New data on formerly incarcerated people’s employment reveal labor market injustices

Newly released data doubles down on what we’ve reported before: Formerly incarcerated people face huge obstacles to finding stable employment, leading to detrimental society-wide effects. Considering the current labor market, there may be plenty of jobs available, but they don’t guarantee stability or economic mobility for this vulnerable population.

by Leah Wang and Wanda Bertram, February 8, 2022

How many formerly incarcerated people are jobless at the moment? A good guess would be 60%, to generalize from a new report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The report shows that of more than 50,000 people released from federal prisons in 2010, a staggering 33% found no employment at all over four years post-release, and at any given time, no more than 40% of the cohort was employed. People who did find jobs struggled, too: Formerly incarcerated people in the sample had an average of 3.4 jobs throughout the four-year study period, suggesting that they were landing jobs that didn’t offer security or upward mobility.

As the data show, not only is reentry difficult in the first months of release from prison, but the struggle to find a job actually grew over time for the study cohort of people leaving federal prison in 2010. We show these increasing jobless rates next to one of the most dire economic moments of recent years — when the US unemployment rate reached its highest point of around 15% in mid-2020.¹

We warn readers that we can’t call the 60% jobless rate an “unemployment rate” — joblessness is different from unemployment, which refers to people actively looking for work. We calculated the first and only national unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people in our 2018 report Out of Prison and Out of Work, and we can’t update that analysis, because we based it on data that the government only collected once.² Nevertheless, the new BJS data suggest that employment rates among people who have been to prison aren’t improving.

Formerly incarcerated individuals tend to experience joblessness and poverty that started long before they were ever locked up. When they’re released from prison, the pressure is on to get a job: People on parole (or “supervised release”) often must maintain employment or face reincarceration,³ while struggling to access social services, and trying to make ends meet in a job market more hostile to them than ever before. This combination of pressures amounts to a perpetual punishment. And it’s not just formerly incarcerated individuals who are punished: Policies that weaken their ability to turn down jobs with low wages may depress wages for other workers in their industries, as we’ll explain in this briefing.

Harsh parole conditions, a lack of social welfare programs, and a tough job market are forcing formerly incarcerated people — already a low-income, majority-minority demographic — into the least desirable jobs. But not everybody is losing: Businesses have found a way to capitalize on the desperation of applicants with conviction histories and exploit the fact that these these individuals have less bargaining power to demand changes in conditions of employment, such as better wages benefits and protections. This results in lower overall wages and more harmful working conditions in certain industries.

Post-release, months of searching and moving between jobs is common

The overall employment rate over four years after the study population was released hovered between 34.9% and 37.9% — in other words, about two-thirds of the population were jobless at any given time.

For those who did find employment after release, their earnings were lower than the general population: In the first few months, formerly incarcerated people were earning just 53% of the median US worker’s wage. And after four years of seeking and obtaining irregular employment, the study population was making less than 84 cents for every dollar of the US median wage (which, in 2014, was about $28,851 annually).

Earnings were lowest for Black and Native American people released from federal prison;⁵ in fact, racial and ethnic disparities in earnings seemed to grow over time. These findings probably reflect an unfortunate “racialized re-entry” process for people leaving prison, where the stigma of incarceration itself and differences in social networks for job-seekers vary across racial and ethnic groups. Researchers of this concept noted that white people getting out of prison actually appeared more disadvantaged and less employable “on paper” due to higher rates of substance use and longer sentences, but still ended up with better employment and income than Black and Hispanic people leaving prison.

Employment may be one of the most important benchmarks of reentry, yet it took formerly incarcerated people an average of over six months to find their first job after release. As such, many did not maintain employment over the entire four-year study period, and the average person in the study had 3.4 jobs over that time. If that sounds erratic, it is: The average person is employed for 78% of the weeks between ages 18 and 54, while people in the study’s cohort were employed just 58% of the time post-release. When people are moving from job to job, families and the economy suffer, and people risk violating their post-release supervision and being returned to incarceration.

Lastly, though it’s not clear exactly why, people who served less than a year in federal prison actually had a harder time finding and maintaining employment post-release, and spent more time without a job than the other groups.⁶ Given this devastating impact on their long-term employment prospects, it’s evident that people who are given short sentences — and who pose no safety risk — should not be incarcerated to begin with.⁷

The struggle to find a good job

The fact that most people released from prison have spotty, sporadic employment may mean that the jobs they’re getting are difficult jobs to keep, even for an extremely motivated worker. These could be temporary jobs, jobs where workers aren’t protected from wrongful termination, or dangerous or low-wage jobs that are unsustainable.

According to the BJS report, the major industries employing formerly incarcerated people include waste management services, construction, and food service. A 2021 study released by the U.S. Census Bureau affirms this finding. The study analyzed thousands of people with felony convictions, tracking their employment and income in the years around the Great Recession (2006-2018), and found that rebounds in construction and various service industries after the recession were associated with a bump in employment and income levels for these individuals. However, the people in that study saw their employment levels plateau after a few years, even in areas where construction and manufacturing thrived.

It’s true that industries like manufacturing and construction tend to boost employment and reduce recidivism for those leaving prison. But while these jobs did, at one time, allow people to build wealth and support a family, they don’t as much anymore, meaning that they are likely not alleviating poverty among formerly incarcerated people. The fact that formerly incarcerated people are not obtaining steady, reliable work is likely related to the industries in which they’re most commonly employed.

When the workforce is under mass supervision, key industries lose employee bargaining power

Looking more closely at the “low-skill” jobs that formerly incarcerated people tend to get can help us understand how mass incarceration and supervision may be hurting whole sectors of workers. In construction and manufacturing, union membership has declined significantly over the last twenty years.⁸ During the same period — between 2000 and 2019 — the number of people on parole grew by more than 150,000, and the number of people with felony convictions swelled from 13.2 million to an estimated 24 million.

While it’s impossible to draw a causal relationship between these two trends — given the numerous factors at play — there is serious potential for exploitation of formerly incarcerated people. For example, The New York Times has reported that New Yorkers with conviction histories are shuttled into non-union construction jobs with low to no benefits. Formerly incarcerated employees placed at such companies have described being “taken aback” at the low wages, and many have had to work other jobs to supplement their pay from their day jobs in construction.

A rising number of people with felony convictions — which is the result of, among other things, overly punitive sentencing — may be depressing wages and hurting working conditions for all workers in certain industries. Formerly incarcerated workers are not to blame, especially as many have likely been working in these industries for the better part of their adult lives. Prison does nothing to improve their qualifications as workers; meanwhile, the struggle of reentry makes them more desperate for job offers, as the new data make abundantly clear.

Formerly incarcerated people need greater opportunity from today’s labor market

The new BJS data confirm that formerly incarcerated people still suffer from sky-high jobless rates (despite evidence that virtually all want to work), and that those who do find work are getting unstable jobs. Formerly incarcerated people are typically poor before they go to prison, and joblessness during reentry can push them into even deeper poverty and have a permanent impact on their wealth accumulation.

These devastating statistics have implications for workers without criminal records as well. When industries can use vulnerable workers to replace or supplement workers who demand decent wages and benefits, the price of labor declines. When burdensome supervision requirements, unnecessary occupational licensing restrictions, and a lack of social welfare programs combine to make formerly incarcerated people desperate for work, all workers suffer.

Indeed, during the labor shortages we’ve seen in 2021 and 2022, employers are turning to currently or formerly incarcerated people as a convenient solution. (And sadly, a rising awareness of formerly incarcerated people’s unjust barriers to employment has allowed some of these employers to frame their actions as enlightened.) These shifts may manifest in depressed wages, benefits, and worker protections sector-wide.

People leaving prison need expanded access to job opportunities so that successful reentry can begin immediately and provide stability, not uncertainty. Policy solutions like occupational licensing reform and automatic record expungement, as well as “banning the box” on all initial employment applications, are respectable first steps. Even better would be including those with conviction histories as a protected class⁹ in employment non-discrimination statutes. In-prison training programs for jobs in construction and similar industries may also boost employment and wages in some areas, according to some research, but it’s not a universal solution, nor does it solve underlying problems of low educational attainment and economic immobility.

It’s critical that lawmakers support workers with and without criminal records who are working together to end the exploitative practices that hurt them all. Without leveling the playing field for formerly incarcerated people, not only will their jobless rates remain high, but self-serving employers will continue to benefit from a disposable labor pool, with detrimental impacts on everyone.

COVID looks like it may stay. That means prison medical copays must go.

Forty states and the federal prison system continue to charge incarcerated people unaffordable copays for medical care.

by Tiana Herring, February 1, 2022

In 2017, our analysis of medical copays in prisons across the country brought to light the common but utterly backwards practice of charging incarcerated people unaffordable fees for their health care. At that time, only eight states did not charge medical copays: Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Wyoming. While several other states have since added themselves to this list, the vast majority have still not eliminated medical copays. With a new legislative session starting in many states, we reviewed each state’s policy — and any temporary changes they’ve made in response to the COVID-19 crisis — to identify places where repealing these fees should be on the agenda. (Looking for your state’s policies? See the appendix tables.)

40 states & the federal prison system still need to eliminate medical copays

Since 2017, two additional prison systems — California and Illinois — have eliminated medical copays, and, for the last two years, Virginia has suspended medical copays as part of a pilot program. Texas reduced its exorbitant $100 yearly health care fee to a less atrocious, but still out-of-reach, $13.55 per-visit fee. Idaho also reduced its medical copays in prison from $5 to $3 in 2018.

Even a $3 copay, though, is unaffordable for most incarcerated people, given the obscenely low wages that incarcerated people earn. For people earning 14 to 63 cents an hour in prison (and many earning nothing at all for their work), a typical $2-5 copay is the equivalent of charging a free-world worker $200 or $500 for a medical visit.

Unaffordable copays in prisons and jails have two inevitable and dangerous consequences. First, when sick people avoid the doctor, disease is more likely to spread to others in the facility and into the community, when people are released before being treated or when diseases are carried by correctional staff back to their homes. Second, illnesses are likely to worsen as long as people avoid the doctor, which means more aggressive (and expensive) treatment when they can no longer go without it. Medical copays encourage a dangerous waiting game for incarcerated people, correctional agencies, and the public, with little payoff in terms of offsetting medical costs and reducing “unnecessary” office visits. In fact, when evaluating the costs versus benefits of charging copays, the Oregon Department of Corrections concluded, “copay systems do not seem to lower overall health care costs,” and “triage on a case-by-case basis is more cost effective than implementing system-wide copayment plans.”

Policy changes made during the pandemic are already being rolled back

In the face of COVID-19, we’ve found that many prison systems relaxed their medical copay policies to avoid disincentivizing people in prison from seeking necessary medical care. Before these changes, medical copays in prisons typically ranged from $2 to $5. Twenty-eight states modified their policies during the first few months of the pandemic, and, ultimately, all but one state — Nevada — temporarily changed their policies. Of the states that do charge medical copays as a matter of policy, only 10 completely suspended these fees at some point in the pandemic. The federal Bureau of Prisons, on the other hand, did not modify their copay policy until March 2021, and only suspended copays for COVID-19 related care for three months before the waiver expired.¹

Most states that have modified their copay policies during the pandemic only suspended copays for respiratory, flu-related, or COVID-19 symptoms. But these limitations ignore the facts that not all COVID-19 symptoms fall within these vague categories, and many people don’t display symptoms at all.

Our survey of all 50 state prison systems found that a handful of states have already returned to their pre-COVID-19 medical copay policies, disincentivizing people from seeking early and frequent medical care behind bars, despite the continued pandemic.

As states stop publishing data about COVID-19 in prisons and start rolling back basic policies that do the bare minimum to protect incarcerated people, it’s important to remember that the pandemic is still ongoing and cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to rise. Five states — Alabama, Arkansas,² Idaho,³ Minnesota, and Texas — rolled back their COVID-19 copay modifications at some point during the pandemic. Alabama went from suspending all copays to reinstating them for all cases in December 2020. Similarly, Minnesota and Texas had modified copays to accommodate people with COVID-19 symptoms, but reinstated all copays in December 2020 and September 2021, respectively. We confirmed that 22 states⁴ continue to operate with their COVID-19 copay policy changes in place, but in 15 states⁵ we were unable to confirm whether these modified policies remain in place.

Copays never make sense behind bars, particularly during a highly contagious viral pandemic. They are cruel, counterintuitive, and disincentivize people from seeking medical care when they need it. As our nation enters the third year of dealing with a virus that has ravaged prisons and jails — and increasingly looks endemic — it is urgent that lawmakers take action to permanently eliminate copays for incarcerated people.

Appendices

New data: The changes in prisons, jails, probation, and parole in the first year of the pandemic

Newly released data from 2020 show the impact of early-pandemic correctional policy choices and what kind of change is possible under pressure. But the data also show how inadequate, uneven, and unsustained policy changes have been: most have already been reversed.

by Wendy Sawyer, January 11, 2022

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a lot of new data over the past few weeks that help us finally see — both nationally and state-by-state — how policy choices made in the first year of the pandemic impacted correctional populations. Unsurprisingly, the numbers document the tragedy of thousands of lives lost behind bars, and evidence of some of the policy decisions that contributed to the death toll. Drilling down, we also see a (very) few reasons to be hopeful and, for those of us paying close attention, a few notable improvements in what the BJS is able to collect and how they report it. Above all, we see how quickly things can change — for better or for worse — when under pressure, and discuss some of the issues and policy choices these data tell us to watch out for.

Key findings from the BJS reports Prisoners in 2020, Jail Inmates in 2020, and Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020:

• Prison, jail, and probation populations dropped dramatically from 2019-2020,¹ but these drops were due to mainly to emergency responses to COVID-19, and correctional populations have already started rebounding toward pre-pandemic levels.
  
• Nationwide, states and the federal government actually released fewer people from prison in 2020 than in 2019.² The decrease in the incarcerated population was not related to releases, but rather the 40% drop in prison admissions and 16% drop in jail admissions.
• Deaths increased 46% in prisons from 2019 to 2020, 32% among people on parole, and 6% among people on probation. Jail deaths in 2020 have not yet been reported.
• Even under the pressure of the pandemic, local jails held a larger share of unconvicted people than ever, and continued to hold far too many people for low-level offenses and technical violations.
• State and federal policy responses to the threat of COVID-19 to incarcerated people varied widely, with a few states appearing to basically ignore the pandemic altogether.

It’s not all bad news: A few “silver linings” for women, youth, and others

While most of the significant changes in correctional populations are unlikely to be sustained after — or even during — the pandemic (more on that in the next section), there are a few positive changes that represent possible tipping points or reversals of seemingly intractable problems. With persistent pressure on policymakers, these changes have the potential to stick:

• Women’s prison and jail populations, and incarceration rates, dropped by a larger percentage than men’s populations did.³ This trend held in all but one state prison system (Alaska), reversing the “gender divide” we’ve observed in the past decade of decarceration efforts.
• Indigenous people experienced the greatest drop, proportionally, in jail populations and jail incarceration rates — nearly 35%. Before 2020, American Indians and Alaska Natives had been a population experiencing disproportionate jail growth, almost doubling between 2000-2019.⁴
• Probation populations were down by over a quarter of a million people in 2020, with far more people going off probation than going on it. With over 3 million people under its thumb, probation is still the leading form of correctional control, and this drop contributed most to the 11% reduction in the overall “footprint” of correctional control.⁵
• The number of youth held in adult prisons dropped by almost half (46%), and three more states joined the ranks of those no longer holding anyone under 18 in adult prisons, bringing the total to 21.⁶ Six other states that held large shares (5% or more) of the roughly 650 youth in prison in 2019 also reduced the number of youth held by at least a third in 2020.⁷

Overall, the “positive trends” in 2020 are nothing to get excited about

In 2020, we did see the kinds of reductions in the number of people under correctional control that we’ll need to see year after year to actually end mass incarceration. And these BJS reports express some of that optimism, with comments like “In 2020, the imprisonment rate was… the lowest since 1992” and “The 15% decrease in persons in state and federal prisons… was the largest single year decrease recorded since… 1926.”

Such dramatic drops in the nation’s use of incarceration would truly be cause for celebration if they weren’t temporary and if they weren’t still “too little, too late” for the thousands of people who got sick or died in a prison or jail ravaged by COVID-19. Unfortunately, there is little reason to think that these drops will be sustained in a post-pandemic world, especially since they have already begun to rebound to pre-pandemic levels, even amid some of the worst outbreaks the U.S. has seen. Above all, we should not expect these trends to hold without sustained reforms, as opposed to temporary “emergency response” changes.

Here, we offer some important context for the trends observed in 2020:

• Nationwide, jail populations have already rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels. While the BJS reports a 25% reduction in jail populations in 2020, that data only covers through midyear 2020 (i.e. the end of June). Because our work trying to shift the nation’s justice system response to COVID couldn’t wait for the official BJS data, we’ve been tracking jail population changes during the pandemic in over 400 county jails using data collected by the NYU Jail Data Initiative. Using that data, we’ve found that the populations of most jails in the sample started climbing back up after July 2020. Overall, the average population change since March 2020 among those jails had diminished to only a 7% decrease by October 2021.
• Jail populations were still too high, even when they were at their lowest in mid-2020. Even in the summer of 2020, after county and city officials had slashed their local jail populations as much as they would at any point in the pandemic (to date, anyway), 1 in 14 jails was still badly overcrowded, holding more people than their rated capacity allows. And in mid-2020, the U.S. still locked up more people per capita in jails alone than most countries do in any type of confinement facilities. That “low” rate of 167 per 100,000 residents is still more than double what it was in 1980.
• The decrease in the prison population was also temporary — and has started to bounce back up. Like the jail population changes, the 15% drop in the nation’s state and federal prison population is explained by temporary conditions caused by COVID-19, not long-term policy changes, nor even particularly intentional changes. The combination of trial and sentencing delays in courts and the refusal of some prisons to accept transfers from jails to prevent COVID transmission resulted in far fewer (40% fewer) admissions than usual. With only a few exceptions, state and federal officials made no effort to release large numbers of people from prison. In fact, there were fewer releases in 2020 than in 2019.

  

• Most of the drop in prison populations occurred within the federal Bureau of Prisons and just three states: California, Florida, and Texas. And even states that reduced prison populations didn’t necessarily reach “safe” population levels (if any prison can be called “safe”). At the end of 2020, 1 in 5 state prison systems were at or above their design or rated capacity. Even California, which reduced its prison population more than any other state (down 25,000) was still locking up more people than its prisons were designed for, and it’s only added more people since then.
• Among people “exiting” parole — either because their sentence was over, they were returned to incarceration, they died, or something else happened — roughly 1 in 5 (over 70,000) were returned to incarceration. This percentage was the smallest it’s been since at least 2005, but during a deadly pandemic that spreads easily in prisons, taking people off of community supervision and returning them to prison should not have been an option. Furthermore, the drop in re-incarceration compared to other years is most likely explained by changes in parole operations, not intentional policy choices: A quarter of agencies responding to a supplementary BJS survey reported suspending reporting requirements for at least a part of 2020.
• As with other forms of correctional control, the reduction in the probation population was due to the COVID-19 emergency, not policy changes, and probation populations were also trending up by the end of 2020. And as with parole, the 35% decrease in returns to incarceration for technical violations, while a welcome change, is largely explained by interruptions in probation operations, and therefore is almost certainly temporary. About half of the agencies responding to BJS’s supplemental survey reported that they suspended all supervision and closed agencies for a period of time in 2020.

Deeply troubling findings: Deaths as “releases” and “exits,” fewer releases amid a pandemic, and bad jail policy choices

Beyond adding context to some of what would otherwise appear to be “positive trends,” our analysis of the 2020 BJS data surfaced some deeply troubling findings about deaths in prison and on community supervision, the failure of states to release more people during the pandemic, and jail policy choices that reveal backwards priorities.

In prisons, BJS reports several disturbing changes from pre-pandemic 2019 to the end of 2020:

• Deaths in prison increased by 46% nationwide. More than 6,100 people died in prison in 2020, which was 1,930 more deaths than in 2019.⁸ California, Florida, Texas, and the federal Bureau of Prisons all saw more than 500 people die in their prisons in 2020 alone (there have been more deaths since).
  
• State and federal prisons released ten percent fewer people during the first year of the pandemic, a significant change compared to the typical 1-3% annual fluctuation in the number of releases. Some of this decrease may be explained by slowdowns in parole board functions (we see a lot of drops in “conditional” releases, which would include releases on parole), but in eight states, at least 2% of “releases” were, in fact, deaths. At a time when vaccines were not available and families, advocates, and public health officials were sounding the alarms about the extreme risks of COVID in and around correctional facilities, far more people should have been released from prisons — not far fewer.

As in previous years, there is a lot of data missing about what happens to people on probation and parole; in many states, BJS reports little about how many people complete supervision successfully, how many are returned to jail or prison, why they are returned, etc. But in 2020, one dismal trend was clear: Many so-called “exits” from probation and parole were actually deaths:

• A total of 22,573 people on probation and parole died in 2020, which represents about 2,800 (14%) more deaths than in 2019.
• Exits from parole due to death increased by 32% (1,945 additional deaths) from 2019 to 2020. This accounted for over 2% of parole “exits.”
• Exits from probation due to death increased in 28 of 38 reporting states from 2019 to 2020, an overall increase of over 6% (891 additional deaths). Additionally (and somewhat mysteriously), the number of “other” exits more than doubled (with over 50,000 more “other” exits), but there is no further detail on what those “other” exits might have been.

Getting state-by-state data, such as the BJS made available in the reports on prisons and on probation and parole populations in 2020, is key to bringing some important facts to light that would otherwise be obscured by the larger, nationwide trends. The state-specific data reported by BJS revealed that some states seemed to largely ignore the urgency and seriousness of the pandemic’s impact on correctional populations:

• Alaska’s incarcerated population actually increased by over 2% (over 100 people) in 2020. It was the only state to show an increase during this time. Worse, most of the increase was among the unsentenced (pretrial or pre-sentence) population, which means authorities made a choice to incarcerate many people who weren’t even serving a sentence.
• Nebraska’s prison population dropped only 6.6%, making it one of only three states with less than a 10% decrease. It also has the dubious distinction of being the one state to exceed its most generous measure of capacity,⁹ at 119% of its prisons’ operational capacity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nebraska saw a greater-than-average (71%) increase in deaths in its prisons compared to 2019.
• Five states held more youth under age 18 in adult prisons in 2020 than in 2019: Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska (where their numbers doubled), Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
• During the pandemic, most states saw reducing incarceration for violations of probation and parole conditions as “low hanging fruit” for depopulating prisons and jails, resulting in a 35% drop in returns to prison for violations nationwide. But six states returned almost the same number of people to prison for technical violations in 2020 as they did in 2019: Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Virginia. Not only is locking people up for violations of conditions counterproductive for their success and much more costly, it’s a clearly unnecessary and serious health risk during a pandemic.

Finally, while BJS has not yet released data about deaths in jails in 2020, the jail data suggests some truly confounding policy choices at the local level that year:

• One change likely to have long-term implications is that jail capacity actually grew during the pandemic by quite a bit: The capacity of jails nationwide grew by 6,000 beds in one year (compare that to an increase of 700 beds the year before). With this additional capacity, authorities are able to jail over 5% more people than they were ten years ago.
• In 2020, people in jail spent an average of two days longer locked up in dangerous conditions compared to 2019.¹⁰ Overall, the estimated average jail stay has increased by a whole week (31%) between 2010 and 2020. Like the other changes in 2020, the longer jail stays in 2020 are due to changes in courts and prisons related to COVID-19. But whatever the reason, longer stays meant vulnerable people were more exposed to extremely risky jail conditions, when their exposure should have been minimized.
• People who weren’t even convicted of a crime (i.e., those held in jail pretrial) made up a larger share of the total jail population than they have since at least 1995 — probably more than in any other year. At a time when jail populations should have been reduced to the bare minimum, why were jails holding so many legally innocent people?
• In response to the pandemic, many jurisdictions aimed to reduce the use of jails for low-level offenses. But in the summer of 2020, almost 1 in 4 (23%) people in jail were still held for misdemeanors, civil infractions, or unknown offenses — that is, not felonies. Moreover, the practice of jailing people for violations of probation and parole conditions still accounted for almost 1 in 5 (18%) people in jail in mid-2020.¹¹
• Black people made up a larger share of the jail population than they have since 2015, because the 22% jail population drop among Black people was proportionally smaller than the 28% drop among white people. While the difference was not dramatic, this imbalance should serve as a reminder that decarceration efforts must always prioritize racial equity.

Conclusions

The recent data reported by BJS about prison, jail, probation, and parole populations during the first year of the pandemic drive home just how quickly things can change under pressure. By and large, the changes we saw during 2020 were temporary, but they suggest how much is politically and practically feasible when there is a critical mass of support to save lives put at risk by mass incarceration. It’s encouraging to see rapid population drops of 15-25% in prisons and jails, to see the total “footprint” of the carceral system shrink by over 10% in one year, and to see that, when pressed, states and counties can find ways to function without so much reliance on correctional control. It’s also helpful to see the weaknesses in such decision-making, which are put into sharp relief when under the same pressure: Racial equity is too often an afterthought in decarceration efforts, and local-level authorities, in particular, too often lack alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenses and supervision violations, and are too quick to lock up people accused, but not convicted, of crimes. There are many lessons for policymakers and advocates for reform in the data from 2020.

At the same time, the fact that many positive early-pandemic policy changes were so short-lived is disheartening. After all, the pandemic rages on two years later, and correctional populations continue to climb back up — what has changed? For one thing, the narrative has changed: The perception (not a reality) that criminal justice reforms have led to upticks in crime over the past few years has fueled pushback against smart policy changes. That perception is powerful, and history shows that reactionary policies can follow: In the 1980s and 1990s, the last time prison and jail populations were as low as they were in 2020, the knee-jerk reaction to (much bigger) increases in crime was to lock more people up, and for longer. There’s a lesson in that for us, too.

Ultimately, centering the facts in our ongoing discussions about safety and justice — and grounding them with context — will be key to sustaining support for any progress toward ending mass incarceration. Towards that end, the recent data from BJS summarized here about changes during 2020 are essential resources.

Prison Policy Initiative asks FCC to reject prison phone company’s request for special treatment to peddle “subscription” phone plans

Securus wants the FCC to waive its rules, but won’t disclose important details about how the plans work.

by Wanda Bertram, January 10, 2022

Securus, a giant prison phone company with a history of misconduct, recently petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to give the company special permission to peddle flat-rate subscription plans in lieu of charging callers a set amount per minute. The Prison Policy Initiative asked the FCC today to reject Securus’s flimsy bid for special regulatory treatment. In our comments to the FCC, we express our concerns with Securus’s petition:

1. Subscription plans could be a good deal for consumers. Or they could be a rip-off. As with most things, the devil is in the details, but Securus hasn’t provided any details on how its subscriptions work. The company’s marketing materials play down or completely omit important details about the plans — for example, that all payments you make via the subscription model are non-refundable, even in the (quite common) case that your loved one can’t use the phone for days or weeks. Securus emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of its subscription products while withholding most details that could make customers reasonably question the value of a subscription plan.
2. Securus makes several claims about its subscription plan — including claiming that a pilot of the subscription plan showed “increased call length” and “reduced costs” — without providing any supporting data.
3. Securus claims that the “effective” per-minute rates for its subscription plans are “well below” the FCC’s current rate caps, but this claim is based on the debatable assumption that subscribers will use all the minutes they possibly can.
4. Securus has declined to disclose important details about its pilot of the subscription model, such as how many customers subscribed, what subscribers’ average usage was, what the average per-minute rate for users was, and what Securus’s profit margin on subscription programs was.
5. We still don’t know what counts as a “call” under the subscription pricing plan. If an incarcerated caller places a call but no one answers, this may count against the weekly or monthly allowance, making subscriptions a far worse deal for consumers. This is just one of several material questions that Securus doesn’t answer in its petition.
6. Securus hasn’t even precisely defined what it wants. At various points in the petition it states that it wants to: continue its pilot subscription program at eight prisons and jails, expand the program, or let any phone company offer subscription plans.

The FCC shouldn’t waive its long-standing rules for Securus unless it would clearly serve the public interest to do so. Securus should face a high burden of proof before the FCC grants it special treatment, particularly given the company’s history of nickel-and-diming its customers.

You can read our full comments here.

Research roundup: The positive impacts of family contact for incarcerated people and their families

The research is clear: visitation, mail, phone, and other forms of contact between incarcerated people and their families have positive impacts for everyone — including better health, reduced recidivism, and improvement in school. Here’s a roundup of over 50 years of empirical study, and a reminder that prisons and jails often pay little more than lip service to the benefits of family contact.

by Leah Wang, December 21, 2021

To incarcerated people and their families, it’s glaringly obvious that staying in touch by any means necessary — primarily through visits, phone calls, and mail — is tremendously important and beneficial to everyone involved. Yet prisons and jails are notorious for making communication difficult or impossible. People are incarcerated far from home and visitation access is limited, phone calls are expensive and sometimes taken away as punishment, mail is censored and delayed, and video calls and emerging technologies are all too often used as an expensive (and inferior) replacement for in-person visits.

Prison- and jail-imposed barriers to family contact fly in the face of decades of social science research showing associations between family contact and outcomes including in-prison behavior, measures of health, and reconviction after release. Advocates and families fighting for better, easier communication behind bars can turn to this research, which demonstrates that encouraging family contact is not only humane, but contributes to public safety.

In-person visitation is incredibly beneficial, reducing recidivism and improving health and behavior

The positive effects of visitation have been well-known for decades — particularly when it comes to reducing recidivism. A 1972 study on visitation that followed 843 people on parole from California prisons found that those who had no visitors during their incarceration were six times more likely to be reincarcerated than people with three or more visitors. A few years later, researchers found similar results in a study of people paroled from Hawaii State Prison.

Since the 1970s, the body of evidence in favor of prison visitation has only grown. In 2008, researchers found that among 7,000 people released from state prisons in Florida, each additional visit received during incarceration lowered the odds of two-year recidivism by 3.8 percent (in this study, recidivism was defined as reconviction). Findings out of Minnesota a few years later were similar: Receiving one visit per month was associated with a 0.9 percent decrease in someone’s risk of reincarceration; better yet, each unique visitor to an incarcerated person reduced the risk of re-conviction by a notable 3 percent.¹ Among people who received visits during their incarceration, felony re-convictions were 13 percent lower and revocations for technical violations of parole were 25 percent lower compared to people who did not receive visits.

Visitation is also correlated with adherence to prison rules. In 2019, an Iowa researcher found that in-prison misconduct (as measured by official citations) was reduced in people who received visits at Iowa state prisons. Based on these results, one additional visit per month would reduce misconduct by a further 14 percent. “Probably as a direct result of the reduced misconducts,” the study’s author notes, “a similar increase in visitation would also reduce time served by 11 percent.”

These findings add to other recent studies linking visitation and reduced prison misconduct. The timing of visits may matter, as visiting “privileges” can swiftly be taken away as a cruel punishment: According to one study, misconduct tended to decrease in the three weeks before a visit. This may explain why more frequent visits lead to more consistent good behavior, better overall outcomes and post-release success. Families who visit, concluded Holt and Miller in the California study, are a “prime treatment agent” for incarcerated people.²

Research has also found that visitation is linked to better mental health, including reduced depressive symptoms — an important intervention for the isolated, stressful experience of incarceration. Yet even before the pandemic halted visitation, and despite these known benefits, correctional facilities have made visitation hard due to remote locations, harsh policies, and the financial incentives to replace visits with inferior video calls.

Consistent phone calls to family improve relationships

Phone calls tend to be more common than in-person visitation, as they involve fewer logistical barriers. In fact, the key studies we found reveal that 80 percent or more respondents used phone calls to contact family, far more than the number receiving visits, and sometimes more than those using mail to keep in contact.³ As with visitation, family phone calls are shown to reduce the likelihood of recidivism; more consistent and/or frequent phone calls were linked to the lowest odds of returning to prison.

A 2014 study of incarcerated women found that those who had any phone contact with a family member were less likely to be reincarcerated within the five years after their release. In fact, phone contact had a stronger effect on recidivism compared to visitation, which the study also examined.

Of course, reduced recidivism is not the only benefit. A 2020 survey of incarcerated parents showed that parent-child relationships improved when they had frequent (weekly) phone calls.

These positive findings have not gone unnoticed by senior policy makers: “Meaningful communication beyond prison walls helps to promote rehabilitation and reduce recidivism,” explained Mignon Clyburn of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a 2015 statement on the high cost of phone calls. “In a nation as great as ours, there is no legitimate reason why anyone else should ever again be forced to make these levels of sacrifices, to stay connected.”⁴

Given the frequency and importance of phone calls from prisons and jails, their prohibitive cost in many jurisdictions and the loss of phone “privileges” as a punishment are both inhumane and counterproductive.

Mail correspondence is a lifeline, and taking it away only hurts families

Mail is widely understood as a major lifeline for incarcerated people, with some literature finding that it’s the most common form of family contact.The fulfilling feeling of receiving personal mail, the ability to write and read (and reread) mail at one’s own pace, and the relatively low cost of a letter mean that it’s a highly practical and cherished mode of communication, universal to people both inside and outside of prison. And while prison mail hasn’t taken center stage in academic literature, some of the studies mentioned earlier did examine mail contact as part of their methods, finding that it contributes to parent-child attachment and relationship quality.

Yet mail is another example of a service whose benefits become obvious once it’s under attack. In 2007, notoriously cruel Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio instituted a postcard-only policy in the county jail, with sheriffs in at least 14 states following suit. These postcard-only policies severely limit parents’ and children’s ability to stay in touch. A study of incarcerated parents in Arizona cited mail as the most common mode of communication with their children, and those who used mail contact reported improved relationships with their children as compared to the year before their incarceration. Postcards also change the economic argument for mail correspondence: With their tiny physical space available for writing, we found that relaying information on a postcard is about 34 times as expensive as in a letter.

In recent years, other correctional systems have embraced another mail-restriction policy that advocates know is harmful: The telecom company Smart Communications has created “MailGuard,” a mail digitization service marketed as a response to (exaggerated) claims of contraband entering prisons through the mail. MailGuard’s scans of letters and photographs tend to be low-quality, and privacy is clearly violated as one’s mail is opened and scanned. We’ve criticized this practice and maintain that mail scanning is a poor substitute for true mail correspondence.⁵

Video calling and emerging technologies could enhance carceral contact if they weren’t prohibitively expensive

Sometimes billed as “video visitation,” video calling from prisons and jails allows families to connect virtually. Used effectively as a supplement, video calls could help eliminate many of the barriers that in-person visitation presents. However, we’ve argued time and time again that these calls fail to replicate the psychological experience — and therefore benefits — of in-person visitation, and should never be used as a replacement. A 2014 survey found incarcerated people in Washington State were pleased when video calling allowed family to see them, but extremely frustrated by the cost and significant technical challenges of the software. Video calling is a “double-edged sword” providing a mediocre service while lining the pockets of private corporations.

Most advocates and groups (including the American Correctional Association) agree that video calling should only supplement in-person visitation, not replace it entirely. But anecdotally, some corrections officials offer video calling only, and promote it as a safer and more efficient option to visitation. (In terms of safety, the argument that most contraband is introduced into prisons through visitation is a myth we’ve busted.)

In fact, taking away visitation can make prisons and jails less safe. For example, when in-person visits were banned at the jail in Knox County, Tennessee, in favor of video-only visitation, incarcerated people lost the opportunity to maintain healthy social connections. As a result, assaults between incarcerated people and assaults on staff increased in the months after the ban on visits was implemented. Data also show that, similar to the Iowa study mentioned earlier, disciplinary infractions in the jail increased after the ban.

Though the Knox County, Tennessee Sheriff’s Office claimed video-only visitation would be safer, the data suggest the opposite: The replacement of family visits with video calls at the Knox County Detention Facility resulted in more assaults between incarcerated people and on staff. There was also no drop in the rate of reported contraband, and there were higher levels of disciplinary infractions at the jail. See more of the devastating findings compiled by the grassroots coalition Face to Face Knox.

The Knox County research wasn’t an isolated finding: In Travis County, Texas, there was an escalation of violence and contraband after that jail switched from offering both video calls and visitation for a few years, to banning in-person visitation altogether. The change also reduced overall family contact: The number of video calls dropped dramatically compared to the average number of in-person visits that had happened at the jail before the policy change. As it turns out, the availability of both in-person visitation and video calling actually increased the average number of in-person monthly visits. And unsurprisingly, visitors who were surveyed overwhelmingly preferred in-person visitation to video calling. In 2015, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office reinstated in-person visits.

Technologies like video calling (and electronic messaging) have the potential to improve quality of life for incarcerated people and help correctional administrators run safer and more humane facilities. New research suggests that video calls may even help reduce recidivism (but only when they supplement in-person visits). Sadly, the promise of these new services is often tempered by a relentless focus on turning incarcerated people and their families into revenue streams.

Families endure tremendous hardship due to incarceration, but staying in touch can mitigate negative impacts

Many of the studies discussed here focused on the benefits of family contact for incarcerated people. But what about their families — do they gain from the time spent visiting, writing, or calling? Research says yes, family contact also provides relief to the family of an incarcerated person. This is important, because simply having an incarcerated loved one indicates poorer health and a shorter lifespan. In particular, children — the “hidden victims” of incarceration — are at increased risk for mental health problems and substance use disorders, and face worse intellectual outcomes compared to children without an incarcerated family member. (Youth can themselves be confined in detention facilities, turning parents into visitors; similar to the research explored earlier, visitation of confined youth was remarkably beneficial.⁶)

Research suggests that families who visited during a loved one’s incarceration show improved mental health measures and have a higher probability of remaining together after release. And a 1977 study, explained in a larger review of family contact research, found that children who had displayed concerning behavior upon their fathers’ incarceration showed improved behavior after visiting with their fathers.

The R Street Institute sums it up nicely: Supportive family relationships can promote psychological and physiological health for incarcerated people and their loved ones, at a time when everyone’s health is otherwise deteriorating. When done well, visitation can ease anxiety in children and mitigate some of the impacts on strained interpersonal relationships. Serving families at this most critical period simply makes communities healthier.

Making family contact readily available should be a no-brainer for prisons and jails

Of course, staying in touch with an incarcerated person is almost never easy. There can be great distress and tension as a family navigates its role, and the inconsistent timing and frequency of contact can be unsettling to someone whose incarceration is overly predictable and tedious, while life outside can be anything but.

Still, academic research is unified in its message that family contact during incarceration provides immense benefits, both during incarceration and the reentry period. Prisons and jails should make all types of family contact safely and equitably available, and end the practice of taking contact away as a punishment for rule violations. And with no certain access to visitation as the pandemic wears on, families and incarcerated people should receive more phone and video time, fewer fees, and better mail options in order to preserve family ties and the critical benefits that result from family contact.

Below, we’ve compiled all of the research discussed and linked above as a bibliography for our readers. And for further reading on the harmful restrictions on communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones, see our resources on visitation and our campaigns fighting for phone, mail, and visitation justice.

Calling on the FCC to regulate video-calling technology in prisons and jails

The FCC has regulated video calling since the 1960s, and there is no reason why it should not use its authority to crack down on high prices and unfair practices in the correctional video-calling market.

by Stephen Raher, December 20, 2021

On Friday December 17, Prison Policy Initiative presented our latest arguments to the Federal Communications Commission regarding steps that the agency should take to combat financial exploitation of incarcerated people and their family members.

A decade ago, the battle for prison and jail phone justice was in its formative years. At that time the movement was focused on phone justice because telephone calling was the only technology available to most incarcerated people for real-time communication. But a lot has changed in the intervening time — new technologies are proliferating in prisons and jails, most prominently video calling.

While activists have won several notable victories in terms of bringing down outrageous phone rates, correctional video calling is completely unregulated. In the face of legal requirements to reduce phone rates, many companies are simply steering people to use more expensive video calling. Our recent filing provides the FCC with a blueprint for addressing this growing problem.

AT&T’s Picturephone provided video calling service in the 1960s. Although the product was a commercial disappointment, the Commission regulated Picturephone as a communication service without any serious objection. Source: Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (2012) (reprint courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center).

The dominant prison telecom companies have waged a years-long misinformation campaign claiming that the FCC lacks the power to regulate video calling. But the legal arguments upon which the companies base their clams are gravely flawed. The FCC has regulated video calling since the 1960s, and there is no reason why it should not use its authority to crack down on high prices and unfair practices in the correctional video-calling market.

Our filing provides an extensive analysis that the FCC can use to reject industry arguments and assert its power to protect consumers. We remain hopeful that the FCC will rise to this challenge.
Other topics that we address in our filing include:

• The need for the FCC to act as quickly as possible to further reduce limits on voice-calling rates and ancillary fees.
• The thorny issue of jail security costs: we review the evidence gathered by the FCC and encourage the agency to not cave to the National Sheriffs’ Association demands that jails be able to charge families for a wide range of security services.
• Industry seizure of customer prepaid funds from “inactive” accounts, and the need to prevent this practice.
• The dominant company’s improper use of patents to stifle competition in the industry and the need for an investigation.

11 of our most important reports of 2021

Some highlights from the six major reports and 40+ short reports we've published this year.

by Wanda Bertram, December 20, 2021

Our work in 2021 has exposed little-known forms of exploitation behind bars, heartless COVID-19 policies, and overlooked reasons that mass incarceration persists. With 2021 coming to a close, we thought we’d share the most important reports we published this year:

States of emergency: The failure of prison system responses to COVID-19

We gathered data from all 50 states and the federal government to compare how prison systems responded to the coronavirus in the pandemic’s first year and a half. We graded each state’s pandemic response along almost 30 data points, finding that virtually every state allowed prisons to remain crowded and unsanitary, abandoning incarcerated people to die. Our report includes graphics showing how states compare on key issues — like getting the vaccine to incarcerated people — and appendix tables breaking down all of the data we collected.

Parole boards approved fewer releases in 2020 than in 2019, despite the raging pandemic

Our analysis of parole releases in 13 states shows that in 2020 — amid a global pandemic that infected one in three people in U.S. prisons — parole boards actually held fewer parole hearings and granted fewer releases than in previous years. Parole grant rates are low in ordinary years, but the number of hearings and releases fell even lower during COVID-19, even in “progressive” states like New York.

States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021

In this report, we compare the incarceration rates of every U.S. state to those of almost every independent country. We find that many states — if they were independent countries — would have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Moreover, every U.S. state incarcerates at least twice as many people (per capita) as do countries like the U.K., Canada, France, and Belgium, even though many of these countries have comparable or higher rates of violent crime.

Smoke and mirrors: A cautionary tale for counties considering a big, costly new jail

One of the many reasons mass incarceration persists is that county governments, dealing with crowded jails, believe the only solution is to build a new, bigger jail — even though their constituents often know better. This year, a resident of Otsego County, Michigan sent us his county’s proposal for a bigger jail, a report that the county had commissioned from a private jail architecture company. Our analysis of the firm’s arguments found that the county, contrary to needing a larger jail, was locking up many people for no good reason and should instead be working to reduce incarceration. Shortly after we released this piece, residents of Otsego County once again voted down the proposed jail expansion.

Building exits off the highway to mass incarceration: Diversion programs, explained

What should counties with crowded jails do, instead of building bigger jails? Policymakers often say the solution is a “diversion program” to keep people out of jail. But what exactly is a diversion program? This report explains the wide variety of programs that can be called “diversion,” and the benefits and drawbacks of each. We envision the criminal legal system as a highway, with diversion programs offering five major “exits” off the road to incarceration. We compare and contrast the different programs, showing how the best programs get people off the highway to incarceration as early as possible, long before arrest or jail time.

Slamming the courthouse door: 25 years of evidence for repealing the Prison Litigation Reform Act

The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) — one of many damaging Clinton-era crime bills — has made it harder for incarcerated people to file federal lawsuits and seek relief when their civil and human rights are violated. For the 25th anniversary of the PLRA being signed into law, we worked with Professor Margo Schlanger, the nation’s leading expert on the issue, to expose the harm done by this law and explain how it limits access to meaningful justice and makes court orders less effective.

Rigging the Jury: How each state reduces jury diversity by excluding people with criminal records

Our first-of-its-kind report surfaces an important but under-discussed issue: the policies in all 50 states that reduce jury diversity by excluding some people with criminal records from serving. Our report includes an easy-to-read map and detailed table describing each state’s policies, and explains how these policies make criminal trials even less fair.

Native people in the criminal justice system: the data, visualized

For Indigenous People’s Day, we gathered and reported the key facts showing how Native people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Most importantly, we explain how the number of Native people locked up in prisons and jails has skyrocketed since 2000, coinciding with a jail-building boom on tribal lands. Our briefing also explains how persistent flaws in data collection obscure the scale and scope of Native people in the criminal justice system.

For the poorest people in prison, it’s a struggle to access even basic necessities

All too often, prisons force people to buy certain basic necessities (such as soap) from the commissary, rather than providing them at no cost. Prisons claim that people who are extremely poor can get certain items for free. But who qualifies as “poor” in prison? We conducted a 50-state survey to find out how prisons determine who “really needs” financial assistance, and discovered requirements so strict that even the poorest people often don’t qualify.

Show me the money: Tracking the companies that have a lock on sending funds to incarcerated people

Our 50-state report breaks down how much it costs to send funds to an incarcerated loved one. As people in prison are increasingly expected to pay for everyday costs like food and hygiene items, a whole industry has arisen to provide faster — but vastly more expensive — electronic money transfers to incarcerated people. Our report shows which companies (if any) hold the contracts to provide money-transfer services in each state prison system, and explains what the fees are to use these services, which harmful clauses are hidden in the “fine print,” and what a better money-transfer system might look like.

New data: state prisons and local jails are increasingly deadly places

Data released this year by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that prison and jail deaths steadily increased in the several years leading up to 2018, even as correctional populations stayed relatively flat. In a short report, we dive into the new BJS data to explore what has caused in-custody deaths to rise over the past several years — a disturbing trend that anecdotal reports suggest is getting even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify several key factors at play, including abusive correctional healthcare systems, officials unwilling to give effective care to people with substance use disorders, and cruel policies that hurt incarcerated people’s mental health, driving many to suicide.

This list only scratches the surface of the work we’ve done in 2021. In total, we’ve published six major reports and over 40 shorter research briefings this year. To see more of our work, check out our Reports page and our Briefings page. Or, to see research we’ve conducted about your state, visit our state profile pages. And if you’d like to get more frequent updates on our work in 2022, you can sign up for our approximately-weekly email newsletter.

As we head into a new year, we’ll continue producing cutting-edge research that exposes the ways mass incarceration harms the people behind bars and our society as a whole.

Since you asked: What information is available about COVID-19 and vaccinations in prison now?

Despite the new variants of COVID-19, prison systems are failing to publish up-to-date and necessary data and we don’t know much about booster shot access.

by Emily Widra, December 16, 2021

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, prison systems throughout the country began publishing COVID-19 data, lifting a tiny corner of the veil of secrecy that usually shields prisons from public scrutiny. These “COVID data dashboards” — which varied from state to state, but generally at least tracked the number of active cases, testing efforts, and COVID-19 deaths — marked a departure from the outdated, obscure data we usually see coming out of prison systems and state and federal agencies. However, the quality and comprehensiveness of the published data varied from state to state, and dashboards were often riddled with inadequacies and confusion. To make matters worse, even as the Delta variant surged through the country in the summer of 2021, the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project reported that a number of states — including those with some of the highest case rates, like Florida and Georgia — had rolled back their publicly available prison data.

Now that we’re facing yet another COVID-19 threat with the Omicron variant, many of these states have reinitiated data reporting on the number of COVID-19 cases and tests behind bars. And yet, data on COVID-19 vaccinations and booster doses — our strongest protection in the face of COVID-19 — are scarce and incomplete across the nation’s prison systems. Publicly available and regularly updated COVID-19 prison data — including vaccination and booster data — are crucial for holding public officials, politicians, and legislatures accountable, as well as for helping families and the general public obtain even the simplest information about COVID-19 in their loved ones’ facilities and local communities.

Most state prison systems provide patchy COVID-19 data, at best

In July 2021, the UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project reported a startling trend: Many state correctional agencies were failing to regularly update their COVID-19 data, including lags of 58 days in Florida, 40 days in New Jersey, and more than two weeks in Wyoming, New Hampshire, Utah, Mississippi, Alaska, and Montana. Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced that they would no longer be updating their COVID-19 prison data dashboards. A month later, in August 2021, UCLA found that Florida and Georgia had completely removed their COVID-19 data dashboards, while Louisiana drastically reduced its published data to only include active case counts.¹

In fact, patchy and delayed prison COVID-19 data has become the norm, not the exception. As of December 14, 2021, 8 state correctional agencies have COVID-19 data dashboards that have not been updated in the last week. The DOC COVID-19 dashboard in Montana has not been updated for 88 days so far, and it’s been 25 days in Mississippi, 14 days in Tennessee, 12 days in North Carolina, 11 days in Alabama and New York, 9 days in Alaska, and 8 days in Oregon. An additional four states’ DOC COVID-19 dashboards — Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, and Oklahoma — appear to be updated frequently but have no consistent information about when they last updated the data, leaving us unsure of how accurate and relevant the data are. West Virginia updates most of their COVID-19 data regularly, but their vaccination data are from November 5th, 2021, 39 days ago.

Even when they do update their dashboards, most states fail to report crucial information.

There are five major metrics that states should be tracking and publishing:

• cumulative case counts,
• active or current cases,
• cumulative deaths,
• vaccination progress, and
• testing counts.

Yet only three states provide sufficient data on all five of these metrics, for both incarcerated people and correctional staff: Washington, West Virginia, and Maryland. All other states with COVID-19 data dashboards are only publishing some of this data.

In particular, data on vaccine administration — and booster doses — are rare. Only 22 states and the federal system provide vaccination data for incarcerated people and only 15 states and federal prisons provide vaccination data for staff. Only two states — Maryland and South Carolina — are publishing the number of incarcerated people who have refused the vaccine, while no prison systems are publishing the number of staff who have refused a vaccine.²

Only a few state prison systems are publishing data on booster shots

The CDC has made clear to the public that booster shots are crucial to maintaining protection from COVID-19 — particularly from newer variants like Delta and Omicron. But are prison systems following the booster dose recommendations of the federal government and the CDC? It’s hard to know, given the absolute scarcity of information about booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in prisons across the country. Our survey of websites operated by state departments of corrections and the Bureau of Prisons found that only four states — Delaware, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota — are publishing data on booster dose administration for incarcerated people, while only one prison system — Maryland — is making data available about correctional staff booster doses.

Given the scarcity of COVID-19 vaccination data, it is concerning but perhaps not surprising that we struggled to find data on booster doses administered. Even more troubling, we were only able to find four state prison systems — North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Utah — that published explicit start dates for the administration of booster doses on their websites.³ An additional six prison systems — Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, and the BOP — have put out policies or public statements that at least mentioned COVID-19 booster doses. This leaves us with no evidence that more than 40 other states are providing boosters at all. And when it comes to staff, we found no explicit plans for administering booster doses to prison staff in any prison system.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, either inside or outside prison walls. COVID-19 cases have spiked nationwide this fall (and are expected to again this winter), and many of the people most vulnerable to the virus are currently locked up. What’s more, we know that COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons can quickly spread to surrounding communities, with grave public health consequences. But alarmingly, it appears that state prison systems are not offering the booster shot to incarcerated people to protect them — as well as the general public — from COVID-19.

Finally, by retiring their COVID-19 data dashboards, prison systems are leaving the public in the dark about a critical public health measure. Rather than waiting until the pandemic is over to hold these prison systems accountable for their healthcare policy failures, we should demand transparency — and booster shots for incarcerated people — now.

If you know of notable policies or data about booster doses that should be included here, please let us know at virusresponse@prisonpolicy.org.

Recent studies shed light on what reproductive “choice” looks like in prisons and jails

States that are otherwise hostile to abortion rights are especially likely to make it difficult for incarcerated people.

by Katie Rose Quandt and Leah Wang, December 8, 2021

In the nearly 50 years since Roe v Wade established the right to an abortion without excessive governmental restriction, the courts have repeatedly confirmed that incarcerated people retain this constitutional right. Yet abortion rights throughout the country are under attack: The Supreme Court is currently deciding on a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks, and a new Texas law empowers private citizens to sue anyone who provides an abortion after six weeks — long before many people know they are pregnant. In the first half of 2021, state legislatures enacted 90 abortion restrictions, the most of any year to date.

Life behind bars does not occur in a bubble, and these state policies have implications for the estimated 58,000 pregnant people who enter jail or prison each year. Two articles recently published in medical journals analyzed incarcerated people’s access to abortion and to permanent and reversible contraception across 22 state prison systems¹ and six (mostly large) county jail systems.^{2 3} The studies reveal that abortion and contraception access varies greatly between states — and that abortion access for incarcerated people is related to broader state policies. Even in states that officially allow abortion, many people may be effectively blocked from obtaining the care they need, thanks to insurmountable barriers like self-payment requirements and physical distance from abortion caregivers.⁴ The studies make clear that people behind bars often have very few — if any — choices and autonomy when it comes to their reproductive health and decisions.

The two articles are based on data from the Pregnancy in Prison Statistics (PIPS) project, a series of studies aiming to fill in significant gaps in data, spearheaded by Dr. Carolyn Sufrin of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and School of Public Health. Earlier studies from this project found a lack of supportive policies for pregnant, incarcerated women, as well as adverse outcomes for expectant mothers and their babies. Taken all together, these studies explain the stakes for incarcerated people during pregnancy — intended or unintended — and the postpartum period: They are likely to receive inadequate prenatal care, give birth without companion support and possibly in shackles, and have their babies taken away immediately after birth.

Main findings

• Most state prison systems (19 of the 22 studied, or 86%) allowed abortion, whether it was written policy or not. Of these, eight allowed it during the first trimester only.
• Seven state prison systems (32%) did not have an official written policy regarding abortion. While four of these states did allow abortions in practice, the lack of policy is concerning and may leave individuals’ access to the discretion of prison staff.
• Three prison systems did not allow abortions at all. None of these three had an official written policy on abortion access, but in practice they did not allow any access, and did not indicate exceptions for rape or incest, in violation of the Constitution.
• Most jails (4 of the 6 studied) allowed abortion. The two that banned abortion were both in Texas: Harris County (Houston) and Dallas County. The four other jails allowed abortion during both the first and second trimesters.
• Abortions are relatively uncommon behind bars: Over the one-year course of the study, there were 33 abortions reported in the study jails and 11 in the study prisons — out of 1,040 total pregnancies that ended in custody during that period.
• Access to contraception varied greatly throughout the study prison systems and jails: Some provided both reversible and permanent contraception,⁵ but more often than not, women had few choices. Concerningly, some states provided access to permanent contraception (i.e. sterilization), but not reversible contraception.
• More than one-fourth of study prisons offered no contraception access at all.

State hostility to abortion rights affects access behind bars

The authors find that there are correlations between statewide abortion policies and abortion access behind bars. Just three of the study’s 22 state prison systems banned abortion entirely. All three were in states with policies considered “hostile” to abortion rights, a distinction coined by the Guttmacher Institute.⁶ In all, 77% of state prison systems in hostile states allowed abortion for incarcerated people, compared to 100% of prison systems in nonhostile states. Second trimester abortions were allowed for incarcerated people in 38% of hostile states and 67% of nonhostile states.

The study’s jails revealed a similar pattern: Both of the jails in a hostile state (Texas) banned abortions for incarcerated people, while all four jails in nonhostile states allowed them in both the first and second trimesters.

Abortions can be prohibitively expensive and impossible to obtain, even in states that allow them

The study identified additional barriers to access, even in facilities that officially allow abortion, chief among them payment. Among the study’s 19 state prison systems that allowed abortion, 13 (68%) required individuals to pay for their own abortion care.⁷ This lack of financial support stems in part from the fact that incarcerated people have been excluded from Medicaid coverage since Medicaid was introduced in 1965.⁸ And in federal facilities, the Hyde Amendment forbids the use of federal funds on abortions, except to save the life of the pregnant person or in cases of rape or incest.

Although Medicaid funds may not be used on incarcerated people, the paper does reveal a correlation between states that allow Medicaid to cover abortions in the non-incarcerated population, and states that assisted with payment for abortions behind bars. Within states included in the study that have opted to allow Medicaid to cover abortion, 57% of prison systems and 75% of jails paid for an incarcerated people to obtain an abortion over the course of the study (or arranged for an outside source, like Planned Parenthood, to pay). In comparison, in states where Medicaid does not cover abortion in the non-incarcerated population, just 17% of prison systems and 0% of jails paid for (or arranged payment for) an abortion.

Other barriers include a lack of written policies on abortion in some states, and the physical distance to abortion caregivers from many rural prisons. And while pregnancy tests should be given at every intake in every women’s facility, pregnancy testing was not part of official policy in eight (36%) of the study’s prison systems and in one of the study’s six jails (17%). Especially in facilities where abortions are only allowed during the first trimester, this may leave people unaware they are pregnant until it is too late to access abortion.

There are significantly fewer abortions in prison than in the general population

Barriers to abortion access in the greater community are amplified among incarcerated populations. Abortions are already more difficult to obtain for people of color, those living in rural areas, and low-income individuals — many of the same people who are more likely to be incarcerated.

Over the course of the study, 33 abortions were reported in the study jails and just 11 in the prisons — out of 1,040 total pregnancies that ended in custody during that period.

This led to an overall “abortion ratio” of just 1.4% in the study’s prisons (the share of non-miscarriage pregnancies that ended in abortion), which is 13 times lower than the overall U.S. ratio of 18.4% in 2017. In other words, excluding miscarriages, just under one in five pregnancies ended in abortion in the general U.S. population in 2017, compared to one in about 72 pregnancies in prisons. Interestingly, the abortion ratio in study jails was 18%, similar to that of the general population. And looking only at the four jail systems that allowed abortions, that rate was even higher: 33% of non-miscarriage pregnancies that ended in those jails ended with an abortion, suggesting to the authors that “pregnant incarcerated individuals…may actually have an increased need for abortion access.”

The discrepancy between abortion rates in prisons and jails might be partially explained by timing: People typically go to jail before prison, so pregnancies may be more likely to be discovered in jail than prison. Pregnant people entering prisons may also tend to be farther along in their pregnancies, and by then it may be too late to request an abortion, although the study was not able to compare gestational age at admission. In addition, five of the six study jails were in large urban areas in close proximity to abortion caregivers (and four of the six were in nonhostile states) — meaning that access may have been better in the study’s jails than its prisons.

Incarcerated people have few — if any — choices regarding contraception

Prior studies have shown that three-quarters of incarcerated women are of reproductive age and many want to use contraception in advance of their release. The second recently-released PIPS study surveyed prison and jail policies regarding both permanent and reversible contraception (“permanent contraception” here refers to tubal ligation or getting one’s “tubes tied”; reversible contraception methods include methods like IUDs and hormonal implants). As with abortion, many facilities did not have a written policy regarding contraception, meaning actual access in those states might fall to the discretion of staff members.

Among the 22 state prison systems studied, five (23%) allowed both permanent and reversible contraception, five (23%) only allowed reversible contraception, and six (27%) only allowed permanent contraception. The remaining six states (27%) did not offer contraception at all. All six studied jails provided access to reversible contraception, with five also offering permanent contraception.

It is particularly alarming that six prison systems allowed access to permanent contraception, but not reversible contraception. This means that incarcerated people who want contraception may be forced to choose between permanent sterilization or nothing at all. In the context of prisons and jails, permanent contraception is a complex issue that blurs the line between choice and coercion, especially where no other options are provided. An audit of California prisons, for example, found that more than 100 women — particularly women of color — were subjected to illegal sterilization procedures between 2006 to 2010, many of whom did not know their surgeries would prevent them from ever getting pregnant. And in 2020, a whistleblower alleged that an immigration detention center was conducting mass hysterectomies; one detained woman compared it to an “experimental concentration camp.” Historically, forced sterilization has disproportionately devastated the lives of Black, Indigenous and other women of color.

Among the 11 state prison systems and five jails in the study that allowed permanent contraception, this procedure was only available after childbirth as a postpartum procedure in all but one prison system and one jail. This raises two concerns: Outside of prisons and jails, this procedure occurs equally frequently outside the postpartum setting, so only allowing it as a postpartum option limits choice. Secondly, incarcerated people are often in a particularly vulnerable position after giving birth in prison: They generally have no choice in their healthcare provider or birth location, and have little privacy. This vulnerability could further contribute to coerced decisions regarding postpartum permanent contraception.

In fact, as the study notes, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises that incarcerated women should rarely undergo permanent sterilization — and only then if long-acting reversible contraception is also available, and if there is documentation of a pre-incarceration request for the procedure.

Prisons and jails must expand access to reproductive healthcare, both in policy and practice

Pregnancy overlaps with incarceration often enough that prisons and jails should have clear policies and procedures to screen for pregnancy, provide quality prenatal and postnatal care, and ensure that incarcerated people have access to safe abortions, deliveries, and contraception, as they are entitled to by law. People do not lose their constitutional right to reproductive autonomy when they are incarcerated. Yet these two recent studies reveal abortion and contraception policies that are sometimes unwritten, sometimes unconstitutional, and frequently undermine individuals’ autonomy. They also make evident that more ongoing data collection is needed. Significant data remains uncollected,⁹ including demographic data (broken down by race, ethnicity, gender identity, etc.), which would allow us to see any disparities in pregnancy outcomes and access to contraception.

In many states where abortion is currently allowed behind bars, the narrow existing window of abortion eligibility may be shut if Roe v Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court. The Guttmacher Institute expects that 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion if the right is not protected by the Constitution.¹⁰ In Texas, for example, the new law bans abortions after six weeks. The jails in Harris County (Houston) and Dallas County do not allow abortions at all, meaning that an incarcerated person in early pregnancy could easily miss this tiny window of eligibility while jailed, and not be able to obtain an abortion upon release. And while people on the outside can — if they have the means — travel to a nonhostile state for abortion care, those in jails and prisons are held captive to the policies of their states.

The study’s findings suggest clear policy recommendations:

• Prioritize the diversion and/or early release of pregnant people from jail and prison, in recognition of the existing, serious risks to parental and infant health and well-being in carceral settings.
• Standardize correctional health care and require oversight to ensure all incarcerated people are provided standard reproductive health services.
• Establish clear, written policies regarding access to abortion care and contraception.
• At intake, screen for pregnancy and provide clear information about how to access available services.
• Provide non-coercive access to begin or end reversible contraception.
• Ensure that abortion access in all facilities is in line with state and federal law.
• Remove financial barriers to needed services for incarcerated people: State and local authorities should cover the cost of abortions and contraception for incarcerated people, or arrange for costs to be covered by service provider partners.
• Connect pregnant people with needed services upon release from jail or prison.
• Collect more data, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender identity, and other individual characteristics, on pregnancy prevalence, outcomes, policies, practices, and individual experiences — including requests for both reversible and permanent contraception.

For the poorest people in prison, it’s a struggle to access even basic necessities

Our survey of all 50 states and the BOP reveals that prisons make it hard for people to qualify as indigent—and even those who do qualify receive limited resources.

by Tiana Herring, November 18, 2021

Many people in prison struggle to purchase basic hygiene supplies, stamps, and other necessities of incarcerated life—thanks in part to the low wages they made before entering prison¹ and the mere pennies they earn working behind bars. Most prison systems claim to provide assistance to people who are extremely poor (or, in correctional policy terms, “indigent”). However, our new survey reveals that these “indigence policies” are extremely limited—both in who they help, and the amount of assistance provided.

We found that in almost every state² and the federal prison system, incarcerated people must maintain extremely low balances in their “inmate trust funds”³ before receiving any help with essential items like soap and stamps. And being deemed indigent is only half of the battle, as many states provide very few resources even to those who do qualify. What’s more, in 18 states, the assistance given to indigent people is actually treated as a loan they must repay if their account balance ever goes up, meaning that people are required to go into debt for access to basic necessities.

We gathered information on indigence policies in all 50 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons by looking through state departments of corrections’ websites and contacting public information officers in each system. Here, we offer answers to two questions:

1. How is indigence is defined in each state?
2. What items or services are supposed to be provided to indigent incarcerated people, according to state policies?

Most states have very narrow definitions of who qualifies as “indigent”

We were able to find a definition for indigence in 41 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons. The remaining nine states did not have easily accessible definitions online, and were not able to provide us with the requested information when asked. The lack of transparency is disappointing, and makes it difficult to hold prisons accountable for doing the bare minimum to support the poorest incarcerated people. Worse, this inability to produce policy information may be an indication that some states do not have indigence policies, meaning extremely poor incarcerated people in these states might not receive any assistance at all.

Every single department of corrections with an indigence policy requires people to have very little money before they can qualify. The monetary thresholds for indigence status range from a low of $0 (meaning that people with $1 to their name would not be considered indigent) to a maximum of $25. Over half of states have their limits set between $0 and $10. Additionally, most states require that people keep these low balances for at least a month before qualifying. If someone does get money added to their account that exceeds the indigence limit, they lose their indigence status and have to wait before they can be considered indigent again. In New Mexico, for example, an incarcerated person must have $0 in their account for a month before they qualify as indigent. Going so long with such low account balances means that people are surviving on severely limited access to food⁴ and basic necessities like toilet paper. While 30 days was the most common wait time – and certainly too long to have to wait for soap and envelopes to write home – Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Utah all require people to wait even longer, from 45 to 90 days.⁵

These arbitrary limits on the amount of money people can have means that people can lose their “indigence” status—and therefore their access to necessary supplies—just because they received a small deposit from a family member or for working a prison job. Many indigence policies specifically prohibit deposits and income of any amount in their definitions. For example, an incarcerated person in Maryland making 15 cents an hour for their labor can’t qualify for indigence status; while $0.15 an hour will hardly make someone rich, people are not allowed to work and receive free access to indigent supplies. These policies often ignore that many incarcerated people have automatic deductions taken from any money deposited into their accounts, including for fines and fees, involuntary savings funds, or repaying the department of corrections for items they received previously while considered indigent.

We also found that four states put additional work-related requirements on who can qualify for indigence, by limiting the status to those who are incapable of working, are “involuntarily unemployed,” or are actively seeking work.

The fact that free basic supplies are provided only to the poorest people—and not to all incarcerated people for free by default—fits with correctional trends of shifting the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, as also evidenced through the rise of paid services like tablets and phone calls.

The services offered to indigent people vary from state to state, but they are always very limited

The most common items provided to indigent incarcerated people are hygiene kits⁶ and supplies for sending a limited number of letters to loved ones; the number of free letters allowed range from one per month in Ohio to seven per week in Maryland. Legal mail is also mentioned in many policies, though departments of corrections are more likely to require repayment for these mailings. In some states, people have to choose between using their mail supplies for personal or legal mail, as they aren’t always considered separate services.

Eighteen states require indigent people to pay the department of corrections back for at least some of the services they receive while deemed indigent. In at least seven states, correctional agencies don’t appear to offer any services or supplies for free without the expectation of repayment. The Department of Corrections in Washington State, for example, covers the cost of mailing up to 10 letters per month for indigent incarcerated people. However, if the indigent person ever loses their indigence status, the department will recoup the costs for any letters previously mailed for free by deducting money from their “inmate trust accounts.” In states with repayment policies, the only way for the poorest incarcerated people to stay out of debt is to simply not write letters to their families, despite the fact that communication is crucial for maintaining family ties and increasing the chance of success upon release.

Every prison system can—and should—do more

Every indigence policy we looked at could be improved, but some states have implemented a few decent practices (at no cost to incarcerated people or their families) that others could consider adopting:

• Seven states allow indigent incarcerated people and their families the opportunity—though often very limited—to communicate via phone calls, video calls, email, or texts free of charge.⁷
• Seven states clearly state that feminine hygiene products are provided to those who need them, free of charge.⁸
• Seven states specify that toilet paper is provided to indigent incarcerated people for free.⁹
• New Jersey provides indigent incarcerated people with a $15 monthly allowance for commissary, which is important for access to food and basic necessities.
• California’s code of regulations prohibits charging indigent incarcerated people for mailing services they received while considered indigent (including the cost of materials, copying, and postage) if they lose indigent status.

Stringent indigence policies punish the poorest people in prison by severely limiting the amount of money people can have and still receive free services, dictating how they can spend the little money they do have, and making them wait weeks in extreme poverty before offering help. All incarcerated people deserve, at minimum, access to hygiene items and ways to communicate with loved ones without having to take on even more debt.