New report shows that mass incarceration led to huge increase in national COVID-19 caseloads

The study provides the first estimates of how prisons and jails led to more coronavirus infections, both inside and outside prisons.

December 15, 2020

Over half a million COVID-19 cases this summer were directly linked to mass incarceration, a new report from the Prison Policy Initiative and Professor Gregory Hooks shows. The study provides the first estimates of how prisons and jails — which are “super spreaders” of the virus — added to COVID-19 caseloads on the county, state, and national levels, including infections of people both inside and outside prisons.

“Our findings leave no doubt that locking up millions of people in this country in close quarters has led to mass sickness and death in 2020, both in and outside of prisons,” said Hooks. “This huge growth in COVID-19 cases isn’t the fault of incarcerated people; it’s the fault of tough-on-crime politicians who insist that mass incarceration is necessary to keep us safe.”

In the study, titled Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread, Hooks compared the population density of incarcerated people in U.S. counties to the growth in COVID-19 cases in those counties over the summer of 2020. To get a more direct measure of community spread across county lines, he also measured the impact on county caseloads from prison and jail populations held in nearby counties located within the same multi-county economic areas. The findings include:

• At the county level: Over the summer of 2020, large prisons and jail populations within nonmetro counties (i.e. rural areas or those with small cities) directly contributed to higher COVID-19 caseloads in those counties.
• At the regional level: COVID-19 caseloads grew much more quickly over the summer among counties in greater economic areas containing large prisons and jails.
• At the national level: Mass incarceration led to more than half a million additional COVID-19 cases nationwide – or about 1 in 8 of all new cases – over the summer, including cases both inside and outside correctional facilities.

The report, written to be accessible to a general audience, includes graphics illustrating the major findings, as well as several tables listing the number of COVID-19 cases attributable to mass incarceration in the most heavily impacted states and economic areas. Additional appendix tables provide estimates of additional cases linked to incarceration for every county, economic area, and state in the U.S.

As the report explains, prisons and jails offer ideal conditions for the transmission of the coronavirus and have had the largest COVID-19 outbreaks in the U.S. on most days in 2020. A team of epidemiologists predicted in April that mass incarceration would lead to hundreds of thousands of additional cases in the U.S. In June, the Prison Policy Initiative released a report with the ACLU showing that states were failing at the one effort likely to prevent such a tragedy: the safe reduction of prison and jail populations. As of mid-November, the Prison Policy Initiative has shown, prison and jail populations are still dangerously high.

“Now that we have the first national numbers showing how prisons and jails sped up the spread of COVID-19, lawmakers need to take action to depopulate these facilities, or we will see even more preventable cases and deaths linked to the conditions in prisons and jails,” said Prison Policy Initiative Research Director Wendy Sawyer, co-author of Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread. “Even though the COVID-19 vaccine is rolling out, it will be months before the virus stops cycling through correctional facilities, and the action states have taken so far has not been enough to slow it down. So far, we’ve seen that too many lawmakers don’t care enough about people in prison to take action on their behalf, but our findings show that failing to reduce prison populations during the pandemic has led to more people outside prison getting sick as well.”

The full report is available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/covidspread.html.

Incarcerated people and corrections staff should be prioritized in COVID-19 vaccination plans

Some states are including correctional facilities in their rollout plans. All states and the BOP should do so - and put incarcerated people near the top of the list.

by Katie Rose Quandt, December 8, 2020

This article has been updated as various states update their vaccination plans. New details have been added for the plans in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Our most recent update was on March 2.

As the approaching rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine brings hope of an eventual end to the pandemic, it also introduces ethical dilemmas. With various groups of Americans at heightened risk of exposure, and others at increased risk of severe cases, who should be vaccinated first?

By any reasonable standard, incarcerated people should rank high on every state’s priority list. The COVID-19 case rate is four times higher in state and federal prisons than in the general population — and twice as deadly. And despite the danger of close quarters and high rates of preexisting health conditions among incarcerated people, prisons and jails have widely failed to reduce their populations enough to prevent the spread of the virus. Since March, at least 227,333 people incarcerated in state and federal prisons have tested positive for COVID-19, and at least 1,671 have died. There have also been at least 56,496 cases and 105 deaths among prison staff.

The federal Bureau of Prisons announced in November that it plans to reserve its early allotments of the vaccinations for staff, not incarcerated people. Curious whether this was indicative of broader policy decisions, we investigated how states are planning to address incarcerated populations and corrections staff in their early rounds of vaccination, which may begin as soon as mid-December. To do so, we looked through all 49 publicly available draft vaccination proposal plans, which states were required to submit this fall using guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). (A complete plan from Minnesota was not available.)

In the draft proposals, states were encouraged to create three-phased plans for vaccine distribution, structured around availability of the vaccine. (Many states further subdivided the three phases into priority tiers, such as Phase 1A and Phase 1B):

• Phase 1: Potentially Limited COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Available
• Phase 2: Large Number of Doses Available; Supply Likely to Meet Demand
• Phase 3: Likely Sufficient Supply

Our most positive finding is that 40 of the 49 states addressed (or seemed to address) incarcerated people as a priority group at all, in the original plans or in later updates. But in many states, correctional staff are prioritized before incarcerated people (staff were also more likely to receive PPE early in the pandemic).

Missouri, for example, placed corrections staff in Phase 1B, while implying incarcerated people would be in Phase 3, which is also when the state plans to vaccinate “every Missourian who qualifies and needs or wants a COVID-19 vaccine.” The Missouri proposal rationalized this plan by pointing to staff as the likely entry point of the virus into facilities, and claiming that the spread can be controlled inside facilities. “Inmates’ confined nature has been amenable to procedural controls to reduce the likelihood of correctional facility outbreaks,” the report states. “As a result, staff now represent the most likely source of a facility outbreak. Vaccination of corrections staff can vastly reduce this source of potential attacks.” The report did not cite any data or other reports supporting these claims. The Missouri Department of Corrections has reported 36 COVID-19 deaths among its incarcerated population since March, as well as four deaths of staff members.

Furthermore, in a New York Times opinion piece, Emily Bazelon argued that the BOP’s similar prioritization of staff over incarcerated people, especially older detainees, “seems dubious, epidemiologically and ethically, without evidence that staff vaccinations would be enough to stop the spread of infection.”

State plans are often unclear and not specific

It is important to note that many of the states were unclear and unspecific in their plans, making it difficult to determine their intent. For example, many states included a CDC-produced graphic that assigns “critical populations” to Phase 2. Some, but not all, of these states provided further explanation as to how they define “critical populations.” For instance, Illinois’ original plan immediately followed the graphic with an explanation of who falls within “critical populations,” specifically listing, “People who are incarcerated/detained in correctional facilities.” We categorized these states as putting incarcerated people in Phase 2, since the intent was clear. (Illinois has since moved incarcerated populations to Phase 1B.)

Other states were somewhat less clear. Virginia, for example, included the CDC chart without any additional context. Elsewhere in the report, however, incarcerated people were included on a list of critical populations. Although it is not completely clear whether this list can be linked directly to Phase 2 on the graphic (“critical populations” is used in varying contexts throughout the reports), this additional attention to incarcerated people led us to categorize these states as “probably” including incarcerated people in Phase 2.

Other states, however, simply included the graphic without further explanation as to what “critical populations” means in their plans. For example, Kansas included the CDC graphic, but did not specifically mention incarcerated populations as part of a priority group anywhere else in the report. Due to our government’s history of medical mistreatment of incarcerated and detained populations, we did not give these states the benefit of the doubt by assuming they intended to include incarcerated people among “critical populations.” However, when states implement their plans, they certainly should include incarcerated populations in the prioritized “critical populations” category. (And in fact, Kansas later updated its plan to include incarcerated people in Phase 2.)

Similarly, some states were unclear on whether they intended to prioritize corrections staff. The same CDC graphic includes “other essential workers” in Phase 1B. Some states specifically interpreted this to include corrections staff. Other states implied this might include corrections staff, by referring to a document from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which provides an extensive list of who may be considered essential workers (that list includes corrections) — but without mentioning corrections workers specifically in their reports (in these cases, we labeled corrections staff as “Maybe Phase 1B”).

The appendix below includes explanations of how we categorized the states that did not explicitly place incarcerated people and staff into phases. Of course, if our judgement calls are incorrect in some instances, we may have listed a state as “maybe” or “probably” including these groups in a phase, when the state did not intend to assign a phase at all.

Another important point to note is that even among states that were specific, some used phrasing like “persons living in correctional facilities.” While we hope these states intend to prioritize those in jails and detention centers, as well as prisons, we cannot be sure — especially since there is a history of locally-operated jails falling through the cracks in state policy. And some states specifically excluded jails, such as New Mexico, which provided this explanation: “Because of the two-dose requirement, it may be difficult to ensure effective vaccination of facilities where people move in and out frequently such as homeless shelters and county adult detention centers. Two doses could be offered to inmates at state prisons and to adult residents at state and county juvenile justice centers.”

States should prioritize vaccinating those in county jails as well as prisons, both because jails can easily become COVID-19 hotspots, and because this is a way to reach large populations who might otherwise be missed.

Recommendations:

• Incarcerated people and corrections staff should be prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19. States and the BOP should not consider vaccination of staff as sufficient to stop the spread of COVID-19 in correctional facilities.
• Governors and state health officials should resist inevitable pressure to deprioritize incarcerated people. For example, earlier this month, when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was questioned about his state’s decision to place incarcerated people in Phase 2A, ahead of some other vulnerable groups, he responded: “There’s no way it’s going to go to prisoners before it goes to the people who haven’t committed any crime.” This type of posturing violates the state’s duty to protect the health of people in its care, as well as to slow the spread of the virus in the places where it is poised to spread the fastest.
• Prisons and jails should decarcerate. Since March, public health and medical officials have warned that the only way to protect incarcerated people (and limit the inevitable spread of the virus out of facilities and back into the community) is by drastically decreasing prison and jail populations. Prisons and jails have largely failed on this front.

Appendix: State COVID-19 Vaccination Distribution Plans

The research is clear: Solitary confinement causes long-lasting harm

At the International Symposium on Solitary Confinement, researchers and formerly incarcerated people made it clear that isolation causes severe and permanent damage.

by Tiana Herring, December 8, 2020

On a given day last year, an estimated 55,000 to 62,500 people had spent the previous 15 days in solitary confinement in state and federal prisons, often in cells smaller than a parking space.¹ Correctional officials often defend their frequent use of solitary confinement as an effective means of maintaining order and deterring violence and gang activity. But this reliance on solitary ignores the abundance of studies demonstrating the harmful and often long-lasting effects it wreaks on the human mind and body.

At the International Symposium on Solitary Confinement, sponsored by Thomas Jefferson University in November, researchers and formerly incarcerated people made it clear that any “positive” benefits correctional institutions gain by using solitary confinement are outweighed by the severe and often permanent damages caused by prolonged isolation. Recent studies show that time spent in solitary confinement shortens lives, even after release, and speakers at the International Symposium emphasized various other ways solitary causes irreparable harm.

Solitary confinement goes by many names, including “special housing units,” “administrative segregation,” “disciplinary segregation,” and “restrictive housing,” but the conditions are generally the same: 22 to 24 hours per day spent alone in a small cell.² The practice is widespread in jails, prisons, ICE detention centers, and juvenile facilities, and people are often sent to solitary for vague reasons or minor offenses. Black and Hispanic people, who are already overrepresented in correctional facilities, are further overrepresented in solitary confinement. Solitary isn’t just used for short periods of time, either: many people are confined without human interaction for years, and sometimes even decades.³

Prisons and jails are already inherently harmful, and placing people in solitary confinement adds an extra burden of stress that has been shown to cause permanent changes to people’s brains and personalities. In fact, the part of the brain that plays a major role in memory has been shown to physically shrink after long periods without human interaction. And since humans are naturally social beings, depriving people of the ability to socialize can cause “social pain,” which researchers define as “the feelings of hurt and distress that come from negative social experiences such as social deprivation, exclusion, rejection, or loss.” Social pain affects the brain in the same way as physical pain, and can actually cause more suffering because of humans’ ability to relive social pain months or even years later.

Premature deaths — by suicide, homicide, or opioid overdose — after release from prison are more likely for those that spent any amount of time (even one day) in solitary confinement than those who never did.

The effects of solitary confinement on mental health can be lethal. Even though people in solitary confinement comprise only 6% to 8% of the total prison population, they account for approximately half of those who die by suicide. Relatedly, observation cells in prisons, which are used for suicide watch — often with similar conditions to solitary confinement — are disproportionately filled with transfers from segregation. People often cycle between the two units without receiving adequate professional help to address their underlying mental health concerns.

Even if someone doesn’t enter solitary with a mental health condition, it’s possible for them to develop a specific psychiatric syndrome due to the effects of isolation. Dr. Stuart Grassian, who first identified the syndrome, notes that it is characterized by a progressive inability to tolerate ordinary things, such as the sound of plumbing; hallucinations and illusions; severe panic attacks; difficulties with thinking, concentration, and memory; obsessive, sometimes harmful, thoughts that won’t go away; paranoia; problems with impulse control; and delirium.

Robert King and Jack Morris, who spent a combined 62 years in solitary confinement, underscored many of the above findings at the International Symposium on Solitary Confinement. Mr. King noted that after a while, he lost his interest in communicating and experienced an emotional numbness that led to a loss of basic skills. Even since his release from prison in 2001, Mr. King says he struggles with simple things, including his sense of direction. Research indicates that many problems people develop while in solitary confinement often persist upon their return to the general population or their release to the outside world.

The irreparable damages caused by solitary confinement are unjustifiable, and have led the Union Nations to consider solitary torture when used for longer than 15 consecutive days. But this overwhelming research is often ignored in jails and prisons, where solitary confinement is frequently used as a “solution” to nearly every problem that arises, including disobedience, perceived threats, alleged gang affiliation, and even supposedly for individuals’ own protection. And as prisons continue using lockdowns in response to COVID-19, leaving many people alone or with a cellmate in tight spaces for 24 hours a day, understanding the damaging effects of solitary and changing these practices is more important than ever.

As COVID-19 continues to spread rapidly, state prisons and local jails have failed to mitigate the risk of infection behind bars

COVID infections are rising across the country. So why are we allowing jail populations to rise?

by Emily Widra, December 2, 2020

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

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the strategy to slowing its spread behind bars was clear: Reduce the number of people in jails and prisons. In March, public health and medical officials were already warning that incarcerated people would be uniquely vulnerable to the spread of the disease and its most serious medical consequences, due to their close quarters and high rates of preexisting health conditions.

And yet, more than eight months after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic, prisons and jails have generally failed to reduce their populations enough to protect the health and lives of those who are incarcerated. While state prison populations have slowly declined from pre-pandemic levels, the pace of these modest reductions has slowed since the spring, even as national infection rates continue to rise. And county jails — which made promising reductions in the spring — have failed to sustain those reforms.

Despite the rising national case rate of COVID-19, the number of people held in 514 county jails across the country has increased over the past four months. This graph contains aggregated data collected by NYU’s Public Safety Lab and updates a graph in our September 10th briefing. This graph includes all jails where the Lab was able to report data on March 10th and for at least 75% of the days in our research period. (The Public Safety Lab is continuing to add more jails to its data collection and data is not available for all facilities for all days.) To see county level data for all 514 jails included in this analysis, see Appendix A. This graph presents the data as 7-day rolling averages, which smooths out most of the variations caused by individual facilities not being reported on particular days. The temporary population drops/increases during the last weeks of May and August, as well as the first week of November, are the result of more facilities than usual not being included in the dataset for various reasons, rather than any known policy changes.

As a result of these failures to sufficiently decarcerate, the early warnings of health experts have come true: the COVID-19 case rate in state and federal prisons is more than four times as high as that of the general public, and the death rate is more than twice as high. The Texas prison system alone has had more COVID-19 cases than in four states and Washington, D.C. combined. And since people who work in prisons and jails regularly return to their communities, correctional facilities are dangerously poised to become incubators for the disease and contribute to rising infection rates in surrounding communities.

Initially, many local officials — including sheriffs, prosecutors, and judges — responded quickly to reduce jail populations. In a national sample of 514 county jails of varying sizes, most (88%) decreased their populations from March to July, resulting in an average population reduction across all 514 jails of 26%.¹ These population reductions came as the result of various policy changes, including police issuing citations in lieu of arrests, prosecutors declining to charge people for “low-level offenses,” courts reducing cash bail amounts, and jail administrators releasing people detained pretrial or those serving short sentences for “nonviolent offenses.”

But now the data tells a different story. Since July, 77% of the jails in our sample had population increases, suggesting that the early reforms instituted to mitigate COVID-19 have largely been abandoned. For example, by mid-April, the Philadelphia city jail population reportedly dropped by more than 17% after city police suspended low-level arrests and judges released “certain nonviolent detainees” jailed for “low-level charges.” But on May 1st — as the pandemic raged on — the Philadelphia police force announced that they would resume arrests for property crimes, effectively reversing the earlier reduction efforts. Similarly, on July 10th, the sheriff of Jefferson County, Alabama, announced that the jail would limit admissions to only “violent felons that cannot make bond.”² That effort was quickly abandoned when the jail resumed normal admission operations just one week later. The increasing jail populations across the country suggest that after the first wave of responses to COVID-19, many local officials have allowed jail admissions to return to business as usual.

On the other hand, state prison populations have continued to decline, but not quickly or significantly enough to slow the spread of COVID-19. Even in states where prison populations have dropped, there are still too many people behind bars to accommodate social distancing, effective isolation and quarantine, and increased health care requirements. For example, although California has reduced the state prison population by about 20% since January, the number of large COVID-19 outbreaks in California state prisons suggests that the population reduction needs to be much more drastic. In fact, as of November 18th, California’s state prisons were still holding more people than they were designed for, at 105% of their design capacity.

Prison population data for 21 states where population data was readily available for January, May, July, August, September, October, and November, either directly from the state Departments of Correction or the Vera Institute of Justice. See our COVID-19 response tracker for more information on many of the most important policy changes that led to these small reductions in some states. For the population data for these 21 states, see Appendix B.
Sharp-eyed readers may wonder if Connecticut and Vermont are showing larger declines than most other states because those two states have “unified” prison and jail systems. However, data from both states show that the bulk of their population reduction is coming from within the “sentenced” portion of their populations. (For the Connecticut data, see the Correctional Facility Population Count Report, and for Vermont, see the daily population reports.)

Early in the pandemic, North Dakota quickly reduced its prison population by 19% between January and May 2020, a trend that continued until the beginning of October. But over the past month this trend reversed and the states’ prison population actually started to increase (by 3% from October 8 to November 19). Now, North Dakota is experiencing the state’s first major outbreaks of COVID-19 in prison. In one facility, the James River Correctional Center, more than half of the incarcerated population had active COVID-19 infections as of November 23rd.

According to a October 2020 report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the modest declines in prison populations can be largely attributed to changes in arrests, jail bookings, and court closures — not releases. Despite evidence that large-scale releases do not inherently endanger public safety, states have elected to release people from prison on a mostly case-by-case basis, which the National Academies report describes as “procedurally slow and not well suited to crisis situations.”

Thankfully, some states have recognized the inefficiency of case-by-case releases and the necessity of larger-scale releases. For example, in New Jersey,³ Governor Phil Murphy signed bill S2519 in October, which allowed for the early release of people with less than a year left on their sentences. A few weeks after the bill was signed, more than 2,000 people were released from New Jersey state prisons on November 4th.⁴

Prisons and jails are notoriously dangerous places during a viral outbreak, and continue to be a major source of a large number of infections in the U.S. The COVID-19 death rate in prisons is three times higher than among the general U.S. population, even when adjusted for age and sex (as the prison population is disproportionately young and male). Since the early days of the pandemic, public health professionals, corrections officials, and criminal justice reform advocates have agreed that decarceration is necessary to protect incarcerated people and the community-at-large from COVID-19. Despite this knowledge, state, federal, and local authorities have failed to reduce jail and prison populations on a major scale, which continues to put incarcerated people’s lives at risk — and by extension, the lives of everyone in greater communities where incarcerated people eventually return, and where correctional staff live and work.

*Some jails did not have population data in the NYU database for July. We used the first August population available for those jails.

No escape: The trauma of witnessing violence in prison

A recent study of recently incarcerated people finds that witnessing violence is a frequent and traumatizing experience in prison.

by Emily Widra, December 2, 2020

Early this year — before COVID-19 began to tear through U.S. prisons — five people were killed in Mississippi state prisons over the course of one week. A civil rights lawyer reported in February that he was receiving 30 to 60 letters each week describing pervasive “beatings, stabbings, denial of medical care, and retaliation for grievances” in Florida state prisons. That same month, people incarcerated in the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Massachusetts filed a lawsuit documenting allegations of abuse at the hands of correctional officers, including being tased, punched, and attacked by guard dogs.

While these horrific stories received some media coverage, the plague of violence behind bars is often overlooked and ignored. And when it does receive public attention, a discussion of the effects on those forced to witness this violence is almost always absent. Most people in prison want to return home to their families without incident, and without adding time to their sentences by participating in further violence. But during their incarceration, many people become unwilling witnesses to horrific and traumatizing violence, as brought to light in a February publication by Professors Meghan Novisky and Robert Peralta.

In their study — one of the first studies on this subject — Novisky and Peralta interview recently incarcerated people about their experiences with violence behind bars. They find that prisons have become “exposure points” for extreme violence that undermines rehabilitation, reentry, and mental and physical health. Because this is a qualitative (rather than quantitative) study based on extensive open-ended interviews, the results are not necessarily generalizable. However, studies like this provide insight into individual experiences and point to areas in need of further study.

Participants in Novisky and Peralta’s study reported witnessing frequent, brutal acts of violence, including stabbings, attacks with scalding substances, multi-person assaults, and murder. They also described the lingering effects of witnessing these traumatic events, including hypervigilance, anxiety, depression, and avoidance. These traumatic events affect health and social function in ways that are not so different from the aftereffects faced by survivors of direct violence and war.

Violence behind bars is inescapable and traumatizing

Violence in prison is unavoidable. By design, prisons offer few safe spaces where one can sneak away — and those that exist offer only a small measure of protection. Novisky and Peralta’s findings echo previous research revealing that incarcerated people often “feel safer” in their private spaces, such as cells, or in a supervised or structured public space, such as a chapel, rather than in public spaces like showers, reception, or on their unit. However, even inside their cells, people remain vulnerable to seeing or hearing violence and being victimized themselves.

Participants in Novisky and Peralta’s study discussed graphic, horrific acts of violence they had witnessed during their incarceration: stabbings, beatings, broken bones, and attacks with makeshift weapons. Some participants were even forced into direct, involuntary participation, by being required to clean up blood after an attack or murder. “I used so much bleach in that bathroom … I just couldn’t look,” one participant recalled. “I just kept pouring the bleach in it [the blood], and pouring the bleach in it, and then I would mop it.” As the authors succinctly state, “the burdens of violence are placed not just on the direct victims, but also on witnesses of violence.”

Responses to witnessed violence behind bars can result in post-traumatic stress symptoms, like anxiety, depression, avoidance, hypersensitivity, hypervigilance, suicidality, flashbacks, and difficulty with emotional regulation. Participants described experiencing flashbacks and being hypervigilant, even after release. One participant explained: “I’m trying to change my life and my thinking. But it [the violence] always pops up. I get flashbacks about it … just how the violence is. In a split second you can be cool. And then the next thing you know, there’s people getting stabbed or a fight breaks out over nothin’.”

The effects of witnessing violence are compounded by pre-existing mental health conditions, which are more common in prisons and jails than in the general public. As one participant in the Novisky and Peralta study put it, prison is no place to recover from past traumas or to manage ongoing mental health concerns: “I don’t think it [prison] made my PTSD worse, it just made the PTSD I already had trigger the symptoms.”

Violence in prison by the numbers

Prisons are inherently violent places where incarcerated people (often with their own histories of victimization and trauma) are frequently exposed to violence with disastrous consequences. Because there is no national survey of how many people witness violence behind bars, we compiled data from various Bureau of Justice Statistics surveys and a 2010 nationally representative study to show the prevalence of violence. The table below shows the most recent data available,¹ although it is likely that many of these events are underreported.

Given the vast number of violent interactions occurring behind bars, as well as the close quarters and scarce privacy in correctional facilities, it is likely that most or all incarcerated people witness some kind of violence.

Prison is rarely the first place that incarcerated people experience violence

Even before entering a prison or jail, incarcerated people are more likely than those on the outside to have experienced abuse and trauma. An extensive 2014 study found that 30% to 60% of men in state prisons had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), compared to 3% to 6% of the general male population. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 36.7% of women in state prisons experienced childhood abuse, compared to 12 to 17% of all adult women in the U.S. (although this research has not been updated since 1999). In fact, at least half of incarcerated women identify at least one traumatic event in their lives.

The effects of this earlier trauma carries over into people’s incarceration. Most people entering prison have experienced a “legacy of victimization” that puts them at higher risk for substance use, PTSD, depression, and criminal behavior. Irritability and aggressive behavior are also common responses to trauma, either acutely or as symptoms of PTSD. Rather than providing treatment or rehabilitation to disrupt the ongoing trauma that justice-involved people often face, existing research suggests our criminal justice system functions in a way that only perpetuates a cycle of violence. It is not surprising, then, that violence behind bars is common.

The relationship between past traumas and violence in prisons is further illuminated by a growing body of psychological research revealing that traumatic experiences (direct or indirect) increase the likelihood of mental illnesses. And we know that incarcerated people with a history of mental health problems are more likely to engage in physical or verbal assault against staff or other incarcerated people.²

Violence continues after release

The cycle of violence also continues after prison. An analysis of homicide victims in Baltimore, Maryland, found that the vast majority were justice system-involved, and one in four victims were on parole or probation at the time of their murder. Other research has found that formerly incarcerated Black adults are more likely than those with no history of incarceration to be beaten, mugged, raped, sexually assaulted, stalked, or to witness another person being seriously injured.

“Gladiator school” and ties to PTSD among veterans

While the effects of witnessing violence in correctional facilities have not been extensively studied, Novisky and Peralta’s findings are reminiscent of the significant body of psychological research about veterans, witnessed violence, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. And while a prison is not a war zone, the study participants themselves made these comparisons, describing prison as “going through a nuclear war,” “a jungle where only the strong survive,” “needing to go be ready to go to war constantly,” and “gladiator school.” Veterans, regardless of exposure to combat, are disproportionately at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and can experience the same debilitating symptoms of PTSD that Novisky and Peralta document among recently incarcerated people.

In an article drawing attention to PTSD among our nation’s veterans, journalist Sebastian Junger describes his own experience with symptoms of PTSD after witnessing violence in Afghanistan. Importantly, he points out that only about 10 percent of our armed forces actually see combat, so the exorbitantly high rates of PTSD among returning servicemembers are not only caused by direct exposure to danger.³ The extensive psychological research on witnessed violence among veterans helps us better understand the risks of witnessing violence in other contexts; with the findings from Novisky and Peralta’s study, we can see a similar pattern of post-traumatic stress symptoms among incarcerated people who have witnessed acts of violence, even if they did not participate directly.

Witnessing violence — whether on a neighborhood block, prison unit, or a battlefield — carries serious ramifications. Exposure to this kind of stress can lead to poor health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and even certain cancers, which are compounded by inadequate correctional health care. Previous research has also shown that violent prison conditions — including direct victimization, the perception of a threatening prison environment, and hostile relationships with correctional officers — increase the likelihood of recidivism.

Moving forward

Novisky and Peralta’s study should be read as a call for more research — and concern — about prison violence. Future research should focus on the effects of witnessed violence on further marginalized populations, including women, youth, transgender people, people with disabilities, and people of color behind bars.

The researchers also recommend policy changes related to their findings. In prisons, they recommend trauma-informed training of correctional staff, assessing incarcerated people to identify those most at risk for victimization, and the expansion of correctional healthcare to include more robust mental health and trauma-informed services. They also recommend that providers in the reentry system receive training regarding the potential consequences of exposure to extreme violence behind bars, such as PTSD, distrust, and anxiety.

While it is important to address the immediate, serious needs of people dealing with the trauma of prison violence, the only way to truly minimize the harm is to limit exposure to the violent prison environment. That means, at a minimum, taking Novisky and Peralta’s final recommendation to heart: changing the “overall frequency with which incarceration is relied upon as a sanction.” We need to reduce lengthy sentences and divert more people from incarceration to more supportive interventions. It also means changing how we respond to violence, as we explore in more depth in our April 2020 report about sentences for violent offenses, Reforms without Results.

Vast research with veterans shows that trauma comes not only from direct violent victimization, but can also stem from witnessing violence. Research among non-incarcerated populations further shows that trauma and chronic stress have a number of adverse effects on the human mind and body. And studies done behind bars show us that incarceration takes a toll on physical and mental health, and that accessing adequate care in prison is a challenge in and of itself. With all of these factors at play and with violence undermining what little rehabilitative effect the justice system hopes to have, we are stacking the cards against incarcerated people.

Since you asked: Can correctional facilities negotiate phone contracts that prohibit deposit fees? (Yes! Many do.)

We review the evidence and find 15 states that said no to unnecessary fees. Who will be next?

by Peter Wagner, November 20, 2020

The high cost of calling home from prisons and jails rightly gets a lot of attention in the press, but the industry’s practice of tacking on hidden fees is getting an increasing amount of attention from regulators and the savviest correctional facilities. These fees can be called by a variety of different names and can add up to significant costs to the families of people in prison. The problem got so bad that the companies were potentially making more from fees than from selling their product — phone calls.

The good news is that in 2015, the Federal Communications Commission prohibited or capped many of the fees that companies can charge consumers to open, have, fund or close an account. Most notably, the FCC capped the amount that can be charged for an “automated payment” i.e., to make a credit card deposit via the internet or a telephone keypad, at $3. At the time that the FCC capped those fees, some prison phone providers were charging fees as high as $9.50 to make a deposit, despite the fact that most companies in most other industries would be so thrilled to have customers pre-pay for services that they wouldn’t charge a fee at all.

The even better news is that some correctional systems are standing up for the low-income families that pay for these calls by pushing back against some of these unnecessary fees. We found that 15 state prison systems and at least one county jail¹ have eliminated automated payment/deposit fees entirely.

State prison systems where there is no credit card fee to make deposits to prepaid accounts, October 2020

Our survey looked only at the results of these contracts, but it seems clear from the available information that this outcome was the result of savvy negotiating by the facilities and not the generosity of the providers. How these contracts came to be is not always readily or publicly available, but we discovered enough evidence from the small number of readily available records to conclude that most or all of these 15 states sought out this result. For example, the original Requests for Proposals in Indiana and New Jersey said that the states would not accept bids that included deposit fees. And while we did not have access to Oregon’s original advertisement, the contract includes a prohibition on charging fees.

In sum, if states want to prohibit their phone companies from sticking their hands into consumer’s pockets with unnecessary fees, they can do so. Fifteen of them already have.

Releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety

When these states, cities, and counties began releasing more people pretrial, there were no corresponding waves in crime.

by Tiana Herring, November 17, 2020

This report has been updated with a new version for 2023.

As COVID-19 makes jails more dangerous than ever, people are looking closer at policies and programs that keep people out of jail and in their homes pretrial. Criminal justice reformers have long supported such measures, but opponents — including district attorneys, police departments, and the commercial bail industry — often claim pretrial reform puts community safety at risk. We put these claims to the test.

We found four states, as well as nine cities and counties, where there is existing data on public safety from before and after the adoption of pretrial reforms. All but one of these jurisdictions saw decreases or negligible increases in crime after implementing reforms. The one exception is New York State, where the reform law existed for just a few months before it was largely rolled back.

Below, we describe the reforms implemented in each of these 13 jurisdictions, the effect these reforms had on the pretrial population (if available), and the effect on public safety. We find that whether the jurisdictions eliminated money bail for some or all charges, began using a validated risk assessment tool, introduced services to remind people of upcoming court dates, or implemented some combination of these policies, the results were the same: Releasing people pretrial did not negatively impact public safety.

About 75% of people held by jails are legally innocent and awaiting trial, often because they are too poor to make bail. The overall jail population hasn’t always been so heavily dominated by pretrial detainees. As we’ve previously reported, increased arrests and a growing reliance on money bail over the last three decades have contributed to a significant rise in pretrial detention. And just three days of pretrial detention can have detrimental effects on an individual’s employment, housing, financial stability, and family wellbeing.

In this analysis, public safety is measured through the narrow lens of crime rates. But pretrial reforms promote other types of safety that are more difficult to measure, such as the safety of individuals who can remain at home instead of in a jail cell, children who are able to stay in their parents’ care, and community members who are spared the health risks (including, currently, the increased risk of COVID-19 exposure) that come from jail churn. (Furthermore, research has found that pretrial detention can actually increase the odds of future offending, which is clearly counterproductive from a crime rate-defined public safety standpoint.)

States and counties can and should build on these pretrial reforms. More progress can be made to continue reducing the number of people held pretrial, and address concerns such as racial bias inherent in pretrial risk assessment tools.¹ But the data is clear: When it comes to public safety, these reforms are a step in the right direction.

State level reforms

• New Jersey
  • Reform: In 2017, the New Jersey legislature passed a law implementing a risk-informed approach to pretrial release and virtually eliminated the use of cash bail.
  • Impact: The pretrial population decreased 50% from 2015 to 2018. By 2019, the overall jail population declined 45%.
  • Public safety: Violent crimes decreased by 16% from 2016 to 2018. There was a negligible difference in the number of people arrested while on pretrial release.

• New Mexico
  • Reform: A 2016 voter-approved constitutional amendment prohibits judges from imposing bail amounts that people cannot afford, enables the release of many low-risk defendants without bond, and allows defendants to request relief from the requirement to post bond. (The Eighth Amendment already forbids excessive bail, but in practice, bail is regularly set at unaffordable levels in courts around the country.)
  • The impact of this reform on the jail population isn’t known.
  • Public safety: State-wide crime rates have declined since the reforms took effect in mid-2017. Furthermore, the safety rate, or the number of people released pretrial who are not charged with committing a new crime, increased from 74% to 83.2% after the reforms took effect.

• Kentucky
  • Reform: Kentucky began using a validated pretrial risk assessment tool in 2013. In 2017, the state began allowing release of low-risk defendants without seeing a judge. In addition, a statewide pretrial services agency is required to make a release recommendation within 24 hours of arrest, and reminds people of upcoming court dates via automated texts and calls.
  • Impact: Judges have released more people on their own recognizance since 2013.
  • Public safety: The new criminal activity rate, which measures the rate at which people commit new crimes while awaiting trial, has not changed.

• New York
  • Reform: A law that went into effect on January 1, 2020 eliminated the use of money bail and pretrial detention for most misdemeanors and many nonviolent felony cases. It also prohibited judges from considering public safety in their release decisions. But on April 3, the bail reform was amended, scaling back some of the changes. The new law, which took effect on July 1, expanded the list of charges for which bail can be set and gave judges more discretion in setting conditions of release.
  • Impact: The pretrial population declined 45% from April 2019 to March 2020. It is estimated that the April reform will result in an increase in the jail population, though it will likely still be lower than if no reforms were instituted at all.
  • Public safety: The NYPD asserted in March 2020 that the original bail reform measures were a “significant reason” for increased arrests in six crime categories from February 2019 to February 2020. However, researchers from Human Rights Watch argued that the reforms had not been in place long enough to pinpoint them as the driving force behind a rise in crime, and accused prosecutors, police, and bail bond agents of spreading “sensational stories and misleading statistics” to kill the reforms. Ultimately, New York’s short implementation period (just three months) and the absence of more complete data make the original reform’s impact on public safety unclear.