We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 21 new reports to the Research Library:

COVID-19

• Risk Averse and Disinclined: What COVID Prison Releases Demonstrate About the Ability of the United States To Reduce Mass Incarceration by Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, April, 2023
  "All people released to house arrest [in Kansas]--15 in a prison system of 10,000--had 5 months or less left on their sentence, indicating that the releases did not significantly reduce the prison population or address social-distancing concerns."

Community Impact

• Neighborhood Incarceration Rates and Adverse Birth Outcomes in New York City, 2010-2014 by Louisa W. Holaday et al, March, 2023
  "In all models, as neighborhood incarceration rate increased, there was an increased incidence rate ratio of preterm birth [and an increased IRR of low birth weight]."

Conditions of Confinement

• Calculating Torture by Solitary Watch and Unlock the Box Campaign, May, 2023
  "State and federal prisons and local and federal jails in the U.S. have reported on a given day locking a combined total of more than 122,000 people in solitary confinement for 22 or more hours."
• The State of Prison Food in New England: A Survey of Federal and State Policy by Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law, April, 2023
  "Cost reductions that result in nutritionally inadequate food may ultimately cost taxpayers more as healthcare in public prisons constitutes their largest expenditure--estimates suggest these costs amount to over $12 billion per year."
• Substantiated Incidents of Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Correctional Authorities, 2016-2018 by Bureau of Justice Statistics, January, 2023
  "In 29% of abusive sexual contact incidents in adult correctional facilities, the victim was not offered or provided medical treatment."
• Special Report: Summer Heat in New Jersey Prisons by New Jersey Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson, September, 2022
  "The Ombuds office confirmed that ice was provided on hot days, however, some facilities provided ice free of charge several times per day while others required a minimal payment or provided ice only on a single shift each day."

Education

• Unlocking College: Strengthening Massachusetts' Commitment to College in Prison by The Boston Foundation, October, 2022
  "In Massachusetts, the average annual cost to incarcerate someone in a DOC facility is $92,000, significantly higher than a year of even the most expensive college program in the state."

Felon Disenfranchisement

• Increasing Public Safety by Restoring Voting Rights by Sentencing Project, April, 2023
  "Retaining one's voting rights regardless of involvement in the criminal legal system can be viewed as a public safety strategy."

General

• Correctional Populations in the United States, 2021 - Statistical Tables by Bureau of Justice Statistics, February, 2023
  "At yearend 2021, an estimated 5,444,900 persons were under the supervision of adult correctional systems in the United States, a decline of 1% (down 61,100 persons) from yearend 2020."

Health impact

• Estimated Use of Prescription Medications Among Individuals Incarcerated in Jails and State Prisons in the US by Jill Curran et al, April, 2023
  "The relative disparity between disease burden and pharmaceutical volume varied from 1.9-fold to 5.5-fold and was greatest for asthma and least for hepatitis."

Mental Health

• Mental health disparities in solitary confinement Paywall :( by Jessica T. Simes, Bruce Western, and Angela Lee, July, 2022
  "Disparities by mental health status result from the cumulative effects of prison misconduct charges and disciplinary hearings. We estimate that those with serious mental illness spend three times longer in solitary [than those without mental illness]."

Poverty and wealth

• Debt Sentence: How Fines and Fees Hurt Working Families by Wilson Center for Science and Justice and the Fines and Fees Justice Center, May, 2023
  "This is the first study to use a nationally representative sample in examining the personal impacts court-imposed debt has on people unable to immediately pay off their fines and fees."

Pretrial Detention

• New West Virginia Capias Law - Effective June 9, 2023 by West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, May, 2023
  "In March 2023, lawmakers passed legislation to address a growing reason why people are taken to West Virginia jails: capiases (also known as bench warrants). Senate Bill 633 provides a uniform standard for addressing capiases..."
• Does New York's Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in New York City by Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, March, 2023
  "The results indicate that bail reform's mandatory release provisions significantly reduced two-year re-arrest rates for any charge (44% vs. 50%) and for a felony (24% vs. 27%)."

Probation and parole

• Safe At Home: Improving Maryland's Parole Release Decision Making by Justice Policy Institute, May, 2023
  "In Maryland, [parole] grant rates decline sharply beginning at 40 years of age."
• Probation and Parole in the United States, 2021 by Bureau of Justice Statistics, February, 2023
  "From yearend 2011 to yearend 2021, the total adult community supervision population fell 22%, from 4,818,300 to 3,745,000. Most of this decrease was due to a decline of 25% (1 million) in the number of adults on probation."

Race and ethnicity

• Racial Injustice Report: Disparities in Philadelphia's Criminal Courts from 2015-2022 by Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, June, 2023
  "Black individuals account for 69% of police stops and 62% of individuals arrested; white people accounted for only 18% of police stops and 21% of arrests, despite the fact that Black and white people make up similar shares of the city's population."

Trials

• Federal Justice Statistics, 2021 by Bureau of Justice Statistics, December, 2022
  "U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 22% of matters concluded in FY 2021. The cases most likely to be declined were property fraud (45%) and regulatory public order (44%) offenses."

Women

• From Victim to Victor: An Inquiry into Death by Incarceration, Gender, and Resistance in Pennsylvania by Abolitionist Law Center, April, 2023
  "One third of [survey respondents'] cases involved the death of a romantic partner, and in 85% of those cases, the participants had experienced partner abuse."

Youth

• Effective Alternatives to Youth Incarceration by Sentencing Project, June, 2023
  "Effective alternative-to-incarceration programs produce better public safety outcomes than incarceration, at far lower costs, and do far less damage to young people's futures."
• Justice for Emerging Adults after Jones: The Rapidly Developing Use of Neuroscience to Extend Eighth Amendment Miller Protections to Defendants Ages 18 and Older by Francis X. Shen et al, June, 2022
  "This Essay provides the first empirical analysis of how courts are receiving the argument to raise the age for constitutional protections and introduces a publicly accessible, searchable database containing 494 such cases."