By The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Rhode Island Advisory Committee 

The Rhode Island Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights submits this report regarding licensing as a barrier to employment post-conviction in Rhode Island. The Committee submits this report as part of its responsibility to study and report on civil rights issues in the state. The contents of this report are primarily based on testimony the Committee heard during an in-person public meeting held on April 30, 2019, as well as virtual meetings held on May 20, 2020 and June 30, 2020. The Committee also included related testimony submitted in writing during the relevant period of public comment. The following report begins with a summary of the testimony the Committee received on this topic. It then identifies primary findings as they emerged from this testimony. Finally, it makes recommendations for addressing related civil rights concerns. While other important topics may have surfaced throughout the Committee’s inquiry, matters that are outside the scope of this specific civil rights mandate are left for another discussion.  

Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2021. 38p.

By C. Geltner

From the cover: Corporal punishment is often seen as a litmus test for a society’s degree of civilization. Its licit use purports to separate modernity from premodernity, enlightened from barbaric cultures. As Geltner argues, however, neither did the infliction of bodily pain typify earlier societies nor did it vanish from penal theory, policy, or practice. Far from displaying a steady decline that accelerated with die Enlightenment, physical punishment was contested throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, its application expanding and contracting under diverse pressures. Moreover, despite the integration of penal incarceration into criminal justice systems since the nineteenth century, modem nation states and colonial regimes increased rather than limited the use of corporal punishment. Flogging Others thus challenges a common understanding of modernization and Western identity and underscores earlier civilizations' nuanced approaches to punishment, deviance, and the human body. Today as in the past, corporal punishment thrives due to its capacity to define otherness efficiently and unambiguously, either as a measure acting upon a deviant's body or as a practice that epitonuzes — in the eyes of external observers — a culture's backwardness.

Amsterdam. Amsterdam University Press. 2014. 110p.

By The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  New Hampshire Advisory Committee

 This report details civil rights concerns the New Hampshire Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examined regarding solitary confinement in New Hampshire. The Committee submits this report as part of its responsibility to study and report on civil rights issues in the state. The contents of this report are primarily based on testimony the Committee heard during virtual public meetings held on July 20, 2020; August 17, 2020; September 21, 2020; and December 9, 2020. The Committee also reviewed related testimony submitted in writing during the relevant period of public comment. The report begins with a brief background of the Committee’s proposed project, followed by a summary of the testimony the Committee received on this topic. It then identifies primary findings as they emerged from this testimony. Finally, it makes recommendations for addressing related civil rights concerns. While other important topics may have surfaced throughout the Committee’s inquiry, matters that are outside the scope of this specific civil rights mandate are left for another discussion.

Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2021. 63p.

By Terry-Ann Craigie, Ames Grawert, and Cameron Kimble 

Ascertaining through careful statistical analyses just how costly the mass incarceration system has been to the people ensnared by it is a major achievement. These findings reframe our understanding of the issue: As a perpetual drag on the earning potential of tens of millions of Americans, these costs are not only borne by individuals, their families, and their communities. They are also system-wide drivers of inequality and are so large as to have macroeconomic consequences. That insight is vital today. The unprecedented economic contraction triggered by the pandemic, and the federal government’s botched response, appears to be falling hardest on those who were already struggling, just like in past slumps. When employers cut back, employees with criminal records are all too often the first to be furloughed and the last to be rehired. And while major corporations get billions of dollars in relief, millions of the jobless are being largely left in the cold. Foreword America is approaching a breaking point. For more than four decades, economic inequality has risen inexorably, stunting productivity, weakening our democracy, and leaving tens of millions struggling to get by in the world’s most prosperous country. The crises that have rocked the United States since the spring — the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting mass unemployment, and a nationwide uprising for racial justice — have made the inequities plaguing American society more glaring than ever.  

New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2020. 44p.

By Leticia Fernandez, Sharon Ennis, Sonya R. Porter and Elizabeth Carson

This report was produced by the U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies (CES), under award number DJO-BJS-21-RO-0005. It explores the role that race/Hispanic origin, other demographic characteristics, and custodial/criminal history factors have on post-release mortality, including on the timing of deaths. It also assesses whether conditional release to community supervision or reimprisonment may explain the higher post-release mortality found among non-Hispanic whites. In the second part of the analysis, the report estimates standardized mortality ratios by sex, age group, and race/Hispanic origin using the U.S. general population as a reference. The data come from state prison releases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP). The NCRP records were linked to the Census Numident to identify deaths occurring within five years from prison release. NCRP records were linked to previous decennial censuses and survey responses to obtain self-reported race and Hispanic origin if available.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2022. 44p.

By Alabama Appleseed

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude, and others have generated increased scrutiny of how the government and law enforcement treat Black people. These police killings of unarmed Black people are perhaps the starkest example of the many ways the state inflicts violence on individuals, contrary to both our legal and social code. But in Alabama and elsewhere, another, pernicious form of deadly state violence continues with far less scrutiny. Black people are dying violent deaths while in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), the largest law enforcement agency in the state — and they are dying in disproportionate numbers as compared to their white peers. This continuum of Black people being killed by police and in prisons amounts to two sides of the same coin. Police are the front end of law enforcement, and prisons are its back end. They are inseparably connected. In this report, Alabama Appleseed seeks to document and demonstrate the ways in which deaths — particularly deaths resulting from homicide, suicide, and COVID-19 in Alabama prisons — are prompted by the same issues of state violence and deliberate indifference to the safety of people in government custody as the police killings that have inflamed the country and energized the Black Lives Matter movement. Alabama Appleseed has identified, by name, 89 people who have died violent, preventable deaths from homicide, suicide, or drug overdose over the last six years while in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. These incarcerated individuals lost their lives due to the State’s failure to provide “basic human needs, one of which is reasonable safety”. The neglect, violence, and death disproportionately impacts Black men, who are dying at over three times the rate of white men.  

Montgomery, AL: Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, 2021? 18p.

By Denis Gough and Megan Coghlan  

This rapid evidence review (RER) presents an analysis of literature and research to understand factors linked to reoffending and desistance, while also analysing multi-2022. 943p.agency working in relation to reducing reoffending. This is important given the 2021- 2023 Department of Justice Statement of Strategy that includes a focus on reducing reoffending and understanding multi-agency working to inform policy and ensure a shared purpose in the criminal justice sector in Ireland. To identify relevant literature for this RER peer reviewed academic literature only is analysed to understand reoffending and desistance, while a mixture of academic and governmental literature was selected to analyse multi-agency working. To be eligible for analysis, the relevant literature and research was required to be European and published in English from 1990-present.

Dublin: Ireland Department of Justice,  2022. 94p.

By Jake Phillips and Rebecca Roberts

In 2018/19, ten people died each week following release from prison. Every two days, someone took their own life. In the same year, one woman died every week, and half of these deaths were self-inflicted. 

This report, co-authored by Dr Jake Phillips of Sheffield Hallam University and Rebecca Roberts of INQUEST provides an overview of what is known about the deaths of people on post custody supervision following release from prison. It highlights the lack of visibility and policy attention given to this growing problem and calls for immediate action to ensure greater scrutiny, learning and prevention.

London: INQUEST, 2019. 17p.

By Rebecca Roberts, Claire Campbell and Deborah Coles

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

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

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

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

London: INQUEST, 2020. 20p.

By Charles Seguin and David Rigby

Historians are increasingly studying lynching outside of the American Southeast, but sociologists have been slow to follow. We introduce a new public data set that extends existing data on lynching victims to cover the contiguous United States from 1883 to 1941. These data confirm that lynching was a heterogeneous practice across the United States. We differentiate between three different regimes over this period: a Wild West regime, characterized mostly by the lynching of whites in areas with weak state penetration; a slavery regime, found in former slave states, characterized mostly by the lynching of blacks; and a third minor regime, characterized by the lynching of Mexican nationals mostly along the Texas-Mexico border. We also note great variability at the county level in the extent of lynching. By contrast, we find very little state-level variability in lynching once local and regional regimes are considered. We discuss the implications of local and regional heterogeneity for quantitative lynching research using these data.

SociusVolume 5, January-December 2019

By Ngozi Ndulue

As this report was being written, tens of thousands were marching on streets across the world shouting “I cannot breathe!”; “No justice, no peace!”; “Black lives matter!”; and “Hands up, don’t shoot.” These are the cries of people exhausted and enraged by a global pandemic that has taken a deadly toll on people of color while videos capture African Americans being killed by law enforcement and former law enforcement officers. After the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, watching a police officer nonchalantly kneel on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes proved too much to bear. Readers may wonder why a report about the death penalty begins with a discussion of police violence. Yet, there are strong links between the indelible images of a knee pressed against George Floyd’s neck, the bodies of lynching victims surrounded by jubilant crowds, and the proud onlookers at the last public execution. Exploring these connections is essential to any full discussion of race and the death penalty in the United States.

Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2020. 88p.

By The Death Penalty Information Center

In 1993, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights conducted hearings on what was then a relatively unknown question: How significant was the risk that innocent people were being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in the United States. After taking testimony from four exonerees who had been wrongfully condemned to death row, Representative Don Edwards, the subcommittee chairman, asked the Death Penalty Information Center to research the issue and compile information on how frequently these miscarriages of justice were occurring and what were the reasons why. DPIC began looking more closely into death-row exonerations in the U.S. in the twenty years since the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia in 1972 that the death penalty as then administered was unconstitutionally arbitrary and capricious. That research—undertaken before the availability of the internet—uncovered 48 cases in which a wrongfully convicted person had been released from death row because of innocence. The results of DPIC’s research were released in a Staff Report by the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights Committee on the Judiciary, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, Innocence and the Death Penalty: Assessing the Danger of Mistaken Execution, issued on October 21, 1993, and became DPIC’s first Innocence List.

Since states began reenacting capital punishment statutes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia striking down existing death penalty laws, at least 185 people who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated. These wrongful capital convictions have happened in 29 different states and in 118 different counties, showing that, in whatever part of the country they are tried, capital defendants face an inherent risk of wrongful conviction. Florida has had the most death-row exonerations of any state, with 30 since 1973, followed by Illinois with 21, and Texas with 16. Cook County, Illinois leads all counties with the most death-row exonerations (15) since 1973, followed by Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, with six exonerations each. Maricopa County, Arizona; and Oklahoma County, Oklahoma had five each. Those five counties, each with a history of police and prosecutorial misconduct and of being outliers in their excessive pursuit of the death penalty, account by themselves for a fifth (20%) of the nation’s death-row exonerations. And more than 95 percent of wrongful capital convictions and death sentences from those counties involved some combination of police or prosecutorial misconduct and witness perjury or false accusation. Twenty-six counties have more than one death-row exoneration, collectively accounting for 50.3% of all of the wrongful capital convictions that have resulted in exonerations

Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2021. 31p.

ByTiana Herring

Oklahoma’s death penalty is at a crossroads. On August 25, 2022, Oklahoma executed the first person in a series of 25 executions set to occur nearly every month through 2024. The projected increase in executions in Oklahoma comes while the death penalty is in decline nationwide; 2021 had the fewest executions since 1988. Furthermore, Oklahoma’s planned executions are scheduled to move forward despite evidence that there are serious problems with Oklahoma’s death penalty that the state has done little to address. Death penalty cases in Oklahoma have garnered significant media attention in recent years, providing the public with tangible examples of systemic issues with the state’s capital punishment system.

Washington DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2022. 72p.

By OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights

Noting the restrictions and safeguards regarding the use of the death penalty adopted by the international community, as well as the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of capital punishment, OSCE participating States have made a number of commitments relating to the death penalty.1 They committed to exchange information on the question of the abolition of the death penalty and to provide information on the use of the death penalty to the public.2 Where the death penalty is still in use, participating States have agreed that it can be imposed only for the most serious crimes and only in line with international commitments.3 OSCE participating States have also made a number of other commitments relevant in the context of the application of the death penalty, such as ensuring the right to life, the right to a fair trial and the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.4

Warsaw, Poland: OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), 2021. 67p.

By Caitlyn Norman

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

WIREs Forensic Science, e1473. 

By MichaelSherman and Gordon Hawkins

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

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

By Robert Johnson

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

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

By Andrew Von Hirsch

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

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

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

Edited by Kenneth C. Haas and Geoffrey P Alpert

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

Prospect Heights. Illinois. Waveband Press. 1986.619p.

By Kenneth C. Haas and Geoffrey P. Alpert

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

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