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New Winnable Criminal Justice Reforms report provides state lawmakers with resources and information to secure victory on these important reforms.

by Naila Awan and Mike Wessler, November 16, 2022

Despite millions of dollars in TV advertisements and countless hours of hyperbolic news coverage, last week, voters across the country rejected fearmongering about efforts to overhaul the nation’s broken criminal legal system. They made clear they are interested in solutions and that the scare tactics that have been a staple of American politics for generations no longer resonate as they once did.

With that in mind, today, we released our annual guide to winnable state legislative criminal justice reforms ripe for victory in 2023. These 31 reforms will shrink the carceral system, mitigate its harms, and remove deeply entrenched financial incentives from the system.

The reforms focus on nine areas:

Each reform explains the problem it seeks to solve, points to in-depth research on the topic, and highlights solutions or legislation introduced or passed in states. While this list is not intended to be a comprehensive platform, we’ve curated it to offer policymakers and advocates straightforward solutions that would have a significant impact without further investments in the carceral system and point to policy reforms that have gained momentum in the past year. We have focused especially on those reforms that would reduce the number of people needlessly confined in prisons and jails. We made a conscious choice not to include critical reforms unique to just a few states or important reforms for which we don’t yet have enough useful resources to be helpful to most states.

We sent this guide to hundreds of lawmakers across the country — from all parties — who have shown interest in fixing the criminal legal system in their state. As they put together their legislative agendas for the upcoming session, legislators can use this guide to develop solutions to make their state’s criminal legal system more just, equitable, and fair.


Evidence from seven jail-based polling locations shows that it is not only feasible but effective.

by Naila Awan, October 25, 2022

Most of the more than 600,000 people locked up in jails are detained pretrial, and therefore, legally innocent. And, in most states people detained in jails on a misdemeanor conviction remain eligible to vote. This means that those who met the voter registration qualifications in their state at the time of their incarceration remain eligible to vote in elections. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that not only are they eligible to vote, they have a right to cast an absentee ballot just like any other voter who cannot vote in person. However, as we detailed in our report Eligible but Excluded: A guide to removing the barriers to jail voting, an insurmountable series of obstacles1 and a lack of awareness2 prohibit most of them from doing so.

In recent years, advocates have successfully pressured a small but growing list of governments to address some of these obstacles by establishing polling locations inside local jails where eligible, detained voters can cast their ballots. We have found seven jails that make in-person voting available:

  • Cook County Jail (Chicago, Ill.)
  • D.C. Central Detention Facility (Washington, D.C)
  • Denver County Jail and Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center (both Denver, Colo.)
  • Harris County Jail (Houston, Texas)
  • Century Regional Detention Facility (Los Angeles, Calif.)
  • Will County Detention Center (Joliet, Ill.)

Data about voter turnout at these jails is hard to come by, so it is difficult to know exactly how many eligible, detained voters have used these polling locations. However, the emerging evidence shows, when combined with outreach and education to ensure incarcerated voters know what steps they must take to cast their ballots, jail-based polling locations are not only feasible, they’re effective: when people know they can vote from jail, they will vote.

Cook County, Illinois

The Cook County Jail first established its jail-based polling location in 2020.

During the 2020 general election, when two weekends of early in-person voting were available, more than 2,000 of the 5,400 people in the jail (or about 37% of the jail’s population) cast a ballot.

In the June 2022 primary, roughly 25% of people detained at the jail (1,384 of the 5,560 people) cast their ballots. This location was so successful that people at the jail actually voted at a higher rate than registered voters in the city of Chicago (20%).3 About half of these voters were able to cast ballots because same-day registration was also available.

By contrast, in the 2018 primary election — before the Cook County Jail provided in-person voting and allowed people detained in the jail to register and vote at the same time — only 394 of the over 6,000 people detained in the jail (less than 7%) cast an absentee ballot.4

Washington, D.C.

The District of Columbia has facilitated voting at the D.C. jail for more than a decade. In 2012, 88 men voted in-person at the D.C. jail.

In 2020, the D.C. Council also passed legislation to abolish felony disenfranchisement and allow D.C. residents incarcerated for a felony conviction to vote, further expanding the number of people eligible to cast their ballots from jail. While this was unquestionably the right thing to do, it makes it a bit difficult to trace turnout patterns. Recent data about incarcerated voting does not break down the number of D.C. residents who have voted in person at the jail versus in prison. In November 2020, 562 incarcerated D.C. residents registered to vote and 264 of them cast ballots — but we don’t know how many of these voted while detained in jail.5

Denver, Colorado

In 2020, voters confined in Denver, Colorado, could cast ballots in person for the first time. On November 2 and 3, 136 eligible voters in the Denver County Jail and Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center cast in-person ballots.

Harris County, Texas

In November 2021, Harris County, Texas established a pilot program to allow people in the county jail to vote at a jail-based polling place. To be eligible, voters had to have been arrested on or after the absentee ballot request deadline (October 22, 2021), already be registered to vote, not be on probation or parole, and meet all other voter qualification requirements.6

That year, 96 people voted from the jail during the county’s local elections. While this number may seem small, it came very close to the 100 people who Durrell Douglas, founder and executive director of Project Orange, a group that helps people in Harris County Jail access the ballot, estimated would be eligible to vote under the pilot requirements. Harris County also saw “a major jump in [the number of jailed voters] who voted by mail, indicating an increased awareness of their right to a ballot.”

During the county’s March 1, 2022 primary election, 13 of the estimated 26 people eligible to vote at the jail cast a ballot.

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles County allows certain people who are detained in their jail to cast ballots in person.

In 2020, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and Sheriff announced the “We All Count” campaign, which aimed to provide voter education information to people detained in LA County jails and assist eligible voters with registration and the voting process.

While incarcerated voters in most facilities cast their vote by mail-in ballot, in February 2020 a pilot program at the Century Regional Detention Facility (CRDF) allowed certain qualified women voters to cast their ballots in person. In total, 35 ballots were cast at the CRDF jail polling location, and 2,200 people incarcerated in LA jails were registered through the “We All Count” campaign.7

Unfortunately, shortly after it was launched, the CRDF’s jail-based polling location was suspended because of the COVID pandemic. However, it returned in June 2022 for the primary election. Several women voted in person8 and the LA County Clerk plans to continue and expand the program for the November 2022 election.

Will County, Illinois

In June 2022, Will County became the second Illinois county to establish a polling location at its jail. Approximately 600 people are detained in Will County Jail, and according to county election officials, in June 2022, 48 people in the jail (approximately 8%) voted. 28 of these individuals cast ballots in the Democratic primary and 20 cast ballots in the Republican primary.

 
 

What to make of this data?

The early results from these seven facilities show the promise and possibilities of jail-based voting locations. However, they also make clear that simply setting up jail voting sites is not enough. Awareness of voter eligibility requirements, access to voter registration, the rules that determine who qualifies to use the polling location, and when voting is available can significantly impact turnout.

Local governments seeking to establish or improve jail-based voting locations should:

  • Do more to raise awareness of the availability of the polling location and any voting eligibility requirements.
  • Allow all eligible voters detained at the jail — regardless of when they were first detained — to cast a ballot at the polling location.
  • Provide in-person voting at the jail on Election Day, not merely during the early voting period.9
  • Take advantage of same-day registration if it is available.
  • Work to ensure that any ID requirements are able to be satisfied by eligible voters who are attempting to register or cast a ballot in jail.

It is time to act to ensure that eligible voters who find themselves behind bars on Election Day are able to exercise their fundamental right to vote.10 As the examples above show, there is increasing momentum to make democracy more accessible to people behind bars. To maximize the impact and use of jail-based polling sites, jurisdictions should ensure anyone detained on Election Day is eligible to both register and vote at the jail, and that voter ID or other requirements do not act as obstacles to voting.11

Note: After publication of this piece, we learned there is also a jail-based polling location in Flint, Michigan.

Are there places we missed?

If there is a jail-based polling site in your county not referenced here, let us know.

 
 

Footnotes

  1. For example, in some states, people who are incarcerated may have difficulties meeting absentee ballot voter ID or notary requirements. Many additional logistical details, such as whether a person is detained near or after the absentee ballot request deadline, whether they can access commissary in time to obtain stamps and mail the absentee ballot request form, whether they can contact their local board of elections with any questions, whether they are able to meet the mailing and postage requirements for their absentee ballot, and whether they are able to be informed of any problems with their ballot and fix those problems, also impact whether a person who is detained can participate in the political process.  ↩

  2. Across multiple states, advocates and government officials noted that qualified voters detained in jail were often unaware that they were allowed to cast a ballot. For example:

    • A representative of Speak Up and Vote in Illinois noted that people detained in jail frequently “didn’t realize they’re eligible to vote, so they didn’t try.”
    • An individual working with the Denver Sheriff Department stated that many people in jail “told us this was their first time voting and they had no idea they had the right the vote.”
    • The Sheriff in Harris County, Texas noted that the “majority of people involved in the justice system don’t vote due to a lack of information on voting.”  ↩
  3. Because Illinois is one of the states that bars people who are serving time for a misdemeanor conviction from voting, in addition to those in custody who are serving a sentence for a felony or who have been found guilty of a felony but not yet sentenced, some of the jail’s total population may not have been eligible to vote.  ↩

  4. Given that groups in Chicago have actively worked to facilitate voting and registration in Cook County Jail for a number of years, this level of participation is higher than what would be expected in many other jails in the country that do not have a polling place.  ↩

  5. Participation rates seem poised to increase: By mid-2021, the number of incarcerated D.C. residents registered to vote had already increased to 650, 355 of them under Bureau of Prison custody and 295 in D.C. Department of Corrections custody.  ↩

  6. Project Orange helped voters who were detained before the absentee ballot request deadline submit a ballot request form.  ↩

  7. More details about this program are available in the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Weekly Status Report — March 3rd Election.  ↩

  8. Correspondence with the LA County Registrar’s Office indicated that “[t]he majority of those that voted also utilized Conditional Voter Registration,” otherwise known as same-day registration, and “were able to register and vote on the spot.”  ↩

  9. Even when there is a jail-based polling location in place, some detained people may still be prevented from voting, depending on their circumstances. For example, in places where in-person voting is only available to people who were arrested after the deadline to request an absentee ballot, individuals who were arrested before that deadline but didn’t request an absentee ballot because they anticipated being released before Election Day would find themselves unable to vote if they remain in custody on Election Day. Similarly, in places where the jail polling site is only operational before Election Day (such as on weekends during an early voting period), people who are taken into custody after the polling site closes and remain detained through Election Day would find themselves unable to vote.  ↩

  10. While establishing jail-based polling locations may at times require a change to state law (as was the case Illinois), other times no legislative change is necessary (as was the case in Harris County, Texas).  ↩

  11. For example, the Harris County Sheriff noted that “[c]asting a ballot while incarcerated also has extra hoops to jump through: Texas requires a photo ID to vote, but the jail confiscates incarcerated people’s possessions, including photo ID.” Further, the Office of the Clerk and Recorder in the City and County of Denver stated that accessibility to IDs was an obstacle preventing people in jails from meeting a prerequisite for voting (registration), so legislation was passed to create a new form of identification for people who are confined in the jail by placing requiring jail administrators to provide necessary identification information to election officials.  ↩


Report shows every community is harmed by mass incarceration

October 17, 2022

Today Western Native Voice and the Prison Policy Initiative released a new report, Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Montana, that provides an in-depth look at where people incarcerated in Montana state prisons come from. The report also provides 18 detailed data tables — including localized data for Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Butte-Silver Bow Counties, as well as Billings, Missoula, and Great Falls — that serve as a foundation for advocates, organizers, policymakers, data journalists, academics and others to analyze how incarceration relates to other factors of community well-being.

The data and report are made possible by the state Redistricting and Apportionment Commission’s decision to count people in prison as residents of their hometown rather than in prison cells when redistricting. Not everyone in state prison should or could be reallocated to their home address. The report and data reflect the individuals that could successfully be reallocated. The decision to change how incarcerated people are counted was made on a unanimous, bipartisan basis.

The report shows:

  • Nearly every county is missing a portion of its population to incarceration in state prison.
  • While Yellowstone County sends the most people to prison, the much smaller Silver Bow and Custer counties send people to prison at the highest rates in the state.
  • There are dramatic differences in incarceration rates within communities. For example, in Billings, residents of the South Side neighborhood are 15 times more likely to be imprisoned than residents of nearby Highlands neighborhood.

Data tables included in the report provide residence information for people in Montana state prisons at the time of the 2020 Census, offering the clearest look ever at which communities are most impacted by mass incarceration. They break down the number of people locked up by county, city, town, zip code, legislative district, census tract and other areas.

The data show the cities with the highest state prison incarceration rates are Hobson (556 per 100,000 residents), East Helena (410 per 100,000 residents) and Walkerville (312 per 100,000 residents). For comparison, the state imprisonment rate is 123 people in state prison per 100,000 residents.

Map of Montana incarceration rates by census tract

“The nation’s 40-year failed experiment with mass incarceration harms each and every one of us. This analysis shows that while some communities are disproportionately impacted by this failed policy, nobody escapes the damage it causes,” said Emily Widra, Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative. “Our report is just the beginning. We’re making this data available so others can further examine how geographic incarceration trends correlate with other problems communities face.”

The report cites studies that show that incarceration rates correlate with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher rates of asthma, depression, lower standardized test scores, reduced life expectancy and more. The data included in this report gives researchers the tools they need to better understand how these correlations play out in Montana.

“This report and data make clear that the pain of mass incarceration is not felt equally across the state. Native communities and low-income neighborhoods bear an undue burden of these failed policies,” said Ta’jin Perez, of Western Native Voice and co-author of the report. “More importantly, though, this should guide state and local policymakers as they make investments in education, housing, health care and economic opportunities that will strengthen families and communities.”

The report is part of a series of reports examining the geography of mass incarceration in America.

Montana is one of more than a dozen states and 200 local governments that have addressed the practice of “prison gerrymandering”, which gives disproportional political clout to state and local districts that contain prisons at the expense of all of the other areas of the state. In total, roughly half the country now lives in a place that has taken action to address prison gerrymandering.


by Wanda Bertram, October 14, 2022

Table of Contents
Are bail companies actually bringing their clients to court?
How much bail owed by companies is not being collected by courts?
How is the bail industry lobbying for favorable conditions in your area?
General tips for investigating the bail industry

Our recent report All Profit, No Risk: How bail companies exploit the legal system was made possible in part by local news investigations into the bail industry. Below, for journalists interested in doing their own investigations, we offer a few story ideas and several tips based on the lessons we learned in our research.

We encourage journalists to use our report and its appendices of local data as a primer on problems in the bail industry. Our 2016 report Detaining the Poor also explains how money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time for defendants.

Read on for three ideas for urgent, impactful stories, and tips for pursuing them. Or skip to general tips for investigating the bail industry.

  1. Are bail companies actually bringing their clients to court?
    • Why this matters: Many people don’t realize that the primary service bail companies claim to perform — ensuring their clients’ appearance in court — is likely already being taken care of by three other parties: law enforcement, “pretrial services” agencies, and defendants themselves. Police, in the everyday course of their jobs, often encounter people who have a “bench warrant” for missing a previous court date, arrest them, and bring them to jail. In jurisdictions with pretrial services agencies, those agencies notify people of court dates, helping ensure their timely appearance. Finally, defendants who miss court usually do so for non-malicious reasons: the court failed to make their hearing date clear, they forgot, or their hearing conflicted with family or work obligations. These defendants often return themselves to court. When bail companies are doing little or no work to ensure clients’ court appearance, it raises the question of what purpose these companies serve besides acting as (predatory) lenders to low-income people.
    • Tips for investigating it: Your local jail may keep records showing who brought in bonded defendants (i.e., defendants released on money bail) following a “failure to appear” (or FTA). Jails also often have records showing how many arrests by law enforcement have “failure to appear” as the reason for arrest. These records — for which you will likely have to submit a public records request — will help you discern how often police, as compared to bail agents, are bringing in defendants who missed a court date.
  2. How much bail owed by companies is not being collected by courts?
    • Why this matters:As we explain in All Profit, No Risk, thanks to loopholes and cracks in the money bail system (many of which the bail industry has lobbied for), bail companies can usually get around paying bail forfeitures, i.e., bail bonds owed to the courts when a client fails to appear in court. Over time, this problem sometimes deprives public agencies of funding — like in Wake County, North Carolina, where schools sued for $1.2 million in bail bond money that was supposed to be forfeited to the courts and routed to the school system. Knowing the full value of bail bonds that companies pay to courts every year — compared to the value of all the bonds companies owe to courts when bonds are forfeited — can help counties and states understand their money bail systems. If bail companies are paying only a fraction of what they owe, it is likely because of numerous loopholes and cracks in the system, and policymakers will want to consider whether getting rid of money bail is more efficient than trying to collect more forfeitures, or more sensible than continuing to subsidize the bail industry by maintaining the status quo.
    • Tips for investigating it:
      • Call your state Department of Insurance. (See a list of state departments of insurance here.) Typically, the Department of Insurance is responsible for licensing both bail bond agencies and the insurance companies that underwrite their activities. You might ask the Department questions like:
        • How many violations by/complaints about bail bond companies were reported over [some date range]?
        • How many companies (or which companies) have had ability to write bonds suspended/revoked over [some date range]?
        • Can you share any internal investigations/audits/communications about bail bond company practices (particularly related to forfeitures)?
      • Reach out to your state or local auditor’s office. We found that several auditors had done extensive investigations of bail bond related problems.
      • Municipal courts often keep records of what happens to every bail bond that is written, including whether it is forfeited and whether the forfeited bond is paid. (Sometimes this information is kept in something called a “Bond Book” or similar.) A clerk at your local court may be able to answer questions like:
        • How many notices of forfeiture (or similar) were filed for bail bonds in [some time period]? You can ask them to compare the number of forfeitures to the number of surety bonds posted, or to the number “exonerated” (i.e. cleared/not forfeited), etc.
        • How many “motions to vacate” (exonerate) forfeited bail bonds were filed and/or granted?
        • How many summary judgments (i.e. orders to companies to pay forfeited bail bonds) were entered? How many of those were “set aside” (forgiven/cancelled)?
      • You can also ask a local court clerk how many “shutdown notices” (or similar) the court received in a given time period, instructing it to stop accepting bonds from specific bail bond agents/companies that had failed to pay summary judgments. (This may not be the same process everywhere, but something similar should be outlined in your state’s statute about bail forfeiture.)
      • If your local court doesn’t keep the detailed information about bail bonds mentioned above, try asking your local Sheriff’s Office.
      • Your D.A. or County Counsel (or similar) is ultimately responsible for prosecuting bail companies when they refuse to pay forfeitures they owe to courts. The prosecutor’s office should be able to answer questions like:
        • How many bail forfeitures were referred for prosecution in the past year/5 years? How many did the D.A.’s office decide to prosecute/pursue (as opposed to how many cases stopped at this point)?
        • How were those prosecuted forfeitures resolved? What was the number of successful prosecutions/collections? How many were negotiated down to lesser amounts?
      • Assuming forfeited bail money is eventually routed to county and/or state funds, the Treasurer’s office may have records about how much was received.
  3. How is the bail industry lobbying for favorable conditions in your area?
    • Why this matters: The bail industry is more active in politics than many people realize — for example, North Carolina Policy Watch reported that between 2002 and 2016, the North Carolina Bail Agents Association “took credit for helping to pass 60 laws ‘helping N.C. bondsmen make and save more money and protect their livelihood.'” The public has a right to know when companies are pushing for reforms that will make it even harder for courts to hold them accountable. Moreover, if you can gauge the lengths the bail industry will go to in order to protect its bottom line, your readers will think critically about what role — if any — private industry ought to play in the criminal justice system.
    • Tips for investigating it:
      • Make sure you have the full scope of the bail industry where you live: not just bail companies, but their insurance underwriters (the state Department of Insurance should know which companies these are), and any local or state-based associations of bail professionals.
      • Most (if not all) states require private entities to submit quarterly reports of lobbying activity. Lobbying records are sometimes kept by the Secretary of State’s office. For example, in California, lobbying entities report quarterly to the state, and the Secretary of State publishes a lot of information online.
      • Screenshot of a bail company's listing on an online report of lobbying activity.
      • Look for political contributions made by bail industry actors to elected prosecutors and judges.
      • Explore who is behind any recent bail-related ballot initiatives that might benefit the bail industry.

* * *

General tips for investigating the bail industry

  1. If you’re just getting started, use Appendix Table 2 from our report All Profit, No Risk to find the statutes governing the bail process in your state. The statutes should help you understand who is involved in the bail process (i.e., who to contact for story leads).
    • These statutes may also specify where and how records of bail bonds are kept. In most areas, some agency — typically a court, jail, or sheriff’s office — is tracking every bond that is written and what happens to that bond, often in a ledger informally called a “Bond Book.”
    • Pro tip: Before submitting any public records requests from agencies involved in the bail process, make sure those offices and/or the information you’re requesting aren’t exempt from FOIA requirements. State laws exempt certain government actors from public records requests, particularly the judiciary. This varies by state. Some criminal justice records are exempt (i.e., if they have personally identifying information). You may need to specify that redacted records (i.e., those with personal information removed) are acceptable. See our Public records request guide for links to more information.
  2. Certain state agencies and offices may be able to tell you about problems in the local bail industry:
    • The state Department of Insurance is responsible for licensing both bail bond agencies and the insurance companies that underwrite their activities. Sometimes, these departments maintain public registers of bail companies that have had their licenses suspended for violations, like failing to pay bonds owed to courts.
    • The state or county auditor’s office may have audited the bail system in the past.
    • The local District Attorney is ultimately responsible for prosecuting bail companies’ misconduct, and may be able to tell you about cases it has prosecuted or that have been referred for prosecution.
    • And, of course, someone at your local court can tell you about the court’s day-to-day relationship with bail companies and any regular problems that occur.
  3. To maximize your chances of finding useful information, cast a wide net when talking to agencies about the bail industry and bail process:
    • In addition to your official information requests, ask agencies you contact for general help with your investigation, blaming any recordkeeping problems you’ve encountered in other parts of the jurisdiction’s processes.
    • You can ask any office what types of information/data they maintain about the bail system and bail payments, to get ideas for follow up (i.e., when you don’t know what records might be available).
    • If you’re looking into a specific type of misconduct in the bail industry, you can ask any office for guidelines or instructions they have about how to treat such misconduct. (For example, you could ask a D.A.’s office about any internal guidelines on how to treat cases where a bail company is refusing to pay forfeited bonds to the court.)
  4. Keep in mind that the absence of data is itself a story. At the very least, you should be able to find out who is keeping track of bail companies that have not abided by court rules and what happens to every bail bond that is written. If that information is hard to locate, or if government agencies refuse to share it even with personal information redacted, consider writing a story that asks why the government is hoarding data that could be used to hold the bail industry — one that has a troubled record of corruption and abuse — accountable.

New data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics summarizes state policies and prison population changes from March 2020 to February 2021

by Emily Widra, October 13, 2022

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ August 2022 report Impact of COVID-19 on State and Federal Prisons, March 2020-February 2021 examines an inventory of measures each state prison system took to mitigate COVID-19, ranging from policies to reduce prison populations to efforts to provide vaccines and hand sanitizer to incarcerated people. The data reinforces what we already know about correctional settings during the pandemic: although crowded living spaces like prisons are generally hotspots for infection transmission, only some departments of corrections followed guidance from medical professionals, public health officials, and the CDC, while others ignored even the most basic recommendations. Below, we summarize the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ findings about state responses to various mitigation tactics and compile key findings about slowing prison admissions, increasing prison releases, testing for the virus, altering housing placements to prevent spread, and providing face masks.

Key findings from Impact of COVID-19 on State and Federal Prisons, March 2020-February 2021:

  • Some prison systems significantly reduced the number of people entering prison, but a handful quickly returned to admitting large numbers of people, even more than the number admitted in January 2020, before the pandemic.
  • 21 state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons reported no policies to expedite releases during the pandemic, and among the 28 states that did have such policies, four of them did not actually release anyone under their expedited release policies.
  • Two state prison systems – California and Michigan – were responsible for an outsized portion (38%) of all COVID-19 tests in state prisons (in February 2020, these two states held a combined total of 14% of the country’s state prison populations).
  • The implementation of COVID-19 mitigation efforts – like expanded testing, provision of hand sanitizer, and daily temperature checks – was inconsistent across state prison systems.
  • Many states failed to prioritize vaccination of incarcerated people and correctional staff. At the time of the February 2021 survey date, some states had not yet provided the vaccine to the prison system, and some state prison systems had access to the vaccine for weeks but had distributed none of it.

 

Reducing prison admissions

In response to the recommendation from public health officials to reduce prison populations in the face of COVID-19, many jurisdictions slowed — and even temporarily suspended — prison admissions. Some departments of corrections responded relatively quickly: From January 2020 to April 2020, the number of people admitted to prison in Virginia, Tennessee, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and the federal Bureau of Prisons decreased by more than 90%.

On the other hand, some states responded particularly slowly to calls to reduce prison admissions: By April 2020, 14 states had only reduced their admissions by 45%. By September 2020, three states – Louisiana, South Carolina, Wyoming – were admitting more people to prison than they did before the pandemic.

January 2021 was the deadliest month of the pandemic: 60,000 people died of COVID-19 in the U.S. That same month, Wyoming admitted more people to state prison than they did in January 2020, before the pandemic. Just one month later, three more jurisdictions followed suit: more people were admitted to federal, North Dakota, and New Mexico prisons in February 2021 than in January 2020.

 

Expediting prison releases

Public health agencies advised prisons not just to slow admissions, but to release more people (particularly immunocompromised people) who were already inside. The new report shines a light on the extent to which prisons followed this advice. Unsurprisingly, the report shows that many states failed to actually use these expedited release policies to their intended effect. For example, although Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Vermont each had an expedited release policy, these departments of correction did not actually release anyone under these policies. In 10 states with expedited release policies, less than 5% of releases from January 2020 to February 2021 were expedited. An additional 21 states did not even have a policy for expediting releases from prisons during the pandemic.

Other states made better use of their expedited release policies to significantly reduce the number of people behind bars. Iowa appeared to make the most of their expedited release policy: 5,272 people were released from January 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021, 89% of which were expedited releases (4,700). There were other states where expedited releases were a significant portion of their total releases as well: New Jersey (36% of releases were expedited), Utah (31%), California (27%), Virginia (20%), and Arkansas (17%). Of course, every state could have gone further to safely release more people, but these states did at least the minimum in facilitating earlier releases amid an unprecedented public health emergency.

The new report also includes data on the measures that each jurisdiction used to determine eligibility for expedited releases. These criteria included offense types, health status, age, risk assessment scores, verified post-release housing, and time left on sentences. Across the 28 states that had a policy for expedited release, the combination of criteria required for eligibility varied greatly:

bar graph showing number of jurisdictions requiring each type of measured criteria for expedited COVID-10 release

The Bureau of Justice Statistics asked departments of corrections about nine different criteria they might have used to determine who was eligible for expedited release. Some of these criteria, such as age, health status, and positive viral COVID-19 test were grounded in health logic: Older people and people with preexisting conditions were at higher risk of serious illness, and of course people who tested positive for COVID-19 were both at risk of serious illness and spreading the virus to others. But at least as many of these criteria, such as maximum time left on sentence, “non-violent” offense, and no prior “violent” convictions, were grounded in carceral logic that assumed the public safety risk posed by many incarcerated people, if released, would outweigh the extreme health risk these individuals were sure to face in prison during this health emergency.

These criteria for early release rely on tired stereotypes about incarcerated people, particularly that there are clear distinctions between “violent” and “non-violent” offenses and that people who have been convicted of “violent” offenses will pose a greater risk to society if released. In reality, we know that distinctions between “violent” and “non-violent” offenses are blurry and misleading. Further, those who are convicted of “violent” offenses are re-arrested at lower rates than those convicted of “non-violent” offenses. These offense-based eligibility criteria therefore reflect a continued commitment to punishment over health and safety, even in the midst of an unprecedented viral pandemic.

Interestingly, the data show that states that used a narrower set of eligibility criteria did not necessarily expedite fewer releases. Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, New Jersey, and Iowa all had high thresholds for eligibility. In spite of their inclusion on this list, Iowa and New Jersey expedited the highest percentages of their releases among all 50 state departments of corrections and the federal prison system in the time period studied. Meanwhile, Colorado used all nine of the criteria listed, yet only expedited about 6% of their releases from January 2020 to February 2021. We conclude that the data in this report show no clear correlation between how restrictive a state’s criteria were for expedited releases and the percentage of the state’s releases that were expedited. These inconsistencies across states’ expedited release policies, criteria, and actual implementation reveal a lack of foresight that departments of corrections must adjust in advance of future public health emergencies.

 

Testing for COVID-19

bar chart comparing share of prison population vs. share of prison COVID-19 tests for five states

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that COVID-19 testing protocols and frequency varied greatly between states and facilities, which both exacerbated the public health situation and hindered efforts to measure the pandemic’s spread. California and Michigan were responsible for 38% of all COVID-19 tests of people in state prisons, even though these two states held a combined total of just 14% of the country’s state prison population as of February 2020. Meanwhile, Texas held 12% of the country’s state prison population in February 2020, but only accounted for 7% of tests administered to people in state prisons from January 2020 to February 2021.

The broad disparities between testing strategies makes it challenging to compare rates of COVID-19 infection between states. States that tested people more than once (indicated by more tests administered than people in prison) — such as Vermont and New Jersey — tended to have lower positivity rates, while states that performed fewer tests (likely only testing people who were symptomatic or had known exposures) tended to have higher positivity rates. Seven of the 10 states with the highest positivity rates (Mississippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kentucky, Indiana, and Florida) performed fewer tests than the number of people in prison; clearly, not everyone in prison received a COVID-19 test.

The differences in testing strategies across states also had grave consequences for public health. Research from the Council on Criminal Justice in April 2021 found that states that did not use a mass-testing strategy (testing everyone at least once) in prisons actually had COVID-19 death rates at nearly eight times the death rate for non-incarcerated populations similar in age, gender, and race and ethnicity. But in states with mass testing, this disparity in death rates was halved. The number of tests performed in each state prison system included in this new report suggests that many states failed to heed the evidence that mass testing and retesting allows for better mitigation and ultimately better public health outcomes.

 

Other tactics to reduce transmission

In addition to reducing the incarcerated population and tracking the spread within that population, prison systems used a variety of other tactics to slow the spread of COVID-19 in prisons. The report includes information about these tactics, some of which were implemented in every prison system in the country: staff temperature checks at the start of the shift, quarantine of symptomatic prison population,1 and providing face masks to incarcerated people and prison staff.

But many states missed opportunities to mitigate COVID-19 with obvious and simple interventions; moreover, the report finds inconsistent practices between facilities within the same prison systems. Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas did not test new admissions to prisons, and six more states only tested on admission at some facilities. Nine states did not test people before release from prison, and an additional seven states only tested people before release at some facilities. We know that the transmission of COVID-19 between prisons and the surrounding communities is significant, so why, once testing became widely available, would departments of correction not test people leaving the prison and returning to the community?

Beyond testing, some states didn’t even take the minimal step of providing hand sanitizer: Nebraska, Connecticut, Georgia, and Tennessee. In Delaware, Hawaii, and Utah, hand sanitizer was only available at some prison facilities in the state. The successful distribution of hand sanitizer in all 43 other state prison systems and the federal prison system discredits concerns that alcohol-based hand sanitizer would not be safe in a prison environment.

bar chart showing number of jurisdictions implementing each COVID-19 mitigation tactic

Programming, in-person family visitation, and legal visitation were restricted across the country at various points during the pandemic. Twenty-three state prison systems suspended educational programming, drug and alcohol treatment, job programs, family in-person visits, legal visits, and religious programs. The federal Bureau of Prisons suspended all of those programs except for religious programming in some facilities. All 50 states and the Bureau of Prisons suspended some variety of these in-prison visits and programming. Only one state — Minnesota — did not universally suspend family in-person visits, though these visits were suspended at some facilities in the state.

It’s worth noting that 14 of the prison systems that suspended all programming and visitation also did not have any expedited prison releases. While it was important to limit transmission in group settings, it’s bad policy to sacrifice incarcerated people’s well-being by suspending visits while ignoring much more impactful strategies like reducing the population through expedited release. The impact of increased isolation and forgoing job training and educational programming (which can improve post-release outcomes) was a heavy toll to weigh against the physical health benefits of this mitigation tactic. And because it isn’t included in the report, we do not know if prison systems made any effort to provide resources to supplement in-person programming, especially in the critical period before vaccines were made accessible to incarcerated people.

 

Rolling out vaccines

bar chart showing number of jurisdictions using each criterion for vaccine prioritization

The Bureau of Justice Statistics collected information on vaccine distribution policies in all 50 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons. Additional findings include that no jurisdictions mandated (or explicitly barred opting out of) vaccinations for staff or prison populations.

When states drafted their vaccine plans in December 2020, we knew that by any reasonable standard, incarcerated people should have ranked high on every state’s priority list. At the time, congregate living settings (prisons, jails, colleges, nursing homes) were high-risk environments and the case rate in prisons was four times higher than the general population. While most states (40) did address incarcerated people as a priority group at some point during the vaccination rollout plan, it was not always particularly clear how incarcerated people — and correctional staff — were categorized for vaccine prioritization. This meant that incarcerated people in some states and facilities were offered the vaccine weeks or months late.

As an illustration of the broad disparities in vaccine rollouts across states, by February 2021, some jurisdictions (Bureau of Prisons, New Mexico, and Alaska) had made the vaccine available to prison populations and staff for more than 70 days, while other state departments of correction (Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina) had not yet even received – let alone started administering – the vaccine by February 28, 2021.

Disorganized and inconsistent vaccine rollout strategies showed that distributing vaccines equitably to incarcerated populations was not a priority, at both the national and state levels. As of February 2021, Alaska, Oklahoma, Michigan, and South Dakota had access to the vaccine for more than three weeks, but had not yet vaccinated a single correctional staff member. Similarly, the vaccine was available for more than three weeks in Arkansas, Maine, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma without a single incarcerated person receiving a dose. Some of these states are still struggling to increase the number of people vaccinated across the state (not just in prisons), but for departments of corrections to report zero vaccinations after three weeks of availability is a frightening display of indifference to the lives of incarcerated people and correctional staff.

 

Conclusion

Throughout the first year of the pandemic, it’s clear that many state departments of corrections ignored clear advice to mitigate the virus’s spread: reduce prison populations; increase prison releases; provide masks, hand soap, and hand sanitizer at no cost; utilize appropriate medical isolation (not solitary confinement); expand the use of screening tools (like temperature checks); expand testing of people in prison and staff to universal testing; conduct pre-release testing; prioritize incarcerated people and correctional staff in state vaccination plans; and improve vaccination rates among incarcerated people and staff. While the Bureau of Justice Statistics has yet to publish COVID-19 response data from the last 19 months, reporting from other sources indicates that many jurisdictions’ responses to COVID-19 in prison did not become more comprehensive or expansive as COVID-19 restrictions loosened outside of prisons.

While the newest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows us evidence of what we observed — state departments of corrections failing to implement even the most obvious mitigation efforts — the data do not give us a full picture of the consequences of these shortcomings. Because of the inconsistencies between departments’ testing protocols, it is challenging to conclude that states that were better about implementing public health measures saw lower infection and mortality outcomes than states that didn’t. Consequently, the truth about just how bad conditions were in certain state prison systems remains obscured. Along with improving and expanding virus mitigation tactics, standardizing data collection practices is an essential next step. Implementing clear public health emergency response policies and enhancing departments of corrections’ transparency about virus prevention and outcomes is necessary in order to keep incarcerated people safe and healthy.

 
 

Footnotes

  1. The first step in responding to the pandemic should have been to reduce the prison population as much as possible because prisons are no place for viral diseases. However, given the barriers to quick prison releases (like slowed court systems), departments of corrections inevitably needed to implement medical quarantine for sick people to reduce transmission. However, medical quarantine is not solitary confinement (which we know presents its own host of mental and physical health risks) but instead requires certain criteria to be met, including access to medical care. For more information on the difference between medical quarantine and solitary confinement, see this fact sheet from AMEND at the University of California San Francisco.  ↩


Report shows every community is harmed by mass incarceration

October 5, 2022

Today, Full Citizens Coalition, Common Cause in Connecticut, and the Prison Policy Initiative released a new report, Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Connecticut, that provides an in-depth look at where people incarcerated in Connecticut state prisons come from. The report also provides eleven detailed data tables — including neighborhood-specific data for Bridgeport, Hartford, Stamford, and Waterbury — that serve as a foundation for advocates, organizers, policymakers, data journalists, academics and others to analyze how incarceration relates to other factors of community well-being.

The data and report are made possible by the state’s historic 2021 law that requires that people in prison be counted as residents of their hometown rather than in prison cells when state and local governments redistrict every ten years.

The report shows:

  • Almost every single city — and every state legislative district — is missing a portion of its population to incarceration in state prison.
  • New Haven County, the third largest county in the state by population, sends the most people to prison and has the highest incarceration rate of all of the counties in the state.
  • There are dramatic differences in incarceration rates within communities. For example, in Hartford, a city that is one of the starkest examples of redlining in the country, residents of the Upper Albany neighborhood are four times as likely to be imprisoned than residents of the nearby West End neighborhood.

Data tables included in the report provide residence information for people in Connecticut state prisons at the time of the 2020 Census, offering the clearest look ever at which communities are most impacted by mass incarceration. They break down the number of people locked up by county, city, town, zip code, legislative district, census tract and other areas.

The data show the cities with the highest state prison incarceration rates are Hartford (1,065 per 100,000 residents), Waterbury (931 per 100,000 residents) and Bridgeport (903 per 100,000 residents). For comparison, Shelton has the lowest prison incarceration rate of any city, at 102 people in state prison per 100,000 residents. The statewide incarceration rate is 288 per 100,000 residents.

Map of incarceration rates in CT by census tract

“The nation’s 40-year failed experiment with mass incarceration harms each and every one of us. This analysis shows that while some communities are disproportionately impacted by this failed policy, nobody escapes the damage it causes,” said Emily Widra, Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative. “Our report is just the beginning. We’re making this data available so others can further examine how geographic incarceration trends correlate with other problems communities face.”

“This data and report put a spotlight on the deep and enduring wounds caused by mass incarceration in Connecticut,” said James Jeter of The Full Citizens Coalition. “As Connecticut looks to turn the page on the era of mass incarceration, it should make direct investments into the people, housing, education, and economic opportunities in those communities that have experienced the most pain.”

The report cites studies that show that incarceration rates correlate with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher rates of asthma, depression, lower standardized test scores, reduced life expectancy and more. The data included in this report gives researchers the tools they need to better understand how these correlations play out in Connecticut.

“Every person locked behind bars in Connecticut represents a piece of the fabric of a community that is missing,” said Keshia Morris Desir, of Common Cause. “This report and its data help to show the deep damage that is done to communities large and small by mass incarceration, and more importantly, provides guidance on where and how resources and support should be allocated to end this devastation.”

The report is part of a series of reports examining the geography of mass incarceration in America.

Connecticut is one of more than a dozen states and 200 local governments that have addressed the practice of “prison gerrymandering,” which gives disproportional political clout to state and local districts that contain prisons at the expense of all of the other areas of the state. In total, roughly half the country now lives in a place that has taken action to address prison gerrymandering.


Report shows every community is harmed by mass incarceration

September 28, 2022

Today the Public Interest Law Center and the Prison Policy Initiative released a new report, Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Pennsylvania, that provides an in-depth look at where people incarcerated in Pennsylvania state prisons come from. The report also provides 10 detailed data tables — including neighborhood-specific data for Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Allentown — that serve as a foundation for advocates, organizers, policymakers, data journalists, academics, and others to analyze how incarceration relates to other factors of community well-being.

The data and report are made possible by the 2021 Legislative Reapportionment Commission’s decision to address the practice of prison gerrymandering. Pennsylvania was the first state to address this problem through its redistricting commission. With this change, the Commonwealth — for the first time ever — counted most incarcerated people at their homes instead of in prison cells when drawing new legislative district lines.

The report shows:

  • Every single county — and every state legislative district — is missing a portion of its population to incarceration in state prison.
  • While Philadelphia County sends the most people to prison, the much smaller Venango County has the highest imprisonment rate of any county, at 452 per 100,000 residents.
  • There are dramatic differences in imprisonment rates within communities. For example, in Philadelphia, one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation, residents of the Nicetown neighborhood are more than fifty times as likely to be imprisoned than residents of the Center City-West neighborhood.

Data tables included in the report provide residence information for people in Pennsylvania state prisons at the time of the 2020 Census, offering the clearest look ever at which communities are most impacted by mass incarceration. They break down the number of people locked up by county, city, town, zip code, legislative district, census tract, and other areas.

The data show the cities with the highest state prison imprisonment rates are Chester (1,191 per 100,000 residents), Harrisburg (1,144 per 100,000 residents) and Uniontown (972 per 100,000 residents). For comparison, Bethel Park has the lowest imprisonment rate, at 21 people in state prison per 100,000 residents. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have imprisonment rates of 463 per 100,000 residents and 276 per 100,000 residents, respectively.

Map of incarceration by census tract in Pennsylvania

“The nation’s 40-year failed experiment with mass incarceration harms each and every one of us. This analysis shows that while some communities are disproportionately impacted by this failed policy, nobody escapes the damage it causes,” said Emily Widra, Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative. “Our report is just the beginning. We’re making this data available so others can further examine how geographic incarceration trends correlate with other problems communities face.”

The report cites studies that show that incarceration rates correlate with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher rates of asthma, depression, lower standardized test scores, reduced life expectancy, and more. The data included in this report gives researchers the tools they need to better understand how these correlations play out in Pennsylvania.

“Mass incarceration hurts every community in Pennsylvania, but hurts some communities more than others,” said Benjamin Geffen of the Public Interest Law Center and co-author of the report. “As state and local leaders rethink our approaches to criminal justice, they should use data about who is in state prisons to target investments in jobs, housing, education, and healthcare that will strengthen families and communities.”

The report is part of a series of reports examining the geography of mass incarceration in America.

Pennsylvania is one of more than a dozen states and 200 local governments that have addressed the practice of “prison gerrymandering,” which gives disproportional political clout to state and local districts that contain prisons at the expense of all of the other areas of the state. In total, roughly half the country now lives in a place that has taken action to address prison gerrymandering.


Report shows every community is harmed by mass incarceration

September 15, 2022

Today the Prison Policy Initiative, along with Delaware advocates Kyra Hoffner and Jack Young released a new report, Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Delaware, that provides an in-depth look at where people incarcerated in Delaware state prisons come from. The report also provides six detailed data tables that serve as a foundation for advocates, organizers, policymakers, data journalists, academics and others to analyze how incarceration relates to other factors of community well-being.

The data and report are made possible by the state’s landmark 2010 law that requires that people in state prisons be counted as residents of their hometown rather than in cells when state and local governments redistrict every ten years.

The report shows:

  • All three counties — and every state legislative district — are missing a portion of their population to incarceration in state prison.
  • Wilmington has the dubious distinction of having both the highest number of city residents incarcerated as well as the highest incarceration rate of any city in the state.
  • Mass incarceration is not just a problem impacting large cities. Many smaller towns are also hit hard. Laurel, for example, has an incarceration rate of 1,227 per 100,000 residents, while Blades has a rate of 924 per 100,000 residents.

Data tables included in the report provide residence information for people in Delaware state prisons at the time of the 2020 Census, offering the clearest look ever at which communities are most impacted by mass incarceration. They break down the number of people locked up by county, city, zip code, legislative district, and census tract.

The data show the cities with the highest incarceration rates are Wilmington (1,299 per 100,000 residents), Seaford (748 per 100,000 residents) and Dover (680 per 100,000 residents). For comparison, Newark has the lowest incarceration rate of any city, at 131 per 100,000 residents, nearly ten times lower than Wilmington, and nearly three times lower than the state rate of 380 per 100,000 residents.

Map showing incarceration rates by census tract in Delaware

“The nation’s 40-year failed experiment with mass incarceration harms each and every one of us. This analysis shows that while some communities are disproportionately impacted by this failed policy, nobody escapes the damage it causes,” said Emily Widra, Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative and co-author of the report. “Our report is just the beginning. We’re making this data available so others can further examine how geographic incarceration trends correlate with other problems communities face.”

The report cites studies that show that incarceration rates correlate with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher rates of asthma, depression, lower standardized test scores, reduced life expectancy and more. The data included in this report gives researchers the tools they need to better understand how these correlations play out in Delaware.

“This report provides the most precise picture ever of which communities are most impacted, and just as importantly, it shows where support and resources should be deployed to repair that harm,” said Kyra Hoffner, co-author of the report.

“Every person locked behind bars in Delaware represents a piece of the fabric of a community that is missing,” said Jack Young, co-author of the report. “This report and data provide critical guidance on where and how resources and support should be allocated.”

The report is part of a series of reports examining the geography of mass incarceration in America.

Delaware is one of more than a dozen states and 200 local governments that have addressed the practice of “prison gerrymandering,” which gives disproportional political clout to state and local districts that contain prisons at the expense of all of the other areas of the state. In total, roughly half the country now lives in a place that has taken action to address prison gerrymandering.


Evidence from court case shows why the FCC should act to stop abusive practices in the industry.

by Stephen Raher, September 7, 2022

On August 30, a federal court in Georgia approved a settlement in the years-long class action lawsuit against Global Tel*Link Corporation (“GTL”), one of the two major providers of phone services in prisons and jails. This litigation challenged GTL’s policy of seizing customer money from “prepaid accounts” after a short period of inactivity. Just as important, though, it shows why the FCC needs to take action to end this type of abusive practice throughout the industry.

Under the terms of the settlement, GTL will provide cash payments to some customers, account credits to others, and will institute a uniform policy of not seizing customer funds until accounts have been inactive for a minimum of 180 days. GTL has also agreed to implement procedures to warn customers before their accounts are declared inactive. Prison Policy Initiative filed an amicus brief in the case, pointing out certain ambiguities in the settlement agreement — our concerns were addressed by the addition of clarifying language in the court order approving the settlement.

One of the more interesting facts revealed in the case came at the very end — just days before the final hearing, the court denied GTL’s request to keep secret the amount of money it has taken from “inactive” accounts over the years. Although the court allowed GTL to keep such amounts secret for recent periods (specifically, September 2021 onward), we now know that from April 2011 through August 2019, GTL took over $121 million from customer accounts that it declared inactive — this averages to over $1.2 million a month. This isn’t money that GTL earned in return for providing a service, it’s simply money that GTL took because it could.

We have pointed out this shocking figure to the FCC, along with a request to enact rules that would prohibit companies from taking funds like this. Even though GTL has agreed to some reforms as a result of the class-action settlement, other telecom companies can and do seize customer funds in a similar manner, and no company should be able to enrich itself by taking money simply because a customer hasn’t made a call in recent months.

 

Information about the settlement

Although the deadline to file a claim for cash payments has passed, customers with active or reactivated accounts are still eligible to receive credits. See the official class website at https://gtlprepaidsettlement.com/FAQ.


An underutilized government dataset goes deep into daily life in state prisons — including work assignments, programming, and discipline — revealing lost opportunities for rehabilitation, education, and hope.

by Leah Wang, September 2, 2022

As 1.25 million people in state prisons navigate their sentences, many are eager to find hope for a better life after release. They may seek out ways to work and earn a living behind bars, set themselves up for success upon release, and gain a better skillset for navigating life outside of the criminal legal system. Prisons often claim to provide appropriate educational programming, vocational training, and other opportunities for growth or “rehabilitation.” But as the most recent, nationally representative data from state prisons show, these facilities provide few opportunities for people looking to make the most of their time inside. Instead, prisons — guided by state policies, as well as the broad discretion of correctional staff — tend to focus on enforcing rigid rules and filling incarcerated people’s time with menial work, without which the prison could not function.

Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, this briefing reveals how prisons fail to implement programs that we know “work” at setting incarcerated people up for success in the future (such as giving people opportunities to earn money, obtain an education, or gain relevant job skills). 1 These failures have far-reaching effects: When people in prison have little to no income, they may accumulate child support debt, suffer without essential commissary items, or be unable to access communication with loved ones, which can impact people on both sides of the bars. Less overall opportunity in prison can mean lowered prospects for employment and finding stable footing upon release.

graph showing that 90 percent of people written up for a rule violation received a sanction

  

Prison work is often compulsory, does little to build useful skills, and pays almost nothing

Prison jobs, often called “work assignments,” are the most common “programming” offered in state prisons. 2 Prisons rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry, and other tasks that offset operational expenses. (While less common, some prisons also contract with public and private entities, assigning some people to “prison industries” jobs where they do anything from make eyeglasses to fight wildfires.) In general, work assignments are not thoughtfully designed to provide job skills and development: They are intended to keep the prison running and keep “idleness” at bay.

  • graph showing 70 percent of incarcerated workers are required to work, and 39 percent of incarcerated workers are paid nothing for their work

    Data note: The last time the data were collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) on how many workers are paid was in 2004. But in 2022, six states (Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., S.C., and Texas) still paid nothing for most or all jobs done by incarcerated people, and together, these states made up 30% of state prison populations nationwide in 2019, suggesting that the percentage of workers who are unpaid has likely not changed much since the 2004 survey.

  • graph showing work assignment types of people in state prisons, only 6% of which are for prison industries or contracted services, the rest are helping to run the prison itself

 

Employment as we know it outside of the carceral system is typically a consensual relationship between employer and employee, and protected by employment laws; prison work assignments, on the other hand, are often compulsory, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections compared to non-incarcerated workers.3 Prison labor is sealed off from standard workplace protections and minimum wage laws by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which contains an “exception clause” allowing slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.

If an incarcerated person refuses to work, they often face disciplinary action. Those who do work receive paltry wages — far less than $1 per hour, typically – and even those mere pennies are often deducted to pay for fees, restitution, and child support, or must be saved for basic necessities like medical visits, hygiene items, and phone calls.

According to the national Survey:

  • 58% of people in state prisons have a work assignment. Most of these jobs help keep the prison functioning, such as janitorial duties (29% of workers); food preparation (20%); working in a prison library, stockroom, barber shop, or similar (12%); groundskeeping (10%); and jobs doing maintenance, repair, or construction (7.4%). Only about 6% work in “prison industries” jobs, producing goods or services for other state agencies or companies.4
  • Considering the broader context of incarcerated people’s lives before prison, 61% of those who had provided at least half of their household’s income before their arrest reported having a prison work assignment in prison. These individuals are now almost certainly earning significantly less than they did in the outside world. And the remaining 39% of former income-providers who now have no work assignment may be experiencing a dramatic shift from providing for their loved ones to having no income to contribute to their families at all.
  • Most (71%) people with a work assignment are required to have one, suggesting that many people are forced to work. While many people in prison want to be productive while behind bars, they lack any control in pursuing relevant, stimulating, and/or safe work assignments.5
  • People in prison who were not forced, but chose to work, said the following reasons were “very important” in their decision: learning new skills (70%), earning money (54%), relieving boredom (51%), or earning good time for earlier release (45%). (Only the 29% of people who chose to work were asked about their motivations.)
  • White people in state prisons were slightly more likely than people of other racial and ethnic groups to have a work assignment (63%, compared to 54%-58% for other groups). Previous studies point to racial bias (and gender bias) in how jobs are assigned to incarcerated people.

The Survey did not ask about wages earned (or even whether respondents earned anything at all), but a recent analysis found that the highest-paid incarcerated people earned over one dollar per hour in “industries” jobs, while the typical state prison job — doing things like laundry, food preparation, or other tasks supporting prison operations — paid only 13 to 52 cents per hour.6 These unthinkably low wages have remained stagnant since our 2017 deep dive into prison earnings (and even then, we found that some prisons were paying workers less than they had in 2001). Considering the additional blow dealt by inflation, people in prison have virtually no chance of building up financial savings, no matter how hard they work.

  

State prisons lack educational opportunities, job training, and programming that would help develop skills

Prison work assignments are not the only area where prison policies are inconsistent with what we know would help incarcerated people. In the words of one group of researchers, prison programs that build skills, confidence, and mental health “reduce recidivism by increasing the opportunity cost of committing crimes.” But the staggering length of waiting lists for education and programming at many facilities nationwide tells us not only that incarcerated people want programming, but that there is not nearly enough.

graph showing people in state prisons are often excluded from education or job training programs

Overall, about two-thirds (68%) of people in state prison have participated in some type of programming, including education (43%); job training (33%); and classes in anger management (35%), parenting (17%), or money management (17%).

According to the Survey:

  • Because most work assignments involve menial tasks that are unlikely to help people find skilled work upon release, it seems likely that job training programs would be popular among incarcerated skill-seekers. But the Survey data show that only one-third (33%) of people in state prisons report ever having participated in job training. This lack of widespread job training opportunities may help explain why 29% of incarcerated workers voluntarily chose to take on their work assignments.
  • Most of those (58%) who were ever enrolled in job training successfully completed their program, but 1 in 5 (20%) people were prematurely cut off from their program before finishing.7
  • White and Hispanic people were the least likely racial or ethnic groups to participate in job training (29% each, compared to 33%-37% for other groups). This disparity could be explained by the fact that white and Hispanic people had the highest rates of pre-prison employment, which could indicate less need for training.

Offering education in prisons has a known return on investment, leading to well-documented reductions in recidivism and providing the credentials that lead to better jobs. People tend to enter prison with lower-than-average education levels, and were often under-supported and over-disciplined while in school.8 Yet instead of being able to make up for lost time by enrolling in educational programs, the Survey data reveal that only 43% of people in state prisons have participated in educational programming (even though 62% had not completed high school upon admission). Participation rates in education are similar among men and women and across age groups, though incarcerated women are more likely to have a high school education than incarcerated men.

Our analysis of the Survey results also found that:

  • Among the 57% of people in state prisons who had never participated in educational programming, the reasons they cite for not participating are illuminating: 18% — over 125,000 people — had never been offered the chance. Another 11% said that they weren’t qualified or allowed to attend, and 7.3% said they could not get into an education program or were waitlisted — again pointing to the widespread problem of waitlists for programming in prisons. Some of these same failures to inform people of educational opportunities and get them enrolled applied to job training programs, too.
  • White people in state prisons were the least likely to participate in an education program compared to all other racial and ethnic groups.9 This finding may be related to the relatively higher educational attainment of white people who enter state prison compared to other groups, particularly Black and Hispanic people, and the requirement in some prison systems that people without a high school education must enroll in basic education courses.
  • Half (53%) of people without a high school credential reported former or current enrollment in education programs, compared to less than 30% of people with at least a high school diploma – further evidence that high school and college opportunities aren’t equally available in prisons.10 While high school equivalency (e.g., GED) programs can start to bridge the education gap between incarcerated people and the general public, the lack of higher education opportunities remains a problem, as a high school education alone greatly limits employment prospects.11

  

Even minor rule violations in prison can have serious consequences

Prisons have strict rules that govern nearly every aspect of life, and incarcerated people face frequent, excessive, and often arbitrary punishment for alleged violations of those rules. Importantly, discipline systems in prison do not have nearly the same level of due process or transparency that courts do: Correctional officers can hand out “tickets” for suspected rule violations at their discretion, setting off a series of administrative hearings and investigations led by prison staff. People behind bars do not have the right to an attorney (related to the violation), to cross-examine witnesses, or to be judged by a jury of their peers, even when they are accused of an action that would be a crime in the free world. And whether the incarcerated person pleads guilty or not, a hearing committee or higher authority can issue sanctions to almost any degree.

graph showing that 90% of people written up for a rule violation received a sanction

In his 1975 illuminating deep-dive, Prisons: Houses of Darkness, law professor Leonard Orland points out the trap set by unjust systems of prison discipline, which still holds true today:

“Punishment imposed by a prison discipline committee constitutes a most unfair kind of ‘triple jeopardy.’ Typically, the same committee that ordered punitive segregation also has the power to take away statutorily or meritoriously earned ‘good time,’ … Moreover, records of such misconduct are seen by the parole boards and may well be a factor in parole denial. Thus, a finding of prison misconduct may result in three separate losses of freedom for the inmate.”

Our analysis of the Survey data shows that people in state prisons can be harshly punished even for minor, non-violent infractions. This is disproportionately true for women, and in some cases for people of color. Specifically:

  • More than half (53%) of people in state prisons had been written up for or found guilty of at least one rule violation in the past year.12 This is the same percentage of people written up for rule violations in 1986 – although state prisons in 2016 held nearly 800,000 more people than they did 30 years prior, so far more individuals are impacted by prison discipline today. Of respondents who were written up at least once in the 12 months prior to the Survey, about 9% reported receiving a “major” violation, a category that includes assault, rioting, attempted escape, and food strikes.
  • graph showing that women are more likely than men to receive a sanction for a rule violation in state prisons
  • Women in prison are more likely to report being written up for a rule violation in the past year than men (58% versus 53%). Of those who were written up at least once, women were more likely to have received a “minor” rule violation than men (70% versus 57%). These data align with research showing that women are more likely to be written up and disciplined for breaking prison rules, and receive disproportionate punishment for minor, subjective infractions like “disrespect.”
  • Nearly all people (90%) with a major or minor rule violation in the previous year received some form of disciplinary action. Of those who were disciplined, about half (53%) lost certain “privileges,” like access to the commissary, visitation, or phone calls, even though these things should arguably be considered “essentials,” not “privileges,” in prison. And 1 in 8 (12%) lost sentence-reducing “good time” (days credited off one’s sentence for good behavior) that they’d already earned. And, of course, these violations become part of each individual’s disciplinary record, which impacts weighty decisions including parole release. All of these punishments underscore the high stakes of prison discipline.
  • One-third (35%) of those who received a disciplinary action for their most recent rule violation were ordered to solitary confinement, an extreme measure that is hardly ever appropriate (and often comes with the losses of other “privileges” mentioned above). This high dependence on solitary confinement is particularly concerning, as the international human rights community considers solitary confinement, as practiced in U.S. prisons, to be torture.13
  • Men (26%) were more likely than women (17%) to receive solitary confinement as a sanction for a rule violation. This finding tracks with national data on the use of “restricted housing,” which includes solitary confinement. Some state prison systems have recently moved to cut down on using solitary for specific populations (for example, Massachusetts eliminated the “restrictive housing unit” at its only women’s prison in 2020). However, women were more likely than men (18% vs. 12%) to be confined to their own cell as punishment, a practice that advocates consider similarly egregious.
  • Racial disparities in sanction types were not readily apparent through the Survey data. For example, between 22% and 28% of each racial or ethnic group was sent to solitary confinement as a sanction, and between 1% and 4% of any given group were transferred to another facility as punishment. Nevertheless, research points to alarming racial disparities in how rule violations in state prisons are recorded and disciplined.14
  • The survey data suggest that prisons lean heavily on solitary confinement for infractions that involve no physical harm, such as “verbal assault.”15 Even respondents who were written up for things falling into the category “other minor violations” ended up in solitary 17% of the time. Even if everyone who was ordered to solitary confinement for their most recent past-year violation served just one day there (and many certainly had much longer stints than that), this amounts to 135,000 days, or 370 years in solitary confinement.

Prison rules and disciplinary procedures are an under-discussed issue that shapes daily prison life. As the Survey findings make clear, just as with work assignments and programming, there is a disconnect when it comes to rule violations between what prisons do in practice and what would actually help people return to their communities with a fair chance at a good life. Solitary confinement, in particular, is incredibly damaging to mental health, even increasing the risk of premature death after release from prison. But any sanctions that disrupt what little support exists for incarcerated people are bound to fail them in the long run.

  

Conclusion and recommendations

In the name of “justice,” states misguidedly send large numbers of people with low levels of education and income to prison, and then offer them little in the way of economic, professional, or personal growth opportunities to increase the odds of a better future. The Survey data show that incarcerated people are starved for opportunities to earn a real living and find purpose in state prisons. It’s in everyone’s best interest to offer meaningful opportunities to incarcerated people — for one, it costs far less to educate someone compared to locking them up. Putting obvious fiscal considerations aside, disrupting the cycles of struggle, unlawful or violent behaviors, and incarceration will require more compassionate — and less carceral — interventions.

Policymakers must drill down to these aspects of everyday prison life to improve outcomes. Without better opportunity and preparation, the hope to which so many incarcerated people cling throughout their sentences will wane, their cycles of incarceration will continue, and the crisis of mass incarceration will continue to be one of our nation’s greatest failures. Therefore, we recommend that states:

Bring prison employment into modern, real-world context:

  • Legally recognize incarcerated workers as employees, affording them workplace protections, the right to unionize, and minimum wages
  • In applicable states, end the requirement to work in prison16
  • Ensure that work assignment and job training opportunities align with skills and technologies that are relevant to today’s job market
  • Establish policies and accountability measures to ensure work assignments are not allocated in a discriminatory manner

Shift priorities away from monotonous work and punishment, toward opportunity:

  • Ensure that all incarcerated people are aware of programming and educational opportunities available to them
  • Shift prison budgets away from costly and counterproductive practices like solitary confinement and toward improvements in job training, high-quality higher education, special education, and English as a second language education, and other programs
  • Provide people who participate in educational or other prison programs with pay equal to what they would receive for a work assignment17
  • Allow people to complete a program before transferring to a facility that does not offer the same program (at a minimum, require that every effort is made to allow continued participation)
  • Ensure that people being released from prison can continue their education or training, instead of having to drop everything and find work immediately to satisfy parole requirements18

Pull back the curtain on rule violations and prison discipline:

  • Acknowledge gender and racial biases in how prison rules are enforced and sanctioned by correctional staff, and work to end excessive and disparate disciplinary practices
  • Prohibit the forfeiture of earned good time as a sanction, as “good time” is a strong motivator for good behavior,19 and an important tool for safely reducing prison populations
  • End the use of solitary confinement and other forms of harmful, long-term segregation

Footnotes

  1. You can read more about the demographic, early life, and health-related results from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates in two of our latest reports, Beyond the Count: A deep dive into state prison populations, and Chronic Punishment: The unmet health needs of people in state prisons, and our briefings, What the Survey of Prison Inmates tells us about trans people in state prison and Both sides of the bars: How mass incarceration punishes families.  ↩

  2. According to the Survey of Prison Inmates, 58% of people have a work assignment, compared to the next-highest result, 43% of people who have “ever” participated in educational programming.  ↩

  3. Though not explicitly excluded, the courts have interpreted the Fair Labor Standards Act – which provides federal minimum wage, overtime protection, and other standards – to exclude incarcerated workers.  ↩

  4. The largest nationwide prison industries program partnering with private companies is called the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP), which places incarcerated people into jobs for outside-world employers, where they are paid the “prevailing local wage.” In order to participate in PIECP, corrections departments must promise to “provide worker benefits,” assure voluntary participation, and comply with federal environmental policy. Though these criteria represent a step up from the average prison work assignment, not all state jurisdictions – and relatively few incarcerated people – participate in PIECP. At the end of 2021, just shy of 5,400 people – or 0.4% of people in state and federal prisons – were employed through PIECP. Meanwhile, other prison industries participants are not necessarily guaranteed minimum wage or other protections.  ↩

  5. Audits of state prison work programs have revealed that the skills many incarcerated workers are trained in fall short of being relevant for future job-seekers. For instance, one-third of participants in Louisiana‘s state prison enterprises program in 2018 were working in industries expected to decrease in the labor market. And in Mississippi, incarcerated workers were being trained in areas for which there were few actual job prospects in that state.  ↩

  6. Raw data from a previous iteration of the Survey of Prison Inmates, conducted in 2004, revealed that only 57% of incarcerated people with work assignments earned any wages for their labor. And according to analysis from the American Civil Liberties Union, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas pay nothing at all in wages to many or all of their incarcerated, non-industry workers.  ↩

  7. About 9.5% of people who stopped participating in job training said that they “were no longer allowed to participate”; 6.4% reported that their job training program stopped running before they could complete it; and 4.3% were transferred to another facility before they could complete their program.  ↩

  8. The Survey data reveal that 40% of people in state prisons (compared to just 15% of all U.S. adults) have a physical or cognitive disability; in childhood, students with learning disabilities or special education needs are systemically under-supported by a severe shortage of trained personnel and related services, setting them up for failing grades and higher rates of discipline and bullying at school.  ↩

  9. Participation in educational programming by race and ethnicity breaks down to the following: white (34%); multiracial (43%); American Indian/Native American (45%); Hispanic (46%); Black (49%); and Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (57%).  ↩

  10. This finding tracks with other Bureau of Justice Statistics data showing that the majority (87%) of state and federal U.S. prisons offer high school education, but only half (49%) offered any college courses in 2019.  ↩

  11. Additionally, because the average maximum sentence length in state prison is about 15 years (according to the Survey), many people could complete both a high school and a college education during their incarceration.  ↩

  12. This is likely an underestimate, because some prisons did not allow certain people to take the Survey of Prison Inmates – including some who may have been more likely to have been written up for breaking prison rules. According to the survey’s methodology, “Refusals by facilities included prisoners who were deemed by the facility to be a safety or security risk because they were too violent to be interviewed. This group also included prisoners to whom SPI interviewers were not permitted access because they were not housed in the general population.” The methodology also notes that “The majority of these [refusals] were from one state,” though they do not specify which state that was.  ↩

  13. U.N. experts have noted that the U.S.’s use of prolonged solitary confinement is excessive and amounts to psychological torture. As established by the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the “Nelson Mandela Rules”), prohibits prolonged solitary confinement (confinement for a period longer than 15 consecutive days), noting that the practice violates the ban on torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment.  ↩

  14. One researcher examined disciplinary records from North Carolina state prisons in 2020, finding that Black and Indigenous incarcerated people received disproportionate numbers of write-ups and sanctions, compared to their white counterparts. And The New York Times examined disciplinary records from state prisons in New York in 2015, finding that Black and Latino men were disciplined at higher rates and sent to solitary confinement more often than white men. The racial disparity persisted even after controlling for offense type and age.  ↩

  15. According to the Survey, over one-third of those written up for “verbal assault” of a correctional officer or incarcerated person were sent to solitary confinement (36% and 35%, respectively).  ↩

  16. Based on the Survey of Prison Inmates data alone, which doesn’t contain state identifiers, we don’t know which states’ prison systems require incarcerated people to work.  ↩

  17. Compensation for participating in education, programming, or even waiting to enter a program is policy in some state prison systems, including Pennsylvania, but is typically set at the lowest pay tier, disincentivizing participation.  ↩

  18. This recommendation may involve providing a basic income upon release, a practice that would have wide-ranging benefits beyond the ability to pursue education.  ↩

  19. As we explain in our 2018 report Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences, some states are already extremely frugal in granting good time (or don’t grant it at all), and can take away years of earned good time in an instant, when forfeiture should only be for the most serious rule violations.  ↩




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