By The Global Commission on Drug Policy

The Global Commission on Drug Policy’s report, Beyond Punishment: From Criminal Justice Responses to Drug Policy Reform, exposes how punitive drug policies have driven mass incarceration and grave human rights violations. In 2023 alone, over 3.1 million people were arrested for drug-related offenses, with 20% of the global prison population detained for such crimes - nearly half for simple possession.

The report underscores the devastating consequences of prohibitionist policies, including over one million overdose deaths in the U.S. in the past two decades and 40,000 in Canada in just eight years. It also highlights systemic inequities, such as Indigenous peoples in Canada being six times more likely to face drug-related arrests than white counterparts. Furthermore, the report illustrates the disproportionate burdens on women and children, deepening cycles of poverty and marginalization.

It examines the broad spectrum of criminal justice responses to drug offenses, ranging from stop-and-search practices that disproportionately target marginalized communities to extreme measures like the death penalty and enforced treatment. These approaches often violate human rights, perpetuate stigma, and fail to address the root causes of substance use.

Offering a roadmap for reform, the report advocates for evidence-based strategies, including harm reduction measures (e.g., Overdose Prevention Centers, naloxone distribution, and safer supply programs), decriminalization and the legal regulation of drug markets. These approaches not only save lives but also reduce societal harms, foster dignity, and promote health and equity.

Geneva: Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2024. 56p.

By Margaret Love & Rob Poggenklass

At the beginning of each year since 2017, CCRC has issued a report on legislative enactments in the year just ended, new laws aimed at reducing the barriers faced by people with a criminal record in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life. These annual reports document the steady progress of what our 2020 report characterized as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and dignity to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. In the three years between 2019 and 2021, more than 400 new record reforms were enacted. Many states enacted new laws every year, and all but two states enacted at least one significant new law during this period. A full appreciation of the scope of this movement can be gained by reviewing the detailed 50-state charts and state-by-state profiles in our Restoration of Rights Project. The modern law reform movement reflected in our annual reports is bipartisan, grounded in and inspired by the circumstance that almost a third of adults in the United States now have a criminal record, entangling them in a web of legal restrictions and discrimination that permanently excludes them from full participation in the community. It reflects a public recognition that the “internal exile” of such a significant portion of society is not only unsafe and unfair, but it is also profoundly inefficient. We are pleased to present our report on new laws enacted in 2022, titled The Frontiers of Dignity: Clean Slate and Other Criminal Record Reforms in 2022. While this report shows that the legislative momentum gathering since 2018 slowed somewhat in the past year, there has still been progress, with more new laws enacted this year than in 2018 when the current reform movement took off in earnest.

Washington, DC: Collateral Consequences Resource Center, 2023. 43p.

By Laurin Bixby, Stacey Bevan, and Courtney Boen

Disabled people are disproportionately incarcerated and segregated from society through a variety of institutions. Still, the links between disability and incarceration are underexplored, limiting understanding of how carceral institutions punish and contribute to the social exclusion of disabled people. Using data from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, we estimated disability prevalence in state and federal prisons, assessing disparities by race, ethnicity, and sex, and we examined inequities in previous residence in other “punitive” and “therapeutic” institutions. Sixty-six percent of incarcerated people self-reported a disability, with Black, Hispanic, and multiracial disabled men especially overrepresented in prisons. Compared with nondisabled incarcerated people, disabled incarcerated people were more likely to have previously resided in other institutions, such as juvenile detention facilities and psychiatric hospitals. Together, our findings advance the understanding of disability in carceral institutions, highlighting the need for policy interventions redressing the mechanisms contributing to the high incarceration risks of disabled people and the disabling nature of prisons and other carceral institutions.

Health Affairs Vol. 41, NO. 10, 2022, 28 p.

By James René Jolin, Benjamin A. Barsky, Carrie G. Wade

By expanding health insurance to millions of people in the US, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) may have important health, economic, and social welfare implications for people with criminal legal involvement—a population with disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rates. OBJECTIVE To scope the literature for studies assessing the association of any provision of the ACA with 5 types of outcomes, including insurance coverage rates, access to care, health outcomes, costs of care, and social welfare outcomes among people with criminal legal involvement. EVIDENCE REVIEW - The literature search included results from PubMed, CINAHL Complete, APA Psycinfo, Embase, Social Science Database, and Web of Science and was conducted to include articles from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2023. Only original empirical studies were included, but there were no restrictions on study design. FINDINGS Of the 3538 studies initially identified for potential inclusion, the final sample included 19 studies. These 19 studies differed substantially in their definition of criminal legal involvement and units of analysis. The studies also varied with respect to study design, but difference-in-differences methods were used in 10 of the included studies. With respect to outcomes, 100 unique outcomes were identified across the 19 studies, with at least 1 in all 5 outcome categories determined prior to the literature search. Health insurance coverage and access to care were the most frequently studied outcomes. Results for the other 3 outcome categories were mixed, potentially due to heterogeneous definitions of populations, interventions, and outcomes and to limitations in the availability of individual-level datasets that link incarceration data with health-related data. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE- In this scoping review, the ACA was associated with an increase in insurance coverage and a decrease in recidivism rates among people with criminal legal involvement. Future research and data collection are needed to understand more fully health and nonhealth outcomes among people with criminal legal involvement related to the ACA and other health insurance policies—as well as the mechanisms underlying these relationships.

JAMA Health Forum, 2024, 10 p.

By Anneliese N. Luck

Jail incarceration remains an overlooked yet crucial component of the U.S. carceral system. Although a growing literature has examined the mortality costs associated with residing in areas with high levels of incarceration, far less is known about how local jails shape this burden at the intersection of race, sex, and age. In this study, I examine the relationship between county-level jail incarceration and age-specific mortality for non-Hispanic Black and White men and women, uniquely leveraging race-specific jail rates to account for the unequal racial distribution of jail exposures. This study finds evidence of positive associations between mortality and jail incarceration: this association peaks in late adulthood (ages 50–64), when increases in jail rates are associated with roughly 3% increases in mortality across all race–sex groups. However, patterns vary at the intersection of race, sex, and age. In particular, I find more marked and consistent penalties among women than among men. Additionally, a distinctly divergent age pattern emerges among Black men, who face insignificant but negative associations at younger ages but steep penalties at older ages—significantly larger among those aged 65 or older relative to their White male and Black female counterparts. Evidence further suggests that the use of race-neutral incarceration measures in prior work may mask the degree of harm associated with carceral contexts, because the jail rate for the total population underestimates the association between jail rates and mortality across nearly all race–age–sex combinations. These findings highlight the need for future ecological research to differentiate between jail and prison incarceration, consider the demographic distribution of incarceration's harms, and incorporate racialized measures of exposure so that we may better capture the magnitude of harm associated with America's carceral state.

Demography (2024) 61 (5): 1455–1482.

By Louise Durand, Eamon Keenan, Deirdre O’Reilly, Kathleen Bennett, Andy O’Hara & Gráinne Cousins 

Background- Pharmacotherapy is essential for the delivery of an equivalent standard of care in prison. Prescribing can be challenging due to the complex health needs of prisoners and the risk of misuse of prescription drugs. This study examines prescribing trends for drugs with potential for misuse (opioids, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs, and gabapentinoids) in Irish prisons and whether trends vary by gender and history of opioid use disorder (OUD). Methods- A repeated cross-sectional study between 2012 and 2020 using electronic prescribing records from the Irish Prison Services, covering all prisons in the Republic of Ireland was carried out. Prescribing rates per 1,000 prison population were calculated. Negative binomial (presenting adjusted rate ratios (ARR) per year and 95% confidence intervals) and joinpoint regressions were used to estimate time trends adjusting for gender, and for gender specific analyses of prescribing trends over time by history of OUD. Results - A total of 10,371 individuals were prescribed opioid agonist treatment (OAT), opioids, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs or gabapentinoids during study period. History of OUD was higher in women, with a median rate of 597 per 1,000 female prisoners, compared to 161 per 1,000 male prisoners. Prescribing time trends, adjusted for gender, showed prescribing rates decreased over time for prescription opioids (ARR 0.82, 95% CI 0.80–0.85), benzodiazepines (ARR 0.99, 95% CI 0.98–0.999), Z-drugs (ARR 0.90, 95% CI 0.88–0.92), but increased for gabapentinoids (ARR 1.07, 95% CI 1.05–1.08). However, prescribing rates declined for each drug class between 2019 and 2020. Women were significantly more likely to be prescribed benzodiazepines, Z-drugs and gabapentinoids relative to men. Gender-specific analyses found that men with OUD, relative to men without, were more likely to be prescribed benzodiazepines (ARR 1.49, 95% CI 1.41–1.58), Z-drugs (ARR 10.09, 95% CI 9.0-11.31), gabapentinoids (ARR 2.81, 95% CI 2.66–2.97). For women, history of OUD was associated with reduced gabapentinoid prescribing (ARR 0.33, 95% CI 0.28–0.39). Conclusions - While the observed reductions in prescription opioid, benzodiazepine and Z-drug prescribing is consistent with guidance for safe prescribing in prisons, the increase in gabapentinoid (primarily pregabalin) prescribing and the high level of prescribing to women is concerning. Our findings suggest targeted interventions may be needed to address prescribing in women, and men with a history of OUD.

BMC Psychiatry, 2023. 12p.

By Trevor L. Brown,  Carter M. Stewart

  The murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer on May 25, 2020, sparked months-long protests about racism and policing across the country and around the globe, including Columbus, Ohio. Captured on video and spread quickly through social media, Floyd’s death galvanized Americans to take to the streets in the midst of a global health pandemic to voice their anger and frustration about the many Black Americans who had been killed by police. The fairness of policing practice as applied to communities of color, particularly Black communities, and more fundamentally, the existence of the police as a legally sanctioned public institution were the clear motivations for the protests. Law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Columbus Police Department, also mobilized to the streets. Their job was to create a space for citizens to peacefully exercise their right to free speech, while simultaneously ensuring the safety of the community. In many protests, police are neutral actors managing the boundaries of the demonstration. In the protests of 2020, protestors saw the police as antagonists, and systematically racist; they were the object of the protest. When police are the focus of the protest, there is a significant increase in the likelihood of direct conflict between protesters and law enforcement personnel. Adhering to best practice in protest management and adapting to evolving protest dynamics become even more important to ensure free speech rights and community safety. This report provides the results of an eight-month research study evaluating how the City of Columbus, Ohio, inclusive of elected officials and the Columbus Division of Police (CPD), managed the protests in Columbus from May 28 through July 19, 2020. The purpose of the research study was three-fold: • document interactions between community members and law enforcement personnel as a part of the protests; • evaluate the City of Columbus’s preparation for and response to the pro tests; and • generate research-informed recommendations about how to improve the performance of the City of Columbus in preparing for and responding to future protests. The study was conducted by an independent research team organized by the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University. The research team was composed of a lead investigative unit that gathered information, a diverse research advisory board. that provided subject-matter and technical expertise, and a core research group that assembled and synthesized the data, generated findings, and produced recommendations   

Columbus, OH: John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University, 2024. 111p.   

By Michael Balfour

The book discusses the use of drama in the rehabilitation of violent male offenders. Itexplores the theoretical territory of criminology and the rehabilitation perspective, aswell as the application of drama with offenders. The document also includes information on the outcomes and evaluation of drama-based rehabilitation programs.

ResearchGate, 2003, 302 pages