By Laura M. Maruschak, Jennifer Bronson, and Mariel Alper

This brief presents findings based on data collected in the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, a survey conducted through face-to-face interviews with a national sample of state and federal prisoners across a variety of topics, such as their demographic characteristics, socio-economic background, health, and involvement with the criminal justice system. This brief provides demographic information about prisoners who have at least one minor child and the number of minor children reported by parents in prison.

Highlights

• An estimated 684,500 state and federal prisoners were parents of at least one minor child in 2016—nearly half of state prisoners (47%) and more than half of federal prisoners (58%).

• State and federal prisoners reported having an estimated 1,473,700 minor children in 2016.

• Among minor children of parents in state prison, 1% were younger than age 1, about 18% were ages 1 to 4, and 48% were age 10 or older.

• The average age of a minor child among parents in federal prison was 10 years old.

Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics , 2021. 8p.

By Rosemary Ricciardelli https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0905-8968 rricciardell@mun.ca, Micheal Taylor https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4959-2572, […], and Dale C. Spencer

Internationally, parole work is loaded with tensions, particularly when supervising a people convicted of sex crimes (PCSCs) who, due to their criminal history, are stigmatized and occupy the lowest rungs of the status hierarchy in prison and society more broadly. Drawing on analyses of interview data from federal parole officers (n = 150) employed by Correctional Service Canada, we interpret their perceptions and feelings about overseeing re-entry preparations and processes for the PCSCs on their caseloads. We unpack the “tensions” imbued in parole officers’ internal reflections and negotiation of complexities in their efforts toward supporting client’s rehabilitation efforts, desistance from crime while negotiating external factors (e.g., the lack of available programming), and being responsible for supervising PCSCs. We highlight facets of occupational stress parole officers experience, finding PCSCs may be more compliant when under supervision but may also require more of a parole officer’s resources, including time and energy. We put forth recommendations for greater empirical nuance concerning parole officer work and their occupational experiences and beliefs about PCSC, particularly as related to parole officer health.

  International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology , 2023. Published online before publication

By Jordan Robert Riddell  

In March 2020, the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department expanded its police-initiated citation release to allow officers to release subjects arrested for certain non-violent felony offenses (ex: larceny-theft). This decarceration effort was designed to reduce COVID-19 transmission in jails and avoid maintaining custody of people pre-trial, as too many custodial arrests would impair the operations of the Superior Court of DC during the public health emergency. Using crime incident, arrest report, and jail population data from DC for 2013 through 2020, this dissertation investigates the effect of the citation release policy modification (i.e., jail decarceration) and arrests on four types of economic crime: robbery, burglary, theft from motor vehicles, and other theft. Vector autoregression analyses suggest arrests do not deter crime and there was no detectable “decarceration” effect from expanding citation release eligibility during the study period. Findings do not support macro-level deterrence theory or the premise of a decarceration effect that has been identified in studies of prisons.

Dallas: University of Texas at Dallas, 2022. 128p.

 By Jacqueline Beard

The Parole Board. The Parole Board is an executive non-departmental public body, responsible for the parole system. The Parole Board carries out risk assessments on these prisoners to determine whether they can be safely released into the community. It is governed by the Parole Board Rules, secondary legislation that sets out the procedures that must be followed when determining parole cases.

Reforms 2018-19: transparency and reconsideration. In 2018-2019 there were reforms to Parole Board procedures, partly in response to the case of John Warboys (now known as John Radford). Rule 25 of the Parole Board Rules was amended in 2018 to allow summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties. Previously Rule 25 had prohibited any release of information about parole proceedings.

Root and branch review 2022. In March 2022 the Government published a root and branch review with plans for further reforms, some of which require legislation. The Government has said it will legislate for those changes which require it as soon as possible.

Most comment regarding the root and branch review focused on the proposal for a Minister to review release decisions where the Parole Board directs the release of a person who is serving a sentence for a ‘top tier’ offence. Organisations such as Justice, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Prison Reform Trust have raised concerns about political interference in legal processes and the possibility of ‘political grandstanding’.....

London: House of Commons Library 2023. 31p.

By Rob Allen  

The aim of this paper is to identify whether the specific developmental needs of young adults are taken into account by courts when making decisions about whether to remand defendants into custody. In particular it looks at: ■ whether there are provisions in the law which require a distinctive approach to young adults at the remand stage of criminal proceedings ■ whether the criminal justice agencies and courts consider the maturity of young adult defendants when making decisions about remanding them ■ the adequacy of alternatives to remand in custody available for young adults, particularly young women, people from BAME backgrounds and defendants with mental health problems ■ the impact of proposals made by the Government, including those in the White Paper ‘A Smarter Approach to Sentencing’, on young adult bail and remand decisions and ■ what measures could be taken to improve the distinctiveness of remand arrangements for young adults  

London: Barrow Cadbury Trust, 2021.40p.

By Rob Allen and Laura Janes

There has been a growing recognition of the distinct needs of young adults in the criminal justice process, largely due to the work of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance. However, the extent to which the criminal justice system meets the needs of young adults aged 18-25 who go through the parole process has received very little attention. The vast majority of young adults considered by the Parole Board (the Board) have not been designated as “dangerous” by a sentencing court and have been recalled to prison for failing to comply with the terms of their licence after their automatic release. A small minority have been designated as “dangerous” at the point of sentence which means the court has formed the view that they are at risk of committing further offences that will cause serious harm. In these cases, the Board is required to consider whether they can be safely released from prison without putting the public at risk of serious harm. Young adults, currently defined by the Board as 18 to 21 year olds, only make up around 2% of the Board’s overall case load. Young adults are much less likely to have been deemed dangerous by the courts compared to the other cases the Board reviews. …  

London: Barrow Cadbury Trust , 2023. 56p.

Kyle J. Bares1, Thomas J. Mowen

Emerging research has shown that the parole officer, much like friends and family, can be an important source of social support for returning persons. While this body of literature is growing, existing research provides little insight into understanding how specific types (e.g., interpersonal and/or professional) of parole officer support matter. Using panel data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, results of mixed-effects models demonstrate that greater levels of parole officer support are associated with decreased odds of reincarceration. Furthermore, parole officer professional support (e.g., providing correct information) exerts a more robust effect than interpersonal support (e.g., listening and caring). Findings suggest policy makers should consider programming to strengthen the professional relationship between the parole officer and returning person. 

Crime Delinq. 2020 June ; 66(6-7): 1023–1051 

By Shawn Bushway 

Job training programs for people under supervision have been based on an economic framework that identifies individuals involved in crime as a disadvantaged group with poor human capital. The best available research evidence has not found that these programs consistently improve employment outcomes. This article reviews the evidence for the effectiveness of standard job training programs and then examines new developments in the field that use alternative frameworks for understanding the roles of such programs. The first alternative is signaling: how people under community supervision use the completion of job training to signal to employers and others that the behavior that led to their conviction is either anomalous or no longer representative of them. The second alternative is a model of desistance known as identity change: the ways in which job training can help individuals solidify a new, more prosocial identity. I make sense of extant work and new alternatives and provide a set of recommendations for change in the community supervision system.

  ANNALS, AAPSS, 701, May 2022  

By Kelly Lyn Mitchell , Erin Harbinson and  Lily Hanrath

  Executive Summary The study is a collaboration between the University of Minnesota, Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, and Hennepin County, funded by a grant from the University of Minnesota's Driving Tomorrow Grand Challenges research initiative. The project used a mixed methods approach examining data on healthcare use and healthcare claims by people on probation, interviews with medical providers, a survey of probation officers, and a survey and interviews of people on probation. The Robina Institute led the survey of probation officers, which was aimed at learning about probation officer attitudes and beliefs about the links between probation and health, and how they saw their role with regard to the health of people on probation. This report summarizes the findings of the survey and suggests potential policy interventions that could be implemented to improve the health and probation outcomes of people on probation.  

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. 2021. 27p.

By Leah Wang and gabriel sayegh

In the United States, the number of people under the surveillance of probation and parole systems is nearly twice the number of those behind bars. Community supervision, which refers mainly to probation and parole, is “too big to succeed.” (Simply defined, probation is a court-ordered “suspended” sentence served in the community, typically with a set period of supervision; parole is a conditional release after incarceration.) This is true throughout the country — and Connecticut is no exception, particularly in terms of its outsize probation system, which jeopardizes the well-being and progress of more than 30,000 people and their families. Chronically underfunded and overly punitive, probation rarely serves as an alternative to incarceration, as it was originally intended. And people released from prison to parole supervision often struggle to rebuild their lives during the reentry process….

Easthampton, MA: Prison Policy initiative, 2023. 20p.

Edited by Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves 

This book provides international perspectives on corrections, correctional treatment, and penitentiary laws. Although its focus is on African and South American countries, the information provided can be easily expanded to North America and Europe. The chapters present legal frameworks and applied research on prisons and their potential to deter crime and reduce recidivism rates. The book puts the human rights agenda at the forefront and is a useful resource for those who work in corrections, including prison, education, and probation officers.

London: InTechOpen, 2023. 146p.

By Giada Girelli, Marcela Jofré, and Ajeng Larasati : Harm Reduction International

As of December 2022, Harm Reduction International (HRI) recorded at least 285 executions for drug offences globally during the year, a 118% increase from 2021, and an 850% increase from 2020. Executions for drug offences are confirmed or assumed to have taken place in six countries: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, plus in China, North Korea and Vietnam – on which exact figures cannot be provided because of extreme opacity. Therefore, this figure is likely to reflect only a percentage of all drug-related executions worldwide. Confirmed death sentences for drug offences were also on the rise; with at least 303 people sentenced to death in 18 countries. This marks a 28% increase from 2021.

These setbacks were not completely unexpected, nor unpredictable. After defending its barbaric policy on the death penalty throughout 2021, Singapore issued execution warrants against individuals convicted of drug trafficking in February 2022. These were eventually stayed after legal appeals and pleas from families and civil society, but more execution warrants quickly followed. In Saudi Arabia, civil society had warned of the risk of resumption in drug-related executions since the partial moratorium was announced in 2021. When the Kingdom carried out the worst mass execution in its history in March 2022, the risk became even more apparent. Similarly, Iranian civil society warned of the risk of a spike in executions, absent persistent international pressure.

London: Harm Reduction International, 2023. 54p.

By Lila  Kazemian

  In Spring 2022, the Council on Criminal Justice launched the Task Force on Long Sentences. Its mission is to examine how prison sentences of 10 years or more affect public safety, crime victims and survivors, incarcerated individuals and their families, communities, and correctional staff, and to develop recommendations to strengthen public safety and advance justice. This brief was commissioned by the Task Force to examine how the use of long sentences in the United States compares with the sentencing practices of other countries. To the author’s knowledge, there is no existing source of comparative international data on long sentences that includes individual U.S. states and offense-specific sentences. This brief draws on the most comprehensive, publicly available data on long sentences. Key Takeaways + The use of long sentences has increased in nations across the globe over the last several decades, but the U.S. remains an outlier in the extent to which it imposes them. Both the average imposed sentence length and the actual amount of time people spend behind bars (time served) are longer in the U.S. when compared with most other countries. These findings are consistent with broader correctional trends that distinguish the U.S. from other nations. + The U.S. grapples with higher rates of homicide when compared with European countries but this does not fully explain its distinctive policies regarding long sentences. Higher homicide rates may partly explain the more frequent recourse to long sentences in the U.S., but they do not explain the longer average prison sentences imposed for homicide and sexual offenses when compared with other nations. + The U.S. imposes longer sentences compared to countries with substantially higher rates of violence. Despite having lower homicide rates than many Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, U.S. states often incarcerate more people and for longer periods of time when compared with Latin American nations. + The average sentence length imposed in the U.S. is more aligned with the criminal justice policies of Latin American countries than with those of peer industrialized nations. Differences in average sentence length are generally less pronounced when comparing the U.S. to Latin American nations. More prominent disparities exist in comparisons with European countries. + The U.S. holds a substantial proportion of the world’s population of people serving life sentences (40%) as well as the vast majority (83%) of individuals sentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP). Some U.S. state laws include provisions that allow for mandatory confinement periods that are exponentially higher than those used in European nations. + The distinctive use of long sentences in the U.S. is partly due to the decentralized structure of the political and criminal justice systems. The position of the U.S. as an outlier is exacerbated by states with distinctively large populations of people serving long prison terms.   

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2022. 36p.

By Susan Howley

  Introduction In Spring 2022, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) launched the Task Force on Long Sentences, a group of 16 experts representing a broad range of experience and perspectives, including crime victims and survivors, formerly incarcerated people, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, courts, and corrections. Its mission is to examine how prison sentences of 10 years or more affect public safety, crime victims and survivors, incarcerated individuals and their families, communities, and correctional staff, and to develop recommendations to strengthen public safety and advance justice. As part of this effort, the Task Force convened nine listening sessions. The sessions were designed to gather input from victims and survivors of crime, including family members of homicide victims, close relatives of people serving long sentences, and individuals who served long prison sentences themselves. The purpose of this analysis is to elevate the perspectives of those individuals closest to long sentences – victims and survivors of serious crime and individuals who served long sentences and their loved ones. The views expressed by participants should be interpreted as direct reflections of their thoughts and feelings rather than as a blueprint for policy reform. Please also note that the opinions presented are not representative of all victims and survivors of serious crime, or all individuals who have served long prison sentences. Two overarching themes emerged from the listening sessions. First, while the sessions were designed to address victims and survivors and formerly incarcerated individuals and their loved ones separately, there was significant overlap in the experiences of participants. Many victims and survivors expressed having experienced the impact of incarceration through a family member and many formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones discussed having experienced serious violence. Although every effort was made to recruit diverse participants, the overlap in experience may be an artifact of how individuals were identified for participation in the listening sessions or may be evidence that there is significant overlap between “victims” and “offenders.” Second, there was broad agreement between victims and survivors and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones on most of the topics explored in the listening sessions and presented below. This brief highlights where the perspectives of listening session participants were in sync-and where they diverged.

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2023. 20p.

By Julia Laskorunsky, Gerald G.Gaes and KevinReitz  

When researchers, policymakers, and advocates examine the impact of long sentences, they typically focus on issues such as the statutory lengths of sentences or the roles that prosecutors and judges play in imposing sentences. While analyses of such “front-end” factors are important, they cannot sufficiently explain the role of “back-end” factors, specifically the laws and administrative rules that govern the awarding of different forms of sentence credit and prison release. This constitutes a significant gap in our understanding of how long sentences work. As research by Kevin Reitz and colleagues has documented,1 state prison-release frameworks have far greater discretionary power over the time individuals actually serve-and, by extension, the size of prison populations-than has been previously understood. To assess the impact of the use of long sentences of 10 or more years in the U.S., it is critical to appreciate how the interplay between the laws and administrative rules governing prison release affect the actual length of time individuals spend behind bars. Based on research conducted as part of the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice’s Prison Release: Degrees of Indeterminacy project,2 this brief’s first section provides an overview of the nation’s parole and non-parole prison release systems. This overview sets up an examination of how these systems’ statutory and administrative policy frameworks influence release decisions, sentence credit awards, and the actual time individuals serve against the sentence they receive in court (i.e., the judicial maximum term). In the second section, the brief uses Colorado as a short case-study to show how one state’s back-end laws and policies affect the time individuals serve. Finally, in the concluding section, the brief points to future research and policy work on prison-release decision making including other empirical factors other than statutory and administrative frameworks that influence how much time an individual serves.  

Washington DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2022. 23p.

By Roger Pryzybylski, John Maki, Stephanie Kennedy, AaronRosenthal and Ernesto Lopez

  Long prison sentences—defined here as sentences of 10 years or more—may be imposed for several reasons, including to punish people engaged in criminal behavior, to prevent individuals from committing additional crimes in the future, and to warn the general public about the consequences of violating the law. This literature review explores empirical evidence on the relationship between sentence length and public safety. It synthesizes the best available research on the incapacitation and deterrent effects of prison sentences and examines whether, and to what extent, prison sentences affect individual criminal behavior and overall crime rates. The relationship between long prison sentences and public safety is complex. Although long prison sentences may be warranted in individual cases based on one or more of the varied purposes of sentencing, the imposition of such sentences on a large scale offers diminishing returns for public safety. Research consistently shows that a relatively small percentage of individuals are responsible for an outsized share of crime in their communities. But attempts to use long sentences to selectively incapacitate this population have been unable to overcome competing factors like the “replacement effect,” where the incarceration of one person leads to another individual taking their place, and the “age-crime curve,” the criminological fact that offending typically decreases with age. Since relatively few studies have focused specifically on long prison sentences, this analysis encompasses the broader literature on incarceration and crime. The report concludes with recommendations for future research.  

Washington, DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2022. 17p.

By Devah Pager, Rebecca Goldstein, Helen Ho, and Bruce Western 

  Court-related fines and fees are widely levied on criminal defendants who are frequently poor and have little capacity to pay. Such financial obligations may produce a criminalization of poverty, where later court involvement results not from crime but from an inability to meet the financial burdens of the legal process. We test this hypothesis using a randomized controlled trial of court-related fee relief for misdemeanor defendants in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. We find that relief from fees does not affect new criminal charges, convictions, or jail bookings after 12 months. However, control respondents were subject to debt collection efforts at significantly higher rates that involved new warrants, additional court debt, tax refund garnishment, and referral to a private debt collector. Despite significant efforts at debt collection among those in the control group, payments to the court totaled less than 5 percent of outstanding debt. The evidence indicates that court debt charged to indigent defendants neither caused nor deterred new crime, and the government obtained little financial benefit. Yet, fines and fees contributed to a criminalization of low-income defendants, placing them at risk of ongoing court involvement through new warrants and debt collection.

American Sociological Review, Volume 87, Issue 3, 2022.

By Lindsay Bing, Becky Pettit, Ilya Slavinski

Low-level misdemeanor and traffic violations draw tens of millions of people into local courts to pay fines and fees each year, generating billions of dollars in revenue. We examine how standardized legal fines and fees for low-level charges induce disparate treatment and result in disparate impact. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates administrative court records as well as interviews with criminal defendants from Texas, we find that although the majority of defendants readily pay for and conclude their case, African American, Latinx, and economically disadvantaged defendants spend disproportionate amounts of money and time resolving theirs. Analysis of criminal case records illustrates the disparate impact of monetary sanctions through the accrual of debt and time spent resolving a charge. Interviews reveal irreconcilable tensions between American ideals of equality in sentencing and the meaning and value of money and time in an increasingly unequal society.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 118–136  , 2022.

By Brittany Friedman, Alexes Harris, Beth M. Huebner, Karin D. Martin, Becky Pettit, Sarah K.S. Shannon, Bryan L. Sykes

Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violations with important variability in law and practice across states. These differences allow for the identification of features of law, policy, and practice that differentially shape access to justice and equality before the law. Common practices undermine individuals’ rights and fuel inequality in the effects of unpaid monetary sanctions. These observations lead us to offer a number of specific recommendations to improve the administration of justice, mitigate some of the most harmful effects of monetary sanctions, and advance future research.

  RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(1): 221–43, 2022

By Kate K. O’Neill, Tyler J Smith, Ian Kennedy

Although men’s incarceration rates have declined in the United States, women’s have stayed steady and even risen in some areas. At the same time, courts have increased their use of monetary sanctions, especially for low-level offenses. We propose that women’s incarceration trends can be partially explained by county dependence on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue. We suggest that monetary sanctions expose female defendants to processes that increase their likelihood of incarceration, especially in counties more reliant on monetary sanctions as a source of revenue, and where women’s poverty rates are high. Using data from Washington State, we find county dependence on monetary sanctions is positively associated with rates of women sentenced to incarceration. Although rural counties’ rates are higher, they depend on monetary sanctions no more than nonrural counties do.

  RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 8(2): 157–72. 2022;