In some counties - like Multnomah County, Oregon - auditors are joining the movement to hold jails accountable.
by Wanda Bertram,
October 31, 2018
Jail reform is on the ballot next week in Multnomah County, Oregon, but it isn’t part of a popular initiative or gubernatorial campaign. It’s a key issue at stake in an unlikely, historically “boring” race: the race for County Auditor.
What could a County Auditor possibly do to reform criminal justice policy? Five years ago, the same question might have been asked about district attorneys or sheriffs. But as the public comes to understand the role that prosecutors, sheriffs and other local electeds can play in reversing mass incarceration, those offices are becoming centers of reform in some areas. The Auditor’s office could be next.
If you think of auditors as glorified bookkeepers, both of the candidates in Multnomah County’s runoff election would disagree. Candidate Scott Learn’s website says the Audit Office “needs to focus far less on informational reports…and far more on helping to improve the effectiveness of crucial county services.” He’s interested in auditing probation and parole services, the local juvenile detention center, and mental health services at the county jail.
Learn’s opponent, Jennifer McGuirk, says that “one of the Auditor’s most important responsibilities is deciding which programs to audit.” McGuirk, too, plans to audit the county’s jails. She was inspired to run after reports emerged of racist abuse in the jails, reports that the previous County Auditor declined to look into.
To be sure, Learn and McGuirk are departing from how auditors have traditionally done their jobs. County Auditors are mainly tasked with rooting out local agencies’ mismanagement of funds.
But to be clear: Abusive, inhumane treatment by criminal justice agencies is a misuse of funds. Jails receive public money (and quite a lot of it) for the purpose of “providing effective detention, rehabilitation, and transition services,” as the Multnomah County Sheriff’s website puts it. Human rights violations fall somewhat outside of this mission, so it’s logical that the County Auditor’s office should investigate.
With two reform-minded candidates neck-and-neck in this race, it’s clear that Multnomah County voters agree that justice reform should be a priority. Will your city or county be next?
Our criminal justice system isn’t just sending people from school to prison – it’s locking them out of education altogether.
October 30, 2018
It’s common knowledge that the U.S. criminal justice system funnels youth from schools to prisons – but what happens after that? How many people, for instance, are able to finish high school during or after prison? A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative breaks down the most recent data, revealing that incarcerated people rarely get the chance to make up the education they’ve missed.
The data shows how incarceration, rather than helping people turn their lives around, cements their place at the bottom of the educational ladder:
- 25% of formerly incarcerated people have no high school credential at all – twice as many as in the general public.
- Formerly incarcerated people are most likely to finish high school by way of GED programs, missing the benefits of a traditional four-year education.
- Less than 4% of formerly incarcerated people have a college degree, compared to 29% of the general public.
The unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is a staggering 27%, the Prison Policy Initiative previously found. This rate differs by education level. For those returning home from prison without educational credentials, it is “nearly impossible” to find a job:
- Formerly incarcerated people without a high school diploma or GED face unemployment rates 2 to 5 times higher than their peers in the general public. These rates differ by race and gender, ranging from 25% for white men to 60% for Black women.
- The number of “low-skill” jobs requiring only a high school credential has dropped since 1970, leaving many formerly incarcerated people with even fewer job prospects than ever before.
- Even as college degrees become critical to finding a job, most incarcerated people cannot access degree-granting programs, Pell Grants and federal student loans.
“We need a new and evidence-based policy framework that addresses K-12 schooling, prison education programs, and reentry systems,” report author Lucius Couloute concludes. He offers four far-reaching recommendations aimed at increasing access to educational opportunities, for both incarcerated people and youth at risk.
Today’s report is the third and final part of a new series from the Prison Policy Initiative, focusing on the struggles of formerly incarcerated people to access employment, housing, and education. Utilizing data from a little-known and little-used government survey, Couloute and other analysts describe these problems with unprecedented clarity. In these reports, the Prison Policy Initiative recommends reforms to ensure that formerly incarcerated people – already punished by a harsh justice system – are no longer punished for life by an unforgiving economy.
It’s become habit to consult prosecutors and victims during the release process. States should break that habit.
by Jorge Renaud,
October 25, 2018
While working on an upcoming report about how to shorten long prison sentences, I was disappointed to see that the same experts urging reform are reflexively endorsing part of the status quo. Criminal justice researchers are urging states to change how they consider release for individuals with lengthy prison sentences. However, these reformers continue to recommend that states solicit the input of prosecutors and survivors when making release decisions.
These recommendations reflect established practice rather than progressive policy. States should leave decisions about an individual’s release to professionals who understand that person’s behavior and needs.
Why should prosecutors have a role in the “mercy” process?
The deference shown to prosecutors reaches every aspect of the criminal justice system. Even the reformers who recommend consulting prosecutors on parole decisions and second-look sentencing, however, fail to explain why their involvement is needed in these post-sentencing processes. It strikes me as counterintiuitive that the official responsible for seeking someone’s lengthy sentence should be consulted about that person’s release, yet those recommendations continue.
For example, in the recently approved revision to the Model Penal Code, The American Law Institute recommends a “second-look” provision that would provide review and possible relief to incarcerated individuals who have spent at least 15 years in prison. However, it also recommends that “notice of the sentence-modification proceedings should be given to victims, if they can be located with reasonable efforts, and to the relevant prosecuting authorities.”
I found it almost impossible to find a policy that would mitigate the time a convicted individual must serve, or a parole decision to be made, where it is not recommended – and in some cases mandated – that the deciding officials give prosecutors a chance to weigh in:
- When asked what “sources of input” were considered in release decision-making, 34 of 38 respondents from state parole decision-making bodies said “district attorneys.”
- In 12 of the 24 states profiled by the Robina Institute, state parole decision-making bodies must notify the prosecuting attorney when an individual is being considered for parole; one state mandates a prosecutor’s input must be solicited when an individual with a life sentence is being considered for parole; and 11 states require that the decision-making bodies provide information to the prosecutors upon their request.
This deference toward prosecutors is uncalled for, especially when the only information prosecutors can provide relates to the crime – not to the more important question of whether the person under review has undergone a transformation while incarcerated. Prosecutors are particularly unfit to determine whether individuals they have not seen in years or decades still pose a threat to public safety. As Prof. R. Michael Cassidy at Boston College Law School puts it in a forthcoming paper, “prosecutorial input at parole hearings is likely to accomplish very little beyond either grandstanding for the media or intimidating the parole board into being risk-averse in close cases.”
Recall that between 95 and 97% of all felony convictions are the result of plea bargains between defendants and prosecutors. In offering and accepting a plea bargain, a prosecutor determines when the defendant may be eligible for release and accepts that possibility in exchange for the certainty of a conviction. Whether individuals thus convicted are actually released at that first eligibility date should not be the prosecutor’s concern, only that of the parole board, commutation official, or judge taking a second look.
Finally, there is a strong argument that prosecutorial overreach is responsible for explosive prison growth, both in the numbers of individuals in prison and the astonishingly long sentences many of them have. Although there has been movement toward a progressive prosecutorial approach, exemplified by D.A. Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, it remains to be seen if that approach extends beyond those charged with drug possession and non-violent property crimes. In any case, states should reconsider their choice to include prosecutors in the “mercy” process, given that the punitiveness of prosecutors has created a prison boom.
Should the release process include the views of survivors?
The voices of survivors have become a welcome part of criminal justice proceedings, as they should be. Survivors have an intimate stake in what happens after individuals are sent to prison. But this valuable perspective should be channeled towards advising prison programming, not release. The decision to release an individual should be informed exclusively by an understanding of that individual’s behavior and needs – information that survivors, like prosecutors, simply do not have.
Many people assume that all survivors of violence fit their image of a bereaved family member angrily demanding that a convicted individual be sentenced to life in prison. While many survivors do ask for lengthy prison terms for their attackers, a more accurate picture is presented by a 2016 national survey of survivors of violence commissioned by the Alliance on Safety and Justice. The survey revealed that:
- 60% of victims preferred shorter prison sentences and more spending on prevention and rehabilitation to longer prison sentences;
- Victims were three times more likely to prefer holding people accountable through options other than prison, such as rehabilitation, mental health and drug treatment, and community supervision;
- Victims were also three times more likely to believe that prison makes people more likely to commit crimes than to rehabilitate them;
- And perhaps most poignantly, seven out of 10 victims of violent crimes preferred that prosecutors focus on solving neighborhood problems and stopping repeat crimes through rehabilitation, even if that meant fewer convictions and prison sentences.
To that end, survivors are uniquely positioned to push state departments of corrections to implement programming that focuses on transformation – on nourishing remorse that is grounded not in shame, but in recognition of harm and responsibility. Survivors’ rights groups should be consulted when policymakers are deciding which programs to offer to incarcerated individuals to prepare them for their eventual release.
However, the decision to release an incarcerated individual, or to mitigate that person’s sentence, should be made by professionals with an understanding of that person’s behavior and needs. It should also include input from those who have been in contact with those individuals throughout their incarceration.
Rather than critique the involvement of survivors outright, reformers have proposed meaningless compromises that effectively insult survivors. Reformers suggest, paradoxically, that survivors be allowed to speak at parole hearings but not to recommend approval or denial of parole. That ignores the emotional weight any testimony of a survivor of violence will have on decision makers.
Restorative justice may find a place in our criminal justice system, allowing survivors of violence to heal in ways besides demanding long prison terms for those who have wounded them. Prosecutors may realize that a truly progressive approach means not seeking unimaginably long sentences rooted in retribution. Until then, neither prosecutors nor survivors should have a meaningful voice deciding whether or not to deny freedom to an individual who has served a lengthy sentence.
So why does Trump continue to endorse stop-and-frisk?
by Alexi Jones,
October 12, 2018
President Trump is again encouraging Chicago police to use stop-and-frisk – a policy that allows police officers to stop citizens for virtually any reason – even as new government data reminds us why such policies can be disastrous for people of color. Just days after Trump endorsed stop-and-frisk in Chicago, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its new report on interactions between police and the public, using survey data from 2015. The report reminds us that police stops and use of force are already racially discriminatory, with predictable consequences for public trust of the police.
The report reveals:
- Black residents were more likely to be stopped by police than white or Hispanic residents, both in traffic stops and street stops.
- Black and Hispanic residents were also more likely to have multiple contacts with police than white residents, especially in the contexts of traffic and street stops. More than 1 in 6 Black residents who were pulled over in a traffic stop or stopped on the street had similar interactions with police multiple times over the course of the year.
- When police initiated an interaction, they were twice as likely to threaten or use force against Black and Hispanic residents than white residents.
These racial disparities in policing have predictable effects on public trust of the police:
- There were marked racial differences in perceptions of police behavior and legitimacy of police stops. Less than half of Black and Hispanic residents stopped on the street by police thought the stop was legitimate, while two-thirds of white residents did. And 60% of Black residents who experienced the threat or use of force perceived the force as excessive, compared to 43% of white residents who experienced force.
- White residents were more likely than Black, Hispanic, and residents of other races to initiate contact with police – for example to report a crime, a non-crime emergency, or to seek help for another reason. 46% of white residents who had contact with police initiated the contact, compared to less 37% of Black residents.
The report’s findings related to the use of force are particularly relevant to the national conversation about policing. The scale of police use of force alone is overwhelming. Nearly 1 million U.S. residents age 16 or older experienced the threat or use of force by police in 2015. And the people experiencing threats or use of force by police were disproportionately Black and Hispanic.
Previous local studies suggest that stop-and-frisk is particularly discriminatory. In 2010, near the peak of the city’s use of stop-and-frisk, Black residents in New York City were 8 times more likely to be stopped by the police than white residents and 11 times more likely to be frisked. And in 2011, New York City police reported using force in 23% of stops of Black and Latino residents, but in only 16% of stops of white residents.
Given these past and current policing disparities, it is not surprising that Black and Hispanic communities are less trusting of police. As the BJS report shows, Black and Hispanic people are less likely view the use of force as legitimate and less likely to seek help from police compared to white people. This is in line with Pew’s 2016 finding that only about a third of Black Americans believe that police treat racial and ethnic groups equally and that police in their community used the appropriate amount of force, compared to three-quarters of white Americans.
These disparities undermine the legitimacy of law enforcement and create a two-tiered policing system; moreover, they compromise public safety. If residents do not trust the police, they are less likely to report crimes and cooperate with police investigations. So despite what Trump says, stop-and-frisk remains as bad a policy as ever. Police should be looking to address these disparities, not implementing a policy that exacerbates them.
The Pennsylvania DOC introduces a telecom company to a large, captive market for e-books.
by Wanda Bertram,
September 21, 2018
Pennsylvania prisons just ended book donations to incarcerated people, claiming they’ve found a new, better way to provide access to books. Their bright idea? Partnering with telecom giant GTL to sell e-books on tablet computers.
Prison tablets, as we’ve shown, deliver low-quality services at frequently exorbitant prices. Email on a prison tablet requires a paid “stamp.” If that’s an acceptable substitute for email, we wondered, what does GTL think passes for a library?
I intended to find out, but the Philadelphia Inquirer beat me to it, with an article this morning revealing just how insufficient GTL’s book list is. Many of the most popular books among incarcerated people – including dictionaries – are missing. Read the excellent full article here, or my summary on Twitter:
Prison tablets are touted as bringing the outside world to incarcerated people, but all they seem to be doing is bringing a new, captive market to telecom giants. Pennsylvania should allow groups that donate books – groups that walk these companies’ talk – to keep doing their valuable work.
Welcome Alexi Jones, our new Policy Analyst!
by Wendy Sawyer,
September 4, 2018
Please welcome our new Policy Analyst, Alexi Jones.
Alexi is a 2017 graduate of Wesleyan University and comes to the Prison Policy Initiative with experience in public health research and advocacy. Her shift to criminal justice reform work stems from her experiences in prison education: Alexi has worked as a tutor in prisons in Connecticut and Massachusetts for the past three years, through Wesleyan’s Center for Prison Education and the Petey Greene Program.
Welcome, Alexi!
Two more states have opted to help safe drivers get their lives back on track after drug convictions.
by Aleks Kajstura,
August 29, 2018
Two more states have stopped suspending driver’s licenses for drug offenses unrelated to driving, one of the most counterproductive policies to emerge from the War on Drugs. In January, this law was still on the books in 12 states and D.C. But with D.C.’s reversal in February and Utah and Iowa following suit, the number is now just 10, suggesting that this remains one of the most winnable justice reforms of the moment.
This marks great progress since the release of our report Reinstating Common Sense, which tracks the growing number of states rejecting this outdated and ineffective federal policy. We found that suspending the licenses of safe drivers makes the roads more dangerous, wastes law enforcement resources, and inhibits people with previous involvement in the criminal justice system from fulfilling personal, familial, and legal obligations.
These odd laws were a product of the War on Drugs, when states were eager to pile on any sort of penalties for drug offenses. In 1991 Congress started supporting automatically suspending driver’s licenses for drug offenses, and states (and D.C.) jumped on the idea.
The decades since have proven that such tactics are ineffective as deterrents. And not only do these laws not work, but they actually cause harm: Suspending driver’s licenses for non-traffic offenses decreases public safety on the road while increasing recidivism for those affected. So at the very least, taxpayers are spending a lot of money on making themselves less safe.
The remaining 10 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia) still suspend over 175,000 licenses every year, so there’s ample room for improvement. Which states will take this common-sense step next?
It's complicated enough for judges to weigh the influence of youth in their decisions. A new paper argues that algorithmic risk assessments may further muddy the waters.
by Wendy Sawyer,
August 22, 2018
Imagine that you’re a judge sentencing a 19-year-old woman who was roped into stealing a car with her friends one night. How does her age influence your decision? Do you grant her more leniency, understanding that her brain is not yet fully developed, and that peers have greater influence at her age? Or, given the strong link between youth and criminal behavior, do you err on the side of caution and sentence her to a longer sentence or closer supervision?
Now imagine that you’re given a risk assessment score for the young woman, and she is labelled “high risk.” You don’t know much about the scoring system except that it’s “evidence-based.” Does this new information change your decision?
For many judges, this dilemma is very real. Algorithmic risk assessments have been widely adopted by jurisdictions hoping to reduce discrimination in criminal justice decision-making, from pretrial release decisions to sentencing and parole. Many critics (including the Prison Policy Initiative) have voiced concerns about the use of these tools, which can actually worsen racial disparities and justify more incarceration. But in a new paper, law professors Megan T. Stevenson and Christopher Slobogin consider a different problem: how algorithms weigh some factors — in this case, youth — differently than judges do. They then discuss the ethical and legal implications of using risk scores produced by those algorithms to make decisions, especially when judges don’t fully understand them.
For their analysis, Stevenson and Slobogin reverse engineer the COMPAS Violent Recidivism Risk Score (VRRS),1 one of the leading “black box”2 risk assessment tools. They find that “roughly 60% of the risk score it produces is attributable to age.” Specifically, youth corresponds with higher average risk scores, which decline sharply from ages 18 to 30. “Eighteen year old defendants have risk scores that are, on average, twice as high as 40 year old defendants,” they find. The COMPAS VRRS is not unique in its heavy-handed treatment of age: The authors also review seven other publicly-available risk assessment algorithms, finding all of them give equal or greater weight to youth than to criminal history.3
To a certain extent, it makes sense that these violent recidivism risk scores rely heavily on age. Criminologists have long observed the relationship between age and criminal offending: young people commit crime at higher rates than older people, and violent crime peaks around age 21.
But for courts, the role of a defendant’s youth is not so simple: yes, youth is a factor that increases risk, but it also makes young people less culpable. Stevenson and Slobogin refer to this phenomenon as a “double-edged sword” and point out that there are other factors besides youth that are treated as both aggravating and mitigating, such as mental illness or disability, substance use disorders, and even socioeconomic disadvantage. While a judge might balance the effects of youth on risk versus culpability, algorithmic risk assessments treat youth as a one-dimensional factor, pointing only to risk.
In theory, judges can still consider whether a defendant’s youth makes them less culpable. But, Stevenson and Slobogin argue, even this separate consideration may be influenced by the risk score, which confers a stigmatizing label upon the defendant. For example, the judge may see a score characterizing a young defendant simply as “high risk” or “high risk of violence,” with no explanation of the factors that led to that conclusion.
This “high risk” label is both imprecise and fraught, implying inherent dangerousness. It can easily affect the judge’s perception of the defendant’s character and, in turn, impact the judge’s decision. Yet in all likelihood, the defendant’s age could be the main reason for the “high risk” label. Through this process, “judges might unknowingly and unintentionally use youth as a blame-aggravator,” where they would otherwise treat youth as a mitigating factor. “That result is illogical and unacceptable,” the authors rightly conclude.
This is not some hypothetical: Even when these algorithms are made publicly available, many judges admit they don’t really know what goes into the scores reported to them. Stevenson and Slobogin point to a recent survey of Virginia judges that found only 29% are “very familiar” with the risk assessment tool they use; 22% are “unfamiliar” or “slightly familiar” with it. (This is in a state where the risk scores come with explicit sentencing recommendations.) When judges rely on risk scores but are unaware of what and how factors affect those scores, chances are good that their decisions will be inconsistent with their own reasoning about how these factors should be considered.
The good news is that this “illogical and unacceptable” result is not inevitable, even as algorithmic risk assessment tools are being rolled out in courts across the country. Judges retain discretion in their use of risk scores in decision-making. With training and transparency — including substantive guidance on proprietary algorithms like COMPAS — judges can be equipped to thoughtfully weigh the mitigating and aggravating effects of youth and other “double-edged sword” factors.
Stevenson and Slobogin provide specific suggestions about how to improve transparency where risk assessments are used, and courts would be wise to demand these changes. Relying upon risk assessments without fully understanding them does nothing to help judges make better decisions. In fact, risk assessments can unwittingly lead courts to make the same discriminatory judgments that these tools are supposed to prevent.
Using a national data set, we find that over half of the people held in jail pretrial because they can't afford bail are parents of minor children.
by Wendy Sawyer,
August 15, 2018
Every day, 465,000 people are held in local jails even though they have not been convicted; legally, they are presumed innocent. Many are there because they cannot afford the money bail bond set for them. The harms of pretrial detention are well-known, both for defendants and for the juridictions that lock them up. But what about the harms of pretrial detention for families?
Previous research has estimated the number of incarcerated parents and the number of children who have parents behind bars. It’s a bit trickier, however, to estimate how many of these families are impacted specifically by pretrial detention or, even more specifically, by unaffordable money bail. We set about to answer this question.
We analyzed the most recent Survey of Inmates in Local Jails to find that over half of the people in jail who could not make bail were parents of children under 18. Of the women who could not meet bail conditions, two-thirds were mothers of minor children, while just over half of the men were fathers. (See a table with all of our findings below.) Although this survey was last conducted in 2002, it remains the most recent national data on the subject available.
These results are generally consistent with national estimates of parents in the prison population. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that 52% of people in state prison and 63% of those in federal prison were parents of minor children in 2007, although the share of mothers among women in pretrial detention is slightly greater than among women in prison.
Two smaller but more recent studies suggest that the impact of pretrial detention on families may be even greater than the two national BJS surveys indicate. Because of their small sample sizes, these studies are not generalizable, but they offer a glimpse of the how changes in jail populations may have impacted families since 2002, when the national data was last collected. In particular, since 2000, pretrial detention has increased by 31% to make up about two-thirds of the overall jail population, while the number of convicted people held in jail has actually fallen. Over the same 16 years, the jail incarceration rate for women has risen 26% while the rate for men has fallen by 5% — a significant trend when we consider that women are more often the primary caregivers of children.
First, in a 2016 study, researchers from George Mason University surveyed pretrial defendants, including both defendants who were detained because they did not post money bond and those who were released to pretrial supervision. Their analysis found that 56% of the detained defendants were parents. Alarmingly, 40.5% of those in this study said that pretrial detention would change — or already had changed — the living situation for a child in their custody. An additional 16.5% didn’t know whether it would change their child’s living situation.
The Robina Institute recently published the results of a 2017 study of parents in Minnesota jails and their children, finding an even greater proportion of jailed parents. Although the study did not distinguish between the pretrial and sentenced populations, it found that 69% of adults in local jails were parents of minor children. This study adds an additional detail missing in most others: 6% of the mothers reported being pregnant, and 9% of the fathers reported having a pregnant partner.
One missing, but essential data point is the number of children separated from a parent because of unaffordable bail. Our analysis of the 2002 survey data shows that at the time of the survey, over 150,000 children had a parent in jail because they couldn’t afford their bail bond. That means more children than adults were impacted by unaffordable money bail. Because of the significant changes in the jail population since 2002, we won’t attempt to extrapolate what the number of impacted children might be today. But as pretrial detention has grown, the number of children harmed by parental incarceration because of the money bail system has almost certainly grown, too.
Our analysis of the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (2002), including all people who had bail bond set and said they were not released on bond because they could not afford it. Estimates are based on a sample and have been rounded. For more details, see the methodology section of our report Detaining the Poor, which focused on the same population.
|
Estimated number with bond set that could not afford bond |
People with no children under 18 (percent) |
Parents of children under 18 (percent) |
Lived with children before incarceration (percent of parents) |
Estimated number of minor children |
| Men |
115,000 |
47% |
53% |
39% |
131,000 |
| Women |
13,000 |
34% |
66% |
50% |
20,000 |
| Total |
128,000 |
46% |
54% |
40% |
151,000 |
Special thanks to Board member Dan Kopf for his help with the data.
A stable home is all but required for successful reentry. How many formerly incarcerated people are locked out of housing?
August 14, 2018
Easthampton, Mass. – People who have been to prison are 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public, according to a new report. In Nowhere to Go, the Prison Policy Initiative provides the first national snapshot of homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, which it calls a “little-discussed housing and public safety crisis.”
The report explains how people returning from prison – who need stable homes to overcome the difficulties of reentry – are nevertheless excluded from housing:
- Over 2% of formerly incarcerated people are homeless, and nearly twice as many are living in precarious housing situations close to homelessness;
- The risk of homelessness increases the more times one has been to prison – an irony considering that police departments regularly arrest and jail the homeless;
- People recently released from prison are most at risk of being homeless, with rates nearly 12 times higher than the general public;
- Women – and Black women in particular – are especially at risk.
Report author Lucius Couloute explains that landlords and public housing authorities “have wide discretion to punish people with criminal records long after their sentences are over.” Couloute lays out policy solutions to what he calls a “fixable” problem, including:
- Regulating competitive housing markets to prevent blanket discrimination;
- Creating statewide reentry systems to help recently-released Americans find homes;
- Ending the criminalization of homelessness in U.S. cities;
- Expanding social services for all homeless people, with a “Housing First” approach.
Today’s report is the second of three to be released by the Prison Policy Initiative this summer, focusing on the struggles of formerly incarcerated people to access employment, housing, and education. Utilizing data from a little-known and little-used government survey, Couloute and other analysts can describe these problems with unprecedented clarity. In these reports, the Prison Policy Initiative recommends reforms to ensure that formerly incarcerated people – already punished by a harsh justice system – are no longer punished for life by an unforgiving economy.
Please welcome our new Policy Analyst, Alexi Jones.
