By Diane Cheng, Arthur Rizer and Nila Bala

Marcus Bullock was 15 years old when he was sentenced to prison. He struggled with his time behind bars—missing his family, feeling disconnected from the outside world and losing hope. After he became depressed, his mother Sylvia promised to keep in touch daily. Her detailed letters and photos curbed Bullock’s loneliness and helped him envision life after prison. In Bullock’s words: “Little did I know, it would be my mom’s letters that saved my life.” Sylvia’s frequent communications gave him the strength to survive his incarceration, start a successful contracting business and launch Flikshop, a company that uses technology to help inmates stay connected with their families and loved ones. Bullock’s story demonstrates the importance of family connections for people who are incarcerated. In 2018, more than two million individuals were incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States. However, the impact of incarceration is felt by millions more through the children, spouses, siblings, parents and other relatives connected to incarcerated individuals. Recent research suggests that nearly half of adults in the United States have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night in jail or prison. Almost half of the inmates in federal prisons have minor children. Additionally, about one in 25 children (nearly 2.6 million) have a parent in jail or prison. Incarceration separates parents from their children, strains interpersonal relationships, harms mental and physical health and exacts deep financial costs to families. Further, incarceration has a disproportionate effect on communities of color and low income families. For example, Black adults are three times as likely as white adults to have a close family member incarcerated for more than one year. As Bullock’s story shows, positive family connections during incarceration are critical for an inmate’s wellbeing, their likelihood of successful re-entry after time served and the overall strength of their family. Technology can help families stay connected, but the cost, accessibility and quality of current options often pose barriers to meaningful interaction. The COVID-19 pandemic presents further challenges for family connection within correctional facilities, but also an opportunity to improve existing infrastructure via technology. If done right, improvements to both technological and non-technological options for family connection would ultimately benefit incarcerated individuals, their families and their communities at large

R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 203 September 2020, 13p.

By Kristin Turney, Naomi F. Sugie, Estéfani Marín, Daniela E. Kaiser

Anticipatory stress—or worries about the future that produce emotional distress—may explain some of the deleterious repercussions of incarceration for health. We use nearly 500 interviews with incarcerated men and their family members to describe anticipatory stress stemming from the stressor of jail incarceration, a commonly experienced but understudied type of confinement distinct from prison incarceration. We identify and explain how jail incarceration involves a powerful confluence of factors that give rise to anticipatory stress about adjudication, family relationships, the well-being of loved ones, and reintegration. We describe three types of anticipatory stress proliferation between incarcerated men and their families. First, anticipatory stress commonly proliferates from incarcerated men to their children's mothers and their own mothers, with anticipatory stress being particularly salient when it involves the possibility of major changes, system irrationality, and powerlessness. Second, family members can experience anticipatory stress regardless of whether their incarcerated loved one reports anticipatory stress, shaped in part by men's extensive criminal legal contact. Third, family members with weak relationships with incarcerated men generally do not experience anticipatory stress despite the anticipatory stress endured by their incarcerated loved ones. This study provides a framework for understanding how other stages of criminal legal contact contribute to health inequalities among incarcerated people and their families.

Criminology, Volume 62, Issue 4, 2024, pages 830-858

By Julienne Weegels

In this article, I explore how prison riots, large critical incidents of a collective order, emerge, take place, and alter governance relations in place in the Nicaraguan prison system. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with prisoners and former prisoners of two Nicaraguan prison facilities, I provide a prisoners’ point of view on the political use of violence in prison, particularly during two large prison riots. While authorities often held that prison conditions combined with the “violent attitudes” of prisoners turned prisons into “powder kegs,” such an interpretation does not allow for an understanding of riots as embedded in prison governance structures and conveniently draws the attention away from underlying issues pertaining to the de facto sharing of power in prison in Nicaragua. I argue that by using what has been termed “creative violence,” prisoners attempt to break through the authorities’ imposed regime of public secrecy and draw attention to these issues, forcing authorities to negotiate. Yet, even if riots then function as a catalyst for changes in co-governance arrangements, they do not appear to be geared at permanently damaging or annihilating the existing arrangements but rather at pressuring the authorities hard enough to make compromises and concessions as to the distribution of power in prison.

International Criminal Justice Review, Volume 30, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 61-82

By Gustavo Fondevila and Carlos Vilalta‑Perdomo

Using a survey applied to incarcerated populations in Latin American countries, this study aims to examine the factors that determine the existence of violence in prisons and explain why some penitentiaries are more violent than others by studying variables such as inmate age, sentence length, and crime type. A quantitative examination is used to determine the efect of these variables on prison violence (property theft and beatings), and whether it is a result of the living conditions within the prisons. The results indicate that the most overpopulated prisons, with the worst living conditions, have the lowest levels of violence (in Brazil and El Salvador). The lower rates of violence observed in certain Latin American prisons appear to be explained by the existence of criminal governments within penitentiary systems, organized and run by a dominant prison gang

International Criminology, (2024) 4:149–165, 17p.

By James Bargent, et al

Over the last five years, Ecuador has been engulfed in violence and a criminal chaos unprecedented in its modern history. The roots of this security crisis can be traced directly to the country’s prison system and the criminal networks that have evolved inside of it. Shaped by a series of failed reforms and the state’s negligence, corruption, and incapacity, the prisons provided a space for these groups, known in Ecuador simply as “mafias,” to take root and grow. More than that, they also provided an economic base for this growth in the form of multi-million-dollar criminal markets that have turned the prisons into one of the most lucrative criminal economies in Ecuador.

Fueled by these profits, the mafias leveraged the opportunity the prisons provided to make connections to gangs on the streets, facilitating their territorial expansion on the outside, and granting them access to the upper echelons of organized crime, including the booming transnational cocaine trade. Competition to control strategic territories and criminal economies between these mafias have driven soaring murder rates on the streets and a series of prison massacres that have claimed hundreds of lives. These criminal networks have also destabilized the country’s democracy with terror-style tactics and political violence. The security crisis stemming from the prisons has provoked a hard-line response from Ecuador’s government, which declared an “internal armed conflict” with “terrorist” groups and deployed the military to the prisons and the streets. While this has disrupted some mafia operations, there has been little sign of any strategy to tackle the systemic failures that led to their rise. And there are signs that both the mafias and corruption networks are reconstituting and setting the stage for a new cycle of violence and criminal activity. Major Findings

▶ Ecuador’s prisons became the epicenter of organized crime because of years of government failures and half-measures. To begin with, hard-line anti-drug laws filled the prisons beyond capacity. The state’s subsequent struggles to control the overcrowded facilities created vacuums in authority, which were filled by corruption networks and criminal gangs. And, after the construction of a series of “mega-prisons” failed to control the internal chaos, the government slashed the operational budget and dismantled the ministry responsible for running it, providing the catalyst for the total criminal takeover of the system.

▶ The concentration of the population in the mega-prisons increased the profits from internal rackets. This converted the penitentiary system into a multimillion dollar criminal economy based on exploiting the lack of state control and the failure to provide basic services. These markets are run both by gangs and extensive corruption networks, which may work with the gangs or independently. The profits from this economy drove the evolution and expansion of the prison mafias, while providing a powerful incentive for corrupt actors to undermine attempts at reform.

▶ The prison mafias grew quickly by recruiting bands of small-time criminals and youth gangs in the prisons and integrating them into federations of semi-autonomous criminal structures operating both in the prisons and on the streets. The mafia leaders were then able to put these networks at the service of criminal elites. This created a unique role for them, coordinating and connecting the different levels of organized crime.

▶ Through this process, the prison mafias have established themselves as important links in the transnational cocaine supply chain. However, for the most part, they remain at the operational level of trafficking, providing logistical and security services to Mexican, Colombian, European, and individual Ecuadorian drug traffickers.

▶ The ceding of the prisons to the mafias, the growth of the criminal economies that fund them, and the opportunities to access the transnational drug trade led to criminal competition that fuelled high levels of violence inside and outside the prison system that has been difficult to control. The catalyst for this rise in violence was the power vacuum left by the murder of Choneros leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” who had previously limited competition by integrating numerous criminal interests and powers into a single network held together by his individual authority.

▶ While the military intervention in the prisons in 2024 disrupted the mafia’s capacity to operate freely, the evident lack of mid- and long-term strategies to tackle the systemic issues at the heart of the prison crisis or dismantle the prison business makes it highly likely organized crime and corruption networks will reestablish operations within the prisons. Furthermore, the weakening of leadership ties between the prisons and the streets has accelerated a trend towards the atomization of the mafias, leading to increased territorial disputes and predatory criminal activities outside the prisons, principally affecting Ecuador’s most economically deprived and marginalized communities.

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2024. 76p.

By Peter Dawson

No one recognises a good teacher more accurately than a pupil, or a good nurse more gratefully than a patient. And no one understands the differences between a good and a bad prison officer1 better than a prisoner.2 This report, made possible through the generosity of the John Armitage Charitable Trust, seeks to bring the wisdom of prisoners to bear on the central challenge facing prisons of how to create an effective and sustainable prison workforce in England and Wales. Changes in sentencing over the last two decades guarantee that prison officers will in future be caring for people spending a much larger portion of their lives in custody.3 Those prisoners will also be subject to far greater uncertainty about when they may be released and whether they will be permitted to remain in the community when they eventually are. Simultaneously, confidence in traditional operating models for prisons has been undermined by a decade of violence, self-harm and disorder, and the physical withdrawal of staff from face to face contact with prisoners legitimised during the pandemic. In this radically altered context the prison service faces a more profound question about the composition of its future workforce than simply whether it can recruit and retain enough people. We will argue that being a good prison officer is a much more sophisticated and skilful job than the prison service currently reflects in its critical human resource processes. If the prison service is to recruit and retain a workforce that can rise to the multiple challenges that it faces over the next decade and beyond, it must develop a new and explicit vision for the role of the prison officer and the way that role needs to be supported. We will argue that prisoners can help both articulate that vision and in some respects support its delivery. The prison workforce is of course very diverse and many people other than officers are crucial to making prisons work. We have chosen to focus on the prison officer role because, more than any other, it affects the day to day life of the prisoners to whom we have listened, and therefore the families they have left behind and the communities to which most of them will one day return. Developing a vision for the role of the prison officer starts with being clear about purpose within a prison. We hope that what prisoners have had to say on that subject will inform every aspect of the prison service’s approach to its employees, and all its partnerships with the many

London: Prison Reform Trust, 2024. 53p.

By Chloe Anderson, Kyla Wasserman, Brit Henderson, with Erika Lewy

On January 1, 2017, the State of New Jersey implemented Criminal Justice Reform (CJR), a sweeping set of changes to its criminal legal system. With these reforms, the state shifted from a system that relied on money bail to a system that virtually eliminated the use of money bail and uses a risk-assessment tool that informs decision-making by generating scores based on an individual’s assessed risk of failing to appear at future court hearings and committing additional crimes if released. Additionally, CJR granted courts the option to detain people without bail until their cases are disposed, established a pretrial monitoring program, and instituted speedy-trial laws that impose time limits for case processing. The state’s goals were to improve fairness and reduce unnecessary pretrial detention while protecting public safety and ensuring that people continue to show up to their court hearings. While improving racial equity was not an explicit goal of the reforms, racial equity may be affected by reducing pretrial detention and eliminating the use of money bail. With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Policies for Action Program, the New Jersey Criminal Justice Reform Advancing Racial Equity (NJ CARE) Study sought to assess racial equity and perceptions of fairness in New Jersey’s criminal legal system after the implementation of the reforms to determine whether the reforms improved racial equity in the state. Furthermore, the study explored whether individuals who were navigating the pretrial system as defendants perceived it as fair. Their experiences and the reforms’ effects on racial disparities reveal valuable lessons about the effects of bail reform efforts on racial equity. The study employed a mixed-methods approach that included quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as participatory elements. The quantitative analysis found that CJR had a net positive impact on some outcomes for both Black people and White people. More people were issued a summons (rather than a warrant) and were immediately released following arrest, and people were released from jail more quickly following an arrest. Yet despite these positive impacts, racial disparities persisted throughout the pretrial system, to varying degrees. For outcomes that had larger disparities before CJR, there was no meaningful reduction in disparities. The largest disparities are seen at the front end of the pretrial system, in arrest rates and initial jail bookings. For the qualitative analysis, interviewees—who had experience navigating the state’s pretrial system as defendants—said that CJR’s elimination of money bail has improved the fairness of the system. Yet they also said the criminal legal system should consider each person’s voice and circumstances, treat each person with respect, be transparent, assign the least restrictive release conditions when possible, and employ diverse staff members. Taken together, the findings suggest that broad bail reform policies can reduce the footprint of criminal legal system involvement, but they may not be a salve for issues of equity broadly and racial disparities specifically. There are several potential approaches to improve racial equity, including programs or processes that reduce people’s initial contact with the legal system, incorporate procedural justice-informed techniques into policing to improve police-community relationships, elevate the voices of individuals who have experience as defendants, enhance the criminal legal system’s transparency and communication, employ the least restrictive conditions of release and offer supportive services, engage prosecutors in reform efforts, and employ a more diverse staff. As a next step, these potential approaches should be rigorously studied.

In a completely equitable society, individuals would not be any more or less likely to experience burdens during their interactions with societal systems just because of their race. However, historically explicit and implicit practices and policies across the United States reinforce racial inequity, and these racial disparities are observed in many social systems, including the criminal legal system.1 Racial disparities in the pretrial system—that is, the period from the point of arrest to a case’s resolution in a verdict, plea deal, or dismissal— have broad equity implications. Spending time in jail—sometimes even just a few days—is associated with a variety of adverse effects on physical and mental health, as well as on social determinants of health like employment, housing, and family ties.2 Jurisdictions across the country have made efforts to reduce their use of pretrial detention and improve perceptions of the system’s fairness through different types of reforms—most notably by reducing their use of money bail or using actuarial risk-assessment tools to guide release decision-making.3 However, relatively little is known about the effects of these reforms.

New York: MDRC , 2024. 87p.

By Louisa Treskon and Anna Kyler

For more than a decade, California has been enacting policy changes that are intended to lower the number of people who are incarcerated in the state. These policy changes include sentencing reforms and new funding streams for programs aimed at addressing underlying causes that can lead to incarceration, such as mental health and substance use disorders. Los Angeles County’s Reentry Intensive Case Management Services (RICMS) program, which began in 2018, is one such program. The RICMS program connects people who have been involved in the criminal legal system to community health workers who work at community-based organizations. Community health workers help people reintegrate into their communities by providing case management and connecting them with supportive services. This brief presents the results of a benefit-cost study of the RICMS program. The RICMS program comes with a cost, mostly borne by the state of California and Los Angeles County, since the program is publicly funded, as are many of the services it refers clients to. However, these costs could be offset by benefits such as reductions in participants’ involvement in the criminal legal system. Benefit-cost analysis provides a tool to compare these costs and benefits, which provides decision makers with a monetary lens through which to assess the potential effects of the program. The study, which is led by MDRC, is part of the Los Angeles County Reentry Integrated Services Project, a multiyear, multistudy evaluation of services that are offered by the Justice, Care and Opportunities Department (JCOD) of Los Angeles County.

New York: MDRC, 2024. 18p.

By Andrzej Uhl, Justin T Pickett

Are public preferences for the type or amount of punishment stable? Instability over short periods would complicate empirical desert by undercutting the value of public preferences as policy guides. Using longitudinal, cross-national survey data from Central Europe, we examined within-person stability in punishment preferences along several dimensions: type, amount, and rank order. Individual-level instability was common; respondents frequently changed their punishment preferences across waves. In the aggregate, public opinion was more stable. Our findings support the ‘qualified public input’ model of policy making—aggregate preferences should provide loose guidance for policymakers, with individual-level instability suggesting the ‘latitude of acceptance’ or ‘zone of acquiescence’. Better-educated respondents exhibited more preference stability, thus greater weight should be given to informed public opinion.

The British Journal of Criminology, 2024, XX, 1–20 pages

By The Global Commission on Drug Policy

The Global Commission on Drug Policy’s report, Beyond Punishment: From Criminal Justice Responses to Drug Policy Reform, exposes how punitive drug policies have driven mass incarceration and grave human rights violations. In 2023 alone, over 3.1 million people were arrested for drug-related offenses, with 20% of the global prison population detained for such crimes - nearly half for simple possession.

The report underscores the devastating consequences of prohibitionist policies, including over one million overdose deaths in the U.S. in the past two decades and 40,000 in Canada in just eight years. It also highlights systemic inequities, such as Indigenous peoples in Canada being six times more likely to face drug-related arrests than white counterparts. Furthermore, the report illustrates the disproportionate burdens on women and children, deepening cycles of poverty and marginalization.

It examines the broad spectrum of criminal justice responses to drug offenses, ranging from stop-and-search practices that disproportionately target marginalized communities to extreme measures like the death penalty and enforced treatment. These approaches often violate human rights, perpetuate stigma, and fail to address the root causes of substance use.

Offering a roadmap for reform, the report advocates for evidence-based strategies, including harm reduction measures (e.g., Overdose Prevention Centers, naloxone distribution, and safer supply programs), decriminalization and the legal regulation of drug markets. These approaches not only save lives but also reduce societal harms, foster dignity, and promote health and equity.

Geneva: Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2024. 56p.

By The Correctional Association of New York

The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Law (hereinafter “the HALT Law” or “the HALT Solitary Law”) passed on March 31, 2021, and went into effect on March 31, 2022, following years of grassroots organizing and advocacy. The Correctional Association of New York (CANY) – an organization that has been monitoring prison conditions since its founding in 1844 and is the only independent organization in New York State with authority to monitor state prisons and publicly report findings – has been monitoring implementation of the HALT Law in state prisons.1 The HALT Law is considered the most expansive and progressive legislative change in the United States concerning the practice of solitary confinement, known more generally as segregation. HALT dictates fundamental shifts in the duration and definition of segregation; perhaps even more significantly, the law prescribes a sea change in the philosophical underpinnings of behavior management in prisons. Implementation of the law has been met with harsh critique and resistance by some staff within the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), who have linked the law to reported increases in violence in the prisons; various data outlined in this report raise questions about the connection between any increase in violence and the implementation of HALT. Other corrections staff acknowledge that the Department had relied too heavily on segregation in the past and embrace the opportunity to expand programming, even as they navigate the challenges. This report presents CANY’s findings and recommendations regarding implementation of the law in state prisons thus far, based on CANY’s prison monitoring activities in the time leading up to implementation and between April and December 2022. The findings presented here should be considered in that context: CANY has monitored the first eight months of implementation of a law that seeks to transform practices that have been in place for decades. In anticipation of the HALT Law taking effect, DOCCS ended the practice of keeplock (a form of segregation or solitary confinement) starting in late 2021. The HALT Law has also led to a reduction in the use of Special Housing Units (SHU), another form of segregation or solitary confinement, and a reduction in the amount of time people are kept in SHU. In addition, some incarcerated people who had spent years and decades in SHU have been moved to alternative units or to the general population. Moreover, DOCCS is operating alternative units, known under the law as Residential Rehabilitation Units (RRUs), that are providing opportunities for out-of-cell programming and engagement. DOCCS has also published a variety of administrative data and reports in compliance with the law, representing an increase in information-sharing, transparency, and accountability.

New York: CANY, 2023. 65p

By The Correctional Association of New York

The Correctional Association of New York (CANY) is a non-profit organization, mandated by law to inspect, monitor and report on conditions in New York State (NYS) correctional facilities. CANY has repeatedly documented that across NYS incarcerated people report a lack of access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food and the systemic mechanisms to secure it. This report sheds light on key issues affecting food access and quality, and highlights opportunities to strengthen and expand existing DOCCS policies and programs to improve food and nutrition in NYS correctional facilities. The report covers three key areas: Part I: DOCCS food service. Part I of this report provides an overview and analysis of policies and practices scaffolding DOCCS menu design and planning, food production, and service. This includes an overview of the DOCCS “cook chill” food production center, based at Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, New York. The food production center is where most DOCCS meals are batch cooked, chilled and then shipped to the 44 DOCCS facilities to be reheated and served in the mess hall. Part I also includes analysis of both administrative and qualitative data regarding people’s experiences with food served in the mess hall. This encompasses an overview of concerns related to the quality, palatability, nutritional value, variety, and accessibility of food. Part II: Supplemental food sources and self-prepared meals. A significant number of incarcerated people reported that they either avoid the mess hall, or that mess hall meals are insufficient to meet their dietary needs. As a result of this, many people reported that they choose to prepare their own food using supplemental food sources, purchased from the commissary and/or outside vendors via the DOCCS package program. CANY consistently heard concerns about the accessibility and affordability of food in the commissary or through packages. CANY also observed that there are inconsistencies in access to cooking and food storage equipment for incarcerated people to self-prepare meals. Part II provides an overview of these challenges. Part III: DOCCS food and nutrition programming and initiatives. Part III provides an overview of current DOCCS food-related programming including Culinary Arts, Horticulture, Harvest Now, and other special events and programs which present an opportunity to increase the variety of foods available to incarcerated people. This part also highlights promising initiatives, like the recent pilot initiative launched by DOCCS to connect incarcerated people to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits up to 30-days prior to release. There is significant potential to strengthen and expand these promising initiatives to improve food and nutrition, including increasing training and certification for incarcerated people working in food service, and better integration of food programming and DOCCS food service. Based on CANY monitoring data, DOCCS’ administrative data, and research and analysis, this report makes key findings about issues affecting food access and quality in DOCCS facilities. It concludes that there are significant current and future opportunities to improve food and nutrition for people incarcerated in NYS prisons. These recommendations, if implemented, would increase meaningful access to food options that help incarcerated people thrive, improve health outcomes for an exceedingly marginalized population, and create replicable infrastructure for healthy food within other state facilities and jurisdictions.

New York: Correctional Association of New York, 2024. 61p.

By Johanna Higgs and Manith Chhoeng

In 2020, Amnesty International released a report detailing serious abuses against people held in drug rehabilitation centers and prisons in Cambodia, highlighting the severe overcrowding caused by the anti-drug campaign that began in 2017. As of March 2020, Cambodia’s prisons had an estimated capacity of 26,593, but the number of people held exceeded 38,990. Four years later, Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior reported that, as of March 2024, 45,122 people were imprisoned, with 21,644 (48%) held for drug offenses and 2,214 being minors. The General Department of Prisons' response to overcrowding has been to request the construction of new drug rehabilitation centers and prisons.

International standards, such as the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules), the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Non-custodial Measures (the Tokyo Rules), and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Mandela Rules), call for detention to be used only as a last resort and promote non-custodial measures, particularly for women and children. Organizations working in Cambodia, like IDPC partner This Life (TLC), aim to address these challenges through programs that improve outcomes for at-risk youth and families. These initiatives align with international standards, advocating for alternatives to incarceration and providing support services.

While Cambodia’s Drug Control Law (2012) gives prosecutors and courts discretion to divert drug offenders from imprisonment in favor of "voluntary" treatment programs, it has not been effectively implemented to reduce detention or imprisonment. TLC offers programs that provide vocational training and family support to juveniles in conflict with the law, aiming to reduce recidivism and promote reintegration. The organization also engages with government ministries, law enforcement, and community leaders to create holistic solutions that strengthen Cambodia's justice system and support vulnerable populations.

There are alternative measures in place for children. The Juvenile Justice Law of Cambodia, promulgated on July 14, 2016, aims to protect the rights of children in conflict with the law, supporting their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. It also provides alternatives to detention, such as diversion, probation, community service, and mediation. This law is seen as a milestone in promoting and protecting children's rights in Cambodia, aligning with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international standards. Non-governmental organizations like This Life are committed to evidence-based interventions that promote human rights, reduce inequality, and create opportunities for marginalized communities. Their work complements the goals of the Juvenile Justice Law by focusing on the rehabilitation and reintegration of youth in conflict with the law.

Amnesty International, 2024. 18p

By Nidhi Kalra, Brian G. Vegetabile, Shawn D. Bushway, and Greg Baumann

In this paper from RAND, the authors argue that the recidivism statistics cited most often in debates about the collateral consequences of criminal conviction are not appropriate to answer the questions inherent in those debates. In particular, the behaviors of criminal justice cohorts are too often mistakenly used to describe, or are entangled with descriptions of, behaviors of the overall population of people who have ever had a conviction, served time in prison, or experienced some other event in the criminal justice system. This confusion has consequences.

This paper demonstrates that the most-cited recidivism statistics often are based on criminal justice cohort samples that disproportionately contain frequent participants in the criminal justice system and, as a result, have higher recidivism rates compared with the broader population of concern.

Santa Monica, RAND, 2022, 16p.

By Margaret Colgate Love

The problem of collateral consequences calls to mind Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous line: “The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.” U.S. criminal law itself is not theoretically pure. In the area of civil law, in particular commercial law, dozens of uniform laws are on the books, drafted by experts, many of which, such as the Uniform Commercial Code, have been widely adopted. But in a country where we evaluate criminal justice polices based on a melange of principles - retributivist, utilitarian, economic, religious, pragmatic, intuitive, and emotional - there is and could be no Uniform Penal Code.1 Criminal law is inconsistent across states, and even within states, in its underlying justification or rationale, and the reasons that particular rules or practices exist. The Model Penal Code has been widely influential, but—as designed—states adopted only the pieces they liked, and heavily modified them. Disagreement about how to treat someone who has been arrested or prosecuted after their criminal case is concluded is, if anything, even more intense. The collateral or indirect consequences of their experience may be divided into four main types: Loss of civil rights, limits on personal freedom (such as registration or deportation), dissemination of damaging information, and deprivation of opportunities and benefits, each of which may be justified and criticized for different reasons. Accordingly, criminal law practitioners and scholars disagree about the fundamental nature and purpose of collateral consequences. To the extent the public at large ever thinks about them, they also hold a range of views. There is no consensus about whether collateral consequences in general or particular ones should be understood as further punishment for crime or prophylactic civil regulation, as a reasonable effort to control risk or as an unconstitutional and immoral perpetuation of Jim Crow, or, perhaps, understood in some other way. Advocates, analysts, and lawmakers will never be in a position to argue persuasively “because collateral consequences rest on Principle X, it follows that they should apply in and only in Condition Y, and must be relieved under Circumstance Z.” Yet, the practical problem of collateral consequences looms large. With their massive expansion in recent decades, those who experience collateral consequences firsthand know that they cannot become fully functioning members of the community without finding a way to overcome them. The economic dislocations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic underscore the practical implications of collateral consequences: With individuals desperate for money and opportunity, and businesses hungry for workers, the need for a sensible policy to minimize employer concerns about risk is clear. And while there remains no compelling necessity for all states to have the same penalties for armed robbery or cattle rustling, collateral consequences are a national economic problem affecting whole communities that might justify a federal, or at least a uniform, solution. Fortunately, agreement on underlying principles is not required to agree on particular policies.2 Most Americans agree that people arrested or convicted of crime should not be relegated to a permanent subordinate status regardless of the passage of time, successful efforts at rehabilitation and restitution, and lack of current risk to fellow Americans. Finding ways to restore their legal and social status is a compelling necessity, given the array of collateral consequences adversely affecting tens of millions of Americans, their families and communities, the economy, and public safety itself. To adapt a line from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2003 speech on criminal justice to the ABA, too many people are subject to too many collateral consequences for too long. At the same time, substantial majorities likely agree that public safety requires excluding those convicted of recent criminal conduct from situations where they present a clear and present danger of serious harm. Even if it is impossible to identify a s

Washington, DC: Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) , 2022. 129p.

By Margaret Love & Rob Poggenklass

At the beginning of each year since 2017, CCRC has issued a report on legislative enactments in the year just ended, new laws aimed at reducing the barriers faced by people with a criminal record in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life. These annual reports document the steady progress of what our 2020 report characterized as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and dignity to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. In the three years between 2019 and 2021, more than 400 new record reforms were enacted. Many states enacted new laws every year, and all but two states enacted at least one significant new law during this period. A full appreciation of the scope of this movement can be gained by reviewing the detailed 50-state charts and state-by-state profiles in our Restoration of Rights Project. The modern law reform movement reflected in our annual reports is bipartisan, grounded in and inspired by the circumstance that almost a third of adults in the United States now have a criminal record, entangling them in a web of legal restrictions and discrimination that permanently excludes them from full participation in the community. It reflects a public recognition that the “internal exile” of such a significant portion of society is not only unsafe and unfair, but it is also profoundly inefficient. We are pleased to present our report on new laws enacted in 2022, titled The Frontiers of Dignity: Clean Slate and Other Criminal Record Reforms in 2022. While this report shows that the legislative momentum gathering since 2018 slowed somewhat in the past year, there has still been progress, with more new laws enacted this year than in 2018 when the current reform movement took off in earnest.

Washington, DC: Collateral Consequences Resource Center, 2023. 43p.

By Justin D. Strong, Keramet Reiter, Gabriela Gonzalez, Rebecca Tublitz, Dallas Augustine, Melissa Barragan, Kelsie ChesnutI, Pasha Dashtgard, Natalie Pifer, Thomas R. Blair

We examine how solitary confinement correlates with self-reported adverse physical health outcomes, and how such outcomes extend the understanding of the health disparities associated with incarceration. Using a mixed methods approach, we find that solitary confinement is associated not just with mental, but also with physical health problems. Given the disproportionate use of solitary among incarcerated people of color, these symptoms are most likely to affect those populations. Drawing from a random sample of prisoners (n = 106) in long-term solitary confinement in the Washington State Department of Corrections in 2017, we conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews; Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) assessments; and systematic reviews of medical and disciplinary files for these subjects. We also conducted a paper survey of the entire long-term solitary confinement population (n = 225 respondents) and analyzed administrative data for the entire population of prisoners in the state in 2017 (n = 17,943). Results reflect qualitative content and descriptive statistical analysis. BPRS scores reflect clinically significant somatic concerns in 15% of sample. Objective specification of medical conditions is generally elusive, but that, itself, is a highly informative finding. Using subjective reports, we specify and analyze a range of physical symptoms experienced in solitary confinement: (1) skin irritations and weight fluctuation associated with the restrictive conditions of solitary confinement; (2) un-treated and mis-treated chronic conditions associated with the restrictive policies of solitary confinement; (3) musculoskeletal pain exacerbated by both restrictive conditions and policies. Administrative data analyses reveal disproportionate rates of racial/ethnic minorities in solitary confinement. This analysis raises the stakes for future studies to evaluate comparative prevalence of objective medical diagnoses and potential causal mechanisms for the physical symptoms specified here, and for understanding differential use of solitary confinement and its medically harmful sequelae.

PLoS ONE, 2020, 20 p.

By Laurin Bixby, Stacey Bevan, and Courtney Boen

Disabled people are disproportionately incarcerated and segregated from society through a variety of institutions. Still, the links between disability and incarceration are underexplored, limiting understanding of how carceral institutions punish and contribute to the social exclusion of disabled people. Using data from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, we estimated disability prevalence in state and federal prisons, assessing disparities by race, ethnicity, and sex, and we examined inequities in previous residence in other “punitive” and “therapeutic” institutions. Sixty-six percent of incarcerated people self-reported a disability, with Black, Hispanic, and multiracial disabled men especially overrepresented in prisons. Compared with nondisabled incarcerated people, disabled incarcerated people were more likely to have previously resided in other institutions, such as juvenile detention facilities and psychiatric hospitals. Together, our findings advance the understanding of disability in carceral institutions, highlighting the need for policy interventions redressing the mechanisms contributing to the high incarceration risks of disabled people and the disabling nature of prisons and other carceral institutions.

Health Affairs Vol. 41, NO. 10, 2022, 28 p.

By James René Jolin, Benjamin A. Barsky, Carrie G. Wade

By expanding health insurance to millions of people in the US, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) may have important health, economic, and social welfare implications for people with criminal legal involvement—a population with disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rates. OBJECTIVE To scope the literature for studies assessing the association of any provision of the ACA with 5 types of outcomes, including insurance coverage rates, access to care, health outcomes, costs of care, and social welfare outcomes among people with criminal legal involvement. EVIDENCE REVIEW - The literature search included results from PubMed, CINAHL Complete, APA Psycinfo, Embase, Social Science Database, and Web of Science and was conducted to include articles from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2023. Only original empirical studies were included, but there were no restrictions on study design. FINDINGS Of the 3538 studies initially identified for potential inclusion, the final sample included 19 studies. These 19 studies differed substantially in their definition of criminal legal involvement and units of analysis. The studies also varied with respect to study design, but difference-in-differences methods were used in 10 of the included studies. With respect to outcomes, 100 unique outcomes were identified across the 19 studies, with at least 1 in all 5 outcome categories determined prior to the literature search. Health insurance coverage and access to care were the most frequently studied outcomes. Results for the other 3 outcome categories were mixed, potentially due to heterogeneous definitions of populations, interventions, and outcomes and to limitations in the availability of individual-level datasets that link incarceration data with health-related data. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE- In this scoping review, the ACA was associated with an increase in insurance coverage and a decrease in recidivism rates among people with criminal legal involvement. Future research and data collection are needed to understand more fully health and nonhealth outcomes among people with criminal legal involvement related to the ACA and other health insurance policies—as well as the mechanisms underlying these relationships.

JAMA Health Forum, 2024, 10 p.

By Keramet Reiter, Joseph Ventura, David Lovell, Dallas Augustine, Melissa Barragan

Objectives. To specify symptoms and measure prevalence of psychological distress among incarcerated people in long-term solitary confinement. Methods. We gathered data via semistructured, in-depth interviews; Brief PsychiatricRating Scale (BPRS) assessments; and systematic reviews of medical and disciplinary filesfor 106 randomly selected people in solitary confinement in the Washington StateDepartment of Corrections in 2017. We performed 1-year follow-up interviews and BPRS assessments with 80 of these incarcerated people, and we present the results of our qualitative content analysis and descriptive statistics.Results. BPRS results showed clinically significant symptoms of depression, anxiety, orguilt among half of our research sample. Administrative data showed disproportionately high rates of serious mental illness and self-harming behavior compared with general prison populations. Interview content analysis revealed additional symptoms, including social isolation, loss of identity, and sensory hypersensitivity.Conclusions. Our coordinated study of rating scale, interview, and administrative data illustrates the public health crisis of solitary confinement. Because 95% or more of all incarcerated people, including those who experienced solitary confinement, are even-tually released, understanding disproportionate psychopathology matters for developing prevention policies and addressing the unique needs of people who have experienced solitary confinement, an extreme element of mass incarceration.

Am J Public Health. 2020, 7 p.