What you should know about halfway houses

Halfway houses are a major feature of the criminal justice system, but very little data is ever published about them. We compiled a guide to understanding what they are, how they operate, and the rampant problems that characterize them.

by Roxanne Daniel and Wendy Sawyer, September 3, 2020

In May, an investigation by The Intercept revealed that the federal government is underreporting cases of COVID-19 in halfway houses. Not only is the Bureau of Prisons reporting fewer cases than county health officials; individuals in halfway houses who reached out to reporters described being told to keep their positive test results under wraps.

It shouldn’t take exhaustive investigative reporting to unearth the real number of COVID-19 cases in a halfway house. But historically, very little data about halfway houses has been available to the public, even though they are a major feature of the carceral system. Even basic statistics, such as the number of halfway houses in the country or the number of people living in them, are difficult to impossible to find.

Broadly speaking, there are two reasons for this obscurity: First, halfway houses are mostly privately operated and don’t report data the way public facilities are required to; second, the term “halfway house” is widely used to refer to vastly different types of facilities. So, we compiled the little information that does exist about halfway houses, explaining how various facilities commonly called “halfway houses” differ from each other, and the ways in which these criminal justice facilities often fail to meaningfully support formerly incarcerated people. We also explore why poor conditions and inadequate oversight in halfway houses have made them hotspots for COVID-19.

“Halfway house” is an umbrella term

The term “halfway house” can refer to a number of different types of facilities, but in this briefing we will only use halfway house to mean one thing: A residential facility where people leaving prison or jail (or, sometimes, completing a condition of probation) are required to live before being fully released into their communities. In these facilities, individuals live in a group environment under a set of rules and requirements, including attendance of programming, curfews, and maintenance of employment.

State corrections departments, probation/parole offices, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) often contract with nonprofits and private companies to run these facilities. These contracts are the primary means through which halfway houses receive funding.¹

Federally contracted halfway houses are called Residential Reentry Centers (RRCs). State-licensed halfway houses can be referred to by a variety of terms, like Transitional Centers, Reentry Centers, Community Recovery Centers, etc. These facilities work with corrections departments to house individuals leaving incarceration, often as a condition of parole or other post-release supervision or housing plan.

“Halfway house” can also refer to a few other types of facilities, which will not be addressed in this briefing:

• Sober living homes, though sometimes housing formerly incarcerated people, do not serve the sole purpose of acting as a transitional space between incarceration and reentry. Sober living homes accomodate people with substance use disorders, and they’re sometimes called “halfway houses” because they often act as transitional housing for people leaving drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs.
• Restitution centers and community based/residential correctional facilities act as alternatives to traditional incarceration, instead of prison or jail, where individuals can go to serve their entire sentence. In restitution centers, people are expected to work and surrender their paychecks to be used for court-ordered fines, restitution fees, room and board, and other debts. Community based/residential correctional facilities frequently include a work-release component, but they function more as minimum-security prisons than reentry services.
• Some transitional housing providers for people leaving prison are voluntary for residents, and are not funded and contracted by the government. Susan Burton’s A New Way of Life Reentry Project, for example, provides safe housing and support for women leaving incarceration. Their services provide a potential model for the future of reentry programs that actually help residents rebuild their lives after the destructive experience of prison or jail.

Some facilities, like community-based correctional facilities, can serve dual functions that blur the lines of what facilities are and are not halfway houses. For instance, a community-based corrections facility might primarily house people who have been ordered to serve their full sentences at the facility, but also house some individuals who are preparing for release. We have included an appendix of the most recent list of adult state and federal correctional facilities that the Bureau of Justice Statistics calls “community-based correctional facilities” (those that allow at least 50% of the population to leave the facility). In our appendix table, we attempt to break down which of those 527 facilities fall under our “halfway houses in the criminal justice system” definition, and which facilities primarily serve other purposes.

“Halfway house” can refer to different types of facilities that share some similarities. These facilities range from entirely carceral to not carceral at all (represented by the locked doors), and feature different priorities and programming for the people residing in them. Their purposes can also overlap, as community based correctional facilities, for instance, house individuals at various stages in their incarceration. For the purpose of this briefing, however, we are focusing on “Halfway Houses in the Criminal Justice System”– which are state or federally contracted facilities for people leaving state or federal incarceration.

Every year, tens of thousands spend time in halfway houses

The federal government currently maintains 154 active contracts with Residential Reentry Centers (RRCs) nationwide, and these facilities have a capacity of 9,778 residents. On any given day in 2018, RRCs held a nearly full population of 9,600 residents. While regular population reports are not available, 32,760 individuals spent time in federal RRCs in 2015, pointing to the frequent population turnover within these facilities.

Unfortunately, much less information exists about how many state-run or state-contracted halfway houses and halfway house residents there are. BJS data collected in 2012 indicates that there are 527 “community-based correctional facilities,” or facilities where 50% or more of the residents are regularly permitted to leave.² These facilities held a one-day population of 45,143 males and 6,834 females, for a total of 51,977 individuals. However, as we will discuss later, these numbers include facilities that serve primarily or entirely as residential correctional facilities (where people serve their entire sentences). This ambiguity means that pinning down how many people are in halfway houses each day – and how many specifically state-funded halfway houses there are – is nearly impossible.

One reason that we know more about federal than state-level halfway houses has to do with the contracting process. The federal contract process is relatively standardized and transparent, while state contracting processes vary widely and publish little public-facing information, which makes understanding the rules governing people in state-contracted facilities much more difficult.

Halfway houses are carceral facilities

Contrary to the belief that halfway houses are supportive service providers, the majority of halfway houses are an extension of the carceral experience, complete with surveillance, onerous restrictions, and intense scrutiny.

For the most part, people go to halfway houses because it is a mandatory condition of their release from prison. Some people may also go to halfway houses without it being required, simply because the facility provides housing. Placement in Residential Reentry Centers (RRCs) post-incarceration can technically be declined by people slated for release, but doing so would require staying in prison instead.

In federal RRCs, staff are expected to supervise and monitor individuals in their facilities, maintaining close data-sharing relationships with law enforcement. Disciplinary procedure for violating rules can result in the loss of good conduct time credits, or being sent back to prison or jail, sometimes without a hearing.

Federal RRC residents³ are generally subject to two stages of confinement within the facility that lead to a final period of home confinement. First, they are restricted to the facility with the exception of work, religious activities, approved recreation, program requirements, or emergencies. A team of staff at the RRC determines whether an individual is “appropriate“⁴ to move to the second, less restrictive component of RRC residency. Even in this second “pre-release” stage, individuals must make a detailed itinerary every day, subject to RRC staff approval. Not only are residents’ schedules surveilled, their travel routes are subject to review as well.

Most states do not release comprehensive policy on their contracted halfway houses. From states like Minnesota, we are able to see that the carceral conditions in federal RRCs are often mirrored in the state system. Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) policy specifically calls for halfway houses to “[conduct] searches of residents, their belongings, and all areas of the facility to control contraband and locate missing or stolen property.” They also mandate that “staff shall maintain a system of accounting for the residents at all times,” that “methods used for control and discipline” are incorporated in written policy, and that there are “written procedures for the reporting of absconders.” The exact policies and procedures vary by facility, but all are expected to adhere to statewide guidelines; the conditions and intensity of carcerality will surely vary from halfway house to halfway house.

There’s far more that we don’t know: Lack of publicly available data makes it difficult to hold facilities accountable

Understanding halfway houses — including basic information like how many facilities there are and what conditions are like — is difficult for several reasons:

• No standard, transparent policies. There are few states that publicly release policies related to contracted halfway houses. In states like Minnesota, at least, there appear to be very loose guidelines for the maintenance of adequate conditions within these facilities. For example, beyond stating that buildings’ grounds must be “clean and in good repair,” the Minnesota DOC specifies no regular sanitation guidelines. Troublingly, beyond an on-site inspection to determine whether to issue a contract, there are no provisions for regular audits of halfway houses to affirm compliance with these policies.
• Privatization. The majority of halfway houses in the United States are run by private entities, both nonprofit and for-profit. For example, the for-profit GEO Group recently acquired CEC (Community Education Centers), which operates 30% of all halfway houses nationwide. Despite their large share of the industry, they release no publicly available data on their halfway house populations. The case is similar for other organizations that operate halfway houses.
• Poor federal data collection. As we noted earlier, the Bureau of Justice Statistics does periodically publish some basic data about halfway houses, but only in one collection (the Census of Adult State and Federal Correctional Facilities), which isn’t used for any of the agency’s regular reports about correctional facilities or populations. The BJS unhelpfully lumps reentry-focused halfway houses together with minimum security prisons and other kinds of community-based facilities in a broad category it calls “community-based correctional facilities,” making the data difficult to interpret. We can tell from the most recent data that, in 2012, there were 527 community-based facilities, but it remains unclear which facilities are which (we did our best to categorize them in the appendix ). It follows that the BJS does not publish disaggregated demographic data about the populations in these different types of facilities, making the sort of analysis we do about prisons and jails impossible. By contrast, the BJS releases detailed, publicly accessible data about prisons and jails, including population counts, demographic data, the time people spend behind bars, what services are offered in facilities, and more.
• Lack of oversight. The most comprehensive reporting on conditions in halfway houses are audits by oversight agencies from the federal government or state corrections departments. However, these audits are too few and far between. Since 2013, only 8 audits of federal RRCs have been released by the Office of the Inspector General. In the few publicly released reports from state-level agencies, we found a similar lack of frequency in reporting and other significant issues with oversight. In a 2011 audit from New Jersey, the state’s Office of Community Programs was found to be conducting far fewer site visits to halfway houses than policy required. The testing they performed to determine the extent and quality of services being provided was found thoroughly inadequate, and the Department of Corrections had no set standards to grade facilities on performance. Even when site visits were conducted, there was no way of authentically monitoring conditions at these facilities, since halfway house administrators were notified in advance of site visits and were able to pick and choose files to be reviewed.

These woeful inadequacies are indicative of a larger systemic failure of halfway house oversight that often results in deeply problematic conditions for residents. Too often, audits are only conducted after journalists report on the ways specific halfway houses are failing residents, rather than government correctional agencies doing proper oversight on their own.

Conditions in halfway houses often involve violence, abuse, and neglect

Since data remains sparse and oversight is unreliable, we have retrieved the bulk of information about conditions in halfway houses from the media and advocates. The voices of those who have spent time in halfway houses, and those who have worked in them, are key to understanding the reality of these facilities and the rampant problems that plague them.

Over 200 interviews with residents, workers, officials and others associated with halfway houses in New Jersey were conducted for a 2012 New York Times report. The interviewees described over 5,000 escapes since 2005, and cited drug use, gang activity and violence occurring in the facilities. The private company Community Education Centers (CEC, now GEO Group) operates the majority of New Jersey halfway houses. In a 2015 report on CEC (now GEO)’s troubled history, The Marshall Project confirmed the frequency of violence, drug use, and escapes in these facilities. While the role of halfway house administrators in creating unlivable, miserable conditions is unfortunately not the focus of these news reports (nor do they address the complex circumstances that foster drug use and violence), they do indicate that the facilities are inadequately serving their residents.

The largest CEC (now GEO) halfway house in Colorado was similarly subject to criticism when reporters found evidence of rampant drug use and gang violence, indicating the failure of the facility to provide a supportive reentry community. Subsequent audits identified a number of major staffing issues, including high turnover rates and misconduct. This pattern of inadequate staffing extends to CEC halfway houses in California, where a former facility director cited inadequate training and earnings barely above minimum wage. The clinical director of the California facility, responsible for resident health, did not possess a medical degree, or even a college degree.

Improper management and inadequate oversight of halfway houses also enables inequities in the reentry process. Journalists have revealed how, when individuals are required to have a halfway house lined up in order to be released on parole, they can encounter lengthy waitlists due to inadequate bed space, forcing them to remain in prison. In July, a Searchlight New Mexico investigation revealed that one halfway house was asking individuals to pay upfront rent in order to move to the “front of the line.” 89 people who were approved for release remained in prison due to their inability to pay to get off of the halfway house waitlist.

These media reports are too often the only way we are able to retrieve public information about the internal conditions of halfway houses. From the lived experiences of those who have resided in halfway houses, it is clear that egregious conditions in halfway houses are common.

Poor conditions and bad incentives make halfway houses hotspots for COVID-19

Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more important that the public focus on the jail-like conditions of halfway houses which put vulnerable populations at risk. As of August 18, federal Residential Reentry Centers (RRCs) had 122 active cases, and 9 deaths, of coronavirus among halfway house residents nationwide. However, recent investigative reports suggest that the real numbers are even higher, as the BOP continues to underreport cases in RRCs and state-level data is nearly non-existent. For instance, The Intercept noted that the GEO Grossman Center in Leavenworth, Kansas had 67 cases (including staff) in May, as reported by the country health officials; yet the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) currently only reports a history of 29 cases of coronavirus in the Center, with no history of cases among staff.

Cases of COVID-19 are uniquely dangerous in halfway houses due to the work release component of many facilities. When some halfway houses locked down to prevent community spread, people who had been employed in high-density work environments, and/or travelled to work by public transportation, were confined in tight quarters with other residents for an extended period, risking disease spread. Now, as individuals return to work, halfway houses are positioned to be vectors of the virus, as the lack of social distancing and adequate living spaces is exacerbated by the frequency with which individuals have contact with the greater community.

Residents of halfway houses have described deeply inadequate sanitation and disease prevention on top of the lack of social distancing. In the now-defunct Hope Village in Washington, D.C., residents reported packed dining halls, makeshift PPE, and restricted access to cleaning products and sanitation supplies. In a Facebook video, a resident described “6 to 8 people” leaving Hope Village daily in an ambulance.

What’s more, halfway houses have a financial incentive to maintain full occupancy due to the conditions of contracts. While the federal Bureau of Prisons has prioritized home confinement as a component of the CARES Act, and has urged federal RRCs to facilitate the process of home confinement releases despite the financial risk, state systems have been more ambiguous about their recommendations for halfway houses. Since states have overwhelmingly failed to protect incarcerated people in jails and prisons, the outlook for halfway houses is bleak.

Conclusion

The gruesome portrayal of halfway houses in the media can often be the catalyst for formal audits of these facilities. But it should be noted that regular monitoring, auditing, and data reporting should be the norm in the first place. Halfway houses are just as much a part of someone’s prison sentence as incarceration itself, but they are subject to much less scrutiny than prisons and jails. This lack of guidelines and oversight has ensured that people in halfway houses are not being aided in safely and effectively rebuilding their lives after serving time in jails and prisons. It’s past time to start implementing oversight measures and extensive reforms that keep residents safe and help the halfway house experience feel more like reentry – and less like an extension of the carceral experience.

Returning from prison and jail is hard during normal times — it’s even more difficult during COVID-19

We review the evidence and call for state and local governments to provide more support for success upon release from prison or jail.

by Wanda Bertram, September 2, 2020

The very same obstacles that make it hard for people released from prison to succeed — homelessness, a lack of transportation, barriers to healthcare, and more — also make it harder to stay safe from the coronavirus. At this moment, where it is well established that depopulating prisons and jails is critical for health and safety on both sides of the walls, it is critical that policymakers focus on the overlooked hardships faced by formerly incarcerated people. We review our research on the struggles of formerly incarcerated people on housing, income and employment, health care, communication, paying burdensome “supervision” fees and more and explain how these challenges are even greater during the pandemic.

Housing

As we reported in 2018, people who have been to prison are nearly 10 times more likely to be homeless than members of the public at large. Rates of homelessness, as one would expect, are highest among people released most recently.

Living without a stable home is even more dangerous than usual during a pandemic, when social distancing and hygiene are especially important. What’s more, people who are homeless risk being re-arrested for “quality of life” offenses such as sleeping in parks. Maintaining housing can even be a parole requirement, the violation of which can land someone back in prison.

Shelters and reentry organizations provide a stopgap to the problem of housing after prison. But even during “normal” times, these organizations are direly under-resourced, as we found in a 2019 investigation of reentry service providers for women. And during a pandemic, many of these organizations are bursting at the seams or have shut down entirely due to their funding being suspended. A housing official in Denver, for example, said that the pandemic, combined with mass releases, had turned the local shelter system “on its head.”

Income and employment

The ongoing recession is likely hitting formerly incarcerated people — and their families — especially hard. As we’ve previously reported, people leaving prison are not only poor (with average pre-incarceration incomes under $20,000), but have seen their existing wealth diminished by incarceration, and must overcome the stigma of a criminal record in order to find work. The effects are worst among Black formerly incarcerated people; Black women who have been to prison, for example, have a 43% unemployment rate.

Even for people leaving prison who manage to find a job, certain senseless “collateral consequences” of incarceration can make holding down a job difficult. Millions of people, for instance, are barred from getting driver’s licenses (and therefore driving to work) because they haven’t paid a fee or fine, or because they committed an offense that had nothing to do with unsafe driving.

We’ve previously recommended that the government provide a temporary basic income to people leaving prison, but no state has stepped up to do so. And ironically, it’s likely that most people released from prison in the past few months did not receive stimulus checks, as the IRS clawed back checks sent to incarcerated people. If future economic stimulus efforts also exclude people behind bars, those leaving prison during the pandemic will have less of a financial “cushion” to lean on during reentry.

Healthcare

Poor people returning from prison typically do not have health insurance, since Medicaid’s “inmate exclusion policy” means that states terminate or suspend coverage when someone goes to prison, and not all states re-enroll people upon release. During a viral pandemic, being uninsured is dangerous. It’s especially risky for people suffering from chronic health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and HIV, all more common among incarcerated people than the general public.

Moreover, people leaving prison are disproportionately likely to suffer from mental health and substance use problems, which require medical attention and therefore health insurance. The consequences of not getting care can be dire: People just released from prison are 40 times more likely to die from an opioid overdose. The stress of the pandemic, which has fallen hard on people with substance dependencies and mental illnesses, can only be making this problem worse.

Unless states immediately act to make sure people leaving prison are Medicaid-insured — such as setting up pre-release enrollment, as a recent article in Health Affairs recommended — people released from prison will be in serious danger.

Phones and communication

Imagine having to communicate with your parole officer, or a reentry service provider, without a phone. Or trying to contact loved ones who might connect you with housing or employment. People leaving prison who can’t afford cellphones have always struggled with this problem, but it’s especially difficult during a pandemic. For instance, while suspending in-person parole check-ins is good public health policy, it leaves people without access to a phone in a bind.

State governments know that phones are essential for successful reentry. Still, news reports from states like Hawaii and Texas reveal that states are leaving people who can’t afford phones to fend for themselves, at the mercy of nonprofits and family members. Those who aren’t lucky enough to have a charity or friend to help them will find it difficult to navigate life after prison, and may even face disciplinary action if they cannot communicate with their probation or parole officer.

Supervision fees

Long before the pandemic, most states decided to require people on parole and probation to shoulder the costs of their own supervision by charging them monthly fees. As we’ve previously shown in our research on the incomes of people on probation, these fees are levied on the people who can least afford them; during a recession, the burden of these costs can be disastrous.

A monthly fee may be just one of several fees that someone on supervision has to pay regularly. As part of the conditions of their supervision, an individual might also have to pay court costs, restitution, electronic monitoring costs, or various one-time charges.

Unfortunately, most state and local governments have an incentive to continue charging these fees even during a pandemic and recession, because the revenue goes to courts, probation and parole offices, and other government agencies. Nevertheless, a handful of counties and states, such as Multnomah County, Oregon, have, since the coronavirus hit, suspended fee collection.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the obstacles that formerly incarcerated people face right now go far beyond the examples listed here: Poverty, combined with the logistical challenges of living in a pandemic, produces countless daily hardships. For instance, NPR recently reported that in many places, the offices that issue driver’s licenses and other forms of ID have been closed, impacting people recently released who need these critical documents.

The good news is that some states have taken some action to ease the pain of reentry. For example, California and Connecticut have made funds available to provide hotel rooms for people released from prisons and jails with nowhere to go. But for the most part, people leaving prison are being ignored, at a time when proper support for reentry is needed now more than ever. Shortchanging reentry is bad criminal justice policy and bad for public health.

Welcome, Ginger Jackson-Gleich!

Please welcome Ginger Jackson-Gleich, the new Prison Policy Initiative Policy Counsel!

by Jenny Landon, September 1, 2020

Ginger is joining the Prison Policy Initiative for a year to help advance our campaign to end prison gerrymandering. Ginger has been involved in criminal justice reform for over 15 years and joins us in the interim period between clerkships. As a Harvard Law School student, Ginger interned at the Criminal Law Reform Project of the ACLU, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, and the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office. She also represented low-income clients with the Harvard Defenders and the Criminal Justice Institute and served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Welcome, Ginger!

Policing resource round-up: Where to find data, advocacy materials, and more information about American policing

A list of the most valuable online resources from organizations focused on policing.

by Emily Widra and Wendy Sawyer, August 28, 2020

In the wake of yet another tragic police shooting, it’s more important than ever that the public be able to access clear, timely data about police behavior and connect with organizations fighting police brutality. Earlier this year, we summarized our key research on policing and showed that U.S. police kill civilians at a much higher rate than in other countries; now, for those looking for more information, we’ve compiled a (not exhaustive) list of the most valuable online resources from organizations focused on policing.

Data about police behavior and brutality:

Deaths by police:

• Mapping Police Violence has the most comprehensive database of killings by police in the United States, which is publicly available for download. They also publish data visualizations that help advocates communicate the gravity and severity of police violence.
• Data visualizations from Fatal Encounters show the national trends in deaths by police, by specific demographics like race and poverty levels across the country. Their database documents all deaths that happen when police are present or that are caused by police, and users can filter to examine specific categories, including deaths caused by on-duty law enforcement, off-duty law enforcement, as well as federal and local law enforcement.

Arrest, stop, and misconduct data:

• The Center for Policing Equity works at the intersection of data and advocacy, using data-driven interventions to partner with police departments across the country to better address community needs like mental health, immigration enforcement, and homelessness, as well as changes to departments to enhance diversity recruitment and retention, training and patrol practices.
• The NYCLU just released the NYPD Misconduct Complaint Database, a repository of complaints made by the public at the Civilian Complaint Review Board. This database includes over 300,000 unique complaint records involving over 80,000 active or former NYPD officers and the raw database is available for download.
• The Stanford Open Policing Project collects and standardizes data on vehicle and pedestrian stops from law enforcement departments across the U.S. Data from over 200 million records of state and local police departments is freely available. A working paper from these researchers analyzes racial disparities in policing and finds that police stops and search decisions are heavily influenced by racial bias.
• Open Data Policing makes stop, search, and use-of-force data publicly available. This aggregated data covers all known traffic stops in North Carolina since 2002, Illinois since 2005, and Maryland since 2013.
• The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement compiles data on records of police racial profiling reports and this data is available to download for 2016-2019.

Police spending:

• The Vera Institute of Justice created a tool that allows individuals to analyze just how much money is allocated to policing and to explore how changes in each spending category could reduce the total policing budget.

Information about police reform and abolition:

(in alphabetical order)

• Campaign Zero tracks legislative changes and a curated collection of research across ten major categories of police reform, including limiting the use of force, community oversight, demilitarization, and fair police union contracts at the federal, state, and local levels. The organization’s platform is dynamic, informed by new research and community feedback.
• Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) is a Minneapolis-based organization working to empower local communities to confront and end police brutality. With a local lens, CUAPB publishes reports on proposed and enacted legislation, as well as fact sheets and educational materials about debunking myths around policing.
• In New York, Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) leads the campaign to end discriminatory policing practices with a team of community members, lawyers, researchers, and activists.
• Critical Resistance curates a list of resources to provide education about the connection between policing and imprisonment, as well as a number of toolkits for advocates working toward dismantling the current law enforcement system and building viable alternatives in our communities.
• The Dream Defenders began in Florida as an effort to organize Black and Brown youth to build power and strength in their communities, and to advance a vision of safety and security that is less reliant on prisons and policing. They offer a downloadable toolkit that outlines the steps for communities to start divesting from police.
• The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a national organization supporting community-led efforts to defund police and to reinvest in long-term safety strategies like education, local restorative justice services, and employment programs.
• MPD150 is a Minneapolis-based collection of local organizers, researchers, artists, and activists dedicated to shifting the discussion of police violence in Minneapolis from procedural reform to more meaningful structural change. They have an accessible and detailed resource list for readers seeking more in-depth information about changing policing.

Commentary:

• NPR’s Code Switch produced a podcast episode — A Decade of Watching Black People Die — with an in depth discussion with journalist Jamil Smith about the years of deaths of Black people at the hands of police and the media coverage of these frequent violent deaths.
• On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver explores the intertwined history of policing and white supremacy, the current roadblocks to police reform, and some potential paths forward for the nation.
• The Untold Story: Policing is a four-part podcast series working to demystify police union contracts, as well as advocate for concrete steps to end police violence.
• After George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, NPR’s history podcast — Throughline —released an episode analyzing the centuries of tensions between police and Black communities.
• In a two-part episode of the podcast Intercepted, Ruth Wilson Gilmore makes the case for police and prison abolition, and offers a road map for understanding the current political moment of police brutality and resistance.
• Human rights lawyer Derecka Purnell offers step-by-step guidance to understanding calls for defunding and abolishing policing as we know it in an effort to reduce harm to individuals and communities in this piece for The Atlantic.
• In a recent article for Vanity Fair, Josie Duffy Rice of The Appeal presents the rationale for rethinking the policing and justice systems in the United States.

Finally, we’re always curating the best new research about the criminal justice system in our Research Library, which has a section dedicated to policing.

Half of states fail to require mask use by correctional staff

States are not reducing their populations sufficiently to slow the spread of COVID-19, and our survey reveals that 20 states are not even requiring masks to be worn by staff and most are not requiring incarcerated people to wear them.

by Emily Widra and Tiana Herring, August 14, 2020

The best way to slow the spread of COVID-19 in state prisons is to reduce the population density, but as we’ve found, states are moving far too slowly in this regard. In this new analysis, we find that states are also failing at the most modest mitigation efforts imaginable: requiring correctional staff and incarcerated people to wear masks.

Almost all states¹ are distributing masks to staff and incarcerated people,² but only half of all states are requiring that staff wear the masks at work. We examined the policies of each state’s Department of Corrections to see which states are requiring masks for staff.

30 states currently require correctional facility staff to wear face masks, while 20 states and the District of Columbia do not. Map updated on August 24, 2020 following a report from the South Carolina Department of Corrections that they are requiring staff to wear masks, although no policy requiring masks is available to the public. (Data collected by the Prison Policy Initiative from Departments of Corrections policies and news reports.)

Just because states require the use of masks by staff does not mean that the policy is adequately enforced. There have been a number of reports from incarcerated people that correctional staff have not been wearing masks appropriately when interacting with those who are in custody. In Arkansas, masks are required for staff, but an internal email from the state’s highest corrections official to the wardens of each prison in the state reveals that “hospitals are not wanting to treat our inmates because our staff are not following the [mask] guidelines that we are sending out.”³

Of course, even in states where masks are not required by correctional policy, staff can choose to wear them. But reports from incarcerated people and their families suggest this is wishful thinking. For example, in New Jersey — a state where the COVID-19 pandemic hit prisons early and hard — staff are not required to wear masks and reports from inside say that many staff are not wearing masks.⁴

As we all know by now, the federal government’s February guidance discouraging masks quickly proved to be misguided, and the most current research makes it even clearer that masks benefit both the wearer and everyone else.

Wearing masks protects the public:

• In states that only required certain employees to wear masks, there was no effect on the county-level daily COVID-19 growth rate, but requiring everyone to wear masks results in a significant decline in infections.
• Face masks have driven down rates of overall COVID infections, as seen in hospital settings, hair salons, and on cruise ships.
• Beyond COVID, masks have long been known to reduce the likelihood of transmission of epidemic respiratory illnesses. This is particularly true in community-living settings like dense prisons.

Masks protect the individuals who wear them:

• Wearing a mask reduces the likelihood of contracting COVID-19.
• Even if you still contract COVID-19 while wearing a mask, the disease is more likely to be mild or even asymptomatic.⁵

Requiring correctional staff to wear face masks is just commonsense: staff are responsible for most day-to-day movement in and out of prisons (and are therefore most likely to carry the virus in and out of them) and they are state employees who must adhere to state regulations and requirements. But states should not stop with mandating masks for staff; they should be requiring everyone in the facility to wear masks.
The obvious implication of the science behind using masks is that the more people who wear masks, the slower the virus will spread. Yet while 27 states require correctional staff to wear masks, only 15 state prison systems require incarcerated people to wear masks.⁶

15 states currently require incarcerated people to wear face masks, while 35 states and the District of Columbia do not. Strangely, Illinois is the only state that appears to require incarcerated people wear masks, but does not require the same for staff. Map updated on August 24, 2020 following a report from the South Carolina Department of Corrections that they are requiring incarcerated people to wear masks, although no policy requiring masks is available to the public. (Data collected by the Prison Policy Initiative from Departments of Corrections policies and news reports.)

The fact that far fewer states require incarcerated people to wear masks than correctional staff may reflect some reluctance to create conflict with incarcerated people over potential enforcement issues. (A more cynical view might interpret this hands-off approach as a callous lack of concern about incarcerated people’s lives and health.) But if correctional agencies care about protecting incarcerated people and staff, they could craft policies that reward those who wear masks, instead of policies that threaten disciplinary action for non-compliance.

We know that reducing the number of people behind bars is the best way to slow the spread of COVID-19 through prisons, jails, and their surrounding communities, but this analysis finds that many states are not even practicing the most basic preventative measure: requiring face masks in prisons, just as they are required by many states in other public spaces. State prison systems need to catch up before it’s too late.

Appendix table

Jails and prisons have reduced their populations in the face of the pandemic, but not enough to save lives

Our updated analysis finds that the initial efforts to reduce jail populations have slowed, while the small drops in state prison populations are still too little to save lives.

by Emily Widra and Peter Wagner, August 5, 2020

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

At a time when more new cases of the coronavirus are being reported each day, state and local governments should be redoubling their efforts to reduce the number of people in prisons and jails, where social distancing is impossible and the cycle of people in and out of the facility is constant. But our most recent analysis of data from hundreds of counties across the country shows that efforts to reduce jail populations have actually slowed — and even reversed in some places.

Even as the pandemic has spiked in many parts of the country, 71% of the 668 jails we’ve been tracking saw population increases from May 1st to July 22nd, and 84 jails had more people incarcerated on July 22nd than they did in March. This trend is particularly alarming since we know it’s possible to further reduce these populations: in our previous analysis, we found that local governments initially took swift action to minimize jail populations, resulting in a median drop of more than 30% between March and May.

Meanwhile, state prisons — where social distancing is just as impossible as in jails, and correctional staff still come and go every day — have been much slower to release incarcerated people. Since January, the typical prison system had reduced its population by only 5% in May and about 13% as of July 27th. Below, we compare the population cuts in local jails to those in state prisons, focusing on just how little states are doing to keep their residents safe. (And note, our use of the term “reduction” is different from “release,” as we have found that there are multiple mechanisms impacting populations, and releases are but one part.)

Jail populations dropped quickly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the local authorities who run jails have not sustained those efforts and populations have started to rise over the last two months. This recent increase is most dramatic in small jails (third slide) but is also true for larger jails (second slide.)

These graphs aggregate data collected by NYU’s Public Safety Lab. The Public Safety Lab is continuing to add more jails to their data collection and data was not available for all facilities for all days, so these graphs show jails where the Lab was able to report data for at least 120 of the 135 days in our research period. To smooth out most of the variations caused by individual facilities not being reported on particular days, we chose to present the data as 7-day rolling averages. The temporary population drop during the last week of May is the result of more facilities than usual not being included in the dataset, rather than any known policy changes.

The strategies jails used to reduce their populations in March and April varied by location, but they added up to big changes. In some counties, police issued citations in lieu of arrests, prosecutors declined to charge people for some low-level offenses, courts reduced the amounts of cash bail, and jail administrators released people detained pretrial or those serving short sentences for nonviolent offenses.

Just a few months later, many local jurisdictions have slowed — and in some cases, completely reversed — their efforts to reduce jail populations. Of the 668 jails we analyzed population data for, 71% of jails had population increases from May 1st to July 22nd, and 84 jails had more people incarcerated on July 22nd than they did in March.

For example, in Philadelphia, judges released “certain nonviolent detainees” held in jails for unspecified “low-level charges” and the Philadelphia police suspended low-level arrests reducing the city’s jail population by more than 17% by mid-April. But on May 1st, the Philadelphia police force announced that they would resume arrests for property crimes, effectively reversing the earlier reduction efforts.

Table 1: Largest known population reductions in large local jails

Meanwhile, in the spring, state Departments of Correction began announcing plans to reduce their prison populations — by halting new admissions from county jails, increasing commutations, and releasing people who are medically fragile, elderly, or nearing the end of their sentences. But these population reductions were small, amounting to only about 5% in the first two months and now about 13%, still significantly less than what jails accomplished in just the first few weeks. However, prisons may be seeing more “slow and steady” progress than jails are: while many jails have reversed course and are increasing their populations again, prison populations have continued on a downward trend since May. Unfortunately, that’s about as optimistic as we can be with these numbers. The drops aren’t significant enough to make social distancing possible inside prisons nor to ensure that all of the most vulnerable people have been released to safer conditions.

Table 2: Most state prison systems show only very modest population reductions since January (showing 17 states where recent data was readily available)

Some states’ prison population cuts are even less significant than they initially appear, because the states achieved those cuts partially by refusing to admit people from county jails. (At least two states, California and Oklahoma, did this.)
While refusing to admit people from jails does reduce prison density, it means that the people who would normally be admitted are still incarcerated, but in different correctional facilities that have more population turnover and therefore more chances for the virus to spread.

Other states are indeed transferring people in prison to outside the system, either to parole or to home confinement, but these releases are not enough to protect vulnerable incarcerated populations from COVID-19. For example, in California, thousands of people have been released weeks and months early, but the state’s prison population has only decreased by about 11% since January, leaving too many people behind bars in the face of a deadly disease. In fact, as of July 29, California’s state prisons were still holding more people than they were designed for, at 117% of their design capacity.

Every state prison system we’ve examined, except for North Dakota, has made smaller reductions than the typical jail. While jails made quick changes at the start of the pandemic and then leveled off or even reversed course, state prisons are at least making sustained, if far too small, steps.

Of the states with available data, the smaller systems have reduced their populations the most drastically. North Dakota’s prison population had already dropped by 19% in May. (North Dakota was also the state that we found to have the most comprehensive and realistic COVID-19 mitigation plan in our April 2020 survey.) Two months later, North Dakota has continued these efforts, reducing its prison population by a total of 25% since January, a greater percent change than any other state.

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

Decision- and policy-makers need to recognize the dangers of resuming unnecessary jail incarceration during the pandemic, which is exactly what is indicated by the slowing and reversing of population reductions. Just as many states are seeing the tragic effects of “reopening” too soon, counties and cities that allow jail populations to return to pre-pandemic levels will undoubtedly regret it. If the leadership and success of local jails in reducing their populations early in the pandemic isn’t enough of an example for continuing these efforts at the state and local levels, officials may find some inspiration in the comparative success of other countries:

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

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

This article updates one published on May 1st and another published on May 14th with an updated dataset of local jail and state prison population reductions. Updated prison population data collected by the Prison Policy Initiative for 17 states from Departments of Correction July population reports. Updated jail reduction figures collected by the NYU Public Safety Lab.

Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration

Racial inequality is evident in every stage of the criminal justice system - here are the key statistics compiled into a series of charts.

by Wendy Sawyer, July 27, 2020

Recent protests calling for radical changes to American policing have brought much-needed attention to the systemic racism within our criminal justice system. This extends beyond policing, of course: Systemic racism is evident at every stage of the system, from policing to prosecutorial decisions, pretrial release processes, sentencing, correctional discipline, and even reentry. The racism inherent in mass incarceration affects children as well as adults, and is often especially punishing for people of color who are also marginalized along other lines, such as gender and class.

Because racial disparity data is often frustratingly hard to locate, we’ve compiled the key data available into a series of charts, arranged into five slideshows focused on policing, juvenile justice, jails and pretrial detention, prisons and sentencing, and reentry. These charts provide a fuller picture of racial inequality in the criminal justice system, and make clear that a broad transformation will be needed to uproot the racial injustice of mass incarceration.

Following the slideshows, we also address five frequently asked questions about criminal justice race/ethnicity data.

There are racial disparities in policing and arrests:

There are racial disparities in the arrest and confinement of youth:

There are racial disparities in local jails and pretrial detention:

There are racial disparities in prisons, extreme sentences, and solitary confinement:

There are racial disparities in homelessness, unemployment, and poverty after release:

Frequently asked questions about race and ethnicity in criminal justice data

Q: Why are terms used inconsistently, such as “Hispanic” and “Latino/a”?

A: Sharp-eyed readers will notice some inconsistency in the terms used in the charts above, and across the literature more generally. For example, the Census Bureau and most national criminal justice data uses the category “American Indian or Alaska Native” to describe indigenous people in the U.S., but the juvenile justice system data uses the term “American Indian.” Likewise, “Hispanic” is used most frequently in various national data sets to refer to those with Spanish-speaking ancestry, but some sources use Latino/a (or Latinx), which specifically refers to those with Latin American ancestry. In these charts (and in most of our publications), we use the terminology of the original data sources.

Q: Why are some racial/ethnic categories not represented in the data?

A: The question of how accurately race and ethnicity data reflect justice-involved populations goes beyond inconsistent labels. Most obviously, not all racial or ethnic groups are consistently represented in the data; less populous Census-identified groups, such as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Asian, and American Indian or Alaska Native – as well as the sizable but less specific “Two or more races” and “Some other race” – are very often excluded in publications, even when they are collected. Moreover, all of these categories are so broad that they lump together groups with very different experiences with the U.S. justice system. They disregard tribal differences, sweep people of East Asian and South Asian origins into one category, and somehow ignore Arab Americans entirely. As a result, our observations of racial and ethnic discrimination are limited to these broad categories and lack any real nuance.

Q: Where can I find data about racial disparities in my state’s criminal justice system?

A: Unfortunately, the more specific you want to get with race/ethnicity data, the harder it is to find an answer, especially one that’s up-to-date. State-level race and ethnicity data can be hard to find if you are looking to federal government sources like the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). BJS does publish state-level race and ethnicity data in its annual Prisoners series (Appendix Table 2 in 2018), but only every 6-7 years in its Jail Inmates series (most recently the 2013 Census of Jails report, Table 7). The Vera Institute of Justice has attempted to fill this gap with its Incarceration Trends project, by gathering additional data from individual states. Individual state Departments of Correction sometimes collect and/or publish more up-to-date and specific data; it’s worth checking with your own state’s agencies.

Q: Where can I find criminal justice race/ethnicity data disaggregated by sex?

A: Disaggregating racial/ethnic data by sex is unfortunately not the norm in reports produced by the federal government (i.e. BJS). For people able to access and analyze the raw data, such analyses are often possible, but most people rely on the reports published by government agencies like BJS. As you can see in the chart showing prison incarceration rates by sex and race/ethnicity, BJS does sometimes offer this level of detail. But again, the same level of detail is not available for jails, and an analysis of both race/ethnicity and sex by state is all but unheard-of – even though it is precisely this level of detail that is most useful for advocates trying to help specific populations in their state.

Q: How are the data collected, and how accurate are the data?

A: Finally, the validity of any data depends on how the data are collected in the first place. And in the case of criminal justice data, race and ethnicity are not always self-reported (which would be ideal). Police officers may report an individual’s race based on their own perception – or not report it at all – and the surveys that report the number of incarcerated people on a given day rely on administrative data, which may not reflect how individuals identify their own race or ethnicity. This is why surveys of incarcerated people themselves are so important, such as the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails and the Survey of Prison Inmates, but those surveys are conducted much less frequently. In fact, it’s been 18 years since the last Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, which we use to analyze pretrial jail populations, and 16 years since the last published data from the Survey of Inmates were collected.

How to link to specific images

Because some readers might want to link to specific images in this briefing out of the context of these slideshows, we’ve created these special URLs so you can link directly to a specific image:

Black people are disproportionately stopped on the street by police, while white people are much more likely to call the police for help

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow1/1

Among individuals who have any contact with police, people of color disproportionately experience the use of force

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow1/2

Black people are disproportionately likely to be arrested, and to be arrested repeatedly in the same year

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow1/3

Black youth are arrested far out of proportion to their share of all youth in the U.S.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow2/1

The juvenile justice system confines Black youth at over 4 times the rate of white youth

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow2/2

For the lowest level offenses, Black and American Indian youth are confined at rates over 3 times the rate of white youth

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow2/3

Racial disparities in local jail incarceration rates

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow3/1

Pretrial populations, disproportionately Black and Hispanic, have more than doubled over 15 years

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow3/2

People detained pretrial because they can’t pay bail are much poorer than their peers – and the income gaps are widest for Black people

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow3/3

Racial disparities in prison incarceration rates, by sex, 2018

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/1

Most people in prison are poor,
 and the poorest are women and people of color

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/2

Black people are disproportionately serving sentences of life, life without parole, or “virtual life”

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/3

Black people are overrepresented on death row, while white people are underrepresented

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/4

Black men and women are overrepresented in solitary confinement, when compared to total prison populations

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow4/5

The “prison penalty” in unemployment disproportionately punishes formerly incarcerated Black men and women

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow5/1

Formerly incarcerated people have very high rates of homelessness, especially women and people of color

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow5/2

Incarceration and wealth accumulation, by race and ethnicity

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/07/27/disparities/#slideshows/slideshow5/3

New research: Adjusted for age and sex, the COVID-19 death rate in prisons is 3 times higher than in the general population

New research in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the tragic results of states' negligence of incarcerated people.

by Emily Widra, July 8, 2020

Today we tweeted about new research using data from the UCLA School of Law’s COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project. The findings, published today in JAMA, present a startling picture of just how widespread COVID-19 is behind bars, especially compared with national COVID-19 infection and death rates:

A new study in @JAMA_current using data from @uclaprisondata has findings that should alarm you:

The #covid19 death rate in prisons is 39 deaths per 100,000 people. Much higher than the death rate in the U.S. population (29 per 100,000). 1/4https://t.co/6kAYXkhxFv

— Prison Policy Init. (@PrisonPolicy) July 8, 2020

When the authors adjusted the death rate for age and sex (because the prison population is disproportionately young and male), the death rate in prisons was THREE TIMES higher than would be expected in the U.S. population. 2/4

— Prison Policy Init. (@PrisonPolicy) July 8, 2020

On April 14, the rate of COVID-19 in prisons surpassed the national rate. Since then, it has continued to grow. The case rate in the U.S. grows ~3.4% every day; meanwhile, the case rate in prisons increases ~8.3% every day. 3/4

— Prison Policy Init. (@PrisonPolicy) July 8, 2020

At least 530 incarcerated people have died from #covid19 so far, according to https://t.co/ndOT9oNaSY. People behind bars are begging states to save their lives. But states are taking very little action. This tragedy is only going to get worse. 4/4https://t.co/bl7wnzvS15

— Prison Policy Init. (@PrisonPolicy) July 8, 2020

What do we know about the spread — and toll — of the coronavirus in state prisons?

Wide variation in the rates of reported infections and deaths in state prisons reflect the uneven spread of the virus and disparate responses by state criminal justice systems.

by Emily Widra, June 24, 2020

We’re frequently asked about the number of infections and deaths in prisons from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The UCLA COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project is helpfully collecting all of the official reports of infections and deaths into a single Google Sheet. But state prison systems are vastly different sizes, so it’s impossible to make direct comparisons using only the counts provided in the UCLA spreadsheet. So we’ve calculated the rates of infection and deaths in state prison systems, which allow us to compare the impact of the pandemic across all 50 states’ prison populations. Our findings, presented in the table below, suggest three possible – and troubling – conclusions:

1. Some states may not be properly testing or may not be accurately reporting infections and deaths;
2. People incarcerated in different states may face very different odds of infection and death from COVID-19, depending on how their state responds to the crisis; and/or
3. Some states have been lucky in that the virus has been slow to reach their facilities. But, as we’ve seen with the uneven spread of the pandemic across states, this likely means the full force of the virus has yet to hit these facilities, so they need to redouble their efforts at population reduction and other preparations.

An important disclaimer: It would be a mistake to use this table as an indication of “how good a job” any state has done in responding to the threat of the pandemic behind bars. No state has even come close to adequately protecting its incarcerated people. Certainly, some states have done more than others to release more medically vulnerable people, and some states’ correctional healthcare systems are less terrible than others, which may increase the odds of surviving COVID-19 in some prisons. We also acknowledge that some states have taken small steps to reduce the population density of their facilities; still, none have done so on a scale that would make social distancing possible or otherwise slow the spread of the virus.

We are skeptical of the officially reported data for several reasons, but especially because of the wide variation in the “case-fatality rates” – that is, the number of deaths relative to the number of infections reported by each state. Why does Tennessee report 785 infections for every death and Alabama reports 10 infections for every death? Both states have similarly-sized prison populations and both states report 4 confirmed COVID-19 deaths among incarcerated people. But it would appear that Tennessee is doing a lot of testing and Alabama is not.

Comprehensive and frequent testing offers the prison system – and the public – a clearer view of the virus spread. If correctional facilities are only testing people with extreme symptoms, we gain very little information about what to expect and how to protect vulnerable lives.

The number of reported deaths may also reflect undercounts for other reasons. For example, unless a state tests everyone who dies in custody, it is likely excluding a number of deaths that were caused by COVID-19 but were not confirmed by testing. Especially where states are severely under-testing, people will be dying of COVID-19 but left out of the official death counts because they were never tested. Similarly, it would be appropriate to classify people who “recover” from COVID-19, but remain weakened and then die of another cause, as COVID-19 deaths. We have not heard of any state prison systems that are counting deaths other than those confirmed by tests, however.

The data, imperfect as it is, tells us that people incarcerated in different states may face vastly different odds of infection and death from COVID-19. The inaction of state prison systems is unconscionable given that, for months, the largest outbreaks of the coronavirus have been in correctional facilities. States put their residents at grave risk by failing to prevent the spread of the virus in the “petri dishes” that are prisons and jails. They should be using every tool available to ramp up efforts to protect incarcerated people, which includes widespread testing and using testing data to target resources to the people and places most at risk.

Table sources

• COVID deaths in prisons: UCLA Law School’s Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
• COVID confirmed cases in prisons: UCLA Law School’s Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project
• Number of tests given: Covid Prison Data Table 2, as of June 19, 2020
• Prison population: Vera Institute of Justice’s People in Prison 2019, supplemented by correspondence between the Prison Policy Initiative and individual state Departments of Correction. All population counts are from May 2020 except for Maryland’s, which is from December 31, 2019.
• Deaths per 10,000 incarcerated people: Calculated by dividing the number of COVID deaths by the prison population, then multiplying by 10,000
• Infections per 10,000 incarcerated people: Calculated by dividing the number of COVID cases by the prison population, then multiplying by 10,000
• Deaths per confirmed case (“case fatality rate”): Calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the number of COVID cases, then multiplying by 100. For more information about case fatality rates and factors that affect the accuracy of these rates, see this New York Times article. The wide variation seen in the prison data suggests that these rates may reflect differences in testing more than differences in severity or treatment of the disease across different states.

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

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

by Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, June 10, 2020

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

Table of Contents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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