By Jacqueline Beard

The prison estate in England and Wales contains 120 prisons holding people who have been sentenced or are on remand awaiting trial for a range of crimes. The prison estate has a mixture of publicly and privately run institutions, some of which are newly built, while others date back to the Victorian era. As of March 2023, the total prison population in England and Wales was around 84,400 people, 96% of whom were male. The prison population has grown substantially over the past 30 years, with almost all the growth having taken place between 1995 and 2010. It reached its highest level in 2012 at around 86,600 people. During the pandemic, in 2020, the prison population dipped to its lowest level for around 13 years before rising again in each of the two most recent years. In the long term, the Government expects the prison population to increase. Among reasons for the projected increase, the Ministry of Justice cites the rise in police officer numbers and changes in sentencing policy. The most recent set of projections give a central estimate for the prison population of 94,400 by March 2025 and a range from 93,100 to 106,300 by March 2027. 

London: UK Parliament, House of Commons Library, 2023. 35p.

By  Mitali Nagrecha

  Over the last few decades, advocates in the United States have exposed the injustices of high fines and fees that courts charge people sentenced to criminal and civil violations. Courts impose fines as punishment for offenses— often in addition to other punishment such as probation or jail—and they charge fees (also referred to as costs or surcharges) to fund the court and other government services. The number of fees and the amounts assessed have been increasing over the last decades, in part because fees are being used to generate revenue for local and state governments. Rarely, if ever, do U.S. courts consider people’s ability to pay before imposing these sanctions.3 When people are  unable to pay, they can become trapped in the system, facing a cycle of consequences including additional fees, court hearings, warrants, arrest, and incarceration.4 In response to advocacy exposing how these punitive practices harm people and communities, jurisdictions have begun to reform. The most direct efforts seek to repeal revenue-raising fines and fees. More common, however, is the adoption of requirements that courts assess people’s ability to pay at the  sentencing hearing, and/or before punishing people for nonpayment.5 Though high monetary sanctions are prevalent in all courts, much of this reform attention has focused on misdemeanor courts that sentence ordinance violations and misdemeanor crimes. This is because fines are a common component of misdemeanor criminal sentences, and because  there are clearer conflicts of interest inherent in the structure of some lower level courts that rely on fines and fees to fund their operations.6 It is in this reform context that academics, advocates, and government leaders have considered day fines as a potential model for the United States. Day fines are used in over 30 countries in Europe and Latin America to  calculate fine amounts that are tailored to people’s ability to pay.7 Day fines are set using a two-part inquiry. Courts first consider the nature and seriousness of the offense, measured in units or days. For example, a common low-level    misdemeanor may receive 20 units. Courts then calculate how much the person can pay per day/unit  based on their individual financial circumstances. The amount a person must pay per day is called the daily rate. Someone earning very little may be required to pay $5 per unit for a total fine of $100, while someone earning more may  be required to pay $20 per unit for a total fine of $400. Day fines provide a framework for setting a fine based not just on  the nature of the offense, but also on how much a fine will impact the person given their financial circumstances. The  resulting fines are theoretically more fair because people of different means experience the fines similarly. A $400 fine affects a person earning that amount per week differently than a person who earns that amount in one day. In the United  States, day fines hold the promise not only of making fines more fair, but also of making fines affordable to avoid the spiral  of negative consequences that people face upon nonpayment. Despite the theoretical resonance of day fines as a  potential solution, there has been very limited information available about how this model works in practice. This project  fills this knowledge gap.  

Cambridge, MA: Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. 2020. 156p.

By Jay Gormley

• Criminal fines are the most common criminal sanction and account for about 75% of principal sanctions issued by courts. As a principal sanction, fines are most commonly used for relatively less serious offences where an out of court disposal (OOCD) or discharge is not appropriate or possible. However, fines can also be used as a complementary sanction to another disposal - such as a community order for more serious offences.

• There is a need for the law to provide better clarity concerning the most appropriate role for criminalisation. Most notably, there could be better clarity about the relationship between criminal fines issued by courts and non-criminal fines issued by criminal justice personnel (e.g. police officers and prosecutors) by way of an OOCD.

• In the past, defaulting on a fine frequently resulted in the next step being a custodial sentence. Today, other sentencing disposals have to be considered first, ameliorating this issue. However, currently, there is no available data on how many people default on a fine, are given another order (e.g. a community order) which they also fail to comply with, and are ultimately given a custodial sentence for what was initially a finable offence. This matter requires urgent clarification and it should also be investigated whether it contributes to the high number of short custodial sentences.

• Fines, more than any other disposal, raise questions of fairness given the socio-economic inequality in society. Without care, fines risk disproportionately punishing the poor who may suffer more from a fine of a given amount. The Sentencing Council provides crucial guidance in this respect, but it could be taken further.
London: Sentencing Academy, 2022. 20p.

By  Lauren Knoth-Peterson, Katelyn Kelley 

In Washington State, some individuals convicted of a criminal offense may be eligible to receive a Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative (DOSA) in lieu of the standard incarceration sentence. Using administrative data from the Department of Corrections and WSIPP’s Criminal History Database, this study examined whether individuals participating in prison or residential DOSA were less likely to recidivate compared to similar individuals who received a non-DOSA sentence. Our findings indicate the prison DOSA reduces the likelihood of recidivism by 6.9 percentage points. These reductions in recidivism were consistent across subgroups by sex, race, and ethnicity. Our findings for residential DOSA were less conclusive. In general, residential DOSA had no effect on the likelihood of recidivism compared to a standard sentence. While we provide several potential explanations for the differences in the effectiveness of prison and residential DOSA, future research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms by which the two DOSA programs impact individuals’ outcomes, including recidivism.

Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy 2022. 32p.

By Todd D. Minton

This report provides statistics on the demographic characteristics, most serious offense, and conviction status of persons held in Indian country jails. It also describes facility characteristics, including capacity and staffing. The report supports the mandate established by the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 that requires BJS to establish and implement a tribal data collection system, to support tribal participation in national records and information systems, and to annually report to Congress the data collected and analyzed in accordance with the act.

Highlights

• After peaking in 2019 (at 2,890 persons) and declining sharply in 2020 (to 2,020 persons) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the midyear jail population increased for the second consecutive year by midyear 2022 (2,250).

• Indian country jails admitted 5,570 persons during June 2022, a 4% decline from the 5,780 admissions during June 2021.

• The ratio of jail admissions to average daily population (ADP) was about 2.6 to 1 in June 2022 (5,570 admissions to 2,170 inmates), down from 5.5 to 1 in June 2012 (12,500 admissions to 2,253 inmates).

• Four in 10 inmates were held for violent offenses at midyear 2022, up from about 3 in 10 in 2012.

  Washington DC:U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2023. 16p.  

By Sharon Dolovich

In the prison law context, even when civil rights claims are strong on the merits, incarcerated litigants will lose most of the time. And even when lawyers win on behalf of their incarcerated clients, conditions don’t tend to change on the ground as much as they should. Regardless, prisoners’ rights lawyers do an enormous amount of good. In this essay, I argue for the indispensability of legal advocacy on behalf of people in custody despite how unfriendly courts are to claims brought from prison. Indeed, I suggest that, at this moment in the development of the carceral state, lawyering for the incarcerated is among the most impactful means we have to move our carceral system closer to consistency with the basic normative commitments of a constitutional democracy. In making this case, this essay describes (1) how lawyers help to lift the veil of secrecy that otherwise shrouds much of what happens in prison; (2) the work lawyers do as watchdogs, calling out and challenging the abuse and exploitation of the incarcerated; and (3) the way that, through their work, lawyers validate the humanity—and thus the dignity and self-respect—of their clients, who more typically exist in a systematically dehumanizing institutional environment

UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 23-07m 2023.

By Alison Siegler

  This Report reveals a fractured and freewheeling federal pretrial detention system that has strayed far from the norm of pretrial liberty. 2 This Report is the first broad national investigation of federal pretrial detention, an often overlooked, yet highly consequential, stage of the federal criminal process. Our Clinic undertook an in-depth study of federal bond practices, in which court watchers gathered data from hundreds of pretrial hearings. Based on our empirical courtwatching data and interviews with nearly 50 stakeholders,3 we conclude that a “culture of detention” pervades the federal courts, with habit and courtroom custom overriding the written law. 4 As one federal judge told us, “nobody’s . . . looking at what’s happening [in these pretrial hearings], where the Constitution is playing out day to day for people.” Our Report aims to identify why the federal system has abandoned the norm of liberty, to illuminate the resulting federal jailing crisis, and to address how the federal judiciary can rectify that crisis. This Report also fills a gaping hole in the available public data about the federal pretrial detention process and identifies troubling racial disparities in both pretrial detention practices and outcomes. Federal pretrial jailing rates have been skyrocketing for decades. Jailing is now the norm rather than the exception, despite data demonstrating that releasing more people pretrial does not endanger society or undermine the administration of justice. Federal bond practices should be unitary and consistent, since the federal bail statute—the Bail Reform Act of 1984 (the BRA)—is the law of the land and governs nationwide.5 Yet this study exposes a very different reality than that envisioned by the Supreme Court, one in which federal judges regularly deviate from and even violate the law, and on-the-ground practices vary widely from district to district. O  

Chicago: University of Chicago, School of Law, Federal Criminal Justice Clinic, 2022. 280p.

By  Thomas Ward Frampton

 Prison abolition, in the span of just a few short years, has established a foothold in elite criminal legal discourse. But the basic question of how abolitionists would address “the dangerous few” often receives superficial treatment; the problem constitutes a “spectral force haunting abolitionist thought . . . as soon as abolitionist discourses navigate towards the programmatic and enter the public arena.”1 This Essay offers two main contributions: it (1) maps the diverse ways in which prison abolitionists most frequently respond to the challenge of “the dangerous few,” highlighting strengths and infirmities of each stance, and (2) proposes alternative, hopefully more productive, responses that interrogate and probe the implicit premises (empirical, ideological, or moral) embedded in and animating questions concerning “the dangerous few.”

Harvard Law Review,  VOLUME 135 JUNE 2022 NUMBER 8

By Karen Heimer, Sarah E. Malone, and Stacy De Coster

Women’s rates of imprisonment and incarceration in jails grew faster than men’s rates during the prison boom in the United States. Even during the recent period of modest decline in incarceration, women’s rates have decreased less than men’s rates. The number of women in prisons and jails in the United States is now at a historic high. Yet research on mass incarceration most often ignores women’s imprisonment and confinement in jails. This review examines trends in women’s incarceration, highlighting important disparities for Black, Latina, and American Indian/Indigenous women. It contextualizes these trends in terms of the economic and social disadvantages of women prior to incarceration as well as inequalities that are created by women’s incarceration for families, communities, and women themselves. The review concludes by calling for improved data on women’s imprisonment and jail trends, particularly regarding race and ethnicity, as well as more research and theoretical development. 

  Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:85–106

By Todd R. Clear

Incarceration rates in the United States are far higher than in the world's other Western democracies, so high that they are referred to as mass incarceration. After nearly 40 years of sustained growth in US incarceration rates, a broad consensus exists to bring them down. The Iron Law of Prison Populations directs attention to the fact that 51 different jurisdictional-level penal policies, rather than crime, drive incarceration rates, making systematic policy reform difficult. However, the fact that prison populations have already begun to decline, combined with the emerging public will to reduce incarceration and dropping age-specific incarceration rates, promotes optimism in the decarceration agenda. Three issues remain to be resolved: the eventual target rate of incarceration, what to do with people convicted of violent crimes, and how to avoid the distracting focus on reentry programming.

Annual Review of Criminology . Volume 4, 2021 . pp 239-260

By Sana Khan, Emily West, Stephanie Rosoff

In response to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020, jails across the U.S. implemented emergency strategies to reduce jail populations and mitigate the vi- rus’s spread. This included releasing people pretrial while they awaited their case resolution. At the same time, public data show that violent crime and homicides have increased nationally. These increases have put a spotlight on criminal legal reform efforts, with growing public discourse in some political and media circles suggesting that reforms are causing these increases. While the recent uptick in violence is real, this analysis shows that, on average, cities and coun- ties implementing jail population reform efforts successfully reduced jail populations without jeopardizing community safety. To explore whether increases in violent crime were related to the pandemic and criminal legal reforms, the CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) analyzed violent crime, incarceration, and rebooking data from sites participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a nationwide initiative to safely reduce jail populations. This data provided comprehensive information on individuals booked into and released from jail over time, allowing ISLG to capture trends in rebooking outcomes in sites with varying geographies, populations, and jail sizes. The rebooking analysis covers data through April 2021, which is more recent than many well-established data sources.

New York:  CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance, 2023. 21p.

By Ryan Shanahan

This report presents the results of a rigorous evaluation of Restoring Promise, which is an initiative that creates prison housing units grounded in human dignity for young adults, ages 18 to 25, that operate with re-trained staff, trained mentors who are older adults serving long- or life-sentences, and developmentally appropriate activities, workshops, and opportunities for young adults. The evaluation reflects two studies: the first is a study of Restoring Promise in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) and the second is a study of Restoring Promise across five housing units in partnership with three corrections agencies. The first study utilizes a randomized controlled trial (RTC) to understand whether and by how much Restoring Promise reduces young adults’ incidences of violence and misconduct, comparing outcomes for two groups of young adults who applied to live on a Restoring Promise housing unit. The second study of Restoring Promise across the five housing units uses latent class analysis (LCA) to compare responses to the Restoring Promise Prison Culture Survey (PCS) from young adults incarcerated in three different corrections agencies, living across five Restoring Process housing units in Connecticut, South Carolina, and Massachusetts. The process of conducting this research provided insights into running an effective and rigorous RCT in a correctional setting. The finding that changing the prison culture led to a reduction in violence fills a gap in the field and provides evidence to support a new, replicable model for improving safety in correctional settings. Findings showed that the results of the RCT are potentially applicable to all young adults; the approach that Restoring Promise uses has several fundamental components that are consistent across locations; and young adults and staff report similarly positive experiences, regardless of location, due to prison culture changes.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 66p.

By The Death Penalty Information Center

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penal­ty in Tennessee places the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem in his­tor­i­cal con­text, doc­u­ment­ing how racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial vio­lence con­tin­ue to influ­ence the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty, released June 22, 2023, notes that as the Tennessee Department of Correction devel­ops new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols and pre­pares to resume exe­cu­tions, the state may find it use­ful to under­stand how Tennessee arrived at its cur­rent cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem.

The report explains that in the 18th and 19th cen­turies, the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Tennessee was large­ly depen­dent on the race of the defen­dant. There were 13 offens­es for which Black peo­ple could receive the death penal­ty, com­pared to just two offens­es that could result in death sen­tences for white cit­i­zens. From the begin­ning, the death penal­ty was applied dif­fer­ent­ly based on race.  The death penal­ty was not the only form of lethal pun­ish­ment that tar­get­ed Black Tennesseans. The report ties Tennessee’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to its trou­bled his­to­ry of racial ter­ror. Tennessee was the site of more than 500 lynch­ings, accord­ing to Tennesseans for Historical Justice, and a nation­wide study of death sen­tences between 1989 and 2017 found a sig­nif­i­cant sta­tis­ti­cal rela­tion­ship between a state’s his­to­ry of lynch­ing and the num­ber of death sen­tences giv­en to Black defendants. 

Many of the his­tor­i­cal issues relat­ed to race in the state, includ­ing seg­re­ga­tion and Black vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment, are still preva­lent in Tennessee today. For exam­ple, the state has the high­est pro­por­tion of dis­en­fran­chised Black res­i­dents in the United States, with more than 1 in 5 Black peo­ple unable to vote. Concerns regard­ing vot­er dis­en­fran­chise­ment have been height­ened as the state leg­is­la­ture has con­tin­ued to remove pow­er from local­ly elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle var­i­ous aspects of cap­i­tal cas­es, and shift­ed the author­i­ty to the state’s Attorney General, who is not elected. 

Washington DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2023. 69p.

By Juan José Martínez d’Aubuisson

Entering Barrio 18, the powerful Central American street gang, can seem like a violent rebirth. Members get a new family, a community, and a sense of belonging and protection. But this comes at a cost. Through the story of Desafío, a boy who grew up on the streets of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, InSight Crime delves into the internal workings that make Barrio 18 tick, the constant state of paranoia that its members are kept under, and the brutal response to anyone who dares to dream of a different life. “I didn’t want to be here. I was already tired of being in the middle of all this. I wanted to distance myself from the gang and become a Christian, but they said I couldn’t. I had to stay in the gang until I died,” says Desafío while sitting at an old desk in the workshop section of El Pozo, a maximum-security prison in Honduras. He had decided to escape, but escaping from prison is never easy. Especially if one prison is hidden inside another.

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2023. 20p.

By Marta Nelson, Samuel Feineh and Maris Mapolski

To understand how the United States became one of the most incarcerated nations in the world, it is critical to understand the role that excessive and harsh sentencing has played. In this report, Vera addresses a main driver of mass incarceration: our sentencing system. Dismantling our system of mass incarceration in favor of a narrowly tailored sentencing response to unlawful behavior can produce more safety, repair harm, and reduce incarceration by close to 80 percent, according to modeling on the federal system. This report summarizes the evidence surrounding sentencing’s impact on safety, offers new guiding principles for sentencing legislation that privilege liberty, outlines seven key sentencing reforms in line with these guiding principles, and suggests a “North Star” for sentencing policy with a presumption toward community-based sentences except in limited circumstances. Severe sentences do not deter crime, retribution often does not help survivors of crime heal, and the U.S. sentencing system overestimates who is a current danger to the community and when incarceration is needed for public safety. Instead, we need a system that privileges liberty while creating real safety and repairing harm.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 81p.

By Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago

  According to statistics gathered from the 2011-2012 National Inmate Survey administered by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 40 percent of individuals in jail self-reported having at least one disability. 3 Navigating jail with a disability can be complex, overwhelming, and costly. The impact of jailing a person with a disability also impacts their families and communities. The incarceration of one is essentially the incarceration of many. In the United States, the use of jail to confine people with disabilities is closely aligned with efforts to place disabled people in asylums and institutions, similar to the criminalization of black people resulting in mass incarceration following the abolition of slavery. From the end of slavery to today, laws have been enacted to criminalize and devalue both people of color and disabled individuals. These laws further socially justify these populations’ incarceration and further fuel biases and fear towards these groups. 4 Efforts to reduce jail incarceration nationwide have resulted in a range of innovative strategies, such as reducing the use of cash bail5 and the way that prosecutors make decisions about charges. 6 There is certainly a serious effort to shift how jails engage with people who need mental health supports, notably at Cook County Jail. 7 However, despite the general prevalence of disability in jails, there remain a range of under-addressed opportunities to discuss how to further reduce the jail incarceration of people with disabilities overall. A number of disability advocates have been working for many years to bring what is essentially a cross-disability look to criminal justice and restorative justice work; we need to hear and build on these efforts. Moreover, even as the National Inmate Survey showed high rates of self-reported disability status, it also showed that incarcerated people of color tended to underreport disability status.8 This poses a complex challenge to understanding the disability experience in different demographics who are impacted by police contact and jail incarceration. We feel this dynamic is of great note given current national work on reducing racial disparities in arrest trends and jail populations. This is especially important for Access Living, as the majority of people we serve directly are from black and brown neighborhoods in Chicago.  

Chicago: Access Living, 2019. 71p.

By Ashley Nellis

This report documents the rates of incarceration for white, Black and Latinx Americans in each state, identifies three contributors to racial and ethnic disparities in imprisonment, and provides recommendations for reform.

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2021. 25p.

By  Advancement Project National Office, One Voice and Mississippi Votes.

Our Voices, Our Votes: Felony Disenfranchisement and Re-entry in Mississippi, a new report by One Voice Mississippi, Mississippi Votes, and Advancement Project National Office analyzes how Mississippi silences those with prior felony convictions and creates reentry barriers for returning citizens. Using statistics, national data, and personal stories from directly impacted Mississippians, the report shines a light on what people with felony convictions are up against. The report details how the state’s Jim Crow legacy not only fails to assist returning citizens, but permanently disenfranchise them. With this report, organizers hope to bring change to the Mississippi criminal legal system and restore voting rights for all incarcerated citizens who have served their prison term.

Los Angeles: Advancement Project / One Voice / Mississippi Votes, 2021. 29p.

By Leah wang

Over 1 million people sit in U.S. state prisons on any given day. They are also suffering from physical and mental illnesses, or navigating prison life with disabilities or even pregnancy. We add to the existing research showing that state prisons fall far short of their constitutional duty to meet the essential health needs of people in their custody. As a result, people in state prison are kept in a constant state of illness and despair. This report is divided it sections: Physical health problems: Chronic conditions and infectious disease Access to healthcare: People in state prison disproportionately lacked health insurance Mental health problems: Exceptionally high rates among incarcerated people Disabilities: Disproportionate rates of physical, cognitive, and learning disabilities Pregnancy and reproductive health: Expectant mothers are underserved in prison Conclusions and recommendations: How do we begin to address unmet needs in prisons? About the unique data used in this report This report offers a detailed view of the people in state prisons nationwide, using the most recent self-reported, nationally representative data available, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates. Though correctional populations are in constant flux, the Survey data released just over a year ago are essential to understanding incarceration today.

Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2022. 29p.

By Leah Wang, Wendy Sawyer, Tiana Herring, and Emily Widra   

We know how many people are in state prisons, but what do we really know about who they are or how they ended up there? Over 1 million people are confined in state prisons nationwide, primarily serving sentences of anywhere from a year to life. But the walls and restrictions that keep these individuals out of public life also keep them out of the public eye: most of what we know about people in prison comes from the prison system itself. But our analysis of a unique, large-scale survey of incarcerated people provides a richer picture of just who is locked up in state prisons. From the survey data, we gain a deeper understanding of how mass incarceration has been used to warehouse people with marginalized identities and those struggling with poverty, substance use disorders, and housing insecurity, among other serious problems. Incarcerated people are a diverse cross-section of society whose disadvantages and unmet needs often begin early in life, and persist throughout their often lifelong involvement with the criminal legal system. This report is divided into sections: Demographics: Race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, and sexual orientation Employment and housing: Incarcerated people were on unstable footing long before prison Arrested early and often: Age at first arrest, youth confinement, and prior incarceration Disadvantage dating back to childhood: Family, housing, poverty, and education in youth Drug use: An extremely common factor leading up to incarceration.

Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2022. 28p.