March 19, 2025: Join Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Department at 1 PM EST on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, for a webinar about understanding recidivism. We will cover strategies from our recidivism toolkit, including an overview of recidivism statistics and what they really mean, how to combat the “Willie Horton” effect, and ways that advocates can transform the narrative around reentry to make it less focused on negative outcomes and more focused on the ways that returning citizens contribute to their communities.
April 15-17, 2025: Sarah Staudt, our Director of Policy and Advocacy, will be attending the MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge Network Meeting from April 15-17 in Chicago. Drop her a line if you’d like to meet up!
Not near you? Invite us to your city, college or organization.
Bill Newman takes on injustice 90 seconds at a time. In the newest episode of his Civil Liberties Minute podcast, he takes on the practice of locking up poor people because they can't afford bail.
Friend of the Prison Policy Initiative Bill Newman has again featured our research in his Civil Liberties Minute podcast produced with the ACLU. This time he takes on the epidemic of jailing the innocent before trial in a powerful 90 second explainer.
In the past 15 years 99% of the growth in the jail population comes from people who don’t have the 50 or 100 or 250 or 400 dollars to get bailed out. When the person held on bail finally goes to court he will be offered a deal. Plead guilty and you can get out, time served, go home today. Or you can say you’re innocent and want a trial, and stay locked up for days, weeks, months, or years. What would you do?
The Eighth Amendment to The Constitution in theory guarantees a reasonable bail and bail in theory is only supposed to be used to help insure the attendance of the defendant at trial – not as a subterfuge for pre-trial detention.
But as the numbers and the lives ruined prove, the constitutional principles of reasonable bail and innocent until proven guilty really only applies to those who are economically well off enough to make their bail.
The United States is the only country in the world that sentences people under 18 to die behind bars. The Supreme Court has twice declared many of these sentences to be unconstitutional, but some states are resisting the Court’s required reforms. (In 2012, the Court struck down mandatory juvenile life without parole sentences. Earlier this year, the Court made that decision retroactive.)
While a number of states continue to use life without parole sentences for juveniles, new research shows that those juveniles are largely and increasingly people of color. A recent study by researchers from the Phillips Black Project found that people of color are overrepresented in the juvenile life without parole population “in ways perhaps unseen in any other aspect of our criminal justice system.”
Young black people are hit hardest by prosecutors’ punitive approach. This is unsurprising. Black children are more likely to be punished by their teachers for the same behaviors, are 2.3x more likely to be referred to law enforcement by school officials, and 3x more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers.
Being sentenced to die behind bars, however, is especially egregious. The Phillips Black Project found that black youth are twice as likely to receive a juvenile life without parole sentence compared to their white peers for committing the same crime.
Significantly, the researchers found that racial bias exists in the prosecutorial and judicial phases of the criminal justice system. Controlling for the fact that black youth have more encounters with the police, this study compared the number of black and white juveniles life without parole sentences against the number of relevant arrests.
By focusing only on the disparate outcomes that occur after the moment of arrest, the Philips Black Project researchers call attention to how prosecutors and courts fail to fairly determine guilt, innocence and punishment.
The Philips Black Project data controls for differences in policing practices to identify increasingly racially disparate outcomes that originate with prosecutors and the courts.
This finding gives new urgency to the 2014 findings of psychologists in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that black youth are generally less likely to be seen as innocent and more likely to be perceived as adults. This result was particularly strong when black youth were accused of a serious crime.
The good news is that juvenile life without parole sentences are falling out of favor; at least eighteen states have abolished the sentence altogether. Sadly, there are a handful of states that have steadfastly held onto the punishment. Just nine states account for four out of every five cases.
Legislators in these states have been remarkably resistant to reform. Take Louisiana for instance. This June, after passing the House with a resounding 83-2 vote, a Senator filibustered the bill with just ten minutes left in the legislative session. For the thousands serving these sentences, the next legislative session, and a chance at a second chance, can’t come soon enough.
Juvenile life without parole sentences are not only irredeemably harsh but are also indicative of the racial biases ingrained in our criminal justice system. Below I’ve put together graphs showing just how overrepresented people of color are in eight of the nine states responsible for the vast majority of juvenile life without parole cases. (California does not provide data on the race and gender of its juvenile life without parole population.)
Note: In order to calculate the national and state-level people of color population, I used 2015 U.S. Census data as to match the data collection period of the Mills, Dorn, Hritz study. Additionally, my use of people of color is based on analyzing Census data for all respondents who do not identify as ‘Non-Hispanic White.’
Are you interested in joining our dedicated team to produce cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization? Do you want to shape innovative advocacy campaigns and spark critical discourse to create a more just society?
More and more people are talking about an uptick in murder and crime. Is there cause for alarm?
No.
While murder is up in some cities, and in cities like Chicago significantly, there isn’t a crime wave and it’s certainly not being caused by the proliferation of citizens recording the police.
Looked at historically, murder is much less common than it used to be; and the small increase from 2014 to 2015 resembles the usual annual fluctuations. This minor change does not justify FBI Director James Comey’s declaration, “Holy cow do we have a problem” or Donald Trump’s tweet that “inner city crime is reaching record levels.”
The following chart shows that after a rapid drop in the 1990s, the number of murders in the U.S.’s ten largest cities have remained at or near record lows:
For most cities, murder is much lower now than during the 1980s or 1990s. The data for 1985-2014 comes from the FBI. The FBI has not published the 2015 full year data yet, so I relied on data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which historically is very similar if slightly higher than the FBI’s figures. For that reason, this graph may overstate the increase in murder in 2015 in these cities.
While there is a notable rise in murder in Chicago (15% higher in 2015, and on track to exceed that in 2016), any discussion of the number of murders in Chicago needs to start with the fact that there have been half as many murders each year in the last decade than during the early 1990s.
It’s certainly true that a lot of major cities had increases in murder in 2015; but these were mostly small increases. In the historical view, murder remains at a record low.
Data sources: I compiled the totals for murder and non-negligent manslaughter from all agencies serving populations over 1,000,000 for 1985-2014 from the FBI UCR data. Data for 1985-2012 were available using the Data Tool, and totals for the same agencies for 2013 and 2014 were compiled from Crime in the United States 2013 and Crime in the United States 2014. Because the UCR full year report for 2015 has not yet been released, I used the totals published by the Major Cities Chiefs Association for 2015.
Please welcome our new Policy Fellow, Joshua Aiken, and our new Policy Analyst, Wendy Sawyer!
Joshua recently graduated with a Master’s in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and a Master’s in U.S. History from the University of Oxford, and he holds a Bachelor’s in American Culture Studies and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis. Joshua also studied solitary confinement and mandatory minimum policies as an advocacy intern for Human Rights Watch, and he worked as an oral history intern for the Missouri History Museum.
Wendy earned a Master’s in Criminal Justice from Northeastern University and a Bachelor’s in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts. She has worked as an investigator for the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York and as a research associate for the Institute on Race and Justice in Massachusetts.
Joshua and Wendy will be taking the lead on exciting new reports and explainers for our National Incarceration Briefing Series, so stay tuned for updates!
We are excited to welcome Nora Demleitner to the Prison Policy Initiative board! Nora is a Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. We asked her a few questions about her work on sentencing and comparative criminal law, as well as what motivated her to become involved with the Prison Policy Initiative.
Why did you decide to join the Prison Policy Initiative board?
Nora Demleitner: Peter’s courage and vision impressed me when he started the Prison Policy Initiative. He is the model of a law graduate on a mission, willing to do what it takes to make a goal become reality. He has built the Prison Policy Initiative from a fledgling single-issue one-man operation into a multi-faceted research and advocacy organization with great impact. How could I not want to be working with a smart and insightful group of people on issues of enormous importance to the country?
What does your work focus on? And what’s the connection between that work and the Prison Policy Initiative?
Nora Demleitner: My research focuses on sentencing and collateral sanctions, often with a comparative angle. I have worked on sentencing issues for over two decades, after a law school sentencing seminar and the prison project there inspired me to learn more and to help bring a different attitude to our criminal justice system. I joined the Federal Sentencing Reporter as an editor, and later became the lead author on a casebook on sentencing, Sentencing Law and Policy.
On my collateral sanctions work, I initially focused on felon disenfranchisement and then turned to restrictions on sex offenders. I also looked at the panoply of collateral sanctions that make it virtually impossible for someone with a criminal record to be ever again recognized as a full member of our society. That perpetual exclusion carries a host of negative consequences for the individual, their families and communities, and ultimately for all of us.
Frequently I compare our practices to those of other countries, especially in Western Europe. Our punitiveness and our unwillingness to accept someone who made a mistake back into society stand out. We are our own worst enemy, and I want to support the Prison Policy Initiative in helping bring about necessary change. We need to learn from best practices here and abroad and infuse our criminal justice system again with humanity. Change is necessary as the current approaches too frequently penalize the poor and disadvantaged, minority and other diverse communities. Our criminal justice system cannot and should not be expected to remedy other social ills, ranging from failing schools to an ineffective mental health system.
What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?
Nora Demleitner: The Prison Policy Initiative is the mouse that roars. How can such a small organization, located outside the typical locations for successful not-for-profits makes such a difference? I credit Peter’s vision, the team he has built, tenacity and grit, an intuitive sense of how to proceed to make the most difference, and a drive for results. The Prison Policy Initiative has taken on topics of great import – the Census count of inmates or the actions of the prison phone industry, for example – and worked on changing unfair practices. That success breeds recognition and further success. It also focuses attention on exploitative and unfair practices in novel ways. The Prison Policy Initiative’s attention is as often focused on improving the lot of the individual offender and their families as it is on protecting core values of our society, such as equal representation.
It is exciting to see an organization that is constantly keeping an eye out for topics that fit its mission. In addition, the Prison Policy Initiative has been spreading its wings in other ways. The relatively recent addition of the Research Clearinghouse, a database of empirical criminal justice reports, is one such example. I love the e-mails that assure that I won’t miss leading reports and relevant information on a host of criminal justice topics.
What’s something that you wish more people knew about the Prison Policy Initiative?
Nora Demleitner: For the Prison Policy Initiative it is not about garnering accolades and acclaim. It is about results, about being a catalyst for positive change in the criminal justice area, and about distributing knowledge and insight.
Two things stand out for me: First, it has been invigorating to see how a single person with the drive to tackle injustice and abuse can do so successfully. What a role model Peter is! I wished more law students and young lawyers knew about him and his story.
Second, even those who may ideologically disagree or be uncertain about their position on some of the issues for which the Prison Policy Initiative advocates, should know about the Research Clearinghouse. It is an amazing resource, and I encourage everyone to sign up – today.
Supporting the Prison Policy Initiative makes you feel good because they get results on issues that matter.
Race is a defining characteristic of the criminal justice system.
It is common knowledge that Blacks are disproportionately represented in prison. Looking at different types of incarceration sentences shows us how pervasive these disparities really are. This slideshow scrolls through the various incarceration sentences one may receive compared to the U.S. population, broken down by race.
Once a person is sentenced to jail, we see that Blacks are overrepresented and Whites are underrepresented, compared to the U.S. population as a whole. This disparity endures in state and federal prison sentences, life sentences, life without parole sentences, and in the death row population.
Compared to the U.S. population, Blacks are overrepresented in jails, state and federal prisons, life and life without parole sentences, and death penalty sentences. Conversely, Whites are underrepresented in those same categories.
Data sources:
U.S. Census Bureau, QuickFacts (Using July 1, 2014 estimates)
Why did you decide to join the Prison Policy Initiative board?
Dan Kopf: The Prison Policy Initiative does incredible work advocating for the end of mass incarceration and the humane treatment of those who are incarcerated – and they do it on a shoestring. I joined the board because I wanted to support, in whatever way possible, an organization I admire.
What does your work focus on? And what’s the connection between that work and the Prison Policy Initiative?
Dan Kopf: I am a data journalist focused on reporting statistical trends in society. Just like the Prison Policy Initiative, my work entails communicating complex topics clearly and in a manner that excites the public.
What do you think is most unique about the Prison Policy Initiative and the projects it takes on?
Dan Kopf: I have been most impressed by the dedication and combination of skills of the staff. This is a group of people that have the rare combination of communication skills, facility with technology and data, and passion.
You may have missed it, but for a short time in Maryland, an alarming policy was on the table. The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services proposed the first total ban on letters to incarcerated people in state facilities. Claiming that the prison system needed to stop the spread of drugs hidden in envelopes, prison officials recommended restricting all correspondence to postcards. Previously, only county jails had ever introduced such a shortsighted and counterproductive policy.
We documented the many reasons why postcards are not an acceptable substitute for letters from home in our 2013 report, Return to Sender: Postcard-only mail policies in jail. Families limited to postcards have no way to shield confidential information or attach drawings and photographs. Plus, regular correspondence by postcard is much less cost-effective. We calculated that each word written on a postcard is about 34 times more expensive to send than a word written on letter-sized paper.
Fortunately, the ACLU of Maryland responded swiftly. The civil liberties organization pointed out that a letter ban would have consequences far beyond the state’s prison walls.
The implications of such a sweeping regulation cannot be overstated. The policy you propose would affect not only the 21,000-plus people in your custody, but also the tens of thousands of Marylanders who are connected with them. The scheme would forbid a pastor from writing to a parishioner who is now incarcerated—indeed, it would forbid letters from organizations that provide all kinds of supportive services to those who are inside. The proposal would rob families of one of the most profoundly significant forms of communication in our society. Under the new scheme, an ailing mother could not send her son a letter for him to hold onto after she is gone. A teen could not write her mom to tell her the things she can’t say in a visit.
The negative publicity worked. Shortly after the ACLU of Maryland issued their response, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services withdrew the request.
The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services is withdrawing its request for limiting mail to postcards for offenders in our facilities.
Secretary Stephen Moyer will form a focus group to determine the best options for eliminating contraband coming into our facilities through the mail.
The group will also research the most effective procedures to ensure the safety of our staff and those in our custody.
The withdrawal is a positive development, but, as the ACLU of Maryland points out, the proposal never should have been under serious consideration.
We are glad that the Department of Public Safety and Corrections is dropping an extreme proposal to ban incoming personal letters. But this should never have come up in the first place. The proposed ban comes on top of other changes that have harmed families’ ability to be in touch, like visitation rules. We are urging the Department to ensure that it is working in ongoing and meaningful partnership with families who can best advise the Department about how to ensure efforts to address security concerns do the least damage possible to families. The Department’s proposed workgroup is an excellent place to start.
For more on the now-defunct proposal, including the perspectives of formerly incarcerated people and their families, see the ACLU of Maryland’s full press release.
Two of the biggest players in the prison and jail commissary market are planning to merge: The corporate parent of Trinity Services Group will be acquiring Keefe Group.
Two of the biggest players in the prison and jail commissary market are planning to merge. In May, H.I.G. Capital (owner of food-service and commissary operator Trinity Services Group) announced that it would be acquiring Keefe Group, one of the largest for-profit operators of prison and jail commissaries. A combination of the two companies would make a formidable player in an industry that is already concentrated among a small number of firms.
Prison and jail commissaries are big business. As explained at the end of this article, we estimate that commissaries throughout the country rake in about $1.6 billion in sales each year. An increasing number of facilities are outsourcing commissary operations to for-profit companies like Keefe and Trinity. But these companies are privately held, and it’s hard to find hard data on their size and profit margins. This article discusses what we currently know about the commissary industry, and why the Keefe/Trinity merger should be a matter of concern to incarcerated people, their family members, and anti-trust regulators.
How many commissaries are outsourced to for-profit companies?
It’s hard to know how prevalent outsourcing is across all commissaries. In 2013, the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) conducted a survey of prison commissaries. Of the thirty-four state prison systems that responded to the survey, twelve (about one-third) reported some level of commissary privatization. Based on anecdotal evidence, privatization seems to be more common in county jails, which are smaller and thus lack the economies of scale that state prison systems can leverage.
When facilities do outsource commissaries, the contractor’s profits are driven not just by the sheer numbers of people incarcerated at any given time (about 2.3 million people), but also from the fact that, as facilities cut their budgets for food and subsistence, incarcerated people are forced to pay for basic necessities out of their own pockets. For example, when the Ohio prison system outsourced its food service operations, commissary orders increased dramatically, as people bought food to supplement what they were served in the cafeteria. Texas state prisons provide soap free of charge, but people must purchase their own toothpaste. And people incarcerated at the Denver jail have to buy their own underwear (which created some confusion, causing the Keefe-run commissary to short the county on its commission payments, according to an audit).
Notably, Keefe Group is not just a commissary company–it’s a network of six companies that operate various prison-related businesses. In addition to commissary operations, Keefe’s holdings include Inmate Calling Solutions (dba ICSolutions), a communications company that operates in prisons and jails (ICSolutions and H.I.G. filed a notice of the sale with the Federal Communications Commission on June 9, 2016).
What does the proposed merger mean for incarcerated people and their families?
As explained below, a combined Trinity/Keefe commissary company could, based on historical revenue figures, reap annual revenues of $875 million. This amounts to more than half of the total $1.6 billion commissary market. But the $1.6 billion figure includes government-run commissaries, so Trinity/Keefe’s share of the privatized commissary market would be far in excess of 50%. Calculating a precise number is not possible, both because it’s difficult to know what percentage of commissaries are privatized, and because Trinity’s revenue figures include money from non-commissary food-service contracts (Keefe’s numbers, as explained below, are based only on Keefe’s commissary subsidiary).
A review of recent procurement actions by jails looking to outsource their commissary operations suggests that there are three dominant companies in this market: Keefe, Trinity, and Aramark. Because jails often receive a commission (kickback) from commissary operators, the same economic distortions that plague the prison phone industry are also at play in commissaries: the winning bidder isn’t necessarily the company that offers the lowest prices for incarcerated people and their families. Nonetheless, reduced competition will only make things worse. Those facilities that do want to negotiate for fair pricing will have less leverage, and higher prices are a distinct possibility.
In their joint filing with the FCC, Keefe and H.I.G. argue that the acquisition “will serve the public interest by providing additional capital to [ICSolutions], which in turn will enhance its ability to maintain and improve its network and services.” What this self-serving statement fails to address is whether ICSolutions (or any other Keefe Company) actually lacks adequate capital. The answer is probably no. Given the market shares of Trinity and Keefe, the proposed transaction seems to be motivated by a desire to dominate the market–something that antitrust regulators should closely scrutinize.
Explaining the math
Because there is no authoritative data source for prison and jail commissary sales, we used the 2013 ASCA survey as our starting point. In that survey, twenty-eight states reported total annual sales of $517.5 million (the profits in those states totals upwards of $57 million), which equals annual sales of $674 per incarcerated person.1
To estimate commissary sales in the states that did not report figures to ASCA, we multiplied the average per capita figure of $674 by the total prison population of the twenty-two non-reporting states, which yields estimated sales of $348 million.
To estimate the size of the jail commissary market, we calculated the per capita sales figures for seven counties where financial information was publicly available.2 The average per capita revenue for these seven counties is $782. We multiplied that amount by the total national jail population of 646,000, resulting in a total jail market of $505 million.
Finally, we added the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ commissary sales (as reported to ASCA).
Adding up all of the aforementioned categories results in a total commissary revenues of $1.6 billion per year, as follows:
State prison sales reported to ASCA (28 states)
$517 million
22 remaining states (estimated)
$348 million
Jails (estimated)
$505 million
Federal BOP sales reported to ASCA
$259 million
TOTAL
$1.6 billion
As far as sales for Keefe and Trinity are concerned, both companies are privately held, and therefore financial information is hard to come by. But in a 2015 bid for an Arizona contract, Trinity claimed annual revenues of over $500 million (this comes both from commissary operations and general food-service contracts), and a captive customer base of approximately 475,000 incarcerated people spread throughout 700 facilities in 44 states.
In 2014, Keefe Commissary Network (one of the Keefe Group companies) bid to operate the commissary system for the West Virginia Division of Corrections. The company’s proposal included 2012 financial statements for the commissary subsidiary, reporting total sales of $375 million, with a net profit of $41 million. This equates to a 10.9% profit margin, which is quite robust (as a point of comparison, Wal-Mart’s profit margin is around 3%).
Based on these historical numbers, combined sales for the two companies could top $875 million. That’s equivalent to controlling every commissary in every state prison.
Footnotes
Per capita figures are based on total revenue reported to ASCA, and 2013 prison populations according to U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2013 (Sept. 2014), tbl. 2. ↩
The seven counties (and the year for which commissary data is available) are: Mendocino County, CA (2009); Collier and Orange Counties, FL (2014 and 2013, respectively); St. Louis County, MO (2014); Lancaster and Wayne Counties, PA (both 2015); and Webb County, TX (2015). ↩
March 19, 2025: Join Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Department at 1 PM EST on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, for a webinar about understanding recidivism. We will cover strategies from our recidivism toolkit, including an overview of recidivism statistics and what they really mean, how to combat the “Willie Horton” effect, and ways that advocates can transform the narrative around reentry to make it less focused on negative outcomes and more focused on the ways that returning citizens contribute to their communities.
April 15-17, 2025: Sarah Staudt, our Director of Policy and Advocacy, will be attending the MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge Network Meeting from April 15-17 in Chicago. Drop her a line if you’d like to meet up!
Not near you? Invite us to your city, college or organization.
The Philips Black Project data controls for differences in policing practices to identify increasingly racially disparate outcomes that originate with prosecutors and the courts.
For most cities, murder is much lower now than during the 1980s or 1990s. The data for 1985-2014 comes from the FBI. The FBI has not published the 2015 full year data yet, so I relied on data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which historically is very similar if slightly higher than the FBI’s figures. For that reason, this graph may overstate the increase in murder in 2015 in these cities.
