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.

Securing a Second Chance

Hello friends,

Over 600,000 people are released from prison each year. When they walk out of the prison walls, they’re met with a daunting series of challenges as they work to rebuild their lives, families, and careers.

April is Second Chance Month, a time dedicated to acknowledging and addressing the obstacles that formerly incarcerated people face after their release. So this month, we’re highlighting some of the research that shows what strategies actually work to help formerly incarcerated people overcome the most significant difficulties they face on a daily basis.

• Guaranteed basic income: Formerly incarcerated people were often on precarious financial footing before being locked up and are even more insecure after their release. There is a growing body of research, including from the Chicago Future Fund and the Penn Center for Guaranteed Income Research (the latter report is co-authored by Prison Policy Initiative alum Lucius Couloute), that shows ensuring recently released people have the money to meet their basic needs, improves housing stability, decreases stress, increases food security, and much more.
• Housing: The challenges that formerly incarcerated people face in securing housing have been well documented. They are 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than the general public. It should come as no surprise, then, that one of the most effective ways to help people after their release is to simply make it easier for them to secure housing through a model known as Housing First. This model shows that if someone has access to safer, secure housing, they’re better able to address the many other challenges that come their way.
• Employment: Similar to housing, formerly incarcerated people face a litany of barriers to securing a job. So, it is no surprise that formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a much higher rate than the rest of the country. Recent research explains this problem and what can be done to fix it.

It is also important to remember that, as this stellar report from Colleen Chien explains, for many formerly incarcerated people, the notion of a second chance is out of reach due to institutional barriers to getting records expunged, restoring their right to vote, and much more.

Now, onto this month’s additions to our Research Library. This month, we added 24 new reports that focus on immigration, the death penalty, drug policy and more.

Take care,

Leah Wang, Senior Research Analyst

We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 24 new reports to the Research Library:

Community impact

See 106 reports on the impact of the criminal legal system on housing, schools, employment, neighborhoods, and more.

• Building a Mass Movement for Community-Led Public Safety by Square One Project, May, 2024
  "This report examines the political context of [community violence intervention] advocacy...and lays out a framework for how to build a mass movement...that can dramatically reduce gun violence over the long term."

Conditions of confinement

See 270 reports on prison and jail conditions such as solitary confinement, labor, discipline, food, and more.

• Slavery Revisited in Penal Plantation Labor by Andrea C. Armstrong, April, 2012
  "Most types of prison labor will approximate conditions of involuntary servitude [thus] permissible under the convict-labor exception of the Thirteenth Amendment...Other types of labor, however, may approximate conditions of slavery."

Death penalty

See 154 reports on capital punishment and executions.

• Talking turkey about the death penalty: outgoing governors and the president must use their clemency power now by Prison Policy Initiative, November, 2024
  "We applaud elected leaders when they use clemency to relieve people of excessive or unnecessary criminal sentences. But too often, they overlook those given the most draconian punishment on the books -- the death penalty."

Drug policy and treatment

See 177 reports on punishing and treating drug use in the criminal legal system.

• From Crisis to Care: Addressing Addiction, Mental Health, and Homelessness Through Health And Supportive Services by Drug Policy Alliance, March, 2025
  This policy brief explains the complex relationships between mental health, drug use, and homelessness, and highlights effective and humane policy solutions that address these issues and create healthier, safer communities.

Economics of incarceration

See 179 reports on the economic drivers and consequences of mass incarceration.

• Estate to State: Pay-to-Stay Statutes and the Problematic Seizure of Inherited Property by Brittany L. Deitch, October, 2024
  "When states seize inherited property to satisfy the costs of incarceration, the states interfere with the decedent's freedom to choose their beneficiaries as well as the beneficiary's freedom to inherit."

Families

See 156 reports on the criminal legal system’s impacts on families.

• Parental Prisoners: The Incarcerated Mother's Constitutional Right to Parent by Emily Halter, July, 2018
  "While the Supreme Court has chipped away at the rights of prisoners in other areas, finding that many rights are forfeited at the prison doors, it has never ruled on the status of parental rights during incarceration."

General

See 165 reports on the criminal legal system.

• The Incoherence of Prison Law by Justin Driver & Emma Kaufman, December, 2021
  "Exposing the myths that animate prison law yields broader insights about judicial regulation of prisons. This Article explains how outdated tropes have narrowed prisoners' rights and promoted the country's dependence on penal institutions."

Health and healthcare

See 209 reports on access to healthcare, chronic and infectious disease, mortality, and more.

• Impediments to Reproductive Justice: The Criminal Legal System and American Carceral State by Harvard Law Review, June, 2024
  "Until there is a reckoning with how criminal law relates to and affects reproductive rights, legal advocates for abortion cannot fully realize reproductive justice."
• A review and content analysis of U.S. Department of Corrections end-of-life decision making policies by Victoria Helmly et al, April, 2022
  "When stated, the overwhelming majority (16 of 20, 80%) of policies state that other incarcerated persons could not serve as a health-care proxy."
• Medication-Assisted Treatment in Criminal Justice Agencies Affiliated with the CJ-DATS (Criminal Justice-Drug Abuse Treatment Studies): Availability, Barriers & Intentions by Peter D. Friedmann et al, January, 2013
  "Pregnant women and individuals experiencing withdrawal were most likely to receive MAT for opiate dependence in jail or prison, while those re-entering the community from jail or prison were the least likely to receive MAT."

Immigration

See 72 reports on the incarceration and detainment of immigrants.

• Duration in Immigration Detention and Health Harms by Altaf Saadi et al, January, 2025
  "Detention periods of 6 months or more [were] associated with higher rates of self-rated poor health, mental illness, and PTSD compared with those detained less than 6 months.."

Incarceration rates and trends

See 337 reports on the growth of prison and jail populations.

• California may take a big step backwards towards more incarceration with Proposition 36 by Prison Policy Initiative, October, 2025
  "[California's Prop 36, which was approved by voters in the November 2024 elections,] is projected to fully undo hard fought progress made in reducing California's prison population."

Jails

See 287 reports on jail populations, jail conditions, jail construction, and more.

• Expanding Alternatives to Incarceration in NYC: A Pathway to Safely Closing Rikers Island by New York City Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) and Reentry Coalition, January, 2025
  "Expanded application of ATls alone will not fully decarcerate Rikers. The City must also...fully implement its 6-A Work Release program and empower the Local Conditional Release Commission to use their authority to release eligible individuals."

Policing

See 272 reports on arrests, traffic stops, law enforcement interactions, and more.

• Four Decades of Law Enforcement in New York State: Changing Arrest, Prosecution, and Sentencing Trends, 1980-2023 by Data Collaborative for Justice, December, 2024
  "After adjusting for population declines outside NYC, misdemeanor arrest rates per 100,000 people in the suburbs and upstate increased from 1980 to 1990 and then declined throughout nearly all of the remaining 34 years examined."

Pretrial detention

See 127 reports on the costs and outcomes of detaining people before trial.

• Toward Safety, Liberty, and Equity: A Community-Centered Framework for Redesigning Minnesota's Pretrial System by Minnesota Justice Research Center, February, 2025
  "On average, people spend longer in jail pretrial in Greater Minnesota, particularly in counties that overlap with or border Minnesota's tribal nations."
• In Our Backyards: Money Bail in Rural Tennessee by ACLU Tennessee, September, 2021
  "From 2000 to 2016, the pretrial incarceration rate increased 163% in the state's 53 rural counties, compared to an increase of only 2% in the state's urban counties."

Privatization

See 104 reports on how private companies exploit incarcerated people and their families.

• Prison Banned Books Week: Books give incarcerated people access to the world, but tablets are often used to wall them off by Prison Policy Initiative, September, 2024
  "When we last looked at the availability of prison tablets in 2019, they were relatively new and rare behind bars. Today, at least 48 prison systems indicate they have tablets or, in the case of Alaska and Nevada, are in the process of implementing them."

Probation and parole

See 126 reports on community supervision policies, conditions, violations, and more.

• A Call for Greater Compassion: How Pennsylvania's Compassionate Release Statute Reinforces Cruelty by Abolitionist Law Center, December, 2025
  "Altering the life expectancy requirements could make the statute less restrictive...Requiring merely that an individual be seriously ill, in tandem with proposing a release plan, would provide a far more effective, compassionate avenue of relief."
• The Public Harm Under a For-Profit Probation System: Spotlight on Augusta by Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, December, 2024
  "Metro Augusta has some of the state's highest concentrations of Georgians with low incomes. For Georgians experiencing poverty, a private probation model provides few to no easy exits from misdemeanor probation supervision."

Public opinion

See 50 reports on public perceptions of crime, prison, reform, and more.

• Mass incarceration is on the ballot by Prison Policy Initiative, September, 2024
  "While presidential campaigns get most of the attention...many lesser-known down-ballot races can have a much more dramatic impact on criminal legal system reform in America. This guide focuses on the most common and consequential offices."

Racial and ethnic disparities

See 183 reports on racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal legal system.

• New, expanded data on Indian country jails show concerning trends extend to tribal lands by Prison Policy Initiative, October, 2024
  "Much like other jails across the country, Indian country jail populations are quickly bouncing back from the lows of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this growth has disproportionately impacted women and older adults."

Reentry and recidivism

See 248 reports on the challenges and outcomes for people released from incarceration, including collateral consequences.

• The Labor Market for People with Conviction Histories: An Examination of Access to Good Jobs by Vera Institute of Justice, January, 2025
  "Findings from this study underscore the value of a bachelor's degree's flexibility, but also the ambiguous barriers people leaving prison with these credentials may have to navigate in seeking a job."

Women and gender

See 142 reports on gender disparities in the criminal legal system.

• Great Weight: A Review of California Board of Parole Hearings Transcripts to Assess Frequency and Consideration of Intimate Partner Violence among Women Convicted of Homicide Offenses by Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School, June, 2023
  "[By reviewing] over 140 parole hearing transcripts...we found that approximately 23% of women incarcerated for homicide in California are serving time for a crime directly linked to their experience of intimate partner violence."
• Depressive Symptoms among Pregnant and Postpartum Women in Prison by Mariann A. Howland et al, July, 2021
  "More time remaining in prison after giving birth was associated with higher levels of postpartum depressive symptoms, after adjusting for depressive symptoms during pregnancy."