By Travis Reginal, Jesse Jannetta, Sam Hoppe

This case study explores how Lake County, Illinois, and the City and County of San Francisco, with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC)—an initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce overincarceration and disparities in jail populations—integrated equity into their efforts to reduce local jail populations. By examining the relationship between equity and decarceration, we provide actionable insights for jurisdictions aiming to address the root causes of incarceration disparities. The case study shows how these sites reevaluated and reshaped practices to tackle systemic inequities, offering a roadmap for reducing the overrepresentation of marginalized groups in the criminal legal system.

WHY THIS MATTERS

In the ongoing pursuit of criminal legal system reform, equity has emerged as a crucial lens for reshaping policies and practices. Systemic inequities—evidenced by racial and ethnic disparities in arrests, detention, and incarceration—remain pervasive. For example, Black people are jailed at nearly 3.5 times the rate of White people, and Native Americans at more than 2 times the rate. These disparities reflect both historical structural inequities, such as segregation, and unequal application of law enforcement practices.

With SJC support, jurisdictions have sought to reduce jail populations and eliminate racial inequities in them. While these decarceration efforts have reduced jail populations overall, many sites still struggle to address disparities, as reductions have often disproportionately benefited White people.

This case study underscores why prioritizing equity is essential for justice reform, offering actionable insights to help policymakers, practitioners, and advocates align decarceration goals with equity objectives. By addressing the root causes of disparities, jurisdictions can advance more effective, humane, and equitable approaches to justice.

WHAT WE FOUND

Drawing on stakeholders’ perceptions of their SJC efforts in Lake County and San Francisco, we highlight key lessons from their initiatives to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in local jails. These insights are intended to inform other jurisdictions as they navigate the challenges and opportunities of integrating equity into their justice reform strategies.

Lessons other jurisdictions might find informative for reducing racial and ethnic disparities in their jails include the following:

• Data play a pivotal role in efforts toward equity. Both sites demonstrated the importance of robust data analysis in identifying disparities and informing reforms. For instance, San Francisco used data to pinpoint drug-related offenses as a key driver of its jail population. However, data alone are insufficient—strategies to engage stakeholders who are not persuaded by data are also necessary.

• Institutionalizing equity work is a multilayered process. Sustaining progress requires embedding equity efforts into organizational structures. Both sites faced challenges owing to staff turnover and a lack of continuity plans, which slowed momentum. Creating dedicated equity-focused roles and ensuring succession planning are critical to maintaining long-term impact.

• Cross-system partnerships are needed to reduce disparities. Racial disparities are driven by inequities across systems like housing, education, and health care. Both sites highlighted the need for coordinated efforts across these sectors to address systemic barriers and promote equity effectively.

• Community engagement continues to be a challenging area for government. Both sites identified opportunities to improve how they engage with the community and raise awareness of their SJC work. Deciding when and how to involve the community meaningfully is critical for building trust and securing buy-in. It is equally important to provide supports and structures that enable community members—particularly those with lived experience—to participate effectively in partnerships with system actors and agencies. Additionally, balancing power dynamics between stakeholders requires careful planning, such as using a toolkit to manage relationships and foster equitable collaboration.

HOW WE DID IT

To develop this case study, we drew on three primary data sources: semistructured interviews with 17 stakeholders from Lake County and San Francisco (conducted between March 2023 and January 2024), analysis of SJC progress reports and public documents, and jail population trend data from the Institute for State and Local Governance. Interviewees represented a range of justice agencies and community partners, sharing insights on equity-focused reforms, challenges, and successes. We analyzed the interviews using NVivo qualitative software, applying a codebook developed to identify trends and themes related to local reform efforts and equity strategies.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2025. 45p.

By Evelyn F. McCoy, Azhar Gulaid

This study aimed to understand the state of reproductive health care access and quality in a jail in California after early stages of the implementation of Assembly Bill 732 (A.B. 732). A.B. 732 was passed in September 2020 with the goal of increasing reproductive health care access and quality for incarcerated people and pregnant incarcerated people in state prisons and county jails.

WHY THIS MATTERS

People in jail—especially women, nonbinary people, and transgender people—have specific and significant reproductive health needs. Most people in jail are in their peak reproductive years, have histories of physical and/or sexual violence, and enter jail with more significant reproductive health care needs than the general population. Incarcerated people are more likely than the general population to have STIs, human immunodeficiency virus, and viral hepatitis, as well as higher rates of cervical and breast cancer and irregular menstrual cycles. Unsanitary conditions in jail, coupled with limited access to reproductive health care, can worsen health outcomes for people in jail. Despite this, reproductive health and health care for incarcerated people, as well as policies implemented to improve these areas, are understudied and overlooked.

WHAT WE FOUND

Study participants experience significant delays between requesting services and delivery of services, and have even experienced nonresponsiveness after multiple medical requests.Study participants face significant challenges in the delivery and quality of care, including having medical staff who are inexperienced with basic medical procedures such as blood draws, having inconveniently timed procedures, and getting little to no follow-up or information after procedures.Study participants noted that they have experienced dismissiveness from medical staff, have needed to exaggerate requests as emergencies to receive care, and have even experienced mistreatment and punishment from staff.Most study participants shared that they have never received general information about reproductive health care or services and do not know what is available to them.Half of study participants shared that they do not feel comfortable or safe receiving services from jail medical staff. Discomfort comes from private medical information being discussed in jail common spaces and officers being present at medical appointments, including procedures that require undressing.Nearly a third of study participants have experienced bias or pressure from staff about reproductive decisions.Our study also identified findings in the following areas, as detailed in the report:preventive caremenstruation supportcontraceptive care and abortionpregnancy and postpartum carereentry preparation and parenting classes

HOW WE DID IT

We conducted semi-structured, individual, in-person interviews with 34 incarcerated people in a women’s jail in California to learn about their experiences accessing and receiving reproductive health care since A.B. 732 was passed.Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2024. 83p.

By Richard Wright, William J. Sabol

Thaddeus L. Johnson

The roughly 175,000 convicted robbers currently serving time in the U.S. eventually will be released. Over half of them will have been there before. Locked up as mostly young men and women, they will return to the communities they left behind, possessing little more than a criminal record and the clothes on their back. Many will find themselves owing supervision fees to the state; almost all will face legal barriers to employment, decent housing, political participation, and other sources of social inclusion. What can the criminal justice system—a system designed to prevent and deter lawbreaking— realistically do to keep them from returning to prison? This Article explores that question by drawing on published accounts from a sample of 86 individuals actively involved in committing armed robberies, many of whom have returned to crime after being released from prison. The emphasis throughout is on the ways in which pervasive social exclusion, both a cause and a consequence of their lawbreaking, challenges our ability to “reintegrate” such offenders who in reality were not integrated to begin with.

103 Marq. L. Rev. 1179 (2020)

By Elliott Young

McNeil Island prison was the first federal penitentiary in the U.S. West from its founding in 1875 through the 1930s. Thousands of immigrants were imprisoned there for violations of immigration laws, and also for drug and alcohol charges. It was at McNeil Island that in the late 1880s scores of Chinese were sentenced to six months hard labor for merely being present in the country without authorization, an offense that was not (and still is not) a criminal offense. This article reveals that the overlap between immigration and criminal law, known as crimmigration, began at the dawn of immigration enforcement.

Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 88, Number 1, pps. 48–85. ISSN 0030-8684, electronic ISSN 1533-8584 © 2019

By Faride Perez Aucar

In 2020, the world experienced an unprecedented global health crisis with the spread of COVID-19 and historic uprisings for racial justice in the aftermath of the state-sanctioned murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The pandemic illuminated extreme health inequities and the many harms of incarceration, when prisons, jails, and detention centers largely failed to protect incarcerated people from illness and death. The racial justice uprisings highlighted a long history of anti-Black racism and terror in the country. They also invigorated movements towards racial justice and helped elevate long-standing calls to abolish the prison industrial complex, defund the police, and invest in communities most impacted by mass incarceration and structural racism. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, immediately restricting access to abortion across the nation and sparking further efforts to criminalize and block access to reproductive health care. Simultaneously, conservative policymakers, fueled by misinformation and fear, began to increase “Reproductive justice is ‘the human right to own our bodies and control our future, the human right to have children, the human right to not have children, and the human right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.’” —SisterSong attacks on transgender people, introducing and passing unprecedented numbers of policies across the nation that threaten and harm the ability of transgender, nonbinary, and queer people to live authentically and with dignity and safety. The incoming Trump administration appears poised to launch additional federal-level attacks on both reproductive health care access and the LGBTQ+ community. These rising threats to bodily autonomy call for a recommitment to reproductive justice as a framework and a goal. As defined by SisterSong, reproductive justice is “the human right to own our bodies and control our future, the human right to have children, the human right to not have children, and the human right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” The reproductive justice movement and framework have always demanded that we look beyond access to abortion and contraception and firmly ground our analysis in racial justice and the right to bodily autonomy for all—including people who are incarcerated and/or disproportionately impacted by criminalization. In alignment with abolitionist movements, reproductive justice advocates have long held that incarceration in and of itself is a reproductive injustice and an affront to the right of bodily autonomy. Against a national backdrop of anti-abortion extremism culminating in the fall of Roe v. Wade and the proliferation of attacks on reproductive health care across the country, reproductive justice advocates in California have worked in recent years to expand access to care and protections for incarcerated people with major success. Nationally, women constitute the largest growing segment in the incarcerated state prison population, entering at twice the pace of men. In California, since 1980, the number of women in jail has increased by 210%, and the number of women in prison has increased by 433%, translating to about 25% of the total prison and jail population. Women make up a significant subpopulation of the incarcerated population in California: Approximately 5,793 women were incarcerated in state prisons as of 2017, and about 9,443 were incarcerated in jails as of 2015. Just over 1% of California’s prison population—or 1,617 incarcerated people—identify as nonbinary, intersex, or transgender, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).8 According to a survey of nonbinary, transgender, and intersex individuals in California women’s prisons conducted by the California Office of the Inspector General, 24.4% of respondents identified as nonbinary, 51.2% identified as transgender, and 4.8% identified as intersex.9 Nearly all California carceral facilities continue to place transgender people, along with nonbinary and two-spirit people,10 in sex-segregated facilities based on their genital anatomy rather than their gender identity, gender expression, or where they feel most safe—despite state laws intended to change this.

San Francisco: ACLU of Northern California, 2025. 50p.

By Victoria Knight

to understand the kinds of practical steps and activities needed to help support people on probation with digital resources as a means to nourish their desistance journeys. The digitization of the justice sector is complicated, and at times fraught with tensions and anxiety, and it shines a light on important factors like human rights, equality and safety. Slowly evidence is emerging that identifies some of the beneficial outcomes for people on probation – especially where digital resources can help improve human flourishing in different ways. In addition, staff are crucial in the digitization journey and are important brokers in empowering probationers to live a life without crime and reduce their risk of reoffending, now in a digitized world. The paper focuses on digital resources and services for people on probation that can implicitly or explicitly support, initiate and facilitate their desistance.

Academic Insights 2025/03

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation, 2025. 15p.

By Andrew Blum

Rise Up Industries emerged from the work of Kairos Prison Ministry in the early 2010s. During an event organized by Kairos at the Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries5 in Los Angeles challenged Joseph Gilbreath, a Kairos volunteer, to establish something similar in San Diego. In response, Gilbreath, Ross Provenzano, and other Kairos volunteers founded RUI in 2013. The mission statement of RUI reads: Rise Up Industries minimizes gang involvement by providing integrated gang prevention, gang intervention, and post-detention reentry services. RUI describes their longer-term goal for this three-pronged approach as breaking the “intergenerational cycle of gang violence.”  RUI began by launching their 18-month reentry program in 2016, after just over three years of research on the needs in San Diego and the organizations already working on reentry services in San Diego County. According to RUI leadership, they launched the reentry program first in part because alumni of the reentry program could then participate in their gang prevention and intervention efforts. RUI is currently laying the foundation for more robust gang prevention programming through a series of speaking engagements, in which reentry program participants and alumni speak with at-risk and justice-involved youth with the goal of assisting them in making more positive life choices. As part of these efforts, RUI is also developing an MOU with Monarch School. Monarch School is a school in San Diego that educates children impacted by homelessness. Participants in the program will continue to regularly visit the school to speak with the students. RUI’s future plans for its gang prevention and intervention initiatives will be discussed in more detail below. 

San Diego: University of San Diego, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice,  2022. 25p.

By David Spencer 

We need more prisons. Amongst the “small stratum of intellectuals, semi-intellectuals and hooligans” who have a “politically motivated contempt for law and order” , it may well be fashionable to suggest otherwise. However, a lack of prison places has led to the Government choosing to release prison inmates earlier than they would otherwise have been. Police officers have been instructed to consider “pausing” arrests due to the lack of prison space. The judiciary have been told to consider prison capacity limits when sentencing those convicted of criminal offences. The most prolific offenders, when convicted of ‘indictable-only’ or ‘eitherway’ offences, are imprisoned on only 46.2% of occasions. A substantial majority of the public, 80% according to recent polling, believe the country should build more prisons. The Labour Party’s 2024 General Election Manifesto said: “Labour recognises that prisons are of national importance and therefore will use all relevant powers to build the prisons so badly needed.” In this report, we outline: 1. The current state of the prison estate and Prison Service: demonstrating that the English and Welsh prison system is in an utterly parlous state and as a result failing across almost every aspect of its core purpose. A wholesale change in leadership and culture across the Prison Service is required. 2. How many more prison places the system requires: recommending a substantial increase in the size of the prison estate with an additional 43,000 prison places (and an additional 10,000 prison cells to eliminate overcrowding) over the next decade. 3. The costs involved: to deliver the substantial increase in the prison estate, we recommend a reallocation of funding from other Government departments, with an increase in public spending on prisons of approximately £6.5bn in capital expenditure and approximately £1.7bn in annual resource expenditure. 4. The necessary changes to the regulatory regime: the Government has announced that it intends for prisons to receive planning permission through the Crown Development Route in order to reduce the amount of time taken for new prisons to receive planning permission. All future prisons should receive planning permission through this route. 5. What type of prisons the Government should deliver: the substantial prison building programme we propose will require an expansion of all types of the male prison estate, with new standards in the design and a shift in the location of the estate to ensure that every prisoner is able to undertake the necessary training, education and rehabilitation we envisage. Building a new generation of prisons is a challenging prospect. A great, or an even greater challenge, will be simultaneously creating a prison system which treats those in the State’s care in such a way that on release prisoners have a greater chance of leading productive lives, without continuing to commit crime. Properly incentivising prisoners towards such an objective is vital – that is why we condemn the current practice of automatic early release for almost all prisoners. We recommend a shift to a system of ‘earned early release’. In addition, the Government should examine previous recommendations in this domain made by Policy Exchange – relating to sentencing reform, prison reform and a bolstering of the entire community sentence regime.8 On additional funding: there is no scope to increase overall government spending. So any increase in funding to finance additional prisons must come from reductions in other sorts of public spending. This paper does not lay out in detail what other spending ought to be cut, but with government spending as a share of GDP at a post-war high, there is ample scope for the level of savings that would be required. Civil service staffing, the benefits bill, overseas aid and the regime for uprating pensions should all be reviewed. This Labour Government has come to believe that it has only a ‘narrow path’ to tread when it comes to law and order. On one side maintaining the confidence of the law-abiding majority; on the other acting in the interests of the ‘stakeholders’ and noisy activists who seek a more ‘progressive’ approach to those who choose to commit crime. This is exactly the kind of challenge that Labour Party strategists will have to navigate amidst its own internal ‘coalition politics’. It is also a debate which readily plays out in the Parliamentary Labour Party. On one side are those MPs, often hailing from the ‘Red Wall’, who understand that only a Labour Party that is “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” has any chance of retaining and winning support beyond a narrow sliver of ultra-progressives. On the other side are the Labour MPs who have, amongst other activities, vigorously campaigned against joint enterprise laws (which are key in the fight against crime) and claimed that some communities are “over-policed” despite those communities simultaneously being ravaged by knife and gang crime. Labour’s challenge in Government is to show to ordinary working people that it understands that the greatest threats they face come not from State oppression in the form of more prison places, but rather from an insufficiency of law and order – thus empowering the criminals and gangs who wilfully immiserate their lives. Too often Ministers, senior civil servants and the judiciary are insulated from the real-life consequences of their decisions relating to law and order. Many do not live or walk on dangerous and messy streets, or have to live next to those who have made criminality and anti-social behaviour a way of life. If Government wishes to genuinely serve the public – the vast majority of whom are living productive and law-abiding lives – Ministers must recognise that a less permissive environment for crime is required. Central to that is that the minority of people who do commit most crime should be far more likely to be in prison than is currently the case. This report shows Ministers how to deliver on a core element of such a plan     

London: Policy Exchange 2025. 55p.

By Kristen M. Zgoba, Rusty Reeves, Anthony Tamburello and Lisa Debilio

The relative contributions of mental illness and substance use disorders to criminal recidivism have important clinical and policy implications. This study reviewed 36 months of postrelease data for nearly 10,000 New Jersey state inmates released in 2013 to ascertain the rearrest rate of those diagnosed with mental illness, substance use disorders, both, or neither. We also examined whether certain characteristics suggestive of higher risk of psychiatric decompensation were associated with higher rates of rearrest. Released inmates who were diagnosed with a substance use disorder (without a mental illness) while incarcerated had the highest rate of rearrest upon release, followed by inmates diagnosed with both mental illness and substance use disorder together, inmates with neither a substance use disorder nor a mental illness, and lastly by inmates diagnosed with mental illness alone. These differences were statistically significant only between inmates with substance use disorders and those without a substance use disorder. Among those with a diagnosed mental disorder, there were no statistically significant differences in recidivism based on diagnosis or based on prescription of antipsychotic medication, injectable antipsychotic medication, or involuntary antipsychotic medication. These results support correctional institutions assertively addressing substance use disorders, especially for individuals returning to the community.

Approximately 2.2 million people, or nearly 1 percent of the United States population, were incarcerated in jails or prisons at the end of 2016.1 The vast majority of these individuals, nearly 97 percent, are expected to eventually return to the community.2 More than two thirds (68%) of persons released from prison will be rearrested within the first three years of release, and 83 percent will be returned to the criminal justice system within nine years of release.3 The societal and financial costs of incarceration and recidivism are burdensome.4 Thus, measuring and reducing recidivism is a high priority for most departments of corrections.5

Research indicates that former inmates with mental illness recidivate at a rate similar to undifferentiated offenders, though inmates with substance use disorders recidivate at a higher rate than undifferentiated offenders. Inmates with both mental illness and substance use disorder recidivate at an even higher rate. Additionally, persons with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, tend to have higher recidivism rates than those with other psychiatric disorders. The matter is complex, however, because other criminogenic factors, such as hostility, impulsivity, and antisocial attitudes and peers, may better account for crime among both those with and without mental illness diagnoses. Moreover, the effort to disentangle mental illness, substance abuse, and other criminogenic factors in the relationship to crime is nothing new. Most famously, the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, conducted between 1992 and 1995, explored the relationship between mental illness and violence, and the implications of that study continued to be debated for years after the conclusion of the study.19

Evidence suggests that better engagement in treatment for persons with mental illness on reentry does reduce the risk of committing a serious crime. Participation in mental health court reduces the risk of violent offending for justice-involved individuals with mental illness.20 Mela and Depiang reported that clozapine delayed the time to reoffending for former inmates prescribed an antipsychotic medication.21 More broadly, routine outpatient treatment, including medication, reduces the likelihood of arrest among persons with severe mental illness.

Notwithstanding the study by Mela and Depiang, little research has been done to consider the effects on recidivism of being prescribed an antipsychotic medication in prison, being prescribed injectable antipsychotic medication, or being prescribed medication involuntarily during incarceration. In the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE), nearly 75 percent of the patients discontinued their medications during the 18 months of the study. CATIE confirmed what psychiatrists already knew: that nonadherence with antipsychotic medication is the norm rather than the exception. In turn, such disengagement from treatment may contribute to incarceration among those diagnosed with severe mental illness.25 Supporting this concern, a prospective study from the United Kingdom reported a higher rate of violence in released prisoners with untreated schizophrenia. There is no reason to suspect that offenders with mental illness prescribed antipsychotic medication are any more likely to take their medication upon release than other individuals with mental illness in the community. Thus, the prescription of antipsychotic medication itself in prison may predict criminal recidivism.

Research suggests that long-acting injectable antipsychotic medications reduce nonadherence and hospital recidivism.27 In our experience, however, an inmate patient for whom long-acting injectable or involuntary antipsychotic medications are prescribed may represent an even greater risk of crime upon release than those for whom voluntary oral antipsychotic medications are prescribed in prison. In the New Jersey Department of Corrections (NJDOC), patients are usually prescribed long-acting injectable antipsychotic medication due to histories of nonadherence with oral medication, and these patients also often have histories of dangerousness associated with mental illness. Furthermore, inmate patients prone to nonadherence are often prescribed the medication involuntarily (on a long-term, non-emergency basis). Thus, we suspected that upon leaving prison, patients who had been prescribed injectable or involuntary treatment would stop taking their medications in the community, become symptomatic, and pose an increased risk for criminal recidivism.

In this study, consistent with the scientific literature, we hypothesized that the three-year recidivism rate of offenders with a mental illness, but not a substance use disorder, would be similar to the rate of offenders with neither problem; that the three-year recidivism rate of offenders with a substance use disorder would be higher than the rates of offenders without a substance use disorder, and of those with a mental illness alone; and that the three-year recidivism rate of offenders with both a mental illness and a substance use disorder would be higher than any of the other three groups. Among the group of offenders diagnosed with mental disorders, we hypothesized that, relative to other offenders with an identified mental illness, three-year recidivism rates would be higher among those with a psychotic disorder or a mood disorder diagnosis, those prescribed an antipsychotic medication upon release, those prescribed a long-acting injectable antipsychotic medication upon release, and those prescribed involuntary medication upon release.

Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online February 2020, 7p.

By Lois M. Davis, Louis T. Mariano, Melissa M. Labriola, Susan Turner, Andy Bogart, Matt Strawn, Lynn A. Karoly

This report presents findings from the three years of the California County Resentencing Pilot Program, which was established to support and evaluate a collaborative approach to exercising prosecutorial discretion in resentencing. Nine California counties were selected and were provided with funding to implement the prosecutor-initiated resentencing (PIR) three-year pilot program. In each pilot county, participants in the pilot were to include a county district attorney (DA) office and a county public defender (PD) office and may have included a community-based organization.

RAND, a nonprofit research organization, was selected by the California State Legislature as the independent evaluator of the pilot program. The pilot term was September 1, 2021, through September 1, 2024; the evaluation term was September 1, 2021, through January 31, 2025. The evaluation in this report comprises three components: a descriptive and outcomes analysis of data collected by DA offices and supplemented by data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, a qualitative implementation assessment, and a cost study to estimate the resources required to implement the pilot activities. Subsequent reports will present the recidivism outcomes.

Key Findings

PIR filled a gap in sentencing policies by focusing on crimes against persons.

The program was not a single intervention at the county level but rather a set of different types of interventions by the nine pilot counties and was implemented in the context of other resentencing legislation.

Each county developed its own eligibility criteria for resentencing consideration. The criteria focused on such factors as the age of the inmate, the crime committed, and the length and other details of the sentence.

Factors that facilitated implementation include a history of collaboration between the DA and PD, leadership support, positive political climate, adequate resources, close coordination with the courts, and the use of stipulation.

Factors that hindered implementation include a less-supportive political context, differing views between DAs and PDs, inclusion of more-serious and more-complex cases, staffing shortages, and the complexity of reentry planning.

Among 1,146 case reviews initiated during the reporting period, 240 cases were referred to the court for resentencing; the DA offices decided not to refer 710 cases that they had reviewed; and 196 cases were still under DA review or were deferred for future review.

Of the 233 cases for which courts had ruled on a resentencing motion, 227 resulted in resentencing, and 174 of those individuals have been released from prison.

Resources for pilot-related activities were primarily for personnel.

Total expenditures for the six counties most actively engaged in the pilot reached nearly $28 million over the three years.

Recommendations

There is a need to clarify the respective roles of DAs and PDs and for an accountability mechanism to encourage them to work more closely together.

There need to be more-realistic time frames for the resentencing process, including the number of cases reviewed and length of time for DA review of cases to serve as benchmarks for counties to meet.

Eligibility criteria should be revisited and possibly streamlined, in addition to some standardization of what factors should be considered in the review of cases and decisions of whether to recommend to the court for resentencing.

A more formal arrangement between California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the counties is needed to tackle the complexity of resentencing under PIR and improve access to clients and documentation.

Training is needed for the DA and PD staff, especially in such areas as the overall PIR initiative, case reviews, and offender central file analysis.

Key factors that helped streamline the resentencing process were the use of stipulation and having a dedicated court assigned to PIR cases. In the future, counties implementing PIR might consider using these two mechanisms.

Funding agencies could consider allocating the community-based organization contract funding to the PDs to implement and varying the size of the funding according to the size of the incarcerated population in a county.

Reentry planning requires further examination.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025.

By Elina Treyger, Maya Buenaventura, Ian Mitch, Laura Bellows, John S. Hollywood

Between 2020 and 2024, increasing volumes of aliens sought entry at the southwest U.S. border without valid entry documents. Several policies adopted since 2020 have sought to incentivize aliens — particularly those who have intentions of seeking asylum — to present themselves at ports of entry (POEs) and disincentivize crossing unlawfully between POEs. These trends and policies raise a question of the capacity of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP's) Office of Field Operations (OFO) to process such aliens and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) through POEs. A congressional request sought an analysis that could shed light on whether and how well OFO would be able to process increased volumes and the resources it would need to do so. This report is the result of that analysis.

Key Findings

There are multiple pathways for processing likely asylum seekers and UACs through POEs. This is a function of several factors, such as whether the alien arrives with a CBP One appointment; whether they are a member of a family unit, a UAC, or a single adult; whether derogatory information is discovered about the alien; and detention facility capacity.

OFO's capacity to process this population varies across time and POEs and is constrained by a mix of individual case characteristics; staffing; infrastructure and equipment; capacity; the capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; and operational demands.

The authors infer that OFO's effective monthly capacity to process likely asylum seekers and UACs in a safe, humane, and orderly manner at the level of resources present as of May 2023 is around 47,000–48,000 aliens.

Substantially increasing OFO processing capacity such that all or most likely asylum seekers and UACs (based on levels observed between October 2022 and February 2024) are processed at POEs would be extremely challenging at best.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2025. 209p.

By Megan Grabenauer; Nichole Bynum

This report describes a project seeking to provide timely, evidence-based intelligence on criminal justice populations regarding growing rates of drug use and patterns of fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds use; it presents a summary of goals and objectives, research questions, project design and methods, results, and applicability to criminal justice; and appendices include Hair Classification Descriptions, LC-MS/MS Method, Results of Fentanyl-Related Compounds and Other Compounds, and Most Common Drugs Detected in Oral Fluid Confirmation Testing and in Hair Confirmation Testing.

Abstract

This summary report discusses the research methods and results of a project that aimed to provide timely, evidence-based intelligence on growing rates of drug use and patterns of use of fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds among incarcerated populations. The project is a response to the US opioid epidemic that has resulted in an increase in law enforcement drug seizures and opioid overdose deaths, which has led to court-ordered mandatory drug testing (COMDT) of hair samples. The testing is routinely done at large commercial laboratories but does not typically include testing for fentanyl or fentanyl-related compounds. The report describes the two project phases, which focus on determining the prevalence of fentanyl and a selection of fentanyl-related compounds in hair specimens submitted for COMDT over six months, and Phase II, which involved a retrospective analysis of COMDT data from a five-year period. The report presents actionable information from several, geographically diverse US jurisdictions, and represents the first large-scale drug prevalence study in a COMDT population

 Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI International, 2024. 24p.

By Robin Olsen, Constance Hull, Barbara Pierce, Ashlin Oglesby-Neal

Many states have enacted comprehensive justice system reforms to reduce the use of incarceration and community supervision with the aim of focusing resources on people at higher risk of reoffending and investing in strategies to achieve better outcomes for people and communities. Missouri (in 2012) and Oregon (in 2013) passed legislation to implement earned discharge from supervision for people who fulfill their supervision conditions. The states use two different approaches; Missouri’s approach awards credits automatically for each month of compliance while Oregon’s approach includes a review of compliance at the midpoint of supervision to consider earned discharge and gives local supervision authorities discretion over implementation of the policy. We conducted interviews with stakeholders and analyzed administrative data in both states to examine the implementation and effects of the earned discharge policy reform. Our analysis found that people who receive earned discharge serve less of their original supervision sentence (2 years shorter on average in Missouri and 13 months shorter on average in Oregon) and less of their sentence when compared to people who successfully complete supervision in other ways. Importantly, rates of the use of earned discharge can vary across a state when discretion at the individual or county-level is a large component of the policy design. The analysis also found that people closing their supervision terms through earned discharge or earned compliance credits have similar recidivism rates compared to people who were otherwise eligible for earned discharge but who successfully complete supervision in other ways. This brief offers recommendations that Missouri, Oregon, and other jurisdictions can consider to build on these reforms, including clearly and simply defining eligibility for earned discharge, and reducing the discretion of judges or supervision staff to determine people’s eligibility to ensure consistency and equity in the application of earned discharge.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2022. 51p.

By Jesse Jannetta,

, Travis Reginal, Daniel Lawrence, Caitlin Flood, Emily LaGratta

Procedural justice, a framework for authority figures to treat people with fairness and respect, can improve probation supervision and core supervision outcomes. With support from Arnold Ventures, the Urban Institute, the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA), the Center for Court Innovation (CCI), and LaGratta Consulting partnered on an effort to develop and pilot a new procedural justice training curriculum—the Evaluation of Procedural Justice in Probation—outlining new tools and practices for probation officers. Analyses of interactions between supervising officers and people under supervision, survey responses regarding perceptions of supervision, and analyses of administrative data provided mixed findings, with some preliminary indications that participating in the procedural justice training may make probation officers’ treatment of people under supervision fairer and more respectful and improve supervision outcomes. However, the conclusions that can be drawn from even those results supportive of intervention impact are subject to significant limitations, given the nonexperimental nature of the design and the small number of observations in some of the data collected.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2021. 46p.

By The  Utah Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice

  This report evaluates the characteristics and outcomes of individuals under AP&P supervision that are classified as habitual offenders, as defined by SB213. Evaluation Scope & Criteria: Assesses individuals under AP&P supervision classified as habitual offenders per Senate Bill 213 (SB213) that started probation and parole between 2019 and 2024. Offense Type & Supervision Challenges: Most were convicted of property or drug-related crimes and frequently violated supervision due to substance use. Prison Returns & Risk Factors: Many returns occur early, with higher-risk individuals returning more frequently.  Policy Recommendations: Early intervention, tailored supervision, expanded treatment access, and comprehensive services can reduce recidivism, improve rehabilitation, and generate cost savings. 

Salt Lake City: The Commision, 2025. 27p.

By Penal Reform International and Women Beyond Walls

Globally, the number of women who are criminalised and imprisoned is rising at an alarming rate. Data published in February 2025 shows that more than 733,000 women and girls are estimated to be in prison worldwide. The female prison population has increased by 57 percent since 2000. The number of women going to prison is growing at a faster rate than that of men. Due to challenges in obtaining accurate information and the systemic lack of prioritisation of this issue, the true scale of the issue is likely to be significantly underreported. Thousands more women – and their children, whether detained alongside them or left behind – are impacted by the well-documented harms of involvement with the criminal justice system. Despite its rapid growth, women’s detention is largely overlooked in policy-making and high-level forums on women’s rights. In 2021, research by Women Beyond Walls revealed that initiatives supporting incarcerated women and girls are critically underfunded, with 70 percent of 34 organisations across 24 countries receiving no funding from women’s rights or human rights donors. This lack of prioritisation and resources hinders efforts to reduce women’s incarceration globally. In the rare instances where imprisoned women are considered in policy conversations, they are often reduced to their caregiving roles, marginalising those who do not fit this stereotype and exposing them to harsher penalties, stigma, and policy neglect, which exacerbates their vulnerabilities and makes their struggles invisible. The global female prison population is estimated to have increased by 57 percent since 2000. The number of women going to prison is growing at a faster rate than that of men. To address the criminalisation and imprisonment of women, there is an urgent need to gain a more detailed understanding of the causes. This report published by Penal Reform International and Women Beyond Walls, both members of the Global Campaign to Decriminalise Poverty and Status, examines some of the laws and practices across the world that, while not explicitly targeting women, disproportionately criminalise them due to poverty, their vulnerability and/or their status as a woman. Poverty is not gender-neutral, and women are overrepresented amongst the poor, resulting in the criminalisation of poverty having an excessive impact on women. The report also exposes how gender discrimination and patriarchal norms target women due to their socially constructed status as women, with laws and practices that disproportionately or differently impact them due to their gender, such as restrictions on reproductive rights or sexuality

Women Beyond Walls, 2025. 56p.

By Jane Mitchell

In today's polarized political climate, criminal justice reform remains one of the few issues that spans partisan divides. Voices from across the political spectrum agree: the United States needs a new approach to incarceration. Our current system of mass incarceration is costly, ineffective, and inequitable. It perpetuates intergenerational cycles of crime and poverty and pushes communities deeper into destitution.

This Article proposes a radically new approach. It presents a diversionary alternative-to-prison model for people facing serious felony charges — the majority of the prison population today. The approach calls on courts to divert felony offenders away from prison toward 501c3-run campuses. Instead of going to prison, offenders live and learn at a residential campus for one to three years. While there, they engage in a holistic, evidence-based program targeting their individual needs. In exchange for completing the program, participants have their prison sentences suspended and records expunged. Participants return home with the skills, mindsets, and support networks needed to succeed in modern society. Critically, government agencies hold campuses accountable for outcomes using an administrative structure similar to that used by high-performing urban charter schools — incentivizing stakeholders to reduce recidivism and alleviate poverty.

After laying out the model on paper, this Article presents a case study of The Reset Foundation ("Reset"), a non-profit organization I launched to pilot the model in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2018. Reset's experience suggests the model is a potentially powerful one for diverting felony offenders away from prison toward better life outcomes: with its first cohort of ten students, Reset eliminated ninety years of prison time. The case study simultaneously shows the complexities and challenges of implementing a model as comprehensive and systemic as this. To increase the chances of successful adoption, the public sector should instigate this work, not the non-profit sector, with significant support from local communities.

Kentucky Law Review, Volume 113, No. 2 (2025), 63p.

By Marco Castillo∗ Sera Linardi† Ragan Petrie‡

Many previously incarcerated individuals are rearrested in the months and years following release from prison. We investigate whether encouragement to use reentry support services reduces rearrest. Field experiment participants are offered a monetary incentive to complete different dosages of visits, either three or five, to a support service provider. The incentive groups increased visits compared to the control group, with those in the 3-visit treatment completing the most. Intent-to-treat effects on rearrest are null in the full sample, but Black participants who complete 3-4 visits are 21.8 percentage points less likely to be rearrested.

Unpublished paper, 2024. , 44p.

By the Independent Rikers Commission

. In October 2023, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams re-appointed the Independent Rikers Commission, which was first established in 2016 by then-Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. Our renewed mission: to re-examine and refresh the plan to close the jail complex on Rikers Island, given the post-COVID-19 world and the New York City law that mandates Rikers close entirely by August 31, 2027. After adding new members to broaden our Commission’s base of expertise and representation, we undertook over a year of research, analysis, and consultations. This report provides our unanimous conclusions and recommendations.

New York: The Commission, 2025; 114p.