Our mission is to empower activists, journalists, and policymakers to shape effective criminal legal system policy, so we go beyond our original reports and analyses to curate a database of the best empirical research on the criminal legal system available online. This newsletter includes just the newest additions to this database.

A closer look at the incarcreation of women

Hello Friends,

March is Women’s History Month, so we wanted to highlight the unique and often hidden ways in which America’s failed experiment with mass incarceration has harmed women and girls.

To get the big-picture view of the incarceration of women and girls, we recommend starting out with our report, Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024, which provides a quick overview of the main issues. But this is only the beginning.

• If you want to understand the underlying trends in the incarceration of women, including racial demographics and what they’re most often incarcerated for, check out this 2023 report in the Annual Review of Criminology.
• The Ella Baker Center’s report, Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families, provides an eye-opening explanation of how even women who are not incarcerated themselves face a disproportionate burden supporting loved ones who are behind bars, financially and emotionally. These impacts are even greater for women of color and their families.
• And if you want to understand the experiences of people who are pregnant or seek reproductive care during incarceration, one research team is leading the way on data collection and advocacy on this topic.

There is a lot of ground to cover on this topic, far more than we can highlight here. If you want to know more about the impact of mass incarceration on women and girls, we recommend checking out our collection of research on this topic by other organizations in our Research Library, as well as our original research on the topic.

And now, on to the rest of the additions to our Research Library over the last month. We’ve added 26 new reports on the financial consequences of pretrial detention, guaranteed basic income for formerly incarcerated people, gender-affirming care in carceral settings, and more.

Take care,

- Leah Wang, Senior Research Analyst

We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 26 new reports to the Research Library:

COVID-19

See 80 reports on the pandemic's impact on prisons and jails.

• Clemency for the Common Good: An Argument to Release Incarcerated Persons in the General Public Interest by Deborah M. Ahrens, November, 2024
  "Incarcerating people often is harmful to the rest of the community, and that broad social benefit is, in and of itself, an appropriate justification for release."

Community impact

See 105 reports on the impact of the criminal legal system on housing, schools, employment, neighborhoods, and more.

• Chicago Future Fund: The Impact of Guaranteed Basic Income on the Lives of Post-incarceration Individuals by Equity and Transformation, February, 2025
  "At the beginning of the program, in March 2023, 35 percent of participants reported that they had experienced homelessness the year prior. The average rate of homelessness throughout the program was 24 percent--a decrease of 11 percentage points."

Conditions of confinement

See 268 reports on prison and jail conditions such as solitary confinement, labor, discipline, food, and more.

• Lockdowns, Overtime, and Unmet Needs: Why we must solve the current prison staffing crisis by John Howard Association, October, 2024
  "As of the end of March 2024, the [Illinois Dept. of Corrections] reported no improvement in staffing with a deficit of 4,314 in authorized facility-based staff, reflecting an overall 29% vacancy rate."

Economics of incarceration

See 178 reports on the economic drivers and consequences of mass incarceration.

• 10 ways that mass incarceration is an engine of economic injustice by Prison Policy Initiative, August, 2025
  "Rather than alleviate poverty through jobs, housing, education, and healthcare, the U.S. uses criminalization to force people to comply with a deeply unequal economy."

Families

See 154 reports on the criminal legal system’s impacts on families.

• Communication Impacts People in IDOC and Their Support Systems: Changes are needed to improve outcomes and daily living by John Howard Association, February, 2024
  "Today, a 20-minute phone call costs approximately 19 cents. Though this is a huge improvement from prior years, it should be noted that for people in custody without funds, even this nominal amount can be impactful."

General

See 163 reports on the criminal legal system.

• The Power and Problem of Criminal Justice Data: A Twenty-State Review by Measures for Justice, January, 2023
  "The problem is, [pretrial and bail] data rarely exist, especially in court records. Of the twenty states we collected data from, only two, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, had data on pretrial practices, and these were limited at best."

Health and healthcare

See 204 reports on access to healthcare, chronic and infectious disease, mortality, and more.

• Gender-Affirming Surgical Care in Carceral Settings by Matthew Murphy, MD, MPH, Carl Streed Jr., MD, MPH, and Josiah D. Rich, MD, MPH, January, 2025
  "The evaluation process for surgical affirmation should follow WPATH's guidance, including aligning surgical and medical gender-affirming care planning as well as the person's reproductive goals."
• Identification and Health Risks of an Emerging Means of Drug Use in Correctional Facilities by David Kuai et al, December, 2024
  "The findings of this case series provide insights into the variable clinical presentations associated with the misuse of [drug-soaked paper] strips among incarcerated individuals."
• Prevalence of Disability Among Older Adults in Prison by Katherine E.M. Miller et al, December, 2024
  "The striking disparity in cognitive limitations between incarcerated and community-dwelling older adults uncovered in our study should motivate a need for programs that focus on this population."
• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Federal Medical Center Devens by U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, December, 2024
  "The medical institution had only 1 physician and the Clinical Director (who is also a physician) to manage the care of approximately 941 inmates: 2 of the institution's 6 physicians were on extended leave without pay, and 3 other positions were vacant."
• New research links medical copays to reduced healthcare access in prisons by Prison Policy Initiative, August, 2024
  "People with chronic conditions in state prisons where copays exceed a week's wage are less likely to have seen a healthcare clinician while incarcerated than those in prisons that charge no copays or lower copay amounts."
• Deaths In Dauphin County Prison (Harrisburg, Penn.), 2008-2022 by Jonah Walters, Ph.D, Grace Sosa, and Terence Keel, Ph.D, UCLA BioCritical Studies Lab, June, 2024
  "The Dauphin County Office of the Coroner appears to have habitually misclassified in-custody deaths attributable to traumatic violence as 'natural,' especially in cases involving deceased Black men."
• Understanding the association between frequent emergency department use and jail incarceration: A cross-sectional analysis by Vidya Eswaran, MD, et al, January, 2022
  "[Our research] provides an empiric basis for the idea of a revolving door between the county-level carceral and health care systems."
• Factors Associated with Incarceration in Older Adults Experiencing Homelessness: Results from the HOPE HOME Study by Ilana Garcia-Grossman, MD, et al, June, 2021
  "Housing status was dynamic and approximately half exited homelessness during study follow-up; remaining homeless was independently associated with risk of incident incarceration."

International incarceration

See 45 reports on incarceration trends worldwide, and how they compare to the U.S..

• States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2024 by Prison Policy Initiative, June, 2024
  "Looking at each state in the global context reveals that, in every part of the country, incarceration is out of step with the rest of the world."

Jails

See 284 reports on jail populations, jail conditions, jail construction, and more.

• Research roundup: Evidence that a single day in jail causes immediate and long-lasting harms by Prison Policy Initiative, August, 2024
  "We find that there is no "safe" way to jail a person, nor is there an amount of time a person can be detained without escalating short- and long-term risks to themselves and their communities."

Mental health

See 86 reports on the prevalence and treatment of mental illness in the criminal legal system.

• The relationship of social contacts with prisoners' mental health: a systematic review by N. Machado et al, September, 2024
  "With respect to objective social support, in our systematic review, in-person visits were associated with increased psychological distress, including depression and anxiety, whereas support through letters and phone calls was associated with lower anxiety"

Policing

See 271 reports on arrests, traffic stops, law enforcement interactions, and more.

• Guilt by Association: How Police Databases Punish Black and Latinx Youth by Andy Ratto, Nina Loshkajian, Eleni Manis, PhD, MPA, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), September, 2023
  "California [made] an effort to open the rolls of CalGang after a 2016 audit revealed egregious errors in the database. And the errors were appalling--42 babies under one-year-old were falsely listed in CalGang."

Poverty and wealth

See 156 reports on fines, fees, debt, and the criminalization of poor people.

• 1000 Freed and Counting: 2018-2024 Bond Report by Envision Freedom Fund, December, 2024
  "In New York, [bond] amounts are higher than ever: Immigration judges in the state currently set the majority of bonds at $10,000 or more, making them the highest in the country."

Pretrial detention

See 125 reports on the costs and outcomes of detaining people before trial.

• Setting Bail to Fail: The Gap Between Bail Reform's Goals and Reality (New York) by Scrutinize, January, 2025
  "Our analysis shows that judges followed rules requiring specific bail options but often set amounts that undermined the statutory intent to provide affordable alternatives, particularly to commercial bonds."
• The Financial Consequences of Pretrial Detention by Pablo Slutzky and Sheng-Jun Xu, October, 2022
  "Pretrial detention results in higher rates of household insolvency, driven by higher rates of Chapter 7 bankruptcies and judgment liens."

Reentry and recidivism

See 246 reports on the challenges and outcomes for people released from incarceration, including collateral consequences.

• Donald Trump can still be president , but he could be barred from being a bartender, car salesman -- or real estate developer by Prison Policy Initiative, June, 2024
  "Even when jurisdictions do not explicitly ban people with felony convictions from obtaining occupational licenses, they typically give licensing agencies so much discretion that they can deter potential job-seekers with records from applying."
• Providing Identification for Those Released from Incarceration by National Conference of State Legislatures, January, 2024
  "Approximately 21 states have laws aimed at helping previous offenders get identification either at release or immediately following. But these laws vary."

Sentencing policy

See 142 reports on the rise and impact of excessive criminal sentences.

• An Act of Regression: Louisiana takes a giant step backward in parole and sentencing reform by Prison Policy Initiative, August, 2024
  "Together, [bills HB9 and HB10] will set prison and sentencing reform back decades in the state: although lawmakers have framed them as "public safety" measures, these laws will have the opposite effect."

Women and gender

See 138 reports on gender disparities in the criminal legal system.

• Women's Incarceration in Idaho: The Problem and a Path Forward by Idaho Justice Project, January, 2025
  "In 2022, Idaho had the highest rate of incarceration for women in the nation. The rate (132 per 100,000) was three times the national average (43 per 100,000)."

Youth and juvenile justice

See 399 reports on youth in the criminal legal system.

• Only Young Once: Dismantling Georgia's Punitive Youth Incarceration System by Southern Poverty Law Center, December, 2024
  "Georgia spends $217,517 annually to incarcerate a child in its system, only to produce a three year recidivism rate of 35.1%."