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU urge governments to divest from supervision and incarceration and invest in jobs, housing, and health care. The report also provides detailed recommendations authorities should follow to substantially reduce the use of supervision and limit incarceration for violations.

New York: Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union, 2020. 231p.

Impact Evaluation of the Adult Redeploy Illinois - Intensive Supervision Probation with Services Program

By Daryl Krone, Breanne Pleggenkuhle, Raymund Narag, Emily Cripps. et al.

The community-based Intensive Supervision Probation with Services (ISP-S) program is one of the prison diversion models funded by Adult Redeploy Illinois (ARI), a state grant program to reduce reliance on incarceration created by the 2009 Crime Reduction Act (730 ILCS 190/) and housed at the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA). In 2019, an impact evaluation study was conducted as a follow-up to the 2018 process evaluation and is the subject of this report. All data collection was conducted by researchers from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale across the four Adult Redeploy Illinois (ARI) sites in DuPage, Macon, Peoria and St. Clair. The duration of the accumulation of data was from March 2019 through June 2019.

Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, 2021. 62p.

Reducing Probation Revocations in Pima County, Arizona: Findings and Implications from the Reducing Revocations Challenge

By Kelly Roberts Freeman, Ammar Khalid, Lily Robin, Rochisha Shukla, Paige Thompson and Robin Olsen

Probation revocation to jail or prison can result when a person is arrested for a new crime or is in violation of their probation conditions. The nature of probation supervision and how these violations relate to revocation varies depending on individual factors and the local context. Through the Reducing Revocations Challenge, the Urban Institute partnered with the Adult Probation Services Division of the Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts and the Pima County Adult Probation Department to shed light on the revocation pathways in Pima County and to identify policy solutions to address them. Specifically, this mixed-methods study aimed to examine 1) the types of noncompliance that occur (i.e., new crimes and technical violations); 2) probation officer and judicial responses to noncompliance; and 3) the role of client, caseload, and supervision characteristics on formal violations and revocation. This report presents our analysis of administrative probation data contextualized by a qualitative assessment of state and local policies, probation client case files, and interviews with probation officers, judges, and community providers. This allowed us to explore in-depth the factors, circumstances, and behaviors that drive both petitions for revocation and revocation outcomes. We provide policy implications based on these findings to safely reduce revocations and maximize supervision success.

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2021. 55p.

Electronic Monitoring Fees: A 50-State Survey of the Costs Assessed to People on E-Supervision

By The Fines and Fees Justice Center

For the purposes of this report, EM is defined as any technology used to track, monitor, or limit an individual’s physical movement or alcohol consumption. It, and the costs associated with it, may be imposed as a condition of probation, parole, diversion, or some other community-based sentence or as a condition of pretrial release for those who have not been found guilty of anything. Its use is widespread in both the juvenile and adult criminal court systems. In most states, the individuals on EM are required to pay—daily, weekly, monthly, or flat fees—in order to be tracked, monitored, and have their liberty curtailed. Failure to pay such fees can lead to extended periods of supervision, additional fees, or even jail. This report will primarily focus on the ways state, local, and municipal governments or courts impose fees on people placed on these devices. It specifically examines the quagmire of how and when states are charging, or allowing others to charge, EM fees to individuals ordered into these programs. We do this by focusing our examination on legislative authorization and statewide court rules that authorize EM fees. We examined statutes and rules from all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine whether their codes authorize fees for electronic monitoring at any point in the criminal legal system and to what extent.5 We explore statutes related to both pretrial release and post-sentencing supervision, the fee amounts authorized, consequences for nonpayment and, to a limited extent, electronic monitoring fees at the local level.

New York: Fines & Fees Justice Center, 2022. 24p.

Reduction or Elimination of Costs and Fees Charged to Inmates in State Correctional Facilities

By The Virginia Department of Corrections

At the directive of bills from the Virginia Senate and House, the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) organized a work group to make recommendations regarding the reduction or elimination of communication, commissary, and financial fees charged to inmates in state correctional facilities. There are limited jobs available to incarcerated people and the high costs of goods and services in prison are prohibitive with the amount of money incarcerated people can earn. As a result, they must often rely on their loved ones for additional financial support. Before the pandemic, a third of families with incarcerated loved ones went into debt trying to stay in touch. This report recommends policymakers reduce the financial burdens on incarcerated people and their loved ones, details the financial impact of their recommendations, and provides potential solutions to ensure no decrease or interruptions in the program and services provided by VADOC facilities.

Richmond: Virginia Department of Corrections, 2022. 54p;.

Tip of the Iceberg: How Much Criminal Justice Debt Does the U.S. Really Have?

By Briana Hammons

Considerable research has uncovered the financial burden and unintended consequences wreaked on the people charged with paying fines and fees. But there has been little, if any, investigation into how much court debt is outstanding or delinquent nationwide. Understanding the full scope of our nation’s criminal justice debt problem is vital to the task of creating an equitable justice system. In an effort to obtain this critical information, the Fines and Fees Justice Center contacted judicial offices and government agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that might have data related to outstanding court debt. We chose to focus our investigation on court debt because courts keep a record of every case, and those records should specify the amount of fines and fees imposed at conviction. We assumed that courts routinely aggregated this data, allowing them to determine the amount of fines and fees assessed. We also assumed that courts would track how much of those fines and fees were actually collected. But for half the country, that is not the case. What this means is that the full extent of our nation’s problem with court debt is shockingly untraceable and unknown. Reliable and current data is necessary to develop informed and effective public policy, and it is a vital tool to accurately judge the efficacy of a particular program and existing practices. In order to intelligently assess policy solutions, we need a complete view of every state’s court debt including, the total amount of fines and fees imposed, assessed, collected, and outstanding and data about the people who owe

  • fines and fees, including eligibility for a public defender or public benefits and charges for which the debt was imposed.

New York: Fines & Fees Justice Center, 2021. 34p.

Uniform Parole Reports: A National Correctional Data System

By M. G. Neithercutt, William H. Mosely and Ernst A. Wenk

From the summary: “At the request of the leading parole organizations which sponsor the National Probation and Parole Institutes program, the Uniform Parole Reports project was initiated in October 1964. An initial Feasibility Study was completed through the collaboration of 24 state parole agencies. This work resulted in a rant award by the National Institute of Mental Health for a three year pilot study to further develop the reporting system. A three year continuation grant followed that and since March 1972 the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration has provided the necessary support. The program is aimed at the development of a nationwide system of uniform parole reporting to provide reliable, comparable data by which paroling authorities may evaluate their policies and programs on an interstate  

National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Unpublished Report. March 1975. 73p.

Nothing But Time: Elderly Americans Serving Life Without Parole

By Ashley Nellis

Almost half of the people serving life without parole are 50 years old or more and one in four is at least 60 years old. Prisons are a particularly hazardous place to grow old. The carceral system is largely unprepared to handle the medical, social, physical, and mental health needs for older people in prison. Nearly half of prisons lack an established plan for the care of the elderly incarcerated. Because of the disadvantages affecting people in prison prior to their incarceration and the health-suppressing effects of imprisonment, incarcerated people are considered elderly from the age of 50. Under current trends, as much as one third of people in U.S. prisons will be at least 50 years old by 2030, the predictable and predicted consequence of mass incarceration. Warnings by corrections budget analysts of the crushing costs of incarcerating people who are older have gone almost entirely unheeded. Indeed, sociologist and legal scholar Christopher Seeds accurately described a transformation of life without parole “from a rare sanction and marginal practice of last resort into a routine punishment in the United States” over the last four decades. And in the contemporary moment of rising concerns around crime, there are reasons to be concerned that ineffective, racially disproportionate, and costly tough-on-crime measures such as increasing sentence lengths will proliferate, leading to even higher numbers of incarcerated people who will grow old in prison. In this, as in many other aspects of its carceral system, the United States is an outlier; in many Western democracies those in their final

  • decades of life are viewed as a protected class from the harsh prison climate.  

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 31p.

How Many People Are Spending Over a Decade in Prison?

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, and Ashley Nellis

Over 260,000 people in U.S. prisons had already been incarcerated for at least 10 years in 2019, comprising 19% of the prison population. Nearly three times as many people—over 770,000— were serving sentences of 10 years or longer. These figures represent a dramatic growth from the year 2000, when mass incarceration was already well underway. Based on criminological evidence that criminal careers typically end within approximately 10 years and recidivism rates fall measurably after about a decade of imprisonment, The Sentencing Project recommends taking a second look at sentences within 10 years of imprisonment. This research brief presents state-level analysis revealing a common growing trend of lengthy sentences, as well as significant geographic variation. The analysis also addresses racial disparities in long sentences. Because racial disparities are even starker here than among those serving shorter prison terms, focusing reform efforts on sentences of 10 years or more can accelerate racial justice. Finally, the brief presents the criminological and legal foundations for sentencing reform and offers recommendations for policymakers.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 16p.

Resisting Carceral Violence: Women's Imprisonment and the Politics of Abolition

By Bree Carlton and Emma K. Russell

This book explores the dramatic evolution of a feminist movement that mobilised to challenge a women’s prison system in crisis. Through in-depth historical research conducted in the Australian state of Victoria that spans the 1980s and 1990s, the authors uncover how incarcerated women have worked productively with feminist activists and community coalitions to expose, critique and resist the conditions and harms of their confinement. Resisting Carceral Violencetells the story of how activists—through a combination of creative direct actions, reformist lobbying and legal challenges—forged an anti-carceral feminist movement that traversed the prison walls. This powerful history provides vital lessons for service providers, social justice advocates and campaigners, academics and students concerned with the violence of incarceration. It calls for a willingness to look beyond the prison and instead embrace creative solutions to broader structural inequalities and social harm.

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 268p.

Prison Policy in Ireland: Politics, Penal-welfarism and Political Imprisonment

By Mary Rogan

This book is the first examination of the history of prison policy in Ireland. Despite sharing a legal and penal heritage with the United Kingdom, Ireland’s prison policy has taken a different path. This book examines how penal-welfarism was experienced in Ireland, shedding further light on the nature of this concept as developed by David Garland. While the book has an Irish focus, it has a theoretical resonance far beyond Ireland. This book investigates and describes prison policy in Ireland since the foundation of the state in 1922, analyzes and assesses the factors influencing policy during this period and explores and examines the links between prison policy and the wider social, economic, political and cultural development of the Irish state. It also explores how Irish prison policy has come to take on its particular character, with comparatively low prison numbers, significant reliance on short sentences and a policy-making climate in which long periods of neglect are interspersed with bursts of political activity all prominent features. Drawing on the emerging scholarship of policy analysis, the book argues that it is only through close attention to the way in which policy is formed that we will fully understand the nature of prison policy. In addition, the book examines the effect of political imprisonment in the Republic of Ireland, which, until now, has remained relatively unexplored.

London; New York: Routledge, 2011. 254p.

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy

By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen

5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adults-- are denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--both for election outcomes, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 384p.