22 updates on mental health, race, recidivism, and more

Criminal Justice Research Library for March 28, 2024 Bringing you the latest in empirical research about mass incarceration

We've added 22 new reports to the Research Library:

Conditions of Confinement

  • Hazardous heat exposure among incarcerated people in the United States by Cascade Tuholske, Victoria D. Lynch, Raenita Spriggs, Yoonjung Ahn, Colin Raymond, Anne E. Nigra, & Robbie M. Parks, March, 2024
    "The number of hot days per year increased during 1982-2020 for 1,739 carceral facilities. State-run carceral facilities in TX and FL accounted for 52% of total exposure to potentially hazardous heat, despite holding 12% of all incarcerated people."
  • Crisis in Corrections: The DOC Staff Shortage and the Inmate Experience by Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (CCJRC), January, 2024
    "An overwhelming 93% of respondents incarcerated in Colorado say there is a staffing shortage at their facility, and 85% say that the shortage is either significant or moderate."

Economics of Incarceration

Health impact

Immigration

  • Electronic Monitoring of Migrants: Punitive not Prudent by American Bar Association Commission on Immigration, February, 2024
    "Electronic monitoring programs are not true alternatives to detention. They are an expansion of detention that imposes a significant financial cost on taxpayers and a considerable human toll on the participants and their family members."
  • Carceral Carousel by Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Detention Watch Network, May, 2023
    "States have sought to reduce prison populations and close some jails. However, those closures have rarely, if ever, meant that the prison facilities would no longer operate as cages...these closures have paved the way for new expansions of ICE detention."

LGBT

Mental Health

Poverty and wealth

Pretrial Detention

Race and ethnicity

Recidivism and Reentry

Trials

  • Under-resourced and Ignored: Indigent Defense in Schuylkill County by Wren Collective, January, 2024
    "We found an underfunded indigent defense system that lacks the support for enough lawyers to represent clients, including at bail hearings, for immigration consultations, and adequate technology for attorneys to properly do their jobs."
  • Restoring and Rebuilding: Indigent Defense in Gwinnett County by Wren Collective, January, 2024
    "In 2022, the county had 132 lawyers willing to take court appointments. Now, that number is 80. Those 80 lawyers are responsible for 13,000 cases/year. There are only 8 lawyers eligible to handle murder cases, which have a potential punishment of death..."
  • Indigent Criminal Defense and Commonwealth's Attorneys by Virginia's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, November, 2023
    "The number of attorneys serving as court-appointed defense attorneys in Virginia has declined since FY13, especially during the last few years. Participation has declined by more than half, from nearly 4,000 attorneys in FY13 to about 1,900 in FY23."

Youth

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Federal judge’s ruling clears the way for Louisiana to end prison gerrymandering without waiting until 2030

Last month, a federal judge struck down Louisiana state legislative maps for unfairly diluting the political representation of Black residents.

In this new briefing, we explain how this judicial ruling provides the state with an opportunity to join the rapidly growing list of places that have ended prison gerrymandering.

Research spotlight: PrisonOversight.org equips the fight for accountability in jails and prisons

For many corrections departments, meaningful and effective oversight is the exception, not the rule.

In this new blog post, we highlight a new resource that aims to fill this gap by providing data to increase accountability in prisons.

Welcome, Regan Huston!

Regan Huston recently joined our team as our first-ever Digital Communications Strategist. In this position, she'll leverage her deep social media experience to use our platforms, like Instagram and X, to expose the harms of mass incarceration. Welcome, Regan!

 

Our other newsletters

  • General Prison Policy Initiative newsletter (archives)
  • Ending prison gerrymandering (archives)

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Prison Policy Initiative
PO Box 127
Northampton, Mass. 01061

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