We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 22 new reports to the Research Library:

Community Impact

• New data: The revolving door between homeless shelters and prisons in Connecticut by Prison Policy Initiative, February, 2021
  "1 in 5 people who used homeless shelters in the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness' network had been released from prison in the past three years."

Conditions of Confinement

• Revisiting and Unpacking the Mental Illness and Solitary Confinement Relationship Paywall :( by Sonja E. Siennick, Mayra Picon, Jennifer M. Brown & Daniel P. Mears, December, 2020
  "Having a mental illness was associated with an increase of up to 170% in the odds of extended solitary confinement, depending on the diagnosis."

Crime and Crime Rates

• Misdemeanor Prosecution by Amanda Y. Agan, Jennifer L. Doleac, and Anna Harvey, March, 2021
  "We find that, for the marginal defendant, nonprosecution of a nonviolent misdemeanor offense leads to large reductions in the likelihood of a new criminal complaint over the next two years."

Death Penalty

• Death Penalty Statutes and Murder Rates: Evidence from Synthetic Controls by Brett Parker, February, 2021
  "Applying this technique using seven states that recently abolished the death penalty and twenty-nine states that retained the punishment during the same period, I find no evidence that the presence of a capital punishment statute in a state is sufficient,"

Drug Policy

• Medicaid Expansion Increased Medications For Opioid Use Disorder Among Adults Referred By Criminal Justice Agencies Paywall :( by Utsha G. Khatri, Benjamin A. Howell, and Tyler N. A. Winkelman, April, 2021
  "Receipt of medications for OUD increased more for individuals referred by criminal justice agencies in states that expanded Medicaid compared with those in states that did not."

General

• Campaign for Criminal Justice Data Modernization: Recommendations From an Expert Roundtable by Arnold Ventures, April, 2021
  "Unfortunately, criminal justice reform is made more difficult by data that is incomplete and fraught with error."

Health impact

• Prison Population Reductions and COVID-19: A Latent Profile Analysis Synthesizing Recent Evidence From the Texas State Prison System by Noel Vest, Oshea Johnson, Kathryn Nowotny & Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, December, 2020
  "Current prison population and level of employee staffing predicted membership in the high-outbreak and high-death profiles when compared with the low-outbreak profile."

Immigration

• Immigrant Sanctuary Policies and Crime-Reporting Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis of Reports of Crime Victimization to Law Enforcement, 1980 to 2004Paywall :( by Ricardo D. Martinez-Schuldt and Daniel E. Martinez, January, 2021
  "We find that Latinos are more likely to report violent crime victimization to law enforcement after sanctuary policies have been adopted within their metropolitan areas of residence."

Incarceration Rates Growth Causes

• New data on jail populations: The good, the bad, and the ugly by Prison Policy Initiative, March, 2021
  "While the total jail population dropped by 25% between June 2019 and June 2020, racial disparities increased over the same period."

Jails

• What Jails Cost: A Look at Spending in America's Large Cities by Vera Institute of Justice, April, 2021
  "Since 2011, jail budgets increased 13 percent--accounting for inflation--while jail populations declined 28 percent."

LGBT

• Visualizing the unequal treatment of LGBTQ people in the criminal justice system by Prison Policy Initiative, March, 2021
  "The data is clear: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ ) people are overrepresented at every stage of criminal justice system, starting with juvenile justice system involvement."

Mental Health

• Policing and public health calls for service in Philadelphia by Jerry H. Ratcliffe, March, 2021
  "In Philadelphia, at least in a relatively normal (i.e. non-COVID-19) year, calls to the police that start or result in some form of medical/public health connection comprise about 8% of the police activity that originates from the public."

Police and Policing

• Black and (Thin) Blue (Line): Corruption and Other Political Determinants of Police Killings in America by Oguzhan C. Dincer and Michael Johnston, February, 2021
  "Our evidence suggests that police can kill Black Americans with impunity because of a lack of accountability - exemplified by corruption - that is largely determined by political influences."

Pretrial Detention

• One Year Later: Bail Reform and Judicial Decision-Making in New York City by Center for Court Innovation, April, 2021
  "Predictably, making more cases newly re-eligible for bail and detention in July increased judges' use of both options."

Privatization

• It's all about the incentives: Why a call home from a jail in New York State can cost 7 times more than the same call from the state's prisons by Prison Policy Initiative, March, 2021
  "These exorbitant phone rates cost some the poorest residents of New York State -- and a group disproportionately made up of women of color -- more than $13 million a year just to talk to their jailed loved ones."

Probation and parole

• Applying Procedural Justice in Community Supervision Assessment of Pilot Testing in the Georgia Department of Community Supervision by Urban Institute, March, 2021
  "The supervisee-level analyses found that supervisees from the training group had significantly fewer arrests, warrants, delinquent reports, and convictions than supervisees from the control group."

Race and ethnicity

• The American Racial Divide in Fear of the Police by Justin Pickett, Amanda Graham, and Frank Cullen, April, 2021
  "Most Whites felt safe, but most Blacks feared the police even more than crime, being afraid both for themselves and for others they cared about."
• Research roundup: Violent crimes against Black and Latinx people receive less coverage and less justice by Prison Policy Initiative, March, 2021
  "In a 2018 Washington Post analysis of nearly 50,000 homicides around the country, the authors found that an arrest was made in 63 percent of murders of white victims, compared to 48 percent of those with Latinx victims and 46 percent with Black victims."
• Who Controls Criminal Law? Racial Threat and the Adoption of State Sentencing Law, 1975 to 2012 by Scott W. Duxbury, February, 2021
  "Results illustrate that states adopted sentencing laws in direct and indirect response to white public punitive policy support and the size of the black population."

Trials

• Felony Case Delay in New York City: Lessons from a Pilot Project in Brooklyn by Center for Court Innovation, March, 2021
  "Despite the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial, in 2019, for indicted felonies, New York City only met the state's standard for a six-month resolution in about a third of cases."
• Pandemic Caseloads Highlights: Court filings and dispositions 2019-2020 by Court Statistics Project, March, 2021
  "While the number of case filings is expected to return to normal in criminal, traffic, and juvenile over the course of 2021, no surge in cases is expected."
• Pleading for Justice: Bullpen Therapy, Pre-Trial Detention, and Plea Bargains in American CourtsPaywall :( by Amy E. Lerman, Ariel Lewis Green, and Patricio Dominguez, March, 2021
  "In a national sample, defendants held in custody pre-trial are significantly more likely to enter a guilty plea, all else equal."