We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 20 new reports to the Research Library:

Community Impact

• Coordinating Safety: Building and Sustaining Offices of Violence Prevention and Neighborhood Safety by Vera Institute of Justice, November, 2023
  "Most offices of violence prevention or neighborhood safety focus specifically on community and gun violence, with a smaller number also focusing on other forms of interpersonal violence."

Drug Policy

• The Real Causes and Solutions to Public Suffering, Including Public Drug Use by Drug Policy Alliance, January, 2024
  "In your reporting, we encourage you to prioritize the people most directly impacted by the government failures... rather than the people whose lives are disrupted by the discomfort of witnessing this public suffering in their day to day lives." This issue brief is intended for journalists who report on public drug use and related policies in U.S. cities.

Education

• Participation and Outcomes in SUNY College-in-Prison Programs by Office of Higher Education in Prison, State University of New York, November, 2023
  "After falling 55 percent in 2020-2021 from their peak in 2018-2019, total credits earned by incarcerated students were 23 percent below their pre-pandemic level in 2021-2022."
• Are Schools in Prison Worth It? The Effects and Economic Returns of Prison Education by Ben Stickle & Steven Sprick Schuster, October, 2023
  "Vocational education is somewhat more practical than ABE or secondary education, leading to a 15.6% decrease in the odds ratio for recidivism, but...College programs are especially effective tools for decreasing recidivism."

General

• Ten Principles on Reducing Mass Incarceration by American Bar Association Working Group on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System, August, 2022
  "It is imperative that jurisdictions across the country reverse the devastating trend of mass incarceration and, in so doing, focus these efforts on reducing disparities in incarceration."

Gun Control

• U.S. Youth Attitudes on Guns by American University's Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL), July, 2023
  "59% of participants agreed that gun safety laws should be stricter. Yet about 40% of youth reported at least "somewhat easy" access to a gun, with 21% reporting "very easy" access to a gun."

Health impact

• Race-Specific Risk Factors for All-Cause, Natural, and Unnatural Deaths Among Individuals Released from [Minnesota] State Prison by Minnesota Department of Corrections, March, 2023
  "Both all-cause mortality and mortality due to specific causes of death were much higher among individuals released from [Minn.] state prison than among the general population."
• Climate Change and Incarcerated Populations: Confronting Environmental and Climate Injustices Behind Bars by Emily C. Gribble and David N. Pellow, June, 2022
  "[We] focus on the brutal conditions incarcerated firefighters and natural disaster workers face while confronting year-round wildfire season as well as in the aftermath of climate-linked industrial accidents and weather events."
• Hell and High Water: How Climate Change Can Harm Prison Residents and Jail Residents, and Why COVID-19 Conditions Litigation Suggests Most Federal Courts Will Wait-And-See When Asked to Intervene by Paloma Wu and D. Korbin Felder, June, 2022
  "Prison and jail residents in most parts of the country will have difficulty using the courts to obtain preliminary relief to prevent climate-related injuries and harms."
• Delayed Cancer Diagnosis and Management, Washington Department of Corrections by Office of the Corrections Ombuds, Washington State, January, 2021
  "These cases demonstrate the need to improve several care delivery processes within DOC, to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients with a cancer diagnosis."
• Tombstone Towns and Toxic Prisons: Prison Ecology and the Necessity of an Anti-prison Environmental MovementPaywall :( by Elizabeth A. Bradshaw, July, 2018
  "The failure of the Environmental Protection Agency to consider prisoners within federal environmental justice guidelines facilitates continued harm for this vulnerable population."

Incarceration Rates Growth Causes

• The Prison Bust: Declining carceral capacity in an era of mass incarcerationPaywall :( by Jacob Harris et al., November, 2023
  "We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022."

Police and Policing

• A Large-Scale Study of the Police Retention Crisis by Ben Grunwald, June, 2024
  "The increase in [police leaving their jobs] after the summer of 2020 was smaller, later, less sudden, and possibly less pervasive than the retention-crisis narrative suggests."

Pretrial Detention

• Evaluating Bail Reform in New York's Justice Courts by The John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety, January, 2024
  "In cases targeted by bail reform, sentence severity declined. Among misdemeanors resulting in conviction, jail sentences declined from 11% in 2018 to 6% in 2021."

Probation and parole

• The Carceral Home by Kate Weisburd, January, 2024
  "A fifty-state analysis of court supervision rules...reveal[s] the extent of targeted invasions of intimate life in the name of rehabilitation or an alternative to prison, rendering the home a highly surveilled space."

Race and ethnicity

• "They Need to Go in There": Criminalized Subjectivity among Formerly Incarcerated Black Men by Lucius Couloute, January, 2024
  "When explicitly asked about what they would say to powerful state officials, these Black men argued for (1) increased criminal justice transparency, (2) improved prison conditions, (3) additional reintegrative supports..."

Recidivism and Reentry

• Housing security among people with criminal records: A focus on landlords by Dr. Lucius Couloute and Kacie Snyder, September, 2023
  "These data suggest that landlord decision-making processes may be structured by broadly stigmatizing ideas around the incompetence or dangerousness of criminalized applicants, even when such stereotypes are unsubstantiated or disproven."

Sentencing Policy and Practices

• Still Cruel and Unusual: Extreme Sentences for Youth and Emerging Adults by Sentencing Project, August, 2024
  "Many of the 8,600 individuals [who were under 18 at offense serving life and virtual life sentences] have already served decades...beyond their risk to public safety."

Sexual offenses

• Responding to Crimes of a Sexual Nature: What We Really Want Is No More Victims by Sentencing Project, January, 2024
  "Compared to a decade ago, individuals convicted of rape or sexual assault are serving more time in prison prior to release...If this pattern persists over time, it will have a compounding effect on the size of the prison population."

Women

• Global governance and climate stress of incarcerated women: the case of the U.SPaywall :( by Daniela Jauk-Ajamie, November, 2022
  "This paper takes the United States as a case study on the gendered implications of hyper-incarceration in the age of climate emergency."