Highlights from a bustling year at Prison Policy Initiative

In our new annual report, we share examples of how we empower the reform movement with the data it needs to counter “tough on crime” narratives

by Danielle Squillante, October 16, 2024

We wrapped up another busy year at the Prison Policy Initiative, and are thrilled to share our 2023-2024 Annual Report with you. We released 7 major reports, 32 research briefings, and two guides for journalists to support further investigative work on issues related to mass incarceration. We also provided technical support to advocates at the state and local levels working on issues such as ending prison gerrymandering, parole reform and fighting jail expansion. Here are a handful of accomplishments we’re particularly proud of:

• Publishing updates to our bedrock reports detailing the scale of mass incarceration in the U.S. and globally, including Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, and States of Incarceration: The Global Context
• Releasing a report on how jails and prisons misuse money from “inmate welfare funds” on staff perks or to cover budgetary gaps, rather than use those funds on services that benefit incarcerated people. We released a companion guide for press to encourage journalists to further investigate welfare funds in state prisons and particularly in local jails.
• Discrediting the argument that jails and prisons are rehabilitative by spotlighting how they fail to provide evidence-based voluntary treatment for people with substance use disorders and refuse to release elderly people who pose no safety risk to their communities.
• Keeping the need for jail reform front and center through multiple publications that challenge the efficacy of detaining people pretrial, show how pretrial detention has a warehousing effect, and debunk common arguments used to justify jail expansion.
• Helping Minnesota join the growing list of states that have ended prison gerrymandering. Progress on this issue has been so rapid that the National Conference of State Legislatures recently called state efforts to end prison gerrymandering “the fastest-growing trend in redistricting.”

This is only a snapshot of what we produced this past year. We are proud of our accomplishments and look forward to sharing new projects with you in the year to come.

Mass Incarceration 101: Resources to help students and teachers understand the carceral system

It’s back to school season, so we’ve curated information and tools for students and teachers to use when researching the carceral system.

by Danielle Squillante, September 3, 2024

Students and teachers are heading back to the classroom. In addition to math, science, and language arts, many will also focus on the criminal legal system and mass incarceration. Unfortunately for them, the carceral system operates like a black box, making it hard to study what’s happening inside the walls of prisons and jails. Fortunately, we have made it our business to make the data that does exist as accessible and understandable as possible.

To better support the work of students and teachers, we’ve curated a list of publications and tools they can use to better study the carceral system and that can serve as launchpads for further research.

Where to start: The big picture

To start any lesson on mass incarceration, you have to understand the U.S. doesn’t have one criminal legal system; instead, it has thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems that incarcerate a combined population of nearly 2 million people.

Our flagship report, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, puts these pieces together to give the “big picture” of mass incarceration by explaining not only the scale of our carceral system but also the policy choices that have driven its expansion. It provides the most comprehensive picture of how many people are locked up in the U.S., in what types of facilities, and why. In addition to showing how many people are behind bars on any given day in the U.S., it goes on to bust 10 of the most persistent myths about prisons, jails, crime, and more.

Additional reading assignments:

• Our briefing on states’ reliance on excessive jailing explains the drivers of jail growth including the practice of renting jail space to state and federal agencies like the U.S. Marshals Service. The appendices include useful data on jail trends and population data over time.
• Our Punishment Beyond Prisons report looks at how many people in each state are on probation or parole. Notably, some of the states that are the least likely to send people to prison are among the most punitive when other methods of correctional control are taken into account.
• States of Incarceration: The Global Context shows how incarceration rates in the U.S. compare to countries across the globe. Although El Salvador has the highest incarceration rate of any country, the U.S. still has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth — worse, every single state incarcerates more people per capita than most nations.

An essential lesson: Disparities in the system

No lesson about mass incarceration in America is complete without covering the stark racial disparities inherent in the system. Black people, for example, not only have higher incarceration rates than white people but are also more likely to receive harsher sentences, including life without parole and the death penalty.

To help teachers and students understand these disparities better, we produced a dataset containing over 100 state-specific graphics showing the number of people in state prisons and jails by race, ethnicity, and sex. Our data compares Black and white imprisonment rates by state, finding that every state locks up Black people at a rate at least double that of white people — and, on average, at six times the rate of white residents.

Every state incarcerates Black residents in its state prisons at a higher rate than white residents. For comparisons to other race/ethnicity categories, see individual state profile pages.

Additional reading assignments:

• Our Native incarceration page contains current data on the incarceration of Native people in jails, prisons, and Indian country jails. In jails, Native people have more than double the incarceration rate of white people, and in prisons, this disparity is even greater.
• Racial disparities aren’t the only disparities in the system. Our 2021 briefing on the system-involvement of LGBTQ people details how they are arrested, incarcerated, and subjected to community supervision at significantly higher rates than straight and cisgender people. This is especially true for trans people and queer women.

Gender studies: Women’s incarceration

Students and teachers looking to examine the carceral system must understand the unique ways that women experience mass incarceration in America.

Our Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie report provides the most recent and comprehensive data on how many women are incarcerated in the U.S., in what kinds of facilities, and why. The report also includes rare self-reported data from a national survey of people in prison to offer new insights about incarcerated women’s backgrounds, families, health, and experiences behind bars. It examines why women’s incarceration has grown so rapidly in recent decades and explains that, because they are often primary caregivers to children, they’re not the only ones harmed by incarceration.

Additional reading assignments:

• Our briefing on how the fall of Roe v. Wade impacts women on probation and parole includes state-level data on how many women are under community supervision in states with abortion restrictions.
• Our 2020 briefing highlights the role that drug enforcement has played in the rise of women’s incarceration and makes clear why we need to pay attention to the ways that women are uniquely impacted by the legal system.

Care not cages: Incarceration and public health

People in prisons and jails are disproportionately likely to have chronic health conditions as well as substance use and mental health problems. Medical care in correctional facilities is notoriously inadequate, and because most prison systems charge copays for medical care, it also deters incarcerated people from seeking the care they need.

Our Chronic Punishment report shows that instead of “rehabilitating” people in prison (physically, mentally or otherwise), or at the very least, serving as a de facto health system for people failed by other parts of the U.S. social safety net, state prisons are full of ill and neglected people.

Additional reading assignments:

• Jails and prisons are often described as de facto mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, and corrections officials increasingly frame their missions around offering healthcare. But as our briefing on the lack of drug treatment in jails and prisons makes clear, most systems fail to provide evidence-based treatment options and instead rely on punitive responses to substance use.
• In our briefing on the aging prison population, we examine the inhumane, costly, and counterproductive practice of locking up older adults that is the consequence of a series of disastrous policy decisions in policing, sentencing, and reentry over roughly the last half-century.
• Our briefing on environmental injustice in prisons highlights how toxic detention facilities put the health of incarcerated people at risk. From having contaminated water to being sited near federal Superfund sites, prisons expose incarcerated people to hazardous substances that create additional health issues behind the wall.

Extra credit

Our website is chock full of data that can be used to further explore incarceration trends or dive deeper into issues related to mass incarceration:

• State Profile pages: contain current state-level data and visuals on a range of issues, including racial disparities and incarceration rates
• Data Toolbox: provides links to our unique datasets, including national and state-level population data
• Research Library: the nation’s largest online database of empirical and policy research about criminal legal issues, including mental health, community impacts of incarceration, and conditions of confinement
• Data Sources guide: includes descriptions of data sources we use to produce research exposing the harms of mass incarceration

Advocacy Spotlight: Texas Jail Project

How one small organization in Texas is fighting to get answers for families of people who die in jails and forcing accountability from the jails they die in.

by Emmett Sanders, August 6, 2024

Across the country, people are dying in jails. Often, these deaths are used as the basis of arguments to spend millions or even billions of dollars on jail construction. As our research has shown, however, a new jail is by no means a guarantee that jail deaths won’t continue or even increase. Meanwhile, far less scrutiny is being paid to whether all jail deaths are even being reported. Some jails have implemented policies of not reporting deaths to media outlets, intentionally obscuring transparency. Many jails do not adhere to rules requiring jail death reporting; one report found that at least 990 in-custody deaths went unreported to the federal government in 2021 alone.

Texas, which saw at least 95 reported in-custody jail deaths in 2019, has a dark history of disguising deaths in custody and failing to report them, leaving the public and families without answers. Texas Jail Project, a small non-profit largely made up of advocates who have had family members incarcerated in the state’s county jails, has been working tirelessly to find who is missing from the in-custody death reports, and to compel accountability from jails.

About Texas Jail Project

Texas Jail Project, whose work Prison Policy Initiative’s advocacy department is proud to support, is a tiny, women-of-color-led organization whose impact is far larger than its team of four full-time employees. For more than 17 years, Texas Jail Project has worked to inform, educate, empower, and liberate communities and people impacted by incarceration in 244 county jails across the state of Texas. Under the guidance of Executive Director Krish Gundu, their goal is not only to, as one of their clients phrased it, “end the investment in death-making facilities such as jails” but to “redirect that investment into life-affirming” community-based resources. Responsivity to the needs of the community they serve has led them to tackle a wide range of issues from opposing the shackling of pregnant women in jail while giving birth, to advocating for people in jail with disabilities or who have mental health or substance use needs, to providing a wide array of direct aid to individuals in jails and their families. For years, they have also been relentless champions for those whose deaths in Texas’ county jails have gone unreported.

The Problem: A strategic lack of accountability

Although Texas has a detailed statute surrounding the reporting of jail deaths in the state, many deaths in jails go unreported. When the system is working as it should, deaths are supposed to be reported to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards within 24 hours. This triggers a third-party investigation, and a custodial death report from that investigation must be filed with the Attorney General’s Office within 30 days. This process is vital not only for public accountability but for families and loved ones – these reports are sometimes the only source of information about the circumstances of jail deaths.

However, through their work directly with families of people incarcerated in jails, Texas Jail Project learned that this process is not being consistently followed. Although some failures to report are an administrative oversight, not all lack of reporting is accidental. Places like Harris County have a record of issuing personal recognizance bonds to critically ill people in their custody and releasing them shortly before they die to avoid being responsible for their deaths. This practice of issuing “medical bonds” is often a way for jails to get off the hook for the costs associated with treating those who are in their care, and happens in many counties in Texas. Texas Jail Project discovered that in Ellis County, for example, two women had died in a period of just two weeks, both shortly after having been issued medical bonds.

In addition, some counties in Texas regularly ship people in their custody to jails in other states, citing overcrowding concerns. Once there, if the person dies, the jail that sent them will often claim to have no responsibility to report their deaths, as the deceased is no longer in their custody.

How Texas Jail Project is making a difference

Texas Jail Project developed a strategy for finding and correcting failures to report jail deaths. By scouring the list of in-custody deaths submitted to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and comparing them to the Attorney General’s records, the organization began to identify missing cases. They then issued letters of notification to the jails that had failed to report these deaths, copying both the Commission on Jail Standards and the Attorney General, and citing the jail’s violation of state law. Often, this simple act of notification alone was enough to have the person added to the list and provide families with information they’d been denied. Since 2023, Texas Jail Project has discovered 18 unreported jail deaths and has successfully forced reports to be issued in 14 of them.

In one of these cases, a woman named Ruby McPeters died in Hood County Jail from complications following a C-section she underwent while in custody. Her death went unreported for nearly 5 years due to simple clerical error before Texas Jail Project discovered the omission. After Texas Jail Project contacted the jail, Ms. McPeters was added to the Office of the Attorney General’s list of in-custody deaths that very day. Making sure that deaths like Ms. McPeters’ are reported is vital to exposing medical maltreatment in jails and forcing changes.

The organization has also worked tirelessly to correct the problem of unreported out-of-state deaths. Harris County, for instance, regularly outsources its incarceration to jails in other states, such as LaSalle Parish, Louisiana, and when someone dies while being held there, Harris County has steadfastly refused to acknowledge responsibility for their death. Texas Jail Project is making progress in holding Harris County accountable; The Texas Commission on Jail Standards is holding a session on August 8th and has put the issue on their agenda.

Although reporting requirements for jail deaths vary by state, advocates throughout the country can follow Texas Jail Project’s lead to ensure jail deaths are more consistently and thoroughly reported. The first step is to develop a deep understanding of what the reporting requirements are for jail deaths, and, if there are gaps in that accountability framework, to lobby regulatory bodies and state legislatures to impose additional requirements. When it comes to making sure the laws on the books are actually followed, Texas Jail Project’s work shows how publicly and consistently informing jails of their oversight responsibilities can be highly effective in forcing jails to actually follow the rules.

Deep Impacts

For the family members of those who die in pretrial detention in Texas jails who have sometimes waited years to learn what happened to their loved ones, Texas Jail Project’s work is profound. Lack of transparency can bring a lack of resolution that can devastate families. Krish Gundu recalls one mother whose 32-year-old son died just six days after being arrested during a mental health crisis and who was “stonewalled” for answers for months. “It nearly killed her,” Gundu notes. In another instance, a family member was so visibly upset over the lack of transparency that they were nearly escorted out of a public meeting with the Jail Commissioners before Texas Jail Project intervened. Texas Jail Project not only compels people in positions of power to follow the statutes, but their efforts provide relief for grieving families and ensure people are not forgotten. As Gundu notes, “This is an essential piece of history that needs to be written.”

Learn More

See more of Texas Jail Project’s work and find out how you can support their efforts here.

Visit our work on jails and jail deaths, and resources for advocates in counties considering jail expansion. You can also use our toolkit to learn how to respond when officials try to avoid transparency by citing HIPAA laws and get better information about jail deaths in your county.

Prison Policy Initiative endorses the Environmental Health in Prisons Act

Act recognizes the right to live in a healthy environment and offers much-needed environmental protections for people in prisons.

by Emmett Sanders, July 18, 2024

On Thursday, July 18, 2024, U.S. Senator Ed Markey and Congressperson Ayanna Pressley, both of Massachusetts, introduced the Environmental Health in Prisons Act. Prison Policy Initiative is proud to support this bill, which seeks to address hazardous environmental conditions in federal prisons.

The bill has several provisions, all focused on increasing transparency and creating healthier environments for those in prisons. This act:

• Requires stricter monitoring and reporting from federal carceral agencies on a wide array of pollutants and environmental hazards, including air and water quality, temperature, mold, pests, light levels, noise pollution, and more, and establishes oversight through an independent advisory panel.
• Requires people held in federal carceral facilities to be informed as to potential environmental hazards, their effects, and precautions they can take to protect themselves.
• Mandates and funds several feasibility studies and pilot programs, including studies on decarceration as well as those that address mitigating environmental harm.
• Offers much-needed whistleblower protections for both incarcerated people and prison staff who request information about a facility’s environmental data or who raise concerns about potential unreported hazards.

Advocates have long sounded the alarm that prisons are situated, constructed, and operated in ways that perpetuate environmental injustices. Fully one-third of all federal and state prisons lie within three miles of designated federal “superfund” sites — toxic waste areas most needing extensive cleanup. Pollutants such as arsenic and lead are regularly found in prison water, and people in prison often are forced to suffer through dangerously excessive heat and other extreme and sometimes deadly conditions.

We at Prison Policy Initiative strongly support the Environmental Health in Prisons Act. It adds a much-needed layer of independent oversight for a prison system that has long deprioritized the environmental well-being of those it imprisons. The hazardous conditions in prisons can have deep and long-lasting physical and mental health consequences, can socially and economically devastate families and communities, and can create enormous strain on the prison system, which is tasked with providing long-term medical care and mental health care in the aftermath. We are proud to support these efforts toward better policy, more equitable and ethical environmental justice, and the recognition of incarcerated people as human beings with a right to be free of toxic prison conditions.

Read the official press release for the Environmental Health in Prisons Act here.

For further information on the need for environmental justice in prisons, consider the following resources:

• Heat, floods, pests, disease, and death: What climate change means for people in prison
• Prisons are a daily environmental injustice

Webinar: In their own words: Organizing legislative testimony from incarcerated people

Learn strategies advocates around the country are using to help incarcerated people be heard at legislative committee hearings.

by Emmett Sanders, July 1, 2024

Americans have a fundamental right to engage with legislators about decisions that affect their lives, and one of the most powerful ways to do that is by testifying at state legislative hearings. People in prison, however, are routinely denied this right. Silencing incarcerated people is not only unjust, but deprives the public of valuable insights and expertise from those most affected by criminal legal system reforms. Even well-intended changes may ultimately be short-sighted or even harmful when created without any input from the people who bear the brunt of their effects. Advocates across the country are taking advantage of the recent expansion of communication technology to help incarcerated people have their voices heard in legislative committee hearings. Through these efforts, the testimony of incarcerated people has been a driving force behind bills to end the use of solitary confinement, end life without parole, and more in Massachusetts, Washington, and Connecticut, among other states.

On August 5, 2024, Prison Policy Initiative hosted a panel of advocates from around the country for a discussion on the importance and challenges of helping people in prisons engage in legislative hearings and introduce our new legislative testimony toolkit.

Webinar Materials

• Webinar Transcript
• Webinar Slides

Additional Resources

Below are the websites for the organizations of our panelists:

• Christopher Blackwell, Look 2 Justice: https://look2justice.org/
• Anthony Blankenship, Civil Survival: https://civilsurvival.org/
• Jesse White, Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts: https://plsma.org/

Additional Resources:

• The ACLU of DC provides some general tips for testifying in front of the DC Council that provide a great outline for anyone testifying in a legislative context.
• The Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism published a detailed article about the impact of testimony from incarcerated people in Massachusetts.

Calling on the FCC to make the most of its upcoming rulemaking on prison and jail telecom rates

Ahead of the FCC’s vote on new prison and jail phone rate caps, The Leadership Conference sent a letter to the agency, and we signed on.

by Wanda Bertram, June 20, 2024

The landmark 2023 Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Just Communications Act set in motion a new round of rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that incarcerated people and their families are paying fair rates for phone and video calls. As the FCC prepares to vote on new regulations, we joined The Leadership Conference (a coalition of over 200 civil rights organizations) in a letter sent to the agency this week with recommendations for how it can make the most of this opportunity.

First and foremost, we urge the FCC to set rate caps as low as possible for voice and video calls. The current rate caps, handed down in 2021, allow local jails to charge a maximum of 21 cents per minute, a rate that family members say can still add up to several hundred dollars a month. The letter notes that costs could be brought down “as low as pennies per minute,” as evidenced by the rates companies are already charging in counties like San Mateo, Cali. and Dallas, Texas, as well as many state prisons.

Beyond setting rate caps, The Leadership Conference letter also calls on the FCC to:

• Adopt consumer disclosure labels for prison and jail telecom products, to help customers understand whether they are being illegally charged (particularly after the new rate caps go into effect).
• Take extreme care when considering new pricing structures proposed by the companies, particularly subscription-based pricing, and only approve them if they are shown to save consumers money.
• Close regulatory loopholes to ensure that all prisons and jails are providing people who have hearing disabilities with the services they need to call home.

Recent data have shown how prison telecom companies continue to strike lucrative contracts with correctional facilities, particularly jails, deals that impose high costs on consumers and strain their bonds with loved ones. Diligent federal regulation can stop the worst of these abuses. We call on the FCC to use its rare mandate from Congress to guarantee the fairest possible deal for incarcerated people and their families.

Read the full letter from The Leadership Conference here: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/10617989616085/1

New memo shows Fulton County, Ga., should rethink proposal for massive new jail

At the request of the Georgia-based Community Over Cages Coalition, the Prison Policy Initiative examined the proposal for a new jail and found serious shortcomings.

by Mike Wessler, June 14, 2024

UPDATE: On July 11, 2024, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted to scrap its $2 billion plan to build a new jail, marking an important victory for the advocates who opposed the proposal. Learn more here.

On Wednesday, the Georgia-based Community Over Cages Coalition hosted a press conference at the Fulton County Superior Court and released a new analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative that called into question the county’s proposed massive new jail.

In the 17-page memo, we make three key points:

1. The overuse of pretrial incarceration hurts communities, and Fulton County is no exception. Pretrial incarceration undermines public safety by increasing the likelihood that people will be arrested in the future by up to 21%. It also harms employment and housing rates, increases overdoses and suicides, and undermines the presumption of innocence by increasing guilty pleas and sentences. These harms fall squarely on the shoulders of Fulton County’s Black and Brown residents, who make up a disproportionate number of people in the jail.
2. The feasibility study fails to consider alternatives to new jail construction. For example, the study fails to sufficiently consider the possibility of renovations to the existing jail or the impact of decarceration efforts. It also does not take into account the fact that crime rates in Fulton County are falling, not rising.
3. The feasibility study ignores the reality that a massive new jail would likely exacerbate its existing staffing issues. The feasibility study claims that updating the jail will completely solve staffing shortages and attempts to highlight other jails around the country as “model jails.” However, we show that even in these updated “model” jails, staffing concerns run rampant, jail deaths are on the rise, and conditions in these new facilities are still bad enough that they are leading to human suffering and costly lawsuits. The reality is that there is no “model jail”, and creating a massive new facility will make staffing problems worse, not better.

The Community Over Cages Coalition was formed to oppose the county’s proposal to build a $2 billion new jail. The coalition includes legal experts, people with lived experience in Fulton’s legal system, healthcare providers, and community organizers and activists with a shared goal of a Fulton County that enables the health and safety of all communities.

Is your community seeking to build a new jail or expand the capacity of its existing facility? We’re happy to help you push back on their arguments (drop us a line to tell us about your fight). There is no need to wait, though. We have created a how-to-guide with tips for pushing back on “jail needs assessments” that local leaders put together to justify the construction and provide strategies for pushing back on false or misleading arguments they’re making.

6 facts about the mass incarceration of LGBTQ+ people

For Pride Month, we gathered a few of the most striking facts about the criminalization of queer youth and adults.

by Wanda Bertram, June 4, 2024

As we’ve reported in the past, LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented throughout the criminal legal system, from their high rates of juvenile justice involvement to the long sentences they often receive as adults. While little government data exists about the over-incarceration of this group, research is slowly emerging that shows how a multitude of forces push LGBTQ people into jails and prisons at highly disproportionate rates. This year, for Pride Month, we gather a few of the most striking facts about the criminalization of queer youth and adults.

• Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are more than twice as likely to be arrested as straight people — and lesbian and bisexual women, specifically, are more than four times as likely to be arrested as straight women. Scant research exists about the causes of these disparities, but it’s likely that drug law enforcement, laws against sex work, and the criminalization of homelessness are largely to blame.

• 40% of homeless youth are LGBT. Stigma, conflict, or a lack of acceptance at home drive many LGBT youth onto the streets — funneling many of them into the juvenile justice system, where 20% of the population identifies as LGBTQ.
• 35 states have laws against behaviors that can potentially spread HIV. These laws — carryovers from the height of the HIV pandemic — punish people for exposing others to the illness even if no transmission occurs, and can lead to people being criminalized for simply having sex while HIV-positive.
• One in six trans people have been incarcerated at some point, including nearly half of Black trans people. This is compared to about 3% of the total adult U.S. population in 2010 that had ever been in prison, and almost 10% of Black adults.
• 44% of trans people in prison have been denied access to hormones they requested, according to a 2015 national survey by Black & Pink. Denying access to hormone therapy is just one way that prison policies fail trans people, as we reported in a 2017 briefing.
• 85% of LGBTQ incarcerated people have been put in solitary confinement, that same 2015 survey found. This is often done in the name of “protecting” queer individuals behind bars, despite the well-documented, long-lasting harms of solitary confinement.

Readers interested in learning more about the forces driving LGBTQ+ into jails and prisons may also be interested in these recent reports:

• Lambda Legal’s 2022 national survey of 2,546 LGBTQ+ people and their experiences with the criminal legal system;
• Vera and Black & Pink’s new report Advancing Transgender Justice, based on a large-scale survey of transgender people about their experiences in state prisons;
• Our 2022 briefing about transgender respondents to the Survey of Prison Inmates, including five data visualizations about the demographics of this group.

Prison Policy Initiative endorses the Families Over Fees Act of 2024, which would protect incarcerated people from predatory fees

Bill would take an important step toward ending the exploitation of incarcerated people

by Wanda Bertram, May 24, 2024

Yesterday, U.S. Senator Cory Booker and Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Families Over Fees Act, a bill targeting “junk fees” in prisons and jails. This piece of legislation would take an important step toward ending the exploitation of incarcerated people and their families, and we urge lawmakers and the public to support its passing.

Incarcerated people are frequently subjected to hidden and unnecessary fees when they make important purchases and transactions, such as paying to call their loved ones. The Act would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to establish rules prohibiting these fees. It would also require prison and jail service providers to disclose these fees upfront, and would create legal protections for people impacted by junk fees looking to bring lawsuits.

“As we have recently noted, billions of dollars each year are mined from incarcerated people, their families, and the often economically disadvantaged communities from which they come. Much of this money comes from charging massive predatory junk fees for things like basic needs and communication,” said Sarah Staudt, Policy and Advocacy Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. “These fees are inflicted upon incarcerated people and their families and used to line the pockets of prison profiteers who have little competition and even less oversight. The Prison Policy Initiative is happy to support the Families Over Fees Act which places people above profits, and offers much needed consumer protections for incarcerated people and their communities.”

Readers can learn more about the Families Over Fees Act in the official press release.

As Congress considers this bill, we also remind state and municipal lawmakers that they can take action to stop predatory fees locally through diligent contracting with prison service providers. Policymakers should refer to these resources:

• Our best practices guides for correctional phone, video, and tablet contracts
• Our explainer about deposit fees and how prisons can prohibit them
• Insufficient Funds, our report on hidden fees in “release cards”

Journalists: Here’s how to uncover how the money in “Inmate Welfare Funds” is being spent

We offer lessons learned from developing our new report, Shadow Budgets, to encourage journalists to investigate welfare funds in their local prison or jail systems.

by Wanda Bertram, May 6, 2024

Our new report Shadow Budgets: How mass incarceration steals from the poor to give to the prison explains that prisons and jails squeeze revenue out of incarcerated people and their families via paid telecommunications services, commissaries, money transfers, and disciplinary fines, then funnel it into “Inmate Welfare Funds” and use the money to cover the costs of incarceration. While corrections officials claim that these funds go to benefit incarcerated people, money from these accounts often sits idle — or worse, is spent on perks for correctional staff, like special meals or gun range memberships. Even when the funds are put toward improving conditions behind bars, the spending typically meets a need that can and should be paid for out of the agency’s general budget — not money extracted from incarcerated people.

Shadow Budgets identifies welfare funds in 49 prison systems, explains what rules govern these funds, and discusses some of the ways this money has been misused. As we discuss in the report, however, inmate welfare funds are not as transparent or accountable as general correctional budgets. Outside actors like state auditors — and investigative journalists — play a key role in uncovering how states and counties use this money. In this blog post, we offer lessons learned from developing our report to encourage journalists to investigate these funds in their local prison or jail systems.

Investigating welfare funds: what records to request, and how

Not all jails and prisons have welfare funds, and those that do may call it something else. In some places, they don’t appear to have formal names at all. (And while most funds draw revenue from commissary and/or telecom services purchases, some may have other sources.) If Appendix A of our report doesn’t provide these details about the jail or prison system you’re investigating, you can call the agency itself and ask. You might want to ask where kickbacks from telecom and commissary services are deposited, or whether there is a fund for the general welfare or benefit of the incarcerated population. Alternatively, you can consult county, municipal or state policies (for example, this one for the Michigan Department of Corrections). Information about funds in local jails may also be listed in state correctional standards, if you live in a state where the department of corrections has authority over jails.

The most important questions you’ll investigate about the welfare fund are: How much money is in the fund, how is it being spent, and who gets to decide? You will likely have to submit a public records request to find out; for tips on filing public records requests to corrections agencies, see our records request guide.

Specifically, we recommend that you request:

• An itemized list of purchases made from the inmate welfare fund (try to go back two or three years, if possible, to get a representative dataset).
• Balance sheets for the account. As we discuss in our report, many if not most prison systems sit on large amounts of revenue even as key programs for incarcerated people go underfunded. The balance sheet will show if the jail or prison is actually using the money. Again, asking for a few years of data will help understand whether balances are carried over.
• Any audits or fiscal reports on the funds. Depending on your county and state, you may instead want to request this information from the auditor’s office, the county/city board or council, or the state department of corrections. (The state or local policies governing the welfare fund should tip you off as to what agency to reach out to about audits and fiscal reports.)
• If the fund has an oversight committee — which should be mentioned in the state/local policies discussed above — request information about how often the committee meets, when its last meeting was, and who sits on the committee. If the jail or DOC cannot provide this information, it’s possible that the committee is not active. (On the other hand, if the committee is active, consider contacting them as a source for your story.)
• You may also want information about the sources of money in the fund. In particular, we advise locating the jail/prison’s contracts with its commissary or telecom providers, where agreements about revenue-sharing are typically laid out. We’ve made hundreds of contract documents available to the public in our Correctional Contracts Library.

We also suggest asking the jail or prison whether incarcerated people have any say in how the inmate welfare fund is used. Since these funds are theoretically dedicated to benefiting incarcerated people, and are paid for by incarcerated people, it’s good to know to what extent administrators consider their input.

How to assess uses of welfare fund money

Most jails and prisons have regulations or statutes governing what the money in their inmate welfare fund may be used for. (Appendix A of our report contains details on the rules in several prison systems.) Sometimes, corrections officials use the money in ways that may violate these rules, like Pinal County, Ariz. Sheriff Mark Lamb, who spent $200,000 in revenue from jail phone calls and commissary services on “guns, bullets and vests” for law enforcement officers. John Washington of Arizona Luminaria, who broke the story, found that the state statute governing the welfare fund only allowed the money to be used for “the education and welfare of inmates.”

It’s worth noting, however, that the Pinal County Jail’s fund also paid for “recreational equipment, clothing, and internet services for people who are incarcerated.” These kinds of expenditures are legal under Arizona’s statute, but they are not laudable uses of poor people’s money. Jails have a responsibility to make sure the people in their care are clothed. And to the extent that “internet services” are necessary for people in jail to have access to law libraries and the courts, they are a constitutional right, not a privilege.

When assessing uses of welfare fund money, consider the following questions:

• Is the jail or prison forcing incarcerated people to cover the cost of their own basic needs?
• Is it appropriate to force many of the lowest-income people in the county or state (i.e. the majority of people in jail, and their families) to pay for these things?
• Why is the county or state not paying for these goods, services or programs out of its general budget?

Keep in mind that it’s not always easy to tell whether uses of these funds are legal or not. As we discuss in our report, many state statutes include wiggle words like “primarily” or “including but not limited to,” effectively giving corrections officials free rein to spend the money any way they like. Just because an expenditure is technically legal, of course, doesn’t mean it is right.

Who else to talk to

Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their families

If you’re able to contact people behind bars or their loved ones, ask them whether they have heard of the inmate welfare fund (make sure to use whatever term the jail or prison uses). You can also ask if they know of any programs or benefits for incarcerated people paid for with that money.

In writing Shadow Budgets, we talked to several formerly incarcerated people and advocates for incarcerated people about their views of welfare funds. Many saw the funds as regressive and exploitative, while many also worried about them being dismantled, and were concerned that if they did not exist, the needs met with those funds would go unfulfilled. While there is no easy answer for what to do about these funds, incarcerated people’s perspectives are crucial to understanding what the funds are or are not accomplishing.

State and local elected representatives

It’s likely that many elected lawmakers will never have heard of inmate welfare funds before. Nevertheless, because the funds are governed by state and local regulations, lawmakers can and should be held accountable for inappropriate uses of the money.

We also suggest asking state elected officials broader questions about welfare funds, such as:

• Are you concerned about prisons and jails having large discretionary budgets that are outside the purview of the legislature?
• Why does the state not choose to fund these services and programs with money from the regular appropriations process?

Recommended reading: investigative journalism about inmate welfare funds

These stories focusing on or involving welfare funds may give you other ideas about questions to explore, or sources to contact for your story:

• PennLive’s 2023 investigation into the Dauphin County Jail’s use of telecom and commissary revenues (via the jail’s welfare fund)
• Pacific Sun’s 2022 reporting on the welfare fund in the jail in Marin County, California
• WSB Atlanta’s 2023 story about misuses of money in the Fulton County Jail’s welfare fund
• Arizona Luminaria’s story series about Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb’s use of welfare fund money to buy guns and ammunition for law enforcement

Much like other aspects of prisons and especially of local jails, inmate welfare funds are rich territory for journalistic investigations because they have so little transparency. Unless state or local lawmakers request visibility into these funds, they can be spent more or less however correctional officials wish, meaning that hundreds of millions of dollars in public spending nationwide is virtually unaccounted for. By investigating welfare funds, journalists can shine a light not only on a little-known form of public spending, but also on the broader priorities of jail and prison officials. Transparency into these funds can spark important conversations about whether these officials’ stated commitment to incarcerated people’s wellbeing is reflected in their use of resources.

If you’re a journalist and have any questions about our report or about this guide, please don’t hesitate to write to us through our contact page.