Principles for using information technology in response to COVID-19

Joining over 80 partner organizations, the Prison Policy Initiative signs on to a set of principles calling for the protection of privacy and democracy as the technology sector responds to the pandemic.

by Jenny Landon, June 12, 2020

As the United States begins to consider strategies for reopening, we signed on to a set of principles designed to guide policymakers, businesses, and public health officials in the use of information technology to help quell the virus.

Too often, information technology is weaponized against communities of color, undocumented people, and other marginalized communities to track and monitor their whereabouts and behaviors.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is heartening to see the tech world step up with potential solutions for containment. However, plans to reopen must not harm those already suffering disproportionately from the health and economic fallout of the virus.

The letter reads, in part:

No COVID-19 response technology has been proven trustworthy and effective for combating the pandemic in the United States. The principles state that use of such technology must only be allowed if it is:

• Nondiscriminatory
• Used Exclusively for Public Health Purposes
• Effective
• Voluntary
• Secure
• Accountable

For more information, check out the full text of the principles, as well as the list co-signing organizations.

To learn more about how information technology negatively impacts marginalized communities and democracy, you can read Stephen Raher’s book review Automated Justice: A Review of Weapons of Math Destruction.

A legislative guide for winnable, high-impact criminal justice reforms

We list some high-impact policy ideas for state legislators looking to reform their criminal justice system without making it bigger.

by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, June 10, 2020

This report has been updated with a new version for 2022.

Table of Contents

End unnecessary jail detention for people awaiting trial and for low-level offenses (2 recommendations)

Shorten excessive prison sentences and improve release processes (2 recommendations)

Sentence fewer people to incarceration and make sentences shorter (3 recommendations)

Change the financial incentives that fuel punitive justice system responses (2 recommendations)

Stop probation and parole systems from fueling incarceration (4 recommendations)

Keep criminal justice, juvenile justice, and immigration processes separate (2 recommendations)

Give all communities equal voice in how our justice system works
(2 recommendations)

Given the public’s increasing demands for real change to the criminal justice system, we’ve updated and expanded our annual guide for state legislators to reforms that we think are ripe for victory. We’ve curated this list to offer policymakers and advocates straightforward solutions that would have the greatest impacts without further investments in the carceral system. We have focused especially on those reforms that would reduce the number of people needlessly confined in prisons and jails — a systemic problem made even more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This briefing is not intended to be a comprehensive platform, but rather to address a surprising problem faced by legislators: Each state’s criminal justice system varies so much that it can be difficult to apply lessons from other states to the same problem in one’s own. The laws and procedures are all different, each state collects different data, and often the same words are used to mean very different things in different states, so it’s important to figure out which problems are a priority in your state and which lessons from elsewhere are most useful. For that reason, each item here includes links to more state-level information, the text of model legislation, and/or detailed guidance on crafting a remedy.

Readers should also note that we made a conscious choice to not include critical reforms that are unique to just a few states, nor important reforms for which we don’t yet have enough useful resources that would make sense in most states. But this guide grows and evolves each year, so we welcome ideas and resources from other state legislators and advocates.

For interesting reports that can help you make the case for criminal justice reform in your state, see our Publications. For our work on specific problems, see our Issues page. And for data about your state, see our State Profiles.

How inflation makes your state’s criminal justice system harsher today than it was yesterday

The case for increasing the monetary level for felony theft.

by Tiana Herring, June 10, 2020

Each state sets a statutory definition of which thefts are felonies (punishable by longer sentences in prison) and which are misdemeanors (punishable by shorter sentences in jail). But in many states, the dollar amount separating felony theft from misdemeanor theft has not been increased in years, even though inflation makes the older laws more punitive each year.

These limits vary from New Jersey (a $200 theft is a fourth-degree felony) to Texas and Wisconsin where a theft must be worth $2,500 before you can get a state prison sentence. New Jersey’s limit is so low because it is one of the oldest in the country — it remains unchanged from when it was originally enacted in 1978.¹ Only one state — Alaska — automatically adjusts the felony theft threshold with inflation.² The range between the states is tremendous:

Updating felony theft statutes is one simple way to reduce the number of people serving time in prison for low-level offenses. Making more minor thefts into misdemeanors will also spare more people from the often lifelong collateral consequences of felony convictions that can limit their access to public housing, welfare benefits, and even voting.

Decreasing the punishment for minor thefts is unlikely to encourage more thefts. As Pew Charitable Trusts found in their invaluable 2018 report, States Can Safely Raise Their Felony Theft Thresholds, Research Shows, South Carolina’s property crime rates actually continued to fall years after the threshold increased. This isn’t unique to South Carolina, either. Pew’s article also included a brief comparison of crime rates in all 50 states, reporting that between 2000 and 2012, the 30 states that increased their thresholds had property crime rates similar to the 20 states that had not yet updated their laws.

Appendix table

Not just “a few bad apples”: U.S. police kill civilians at much higher rates than other countries

Police violence is a systemic problem in the U.S., not simply incidental, and it happens on a scale far greater than other wealthy nations.

by Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer, June 5, 2020

There is no question that the number of police killings of civilians in the U.S. – who are disproportionately Black and other people of color – are the result of policies and practices that enable and even encourage police violence. Compared to police in other wealthy democracies, American police kill civilians at incredibly high rates:

The chart above compares the annual rates of police killings in each country, accounting for differences in population size. This is the most apples-to-apples comparison we can make with this data.¹ But the total number of deaths at the hands of police is also worth seeing in comparison with other countries:

The sources for these charts are listed in the table below. For more statistics on police, arrests, and incarceration in the United States, see these other pages:

• Ten key facts about policing
• Policing Women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force
• Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems
• Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration
• Mass incarceration state profiles

Ten key facts about policing: Highlights from our work

Police disproportionately target Black and other marginalized people in stops, arrests, and use of force; and are increasingly called upon to respond to problems, such as homelessness, that are unrelated to public safety.

by Wendy Sawyer, June 5, 2020

Many of the worst features of mass incarceration — such as racial disparities in prisons — can be traced back to policing. Our research on the policies that impact justice-involved and incarcerated people therefore often intersects with policing issues. Now, at a time when police practices, budgets, and roles in society are at the center of the national conversation about criminal justice, we have compiled our key work related to policing (and our discussions of other researchers’ work) in one briefing.

1. Nearly 1 million people in the U.S. experience the threat or use of force by police annually, and they are disproportionately Black and Latinx.

The scale of police use of force is an important fact in and of itself, made more troubling by the racial disparities evident in police stops and use of force. In a national survey, Black respondents were more likely to be stopped by police than white or Latinx respondents, and both Black and Latinx respondents were more likely to be stopped multiple times over the course of a year than white respondents. The survey also showed that when they initiated a stop, police were twice as likely to threaten or use force against Black and Latinx respondents than whites. These disparate experiences have predictable effects on public trust in police: white respondents were more likely to view police use of force as legitimate and more likely to seek help from police than were people of color.

2. Over 4.9 million people are arrested each year.

In all, there are over 10 million arrests in the U.S. each year, but many people are arrested multiple times per year. From responses to a national survey, we estimate that at least 4.9 million unique individuals are arrested and jailed each year, and at least one in four of those individuals are arrested more than once in the same year. The massive scale of these police responses means that there are millions of opportunities each year for police-civilian encounters to turn violent or fatal, and an estimated 77 million people are now saddled with a criminal record.

3. Most policing has little to do with real threats to public safety: the vast majority of arrests are for low-level offenses. Only 5% of all arrests are for serious violent offenses.

The “massive misdemeanor system” in the U.S. is an important but overlooked contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as benign as jaywalking, sitting on a sidewalk, or petty theft, an estimated 13 million misdemeanor charges sweep droves of Americans into the criminal justice system each year (and that’s excluding civil violations and speeding). And while misdemeanor charges may sound like small potatoes, they carry serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants but also for broader society, which finances the enforcement of these minor violations, the processing of these court cases, and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them.

4. Policing criminal law violations costs taxpayers over $63 billion each year.

Policing costs the public $126.4 billion per year, nationwide. In our report about the fiscal costs of mass incarceration to the government and families of justice-involved people, we used only half of that figure – $63.2 billion – because only about half of police work is devoted to criminal law enforcement. The other half is spent on things unrelated to criminal law violations, such as traffic control, responding to civil disputes, and administration. Even at half the total cost of policing, $63.2 billion represents a huge public investment in criminalization. As many Americans are questioning the role of police in society, they should know just how much money is available to redirect to more humane community-based responses to social problems.

5. People who are Black and/or poor are more likely to be arrested, and to be arrested repeatedly.

People who are arrested and jailed are often among the most socially and economically marginalized in society. The overrepresentation of Black men and women among people who are arrested is largely reflective of persistent residential segregation and racial profiling, which subject Black individuals and communities to greater surveillance and increased likelihood of police stops and searches. Poverty, unemployment, and educational exclusion are also factors strongly correlated with likelihood of arrest.

6. People with mental illnesses or substance use disorders are also more likely to be arrested, and to be arrested repeatedly.

People who are arrested often have serious health needs that cannot and should not be addressed through policing or incarceration. Even a few days in jail can be devastating for people with serious mental health and medical needs, as they are cut off from their medications, support systems, and regular healthcare providers. Even worse, many people are arrested in the midst of a health crisis, such as mental distress or substance use withdrawal. History has shown that jails are unable to provide effective mental health and medical care to incarcerated people, and too often, jailing people with serious health problems has lethal consequences.

7. Women make up a growing share of arrests and report much more use of force than they did 20 years ago, with Black women most likely to be targeted.

The experiences of women and girls – especially Black women and other women of color – are often lost in the national conversation about policing. But of course women, too, are subject to racial profiling, use of excessive force, and any number of violations of their rights and dignity by police. Our analysis of national data shows that women now make up over a quarter of all arrests, with an estimated 2.8 million arrests in 2018. At the same time, the use of force has become much more common among women: the number of women who experienced police use of force (about 250,000) was 3.5 times greater in 2015 compared to 1999.

A closer examination of the data also reveals racial disparities in police stops, arrests, and use of force involving women. Black women are more likely than white or Latina women to be stopped while driving, and Black women are arrested 3 times as often as white women and twice as often as Latinas during police stops. Black women also report experiencing police use of force at higher rates than white or Latina women. With an estimated 12 million women per year experiencing police-initiated encounters – many of which involve searches, use of force, and other traumatizing experiences – the harms of policing to women demand more attention.

8. Disabled people represent a disproportionate number of those stopped, arrested, and killed by police.

As the ACLU of Southern California and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law report, many criminalized behaviors targeted by law enforcement are related to disability: substance use (often used as self-medication for pain and other symptoms), homelessness (an estimated 78% of people in shelters have a disability), and atypical reactions to social cues, which may be interpreted as vaguely defined crimes such as “disorderly conduct.” The Ruderman Foundation reports that in police use-of-force incidents, the media and police often blame disabled people for their own victimization, especially by characterizing disabled people of color as “threatening” and “refusing to comply.”

The frequent use of police as first responders to individuals in crisis only compounds these problems. Too often, officers who are called to help individuals get medical treatment end up shooting them instead. Public funds should be redirected to community health providers to handle mental and physical health crises, rather than trying to meet this critical need with militarized police forces, who sometimes receive little training on crisis response or de-escalation.

9. Police treat Black Americans with less respect.

A Stanford University analysis of police bodycam footage from nearly 1,000 vehicle stops substantiates what Black Americans already know: police officers treat Black people differently than they do whites. This study, discussed in our briefing, finds that “police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members in everyday traffic stops,” and that this happens irrespective of officer race, severity of the infraction, and outcome of the stop. These findings lend important context to the racial disparities observed in police encounters.

10. State and federal law enforcement practices target poor Black and Latinx residents.

Separate reports focusing on policing in Chicago highlighted two law enforcement strategies justified as ways to protect communities – drug stings and asset forfeiture – that facilitate widespread targeting of low-income communities of color. Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) arranged drug stings that set up fake drug stash houses and lured people into committing new crimes. But they didn’t single out just anyone: At least 91% of the time, agents targeted Black and Latinx people. Columbia professor Jeffrey Fagan’s analysis found no statistical explanation for this except disparate racial treatment. A District Court judge described these cases as “ensnaring chronically unemployed individuals from poverty-ridden areas.”

Meanwhile, Cook County police conducted 23,000 seizures of assets connected to civil and criminal cases, a practice that is supposed to disrupt major illegal drug trades. But an analysis by Reason and the Lucy Parsons Lab showed that police officers were often taking petty property and the lowest-value seizures (valued under $100) were clustered in predominantly poor and Black communities on Chicago’s South and West Sides. These examples illustrate that at every level, the “war on drugs” functions as a war on communities of color.

For more information, the reports and briefings summarized here – and more – can be found on our Policing Issue page.

Acknowledgements: This briefing was compiled by Wendy Sawyer based on previously published writing by current staffers Wanda Bertram, Alexi Jones, Wendy Sawyer, and by Policy Initiative alumns Joshua Aiken, Alex Clark, Lucius Couloute, and Elliot Oberholtzer.

Compassionate release was never designed to release large numbers of people

With help from artist Kevin Pyle, we explain why very few people who apply for compassionate release are approved — even during a pandemic.

by Emily Widra and Wanda Bertram, May 29, 2020

With the coronavirus pandemic threatening to turn prison sentences into death sentences, many incarcerated people are seeking compassionate release — the release of people who are facing imminent death and who pose no threat to the public — to save them from dying of COVID-19 in prison. Unfortunately, what they, and the American public, are learning is that compassionate release is not a transparent and linear process, but an unpredictably ordered series of obstacles. As artist Kevin Pyle depicts here, these hurdles and delays kill the vast majority of compassionate release petitions:

Applying for compassionate release is a lengthy and cumbersome process. Given that those who apply are almost always terminally ill or profoundly incapacitated, the arbitrary nature of this process means many die before their cases are resolved.¹

The compassionate release process varies tremendously between states (some states even give it a different name, like “medical parole,” “geriatric parole”, etc.),² but the basic framework is the same: An incarcerated person is recommended³ for release on compassionate grounds to prison administrators, who then solicit a medical recommendation, and then administrators or members of the parole board approve or deny compassionate release. Some states allow only family and attorneys to recommend that someone be released on these grounds; others allow incarcerated individuals to apply on their own behalf, or allow prison personnel to do so.

Compassionate release programs are plagued by many shortcomings, including:

• Requirements that a person be extremely close to death, or so incapacitated that they do not understand why they are being punished.⁴
• Requiring medical professionals to attest that someone is within six months, or nine months, of death. Health professionals are reluctant to give such exact prognoses, which means prison officials will default to saying “it’s safer just to not let this person go.”⁵
• Allowing the ultimate decision-makers⁶ to overrule recommendations from medical professionals and prison staff (e.g. by refuting or ignoring a medical prognosis).

The compassionate release process is frustratingly obscure not only for applicants, but for reporters, advocates, and others trying to understand the system. In their national survey, FAMM found that only three states are required to publish data on compassionate release grants, and eight other states publish some publicly available data, leaving most Americans in the dark about how often compassionate release is actually used. And despite that fact that FAMM has helpful memos for all fifty states and the District of Columbia detailing eligibility requirements for compassionate release, the application and referral process, the necessary documentation and assessments, and the decision-making criteria, the application process remains an arduous one.

There is plenty of room for states to improve their compassionate release processes. In our 2018 report Eight Keys to Mercy, we recommended that states:

• Make compassionate release available to all incarcerated people, irrespective of the offenses for which they are incarcerated.
• Streamline all compassionate release processes and set reachable deadlines so that petitioners don’t die due to bureaucratic bottlenecks before they are released.
• Limit the ability of prison officials to overrule, on medical grounds, a recommendation of release by medical professionals.

But even when a compassionate release system operates efficiently and fairly, the majority of people in prison are still not eligible for it. As currently constituted, these programs exclude too many people and these systems were never designed for quick responses during a global pandemic. States need to look beyond compassionate release — including expedited parole, and mass commutations — to slow the spread of the pandemic and prevent a needless tragedy behind bars.

When parole doesn’t mean release: The senseless “program requirements” keeping people behind bars during a pandemic

Parole boards are granting parole contingent on participation in programs that are often not readily available for people behind bars, especially during the pandemic.

by Emily Widra and Wendy Sawyer, May 21, 2020

With public health officials and criminal justice reform advocates urging prisons to reduce their populations, people who have already been approved for release should be the first to return to their communities and families. Instead, thousands of them are waiting behind bars — where social distancing is impossible — as prisons across the country become the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These are the people who have already been granted parole by the state parole boards, but have not yet taken a class or program that the parole board requires them to complete before they can go home. They are near enough to the end of their sentences to be parole-eligible, and the parole board has determined that they are “safe” to return to the community, but they cannot be released until they complete a program, often a drug and alcohol treatment program.

Parole boards are granting parole contingent on participation in programs that are often not readily available for people behind bars. If states changed their policies to allow for these programs to occur in the community upon re-entry, they would see the prison population drop without making any other significant release policy changes. Studies show that, at least for the therapeutic community model used in many prison systems, there is nothing unique to the prison context that makes these programs more effective than when they are done in the community.

Tennessee offers a striking example of this potentially devastating policy failure. Over 1,300 COVID-19 cases in Tennessee are connected to a single state prison — Trousdale Turner Correctional Center — making it the third largest source of COVID-19 cases in the country. As Nashville defense attorney David Raybin explained to NewsChannel5, over 1,000 people in Tennessee prisons have been approved for parole but are waiting to participate in the mandated programming, most often the Department of Correction’s therapeutic community program, which lasts 9-12 months. That means Tennessee could reduce its prison population by almost 4% by releasing just those who have already been approved for parole.¹

Evidence shows that these programs are effective whether offered before or after release, but states have been reluctant to offer these programs in communities instead of in prisons. But of course, education and treatment programming across the nation’s prison systems have been interrupted by the virus, as volunteers and educators are no longer entering the prison system on a regular basis; in Tennessee, the Department of Correction released a statement that the virus is causing “some disruption in programming.” Even in the best of times, participation in these programs is limited and people wait behind bars for a space in the program before they can be released.

This is not a new problem for Tennessee. Before the pandemic, a taskforce commissioned by the governor found that 40% of people granted parole from 2015-2019 had not actually been released because they were still waiting to participate in pre-release programs mandated by the parole board. That means that over those four years, more than 6,000 people were parole-eligible, reviewed and approved for release by the parole board, and then remained in prison simply because the mandated program was not offered at their facility or the maximum number of participants had already been reached.

Nor is this problem unique to Tennessee. A 2015 survey by the Robina Institute revealed that at least 40 states use “institutional program participation” as a factor in release decision-making for parole. In Texas, families have voiced their concern about loved ones who have been granted parole, but are still waiting to complete a pre-release program. Officials report that people often wait for months after being granted parole to begin these programs that provide education, life skills and employment training, substance abuse treatment, and other important re-entry supports. But waiting for programming that is on-hold or indefinitely postponed is no reason for people to remain in prison, especially when incarceration puts them at a heightened risk for contracting the virus.

If parole boards do not change this practice, for as long as the virus causes a “disruption in programming,” the number of people approved for parole but still in prison will continue to grow. The solution is obvious: Parole boards can waive the requirement or offer the therapeutic community programming after release. Especially given the current public health crisis, it makes sense for these programs — which, again, have been shown to be effective when offered after release — to be moved to the community setting when it is safe to do so. And in the meantime, people who have been approved for parole should be released as quickly as possible as part of the state’s efforts to protect incarcerated people and the larger community.

The Prison Policy Initiative is exploring doing a larger project evaluating prison programming, particularly the programming used to make parole decisions. If you happen to have copies of the curricula for any programs run in your state, please send a copy to virusresponse@prisonpolicy.org.

Since you asked: Should incarcerated people be receiving stimulus payments?

Some correctional authorities - responding to bad guidance from the IRS - are intercepting and returning stimulus checks for incarcerated people. We explain why people in prison and jail are eligible for, and should be receiving, emergency aid.

by Stephen Raher, May 18, 2020

On March 27, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, more commonly known as the “CARES Act.” One of the better-known aspects of the 883-page bill is the Treasury’s disbursement of one-time economic stimulus payments, which were designed with broad eligibility requirements to get financial relief into people’s pockets as quickly as possible.

Now, the IRS is claiming that incarcerated people do not “qualify” for stimulus payments and the agency is attempting to “claw back” badly needed funds from vulnerable people who may need it most. But this policy is contradicted by the unambiguous language of the CARES Act itself.

Does incarceration make people ineligible for stimulus payments?

In short: According to the CARES Act, no. The provision regarding the stimulus payments is fairly straightforward: the government is directed to distribute $1,200 to every “eligible individual.”¹ An eligible individual is defined as “any individual” other than a nonresident immigrant, someone who is claimed as a dependent on another person’s tax return, a probate estate, or a trust.² Other parts of the law reduce the size of payments to high-earning taxpayers³ and require eligible individuals to have tax ID numbers.⁴ These basic eligibility requirements appear in the law itself, and are repeated on the IRS’s webpage regarding stimulus payments. There is no language in the statute that directly or indirectly suggests that incarceration status affects eligibility.

Why have I heard that payments to incarcerated people should be returned?

On May 6, 2020, the IRS updated the frequently asked questions (“FAQs”) on its webpage to say that incarcerated people do not qualify for stimulus payments and should return any payments that they receive. The IRS cites no authority for this, and the only law mentioned in the FAQ is the statute that prohibits incarcerated people from receiving Social Security payments. But this is irrelevant since the stimulus payments are refundable tax credits⁵ having nothing to do with Social Security. Despite the fact that this new advice comes from an IRS FAQ page, and not from the CARES Act itself, it has been cited widely in publications like Forbes, leading to a lot of confusion.

How is it possible that the IRS website would give advice that’s not consistent with the law?

There is a well-defined process for the IRS to issue rules and regulations that supplement tax laws passed by Congress. The purported ban on stimulus payments to incarcerated people was not a result of this rulemaking process. Instead, it appears that IRS made up this “rule” out of whole cloth and announced it by posting it on a webpage.

It’s impossible to say why the IRS took this unusual approach, but here’s one theory: someone in the Treasury Department may have decided that giving money to incarcerated people is bad policy. Of course, the IRS is severely under-resourced, as a result of decades of attacks by grandstanding members of Congress, so the agency doesn’t have the time or staff to go after individual incarcerated people to claw back stimulus payments. And the IRS would likely lose in court if such an action were challenged in litigation. But, by placing an FAQ on the agency’s website saying that incarcerated people cannot receive the payments, some prison systems will probably do the IRS’s dirty work by using the FAQ as a justification to intercept payments or bring disciplinary action against people who take the steps to claim the money to which they are legally entitled. In fact, we’ve heard that at least one state prison system is already doing this.

It is entirely reasonable to give emergency financial aid to incarcerated people

Even though this issue is fundamentally about the rule of law (more about that in a minute), as a practical matter some people can’t fathom giving money to incarcerated people or others who are “dependent” on the government. But there are good reasons why people in jail or prison need emergency aid in these unprecedented times. First, many incarcerated people will be released soon (especially people in jail, where stays tend to be for short periods of time). Navigating the financial hurdles of post-incarceration life is difficult even in normal times. But to state the obvious, we are not in normal times: given the record-high unemployment rates, the well-documented challenges of finding work as a formerly incarcerated person are only going to get more formidable. It makes perfect sense for the government to provide monetary aid so that recently released people can obtain housing, clothing, and food. The CARES Act stimulus payments, while modest, can provide literally lifesaving assistance for people being released from incarceration.

It also makes sense to give money to people who won’t necessarily be released from custody soon. Prisons and jails have shifted more and more costs onto incarcerated people — costs for things like hygiene supplies, medical copayments, and communication with loved ones. Since incarcerated people have little ability to earn money, they tend to rely on money transfers from friends and family to pay for basic necessities. But as family members on the outside (who are often low-income to begin with) lose their jobs in the pandemic-induced economic collapse, families will be increasingly less able to send money to loved ones inside. Providing stimulus funds to incarcerated people helps protect the health and well-being of those behind bars and provides relief to their loved ones at home.

The implications of the IRS’s policy for our government and the rule of law

Beyond the immediate implications for incarcerated people and their families, the IRS’s errant attempt to prevent incarcerated people from receiving stimulus payments is troublesome because it upends our system of government, specifically the separation of powers. Executive-branch agencies (like the IRS) are charged with implementing the laws passed by Congress, not changing the law. But that seems to be exactly what’s happening here: Congress said to give everyone money, but then the Treasury Department thought that incarcerated people should have been excluded. As every first-year law student learns, it is settled law that unambiguous statutes are to be applied as written, even if that could lead to arguably unintended consequences.⁶

Furthermore, interfering with the administration of the federal tax system (which would presumably include interfering with someone’s ability to claim a valid tax refund) is a federal crime.⁷ But we live in a time when the national government operates under a philosophy that only some people (namely, people without the right connections) are obliged to obey the law. The IRS’s sudden about-face on stimulus payments provides a troubling illustration of this mindset: a government agency has ignored the clear-cut language of the governing law in an effort to impose additional punishment on people who are serving time for violating other laws.

While jails drastically cut populations, state prisons have released almost no one

Our updated analysis finds that jails are responding to the unprecedented public health crisis by rapidly dropping their populations. In contrast, state prisons have barely budged.

by Emily Widra and Peter Wagner, May 14, 2020

This article was updated on October 21st, 2021 with more recent jail and prison population data. That version should be used instead of this one.

In the last two months, local governments across the U.S. have drastically reduced their jail populations to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The typical jail has reduced its population by more than 30%. But state prisons — where social distancing is just as impossible as in jails, and correctional staff still move in and out every day — have been much slower to release incarcerated people: The typical prison system has reduced its population by only 5%. Below, we compare the population cuts in local jails to those in state prisons, discussing just how little states are doing to keep their residents (and the general public) safe. (And note, our use of the term “reduction” is a purposeful distinction from “release,” as we have found that there are multiple mechanisms impacting populations, of which releases are but one part.)

While jails continue to make quick changes in the face of the pandemic, they house only 1/3rd of the incarcerated population, while the other two-thirds are held by state and federal authorities, who are moving far too slowly. After North Dakota, the six states with the largest reductions share an important quirk: they are all small state prison systems that serve as both prisons and jails. For that reason, much of their reduction could be the result of drops in the jail portion of their populations and it is possible that the reduction of their sentenced prison population may be much smaller. The one exception is Connecticut, which after the previous version of this report sent us data showing that their pretrial population decreased 10% and their sentenced population decreased by 11% from March 1st to April 29. (For detailed data on 131 large jails, see Table 1 below and for the data on more than 600 jails see our appendix, and for the smaller changes in 41 state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons, see Table 2 below.)

The strategies jails are using to reduce their populations vary by location, but they add up to big changes. In some counties, police are issuing citations in lieu of arrests, prosecutors are declining to charge people for “low-level offenses,” courts are reducing the amounts of cash bail, and jail administrators are releasing people detained pretrial or those serving short sentences for “nonviolent offenses.” (We’re tracking news stories and official announcements of the most important changes in the country on our virus response page.)

Table 1: Largest known population reductions in large local jails

Meanwhile, state Departments of Correction have been announcing plans to reduce their prison populations — by halting new admissions from county jails, increasing commutations, and releasing people who are medically fragile, elderly, or nearing the end of their sentences — but our analysis finds that the resulting population changes have been small.

Table 2: Most state prison systems show only very modest population reductions (showing 41 states — and the Federal Bureau of Prisons — where the data was readily available)

Some states’ prison population cuts are even less significant than they initially appear, because the states achieved those cuts partially by refusing to admit people from county jails. (At least Colorado, Illinois, California, and Oklahoma are doing this.) While refusing to admit people from jails does reduce prison density, it means that the people who would normally be admitted are still being held in different correctional facilities.

Other states are indeed transferring people in prison to outside the system, either to parole or to home confinement, but these releases have not amounted to significant population reductions. For example, the Iowa Department of Corrections has released over 800 people nearing the end of their sentences since March 1st, but the overall net change in Iowa’s incarcerated population has only been about 4%. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear commuted the sentences of almost 200 people convicted of felonies in early April, and the state also planned to release 743 people within 6 months of completing their sentences. Since December 2019, the Kentucky prison population has only decreased by a net 9%, while more than 85% of the jails we analyzed had dropped their populations by 10% or more.

Of the states we analyzed, those with smaller pre-pandemic prison populations appeared to have reduced their populations the most drastically. The prison population has dropped by 19% in North Dakota, the same state that we found to have the most comprehensive and realistic COVID-19 mitigation plan in our April 2020 survey. North Dakota has done more to reduce its state prison population than any other state, but even that state has done less than the typical jail in the country which has reduced its population by more than 30%.

States clearly need to do more to reduce the density of state prisons. For the most part, states are not even taking the simplest and least controversial steps, like refusing admissions for technical violations of probation and parole rules, and to release those that are already in confinement for those same technical violations. (In 2016, 60,000 people were returned to state prison for behaviors that, for someone not on probation or parole, would not be a crime.) Similarly, other obvious places to start are releasing people nearing the end of their sentence, those who are in minimum security facilities and on work-release, and those who are medically fragile or older.

If the leadership and success of local jails in reducing their populations isn’t enough of an example for state level officials, they may find some inspiration in the comparative success of other countries:

Table 3: Countries reducing their incarcerated populations in the face of the pandemic (showing 13 countries where current population data was readily available)

Prisons and jails are notoriously dangerous places during a viral outbreak, and public health professionals, corrections officials, and criminal justice reform advocates agree that decarceration will help protect both incarcerated people and the larger communities in which they live. It’s past time for U.S. prison systems to meaningfully address the crisis at hand and reduce the number of people behind bars.

This article updates one published on May 1st with a larger dataset of state prison population reductions collected by the Vera Institute of Justice and released alongside their report Prisoners in 2019, and with updated jail reduction figures collected by the NYU Public Safety Lab.

Since you asked: How many people aged 55 or older are in prison, by state?

Our table shows that more than 10% of people incarcerated in state prisons are 55 or older - and in some states, like Montana, the percentage is much higher.

by Emily Widra, May 11, 2020

This briefing has been updated to a new version with data through 2021.

Prisons and jails have become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with seven of the ten largest hotspots identified as state prisons and local jails. With the CDC having warned that older adults are at heightened risk for severe complications and death from COVID-19, readers have asked us: Just how many people in state prisons are older adults? We’ve answered this question — state by state — in a handy table below.

To prepare our table, we drew on the most recent age data from the National Corrections Reporting Program, 1991-2015. Age data for state prisons is broken down into categories, and older adults fall into the category of “55 and older.” Although outside of correctional facilities, the term “older adults” often refers to people 65 and older, incarceration itself shortens life expectancy and hastens physiological aging. So for the purposes of addressing how vulnerable different groups are to the coronavirus, it makes sense to consider adults 55 and older behind bars as “older adults.”

We found that, on average, more than 10% of people in state prisons are over the age of 55. Some state prison systems have much higher percentages of older adults, like in Montana, where over 17% of the state prison population is 55 years or older.

Regardless of their preexisting health conditions, all older adults are at greater risk for complications from COVID-19. As this virus threatens to turn their prison sentences into death sentences, states should use all possible strategies to release them to the care of their families.