Research Library

Our mission is to empower activists, journalists, and policymakers to shape effective criminal justice policy, so we go beyond our original reports and analyses to curate a database of virtually all the empirical criminal justice research available online.

Tips: If you know what you are looking for, you may also search the database. We also have an email newsletter (at right)(at bottom) for new research library updates.

  • COVID-19 (80) Research on the pandemic’s impact on prisons and jails
  • Community impact (105) Research on the impact of the criminal legal system on housing, schools, employment, neighborhoods, and more
  • Conditions of confinement (268) Research on prison and jail conditions such as solitary confinement, labor, discipline, food, and more
  • Courts and trials (164) Research on prosecutors, judges, public defense, court caseloads, and more
  • Crime (282) Curated research on crime, crime rates, and victimization
  • Death penalty (153) Information and data on capital punishment and executions
  • Disability (31) Research on the prevalence of, and challenges faced by, people with disabilities in the criminal legal system
  • Drug policy and treatment (176) Research on punishing and treating drug use in the criminal legal system
  • Economics of incarceration (178) Research on the economic drivers and consequences of mass incarceration
  • Education (133) Curated research on education programs in prisons and the school-to-prison pipeline
  • Families (154) Information and data on the criminal legal system’s impacts on families
  • Felony disenfranchisement and voting rights (92) Information about laws barring people from the polls because of criminal convictions
  • General (163) Broad-based research and information about the criminal legal system
  • Gun control (44) Information and data about gun violence, firearms, and gun control policy
  • Health and healthcare (204) Research on access to healthcare, chronic and infectious disease, mortality, and more
  • Immigration (71) Research on the incarceration and detainment of immigrants
  • Incarceration rates and trends (335) Research documenting the growth of prison and jail populations
  • International incarceration (44) Curated research on incarceration trends worldwide, and how they compare to the U.S.
  • Jails (284) Research on jail populations, jail conditions, jail construction, and more
  • LGBTQ (26) Information and data on the mass criminalization and incarceration of LGBTQ+ people
  • Mental health (86) Research on the prevalence and treatment of mental illness in the criminal legal system
  • Policing (271) Information and data on arrests, traffic stops, law enforcement interactions, and more
  • Poverty and wealth (156) Research on fines, fees, debt, and the criminalization of poor people
  • Pretrial detention (125) Research on the costs and outcomes of detaining people before trial
  • Prison gerrymandering (20) Research on prison-based gerrymandering (see also www.prisonersofthecensus.org)
  • Privatization (103) Information and data on how private companies exploit incarcerated people and their families
  • Probation and parole (123) Information about community supervision policies, conditions, violations, and more
  • Public opinion (49) Research on public perceptions of crime, prison, reform, and more
  • Racial and ethnic disparities (183) Research and statistics on racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal legal system
  • Reentry and recidivism (246) Information and research on the challenges and outcomes for people released from incarceration, including collateral consequences
  • Sentencing policy (142) Research on the rise and impact of excessive criminal sentences
  • Sex-related convictions (17) Research about the unique punishment of sex-related crimes through registries, civil commitment, and other means
  • Women and gender (138) Information and data on gender disparities in the criminal legal system
  • Youth and juvenile justice (399) Research about youth in the criminal legal system

Enter one word from the title, author or topic to search the library:

Advanced search options or view entire database by the date added.


Some of the most recently added reports are:

Wednesday, February 26 2025:

Tuesday, February 25 2025:

  • Clemency for the Common Good: An Argument to Release Incarcerated Persons in the General Public Interest, Deborah M. Ahrens. November, 2024. "Incarcerating people often is harmful to the rest of the community, and that broad social benefit is, in and of itself, an appropriate justification for release."
  • Chicago Future Fund: The Impact of Guaranteed Basic Income on the Lives of Post-incarceration Individuals, Equity and Transformation. February, 2025. "At the beginning of the program, in March 2023, 35 percent of participants reported that they had experienced homelessness the year prior. The average rate of homelessness throughout the program was 24 percent--a decrease of 11 percentage points."
  • 10 ways that mass incarceration is an engine of economic injustice, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2025. "Rather than alleviate poverty through jobs, housing, education, and healthcare, the U.S. uses criminalization to force people to comply with a deeply unequal economy."
  • New research links medical copays to reduced healthcare access in prisons, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2024. "People with chronic conditions in state prisons where copays exceed a week's wage are less likely to have seen a healthcare clinician while incarcerated than those in prisons that charge no copays or lower copay amounts."
  • Research roundup: Evidence that a single day in jail causes immediate and long-lasting harms, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2024. "We find that there is no "safe" way to jail a person, nor is there an amount of time a person can be detained without escalating short- and long-term risks to themselves and their communities."
  • The relationship of social contacts with prisoners' mental health: a systematic review, N. Machado et al. September, 2024. "With respect to objective social support, in our systematic review, in-person visits were associated with increased psychological distress, including depression and anxiety, whereas support through letters and phone calls was associated with lower anxiety"
  • Donald Trump can still be president , but he could be barred from being a bartender, car salesman -- or real estate developer, Prison Policy Initiative. June, 2024. "Even when jurisdictions do not explicitly ban people with felony convictions from obtaining occupational licenses, they typically give licensing agencies so much discretion that they can deter potential job-seekers with records from applying."
  • An Act of Regression: Louisiana takes a giant step backward in parole and sentencing reform, Prison Policy Initiative. August, 2024. "Together, [bills HB9 and HB10] will set prison and sentencing reform back decades in the state: although lawmakers have framed them as "public safety" measures, these laws will have the opposite effect."

Wednesday, February 19 2025:

  • The Power and Problem of Criminal Justice Data: A Twenty-State Review, Measures for Justice. January, 2023. "The problem is, [pretrial and bail] data rarely exist, especially in court records. Of the twenty states we collected data from, only two, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, had data on pretrial practices, and these were limited at best."
  • Understanding the association between frequent emergency department use and jail incarceration: A cross-sectional analysis, Vidya Eswaran, MD, et al. January, 2022. "[Our research] provides an empiric basis for the idea of a revolving door between the county-level carceral and health care systems."
  • Factors Associated with Incarceration in Older Adults Experiencing Homelessness: Results from the HOPE HOME Study, Ilana Garcia-Grossman, MD, et al. June, 2021. "Housing status was dynamic and approximately half exited homelessness during study follow-up; remaining homeless was independently associated with risk of incident incarceration."
  • Gender-Affirming Surgical Care in Carceral Settings, Matthew Murphy, MD, MPH, Carl Streed Jr., MD, MPH, and Josiah D. Rich, MD, MPH. January, 2025. "The evaluation process for surgical affirmation should follow WPATH's guidance, including aligning surgical and medical gender-affirming care planning as well as the person's reproductive goals."
  • Deaths In Dauphin County Prison (Harrisburg, Penn.), 2008-2022, Jonah Walters, Ph.D, Grace Sosa, and Terence Keel, Ph.D, UCLA BioCritical Studies Lab. June, 2024. "The Dauphin County Office of the Coroner appears to have habitually misclassified in-custody deaths attributable to traumatic violence as 'natural,' especially in cases involving deceased Black men."
  • Guilt by Association: How Police Databases Punish Black and Latinx Youth, Andy Ratto, Nina Loshkajian, Eleni Manis, PhD, MPA, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). September, 2023. "California [made] an effort to open the rolls of CalGang after a 2016 audit revealed egregious errors in the database. And the errors were appalling--42 babies under one-year-old were falsely listed in CalGang."
  • Setting Bail to Fail: The Gap Between Bail Reform's Goals and Reality (New York), Scrutinize. January, 2025. "Our analysis shows that judges followed rules requiring specific bail options but often set amounts that undermined the statutory intent to provide affordable alternatives, particularly to commercial bonds."
  • Women's Incarceration in Idaho: The Problem and a Path Forward, Idaho Justice Project. January, 2025. "In 2022, Idaho had the highest rate of incarceration for women in the nation. The rate (132 per 100,000) was three times the national average (43 per 100,000)."


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