By Jeffrey Fagan, Garth Davies & Raymond Paternoster

Decades of research on the administration of the death penalty have recognized the persistent arbitrariness in its implementation and the racial inequality in the selection of defendants and cases for capital punishment. This Article provides new insights into the combined effects of these two constitutional challenges. We show how these features of post-Furman capital punishment operate at each stage of adjudication, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to the selection of eligible cases for execution and ultimately to the execution itself, and how their effects combine to sustain the constitutional violations first identified 50 years ago in Furman. Analyzing a dataset of 2,328 first degree murder convictions in Georgia from 1995–2004 that produced 1,317 death eligible cases, we show that two features of these cases combine to produce a small group of persons facing execution: victim race and gender, and a set of case-specific features that are often correlated with race. We also show that these features explain which cases progress from the initial stages of charging to a death sentence, and which are removed from death eligibility at each stage through plea negotiations. Consistent with decades of death penalty research, we also show the special focus of prosecution on cases where Black defendants murder white victims. The evidence in the Georgia records suggests a regime marred less by overbreadth in its statute than capriciousness and randomness in the decision to seek death and to seek it in a racially disparate manner. These two dimensions of capital case adjudication combine to sustain the twin failures that produce the fatal lottery that is the death penalty

Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 4324073; Cornell Law Review, Vol. 107, No. 1565, 2022

By: Carrie Pettus, Beth M. Huebner, Faye S. Taxman, Teisha Sanders, Laura Lightfoot, Nancy McCarthy, and Rebeccah Bennett

Jails hold more individuals than any other correctional facility, with over 10 million people admitted annually (Zeng & Minton, 2021). The management of jails at the local government level is characterized by inconsistent leadership and offering few services or transitional programming (Copp & Bales, 2018; Henrichson et al., 2015). The misuse of local jails is often noted because they have become mental health facilities, warehouse unconvicted pretrial populations, often for minor offenses, spread diseases such as COVID-19, and other related health concerns of overcrowding (Nowotny et al., 2020). Jails play a central role in the criminal legal system, and yet they are understudied and overused.

There is evidence of substantial racial disparities and other inequities in jail incarceration. Black people are disproportionately held in jail and, in 2019, had incarceration rates over three times that of white persons (Zeng & Minton, 2021). People of color are also less likely to be given non-monetary bail options and are substantially less likely to be able to post financial bonds, further contributing to disproportionate minority confinement (Wooldredge, 2012).

Jails are also racialized institutions. Many jails have racialized subcultures, where residents of non-white racial backgrounds face increased segregation, tensions, or violence; limited employment opportunities; and social stigma (Walker, 2022; Pettit & Gutierrez, 2018). Racial disparities in incarceration exacerbate vulnerability to violence, sexual abuse, solitary confinement, and inadequate healthcare (Western et al., 2021; Wildeman & Wang, 2017). Carceral environments such as jail often manifest racial divisions, with staff frequently exhibiting racial antagonisms, either individually or collectively.

Racism can also manifest within the dynamics of a jail setting, with documented instances of racial bias and discrimination within correctional facilities including, the rate at which Black individuals are admitted to jails and the corresponding length stay. Racial disparities among the staff also result from disparate hiring practices, barriers to promotions, and negative workplace interactions (Wooldredge, 2020). Discrimination among fellow staff can lead to a hostile work environment, exacerbating tensions and negatively impacting job satisfaction and morale, and a humane jail environment. But studies of jail officers’ experiences of racism are still limited.

Understanding and addressing these systemic issues are crucial for fostering a more equitable and just correctional system. New approaches are needed to transform the culture that contributes to racial bias in correctional settings. Yet, despite decades of studies documenting racial disparities as drivers of incarceration, few models have been implemented effectively to reduce inequities and disparities in the system.

This report presents an approach to addressing racial equity within jail settings. Our innovative method integrates participatory methods and evidence-driven quality improvement processes to develop and refine recommendations of racial equity interventions in complex jail systems. Participatory methods engage diverse stakeholders to assess historical and contemporary drivers of racism and develop cohesive organizational goals to promote racial equity. The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) quality improvement process highlights the use of empirical information, allowing participants to address their perspectives and reconcile them with empirical data, resulting in the identification of new approaches that promote equity.

The premise of our work is that achieving racial equity in jails can profoundly impact the conditions of confinement for residents and working conditions for staff. For residents, outcomes include ensuring appropriate support, instilling a sense of fair treatment, improving the handling of individuals with health issues, and reducing the punitive nature of the jail climate. For staff, racially equitable policies and practices provide a better work environment, enhance well-being, aid recruitment and retention, support career advancements, and promote healthy exchanges with residents, as project outcomes.

In 2022, our collaborative initiative undertook a project to address racism and racial inequities within one County Jail.

KEY THEMES THAT EMERGED IN THE RESEARCH

• Resident workgroups described a lack of beneficial programs within the jail. Incarcerated women denoted that the programming was gendered, and that they did not have equal opportunity to participate in programming, like the education and training programs that had been recently launched for men.

• Healthcare, particularly mental health services, was a key stressor for all. Many residents indicated that their medical emergencies were not taken seriously or responded to in a timely manner. Female residents felt that the detox process was not well supported. Staff felt that they would like more mental health counseling made available, as well as more of an emphasis placed on improving the well-being of staff and incarcerated individuals, as a result of expressed powerlessness within their position as a staff member and status as an incarcerated resident.

• Inequities are also intersectional. For example, women felt that their hygiene needs were not addressed. Women lacked access to soap, menstrual supplies, and undergarments. Black women reported not having access to hair products that met their needs. Individuals who did not speak English as their primary language or had other physical or mental disabilities were perceived as not having their needs met or considered.

• Staff and incarcerated persons identified that they felt a pervasive sense of unfairness within the organization, and people in minority groups felt that there was little accountability for staff’s racist behavior or misconduct of any kind.

• Staff and incarcerated persons – the majority of whom are Black – felt that racism is implicitly endorsed and perpetuated. Conversely, some white staff and residents downplayed or overlooked the existence of racism, and attributed any hardships experienced in the jail environment to factors other than race.

• Staff-specific areas of concern included disparities in promotions and leadership opportunities. Black staff felt that they were often overlooked for promotions. Staff felt that there was a lack of transparency in the process, which led to perceptions of favoritism, particularly among the predominantly white male leaders.

• Through workgroups and surveys involving staff and residents, we identified and prioritized 30 intervention recommendations across three categories: Health and wellbeing, staff and resident interactions, and training and programs. These interventions, guided by an antiracism framework, aim to address power imbalances, disparities in perceptions of racism, and intersectional issues.

• Overall, it is essential to balance power distribution in racial equity work, particularly in the context of jails where conditions of confinement are intertwined with power dynamics. Participants recognized that jails are environments characterized by powerlessness, emphasizing the importance of addressing power imbalances as part of efforts to achieve racial equity.

• Increasing transparency and accountability emerged as a central theme for staff and residents. They felt there was a need to develop or appoint a neutral, external group to review the jail operations and manage staff complaints and internal affairs investigations. Residents also felt that developing an app that tracked the grievance process would be helpful.

• Staff requested a clear career pipeline from the jails’ frontline to leadership to allow for job expectations to be more transparent. They requested that all employees receive the support, training, and professional development opportunities needed to be promoted to higher jobs.

• Both staff and residents requested substantial reforms to their respective healthcare needs. Residents suggested implementing a protocol to respond to sick calls and medical emergencies. Residents also requested healthier food and access to more recreation time. Staff felt that there was a stigma against requesting assistance, particularly mental health care, and suggested more confidential programming and supports.

Moving forward, ongoing implementation, evaluation, and refinement of interventions remain crucial to validate this process and the issues that were exposed. Staff and residents raised concerns about the full adoption and sustainability of the effort and interventions. The issues raised require care and attention by jail leadership that are often not fully available to those who manage a chaotic environment. There is a need for continued support in the implementation of the recommendations from the PDSA process. This underscores the broader implications for the sustainability of this transformative work and its potential for lasting systemic change.

Fairfax County, VA: Safety & Justice Challenge, George Mason University, 42p.

by Anastasia Christman & Han Lu

In virtually all US states, official emergency response plans (EOPs) include roles for incarcerated workers as part of preparation, response, and recovery work. Many EOPs define roles for “inmates” or “prisoners” that place these workers in danger from environmental hazards or exposure to chemicals or biological dangers. Elected officials often admit that they could not afford to engage in disaster response without access to this coerced and typically unpaid work force. But in most cases, states also refuse to extend the typical health and safety protections of other workers as laid out in the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). These states alternately rely on longstanding and racist loopholes in Civil War-era amendments that extended coerced labor for those in the carceral system, assertions that incarcerated disaster workers are volunteers engaging in dangerous work as a form of redemption, and claims that exemptions in federal OSHA law for public sector employees shield departments of correction from having to abide by labor protections. We explore the language and structure of assignments in some of the 30 states that include incarcerated workers in their EOPs to identify how age-old notions of a racist carceral system and the necessity of punishment underlie dangerous assignments during disasters. We place this analysis next to legal arguments and conventions in health and safety laws that put these workers outside the jurisdiction of labor regulators. Together, these narratives work to put incarcerated people in peril during natural disasters without even basic workplace protections. We find that:  In many states incarcerated workers are labelled as “prisoners” or “offender labor” and are sent to clear roadways of debris, engage in wildfire suppression, assist in heat emergency response, and dispose of dead or diseased livestock.  While departments of correction often characterize this work as voluntary, systems of physical danger, privation, and excessive carceral costs and fees coupled with strong incentives for early release push incarcerated workers into accepting dangerous assignments.  Very few incarcerated workers have recourse to OSHA protections if they get hurt working on assignment by department of corrections officials, and nearly 90 percent fear retaliation if they lodge complaints about carceral operations.  Health and safety protections for incarcerated workers are minimal and inconsistent, with some states offering limited protections for workers having contact with private businesses, others denying all coverage entirely, and some deciding on a case-by-case basis if OSHA has jurisdiction. We conclude that:  The abolition of coerced labor entirely is a matter of basic human rights and dignity, and every state should amend its state constitution to prohibit all slavery and then immediately change all regulations, rules, and practices that exempt these workers from basic labor standards.  States with their own OSHA plans should explicitly extend health and safety protections to all incarcerated workers and work with community advocates and incarcerated workers to understand the health and safety needs of this group of workers.  Federal lawmakers should pass the Correctional Facilities Occupational Safety and Health Act immediately to amend the OSH Act to include state and local carceral facilities as employers and incarcerated workers as employees under the law.

New York: National Employment Law Project, 2024. 32p.

By Penal Reform International (PRI) and the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre (U4).

Corruption poses a significant challenge in criminal justice systems globally, impacting the human rights of prisoners and the effective administration of justice. Detention monitors, with their unique access to prisons, play a critical role in addressing corruption. They can document evidence of corruption, engage in advocacy, and support evidence-based policymaking at various levels.

London: U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre (U4)., 2024. 24p.

By Nixon Randy Sinaga

Indonesia maintains a punitive war on drugs policy model. Various campaigns are conducted to emphasise that drug offences are the most serious crimes. This construction is clearly contrary to international human rights standards. The Human Rights Committee defines the meaning of ‘most serious crime’ through General Comment No. 36 (2018) on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life (GC/36). Paragraph 35 of GC/36 does not place drug offences as one of the most serious crimes. This further confirms that Indonesia’s war on drugs policy has been built upon an erroneous and unfounded paradigm. Law Number 35 of 2009 concerning Narcotics (Narcotics Law) which is in force until now contains offences that tend to open up extensive interpretations and overlap between one another. The implication of this overlapping offence in the Narcotics Law is the imprisonment of people who use drugs, people who have drug dependency, and people who abuse drugs. The paradigm of the most serious crime built by the government in narcotics cases actually brings problems to the conditions of correctional institutions in Indonesia. The problem is at least evident from the results of an assessment of the characteristics of people incarcerated for drug cases conducted by the Jakarta Regional Office of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, stating that at the end of 2018, the number of people in prison for drug cases reached 115,289 people or 95% of the total number of people imprisoned for special criminal cases in Indonesia. This figure is much higher than the number of people detained in corruption cases (5,110), illegal logging (890), terrorism (441), and money laundering (165).

London: International Drug Policy Consortium, 2024. 8p.

By Scottish Government, Justice Directorate

In November 2019, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice commissioned an independent review into the response to deaths in prison custody. The Independent Review of the Response to Deaths in Prison Custody was published in November 2021.

In early 2022, it was decided to bring in an external chair to oversee the implementation of the recommendations. I took up the role in April 2022, forming the Deaths in Prison Custody Action Group soon afterwards.

My first priority was to engage with families who had direct experience of losing a loved one through death in prison custody. A Family Reference Group was formed, which included some families who had contributed to the original Review. The membership has changed and increased over time with four more families joining the Group who were bereaved by the death of a loved one in prison after the Review was published in November 2021.

Families involved in this work are generously sharing their experiences in the hope that the response to the death of a relative in prison is improved for other families in the future. They share a desire to help improve the understanding of factors leading to deaths in prison in order to reduce and prevent more deaths.

The Review recognised the importance of data and analysis, with part of the key recommendation being that an independent body should produce and publish reports analysing data on deaths in custody, identifying trends and systemic issues.

Two important recommendations are aimed at understanding causes of deaths in prison and identifying trends with a view to preventing future deaths. Recommendation 1.1 states that leaders of national oversight bodies should work together with families to support the development of a new single framework on preventing deaths in custody. Recommendation 3.4 asks for a comprehensive review into the main causes of all deaths in prison custody.

I introduced an Understanding and Preventing Deaths in Prison Working Group, which sits under the Deaths in Prison Custody Action Group, to take these recommendations forward.

The Scottish Prison Service publishes data on its website, including date of admission; date of death; age; gender; ethnic group; legal status, and medical cause of death (from 2019 onwards). There has been no published analysis or identification of trends by the Scottish Prison Service or the Scottish Government, despite the data having been publicly available since 2012.

Whilst long overdue, this paper is welcome and presents a high level analysis of the data published by the Scottish Prison Service on deaths in prison between 2012 and 2022. Overall the analysis shows that there has been an increase in the number of deaths in prison over that period. It is the first in a series of reports that will be produced over the coming year. The next stage will be work with the National Records of Scotland to examine causes of deaths in prison in more detail, and to make comparisons with trends in the general population.

I will be particularly interested to see the age distribution of the prison population compared with the general population, and what analysis might tell us about the prevalence of suicide amongst young people in prison.

The healthcare provision across the prison estate and the efficiency of resources to escort people in prison to access medical appointments/treatment will also be an area of interest for future analysis.

This paper represents a start to the important work of improving the data, evidence, and analysis around prison deaths with a view to identifying factors and causes, and to prevent future deaths.

Two important recommendations are aimed at understanding causes of deaths in prison and identifying trends with a view to preventing future deaths. Recommendation 1.1 states that leaders of national oversight bodies should work together with families to support the development of a new single framework on preventing deaths in custody. Recommendation 3.4 asks for a comprehensive review into the main causes of all deaths in prison custody.

I introduced an Understanding and Preventing Deaths in Prison Working Group, which sits under the Deaths in Prison Custody Action Group, to take these recommendations forward.

The Scottish Prison Service publishes data on its website, including date of admission; date of death; age; gender; ethnic group; legal status, and medical cause of death (from 2019 onwards). There has been no published analysis or identification of trends by the Scottish Prison Service or the Scottish Government, despite the data having been publicly available since 2012.

Whilst long overdue, this paper is welcome and presents a high level analysis of the data published by the Scottish Prison Service on deaths in prison between 2012 and 2022. Overall the analysis shows that there has been an increase in the number of deaths in prison over that period. It is the first in a series of reports that will be produced over the coming year. The next stage will be work with the National Records of Scotland to examine causes of deaths in prison in more detail, and to make comparisons with trends in the general population.

I will be particularly interested to see the age distribution of the prison population compared with the general population, and what analysis might tell us about the prevalence of suicide amongst young people in prison.

The healthcare provision across the prison estate and the efficiency of resources to escort people in prison to access medical appointments/treatment will also be an area of interest for future analysis.

This paper represents a start to the important work of improving the data, evidence, and analysis around prison deaths with a view to identifying factors and causes, and to prevent future deaths.

2023. 36p.

By: Heather Harris and Sean Cremin

California’s prison population decreased dramatically during the pandemic. ⊲ The prison population fell sharply during the first year of the pandemic: between March 2020 and February 2021, it dropped 23%, from 123,100 to 94,600. ⊲ California’s prison population now stands at its lowest point in more than thirty years. After increasing nearly eightfold between 1977 and 2006 to peak at over 173,000, the prison population has since declined. In 2023, the population stood at nearly 94,200; it was just above 97,300 in 1990. ⊲ California’s imprisonment rate—the share of adults in state prisons—stood at 309 per 100K in 2023. Imprisonment rates vary by gender, race, and age in California. ⊲ In December 2023, men made up 96% of California’s prisoners—up 0.5 percentage points from 2019. The female population fell more sharply amid the pandemic than the male population—31% relative to 24%. As a result, the male-female disparity in imprisonment rates grew from 22:1 in 2019 to 25:1 in 2023. ⊲ At 46%, Latinos are the most prevalent racial/ethnic group in California prisons. Black, white, and people of other races are 28%, 20%, and 6%, respectively. ⊲ Black people and Latino men are overrepresented among prisoners. Black men and women are 28% and 23% of prisoners, while both make up just 6% of the state’s adults. Similarly, Latino men are 46% of prisoners, but just 38% of adult Californians. By contrast, Latino women account for about 37% of both populations. ⊲ While imprisonment rates for Californians of all ages fell amid the pandemic, younger adults saw the sharpest declines. In 2023, Californians aged 18 to 24 were imprisoned at less than half the 2019 rate (121 vs. 248 per 100K), and imprisonment rates for those age 25 to 34 fell 35%, from 746 per 100K in 2019 to 480 per 100K in 2023. The highest rate in 2023 rate was among 35- to 44-year-olds (545

Most people in California prisons have been convicted of violent crimes that can carry long sentences. ⊲ Half of people in California prisons in 2023 were convicted of homicide or assault—up from 45% in 2019. Another 17% were convicted of sex crimes. About 18% were convicted of robbery or burglary—down 4 percentage points from 2019. Just 3% were imprisoned for drug crimes. ⊲ More than 3 in 10 people in California prisons are serving sentences of life or life without parole—a 5 percentage point increase since before the pandemic. The average sentence for people serving non-life terms is five years; on average, people are released after they have served 60% of their sentences. ⊲ California prisons currently house 20 women and 616 men who have been sentenced to death. Though Californians continue to receive death sentences, the state has not executed anyone since 2006, and the governor suspended executions in 2019. Prisons across the state are less overcrowded now than they were before the pandemic. ⊲ Most California prisons operate within the systemwide limit of 137.5% of design capacity that was mandated by the United States Supreme Court in 2010. At the end of 2023, the overall population stood at 117.6% of design capacity and 23 of the 32 currently operating prisons were below the systemwide limit. ⊲ The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has closed three prisons since 2021 and will close another in 2025. The legislature abolished for-profit prisons in 2020; as of 2023, the state no longer leases any prison facility from a private company. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the state could close five more prisons. The CDCR’s budget has been rising while its share of the state budget has declined. ⊲ The average cost of imprisoning a person for one year has risen almost 50% since the onset of the pandemic, from $91,000 in 2019 to $133,000 in 2024. Security, operations, and administration account for about 60% of that cost. ⊲ The prison system is funded by a substantial—but decreasing—portion of the state budget. From 2019 to 2023, CDCR’s share of the state General Fund declined from 8.6% to 6.5%, even as its budget grew from $12.8 to $14.8 billion. This year, CDCR faces its first projected budget decrease (of $600 million) in 12 years. ⊲ More than half of the CDCR budget—54%—goes to operations and prisoner health care consumes 28%. Only 4% supports rehabilitative programs.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2024. 2p.

By Matt Ford and Roger Grimshaw

This report presents the raw data from a set questions asked to representatives from institutions in a selection of European countries about how the COVID-19 pandemic in prisons in their respective jurisdictions was being managed. The questions were based on a checklist developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to help support policy-makers and prison administrators implement the WHO’s interim guidance on preparedness, prevention and control of COVID-19 in prisons and other places of detention. The interim guidance contained measures recommended to prevent the virus entering prisons, to limit its spread in prisons, and to prevent transmission from within prisons to the outside community. It was published on 15 March 2020, and is based on the evidence about COVID-19 available at that time. Whilst prison services will use a variety of sources of guidance to develop their strategies to deal with COVID-19, we have assumed that the WHO guidance is the international standard and therefore is appropriate for international research such as this. The WHO do make clear that their checklist is not exhaustive. The WHO questions formed one module of a larger survey that the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (from here on in referred to as 'the Centre') circulated to members of the European Prison Observatory, an international coalition of non-governmental organisations and educational institutes, to complete. The survey also contained questions about the prison populations, prison healthcare arrangements, incidence and prevalence of COVID-19 infection in prisons, and emerging problems and responses in prisons as a result of COVID-19.

London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, 2020/ 39p.

By The Howard League for Penal Reform

Over the half-century that we have been involved in the law, custodial sentence lengths have approximately doubled and the same is true of prison numbers. The connection between the two is obvious. Over time, the growing prison population has outstripped safe and decent accommodation. As a consequence, prison overcrowding prevents the rehabilitation that should take place to reduce reoffending. There is nothing that justifies this doubling of sentence lengths. Government legislation relating to sentencing has consistently provided that imprisonment should only be imposed if there is no suitable alternative punishment, and that imprisonment should be for the minimum period commensurate with the crime. The law dictates this. The problem is that there is no objective measure for deciding what term of imprisonment is commensurate with a particular offence. Nor have governments always been content to leave it to the judges to decide the appropriate sentence. Instead they have intervened piecemeal, by securing legislation to impose minimum sentences where crimes, typically murder, are committed in specified circumstances that are seen as aggravating the offence. The result of such interventions has been to raise the level of sentences imposed across the board, as judges, with guidance from the Sentencing Council, seek to maintain a consistent scale of punishment. The only purposes of sentencing which are served by longer sentences are punishment and, in some instances, the protection of the public. But punishment does not stop reoffending and is expensive. It currently costs about £50,000 to imprison an adult for a year.

London: The Howard League for Penal Reform, 2024. 14p.

By Lulit Shewan

An exploitative labor economy exists within the confines of this nation’s prisons. This is a fundamental pillar of the criminal justice system, yet it is largely concealed from public view. In the United States, all state and federal prisons allow some form of involuntary labor as part of various correctional work programs. Even when prison labor is ostensibly voluntary, the combination of meager pay (often less than $1/hour) and the presence of harsh alternatives creates an inherently exploitative system that depends on the labor of those behind bars and perpetuates a cycle of exploitation and marginalization. Prison labor amplifies deep-seated issues within the criminal justice system and casts a stark light on the intersection of labor rights, social justice, and the ethics of incarceration

The Exploitative Prison Labor Economy

Incarcerated men and women toil in workshops, kitchens, and fields, producing goods and services that reach far beyond their confinement. From manufacturing furniture and processing food to fighting fires and working in call centers, their labor fuels supply chains, corporate profits, and consumer markets. Yet these workers remain invisible, their contributions often overlooked or dismissed. The commodification of their labor perpetuates a cycle of vulnerability, where meager wages and limited rights prevail. In the intricate tapestry of the prison industrial complex, we confront a profound challenge that transcends temporary reforms. The only holistic and ethical approach calls for a paradigm shift, a reimagining of justice itself. Within this context, we fiercely advocate for granting incarcerated individuals fundamental rights: the right to choose voluntary work and earn fair wages, and the freedom to join unions. These rights are not concessions; they are affirmations of human dignity and agency, and are necessary to improving the material conditions of incarcerated people.

Washington, DC: CLASP, 2024. 6p.

By Giada Girelli, Marcela Jofré, and Ajeng Larasati

Harm Reduction International (HRI) has monitored the use of the death penalty for drug offences worldwide since our first ground-breaking publication on this issue in 2007. This report, our 13th on the subject, continues our work of providing regular updates on legislative, policy and practical developments related to the use of capital punishment for drug offences, a practice which isa clear violation of international human rights and drug control standards.

This year marks the beginning of a new approach to our flagship publication. Every edition of this report will provide key data and updated categories, as well as high-level developments at the national and international level. A deeper analysis of developments and trends will be published in the 2024 edition and on alternate years. The methodology used for both reports remains the same. HRI opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception.

Harm Reduction International, 2024. 22p.

By Solitary Watch, American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana; Jesuit Social Research Institute/Loyola University New Orleans

The use of solitary confinement in the state of Louisiana has penetrated the broader public consciousness largely through the story of the Angola 3. Over the past decade, the harrowing saga of three African American men—all likely innocent of the prison murders that were used to justify confining them in solitary for up to 43 years—sparked media attention and public outcry as the ultimate expression of harsh, racist, Southern injustice. But there is another story to be told about solitary confinement in Louisiana. Like the story of the Angola 3, it is deeply rooted in the history of racial subjugation and captivity in the South, which begins with slavery and stretches through convict leasing and Jim Crow to the modern era of mass incarceration. However, it extends far beyond the lives of just three men. This is the story of a prison system where, on any given day, nearly one in five people is being held in isolation, placed there by prison staff, often for minor rule violations or “administrative” reasons. When it conducted a full count in the fall of 2017, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LADOC) reported that 19 percent of the men in its state prisons—2,709 in all—had been in solitary confinement for more than two weeks. Many had been there for years or even decades. The Vera Institute of Justice, which released its own report on solitary confinement in Louisiana earlier this year, similarly found over 17 percent of the state’s prison population in solitary in 2016. These rates of solitary confinement use were more than double the next highest state’s, and approximately four times the national average. Given that Louisiana also has the second highest incarceration rate in the United States, which leads the world in both incarceration and solitary confinement use, it is clear that Louisiana holds the title of solitary confinement capital of the world. The state has this dishonorable distinction at a time when a growing body of evidence offers proof of the devastating psychological and social harms caused by prolonged solitary confinement, as well as its ineffectiveness as a tool to reduce prison violence. In 2015, when it revised its Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (known as the Mandela Rules), the United Nations acknowledged that solitary confinement of 15 days or more is cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment that often rises to the level of torture. Taken together, these facts indicate that the state of Louisiana is abusing and at times torturing thousands of its citizens for no legitimate purpose whatsoever. The numbers, however, still tell only part of the story. Just as Albert Woodfox’s memoir "Solitary" powerfully conveys what it is like to live for decades in conditions that are designed “to break people,” the words of individuals living in solitary confinement are vital to understanding the reality of what is happening today in Louisiana’s prisons. For this report, we collected information directly from those men and women. The bulk of the report is based on detailed responses from more than 700 lengthy surveys completed by individuals in solitary, whose names and identifying information have been changed to protect their safety and privacy. Their descriptions paint a grim picture of long stretches of time spent in small cells that are often windowless, filthy, and/or subject to extreme temperatures, where they are denied basic human needs such as adequate food and daily exercise, and subject to many forms of abuse as well as to unending idleness and loneliness, resulting in physical and mental deterioration. Since surveys were returned voluntarily, the results cannot be viewed as a comprehensive or representative sampling. Yet with more than 700 responses from all nine of the state’s prisons, which provided personal narratives as well as quantitative data,8 we believe our report complements, builds upon, and adds an even greater sense of urgency to previous recommendations for reform of solitary confinement in Louisiana, including those included in the recent report by the Vera Institute of Justice. At a moment when LADOC has, for the first time, shown willingness to reconsider and reduce its use of solitary confinement, the findings in this report offer vital insights—and illuminate a path toward the sweeping changes that must be made if Louisiana is to create a prison system that succeeds in both advancing public safety and preserving the human rights of incarcerated people. Major findings from this report include the following: • More than 77 percent of respondents said they had been held in solitary confinement for more than a year, and 30 percent said they had been in solitary for more than five years. LADOC has not collected data on duration of time in solitary. Nationally, less than 20 percent of individuals in solitary, on average, have been there for more than one year. The United Nations has called on countries to ban the use of solitary beyond two weeks. • Just over 56 percent of respondents were in Extended Lockdown, which is generally used as punishment for prison rule violations, and which has no maximum duration. This type of segregation violates UN prohibitions on both using isolation for punishment (as opposed to safety) and using it for indefinite periods. • African Americans were over-represented among respondents. This racial disparity is consistent with the Vera Institute’s report, which also found higher percentages of African Americans and lower percentages of whites in solitary than in the general prison population. • More than half of respondents believed their mental health had worsened during their time in solitary. Most others said it had stayed the same or weren’t sure. • Many described psychological problems consistent with research on the negative mental health effects of prolonged solitary confinement. These include anxiety, panic attacks, depression, hopelessness, sensitivity to light and sound, visual and auditory hallucinations, rage, paranoia, and difficulty interacting with others. Some expressed fear that the damage would be permanent, and they would “never be the same again.” • More than one-quarter of respondents reported engaging in self-harm, including cutting and head-banging, while in solitary, while less than 6 percent said they had done so while in general population. More than 66 percent said that they had witnessed others attempting to harm themselves frequently while in solitary. Of those who had harmed themselves, 4 percent said they received counseling in response, while more than 26 percent said they were punished for it. etc.....

New Orleans: Solitary Watch American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana Jesuit Social Research Institute/Loyola University New Orleans. 2019. 135p.

By The Center for Human Rights

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred urgent and growing concerns about the health of immigrants held in detention centers in the United States. In fact, awareness of the problem is not new: in 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general raised deep questions about the agency’s preparedness for a possible pandemic event,[1] concerns that were reiterated last December when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denounced DHS for having medical infrastructure it described as “not sufficient to assure rapid and adequate infection control measures.”[2]

Here in Washington, over the course of recent years, increasing activism by people detained at the Northwest Detention Center[3] (NWDC) and community supporters has spurred pointed criticism by elected officials at the local, state, and national level of conditions within the facility. Sustained media attention and multiple lawsuits have also forced the facility to defend its practices. In March 2020, the Washington State Legislature passed HB 2576, a law mandating inquiries into state and local oversight mechanisms regarding conditions in the NWDC, further underscoring the perceived need to address gaps in understanding regarding the health and welfare of those housed within the facility.

In this context, the UW Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) considers it important to make our ongoing research on conditions within the NWDC available to the public. As part of our longstanding effort to examine the human rights implications of federal immigration enforcement in our state, UWCHR has sought, since 2017, to obtain information about conditions of detention in public and private detention facilities where immigrants are housed in Washington state.[4] While our efforts to obtain information about conditions within the NWDC have been only partially successful due to the lack of transparency surrounding the facility, the information we have obtained is sufficiently concerning, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that we are choosing to share our initial findings with the public even as our collection and analysis of further data continues.

This report will be published as a series discussing areas of human rights concern at the facility, including background, methodology, and relevant human rights standards; sanitation of food and laundry; allegations of medical neglect; use of solitary confinement; COVID-19 and health standards; reporting of sexual assault and abuse; and uses of force and chemical agents. The report includes research updates covering concerns about cleanliness at the detention center going unanswered and a look at the context for Charles Leo Daniel’s death at the NWDC.

The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

By Paul H. Robinson and Jeffrey Seaman

The decarceration movement enjoys enthusiastic support from many academics and activists who point out imprisonment’s failure to rehabilitate and its potential criminogenic effects. At the same time, many fiscal conservatives and taxpayer groups are critical of imprisonment’s high costs and supportive of finding cheaper alternatives. Yet, despite this widespread support, the decarceration movement has made little real progress at getting offenders out of prison, in large part because community views, and thus political officials, are strongly committed to the importance of doing justice – giving offenders the punishment they deserve – and decarceration is commonly seen as inconsistent with that nonnegotiable principle. Indeed, almost no one in the decarceration movement has attempted to formulate a large-scale decarceration plan that still provides for what the community would see as just punishment.

In this Article, we offer just such a plan by demonstrating that it is entirely possible to avoid the incarceration of most offenders through utilizing non-incarcerative sanctions that can carry a total punitive effect comparable to physical prison. New technologies allow for imposing “electronic prison” sentences where authorities can monitor, control, and punish offenders in a cheaper and less damaging way than physical prison while still doing justice. Further, the monitoring conditions provided in electronic prison allow for the imposition of a wide array of other non-incarcerative sanctions that were previously difficult or impossible to enforce. Even while it justly punishes, electronic prison can dramatically increase an offender’s opportunities for training, treatment, education, and rehabilitation while avoiding the problems of unsupported families, socialization to criminality, and problematic reentry after physical incarceration. And, from a public safety standpoint, electronic prison can reduce recidivism by eliminating the criminogenic effect of incarceration and also provides longer-term monitoring of offenders than an equivalently punitive shorter term of physical imprisonment. Of course, one can imagine a variety of objections to an electronic prison system, ranging from claims it violates an offender’s rights to fears it may widen the net of carceral control. The Article provides a response to each.

Electronic prison is one of those rare policy proposals that should garner support from across the political spectrum due to effectively addressing the complaints against America’s incarceration system lodged by voices on the left, right, and center. Whether one’s primary concern is decarcerating prisoners and providing offenders with needed treatment, training, counseling, and education, or one’s concern is reducing crime, imposing deserved punishment, or simply reducing government expenditures, implementing an electronic prison system would provide a dramatic improvement over America’s current incarceration policies.

Written April 2024. U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 24-20,

Sandra Babcock, Nathalie Greenfield and Kathryn Adamson

This article presents a comprehensive study of 48 persons sentenced to death between 1990 and 2023 who presented as women at the time of their trials. Our research is the first of its kind to conduct a holistic and intersectional analysis of the factors driving women’s death sentences. It reveals commonalities across women’s cases, delving into their experiences of motherhood, gender-based violence and prior involvement with the criminal legal system. We also explore the nature of the women’s crimes of conviction, including the role of male co-defendants and the State’s use of aggravating factors. Finally, we reveal for the first time the extent to which capital prosecutions are dominated by men—including judges, elected District Attorneys, defense attorneys, and juror forepersons—and explain why gender matters in determining who lives and who dies.

We present our data against the backdrop of prevalent theories that seek to explain both the rarity of women’s executions and the reasons why certain women are singled out for the harshest punishment provided by law. We explain why those frameworks are inadequate to understand the role that systemic gender bias plays in women’s capital prosecutions. We conclude by arguing for more nuanced research that embraces the complexities in women’s capital cases and accounts for the presence of systemic and intersectional discrimination.

Cardozo Law Review, Forthcoming (Written April, 2024}.

By Aaron Littman

The machinery of mass incarceration in America is huge, intricate, and destructive. To understand it and to tame it, scholars and activists look for its levers of power—where are they, who holds them, and what motivates them? This much we know: legislators criminalize, police arrest, prosecutors charge, judges sentence, prison officials confine, and probation and parole officials manage release.

As this Article reveals, jailers, too, have their hands on the controls. The sheriffs who run jails—along with the county commissioners who fund them—have tremendous but unrecognized power over the size and shape of our criminal legal system, particularly in rural areas and for people accused or convicted of low-level crimes.

Because they have the authority to build jails (or not) as well as the authority to release people (or not), they exercise significant control not merely over conditions but also over both the supply of and demand for jail bedspace: how large they should be, how many people they should confine, and who those people should be. By advocating, financing, and contracting for jail bedspace, sheriffs and commissioners determine who has a say and who has a stake in carceral expansion and contraction. Through their exercise of arrest and release powers, sheriffs affect how many and which people fill their cells. Constraints they create or relieve on carceral infrastructure exert or alleviate pressure on officials at the local, state, and federal levels.

Drawing on surveys of state statutes and of municipal securities filings, data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, case law, and media coverage, this Article tells overlooked stories—of sheriffs who send their deputies out door knocking to convince voters to support a new tax to fund a new jail, and of commissioners who raise criminal court fees and sign contracts to detain “rental inmates” to ensure that incarceration “pays for itself.” It also tells of sheriffs who override the arrest decisions of city police officers, release defendants who have not made bail, and cut sentences short—and of those who would rather build more beds than push back on carceral inertia.

A spotlight on jails and the officials who run them illuminates important attributes of our carceral crisis. The power and incentives to build jail bedspace are as consequential as the power and incentives to fill it. Expanding a county’s jailing capacity has profound ramifications across local, state, and federal criminal legal systems. Sheriffs have a unique combination of controls over how big and how full their jails are, but this role consolidation does not produce the restraint that some have predicted. Their disclaimers of responsibility are a smokescreen, obscuring sheriffs’ bureaucratic commitment to perpetuating mass incarceration. State courts and federal agencies have increasingly recognized and regulated public profiteering through jail contracting, and advocates have begun to hold jailers accountable, challenging expansion in polling booths and budget meetings.

74 Vanderbilt Law Review 861 (2021)

By Aaron Littman

What law governs American prisons and jails, and what does it matter? This Article offers new answers to both questions.

To many scholars and advocates, “prison law” means the constitutional limits that the Eighth Amendment and Due Process Clauses impose on permissible punishment. Yet, as I show, 'free-world' regulatory law also shapes incarceration, determining the safety of the food imprisoned people eat, the credentials of their health-care providers, the costs of communicating with their family members, and whether they are exposed to wildfire smoke or rising floodwaters.

Unfortunately, regulatory law’s protections often recede at the prison gate. Sanitation inspectors visit correctional kitchens, find coolers smeared with blood and sinks without soap—and give passing grades. Medical licensure boards permit suspended doctors to practice—but only on incarcerated people. Constitutional law does not fill the gap, treating standards like a threshold for toxic particulates or the requirements of a fire code more as a safe harbor than a floor.

But were it robustly applied, I argue, free-world regulatory law would have a lot to offer those challenging carceral conditions that constitutional prison law lacks. Whether you think that criminal-justice policy’s problem is its lack of empirical grounding or you want to shift power and resources from systems of punishment to systems of care, I contend that you should take a close look at free-world regulatory law behind bars, and work to strengthen it.

131 Yale Law Journal 1385 (2022)

UCLA School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 22-18

By U.S. National Institute of Justice

In a complex system, like a hospital system or a criminal justice system, an unexpected, negative occurrence or outcome is rarely the result of a single act, event, or slip-up. More likely the bad outcome is a sentinel event — a significant negative outcome that indicates fundamental weaknesses in the system and which is likely the result of multiple factors. A systematic review of the sentinel event can identify system gaps and opportunities that improve the system and reduce the risk of future bad events. For this reason, the fields of aviation, medicine, and the military conduct a Sentinel Event Review (SER) to assess the processes that resulted in the sentinel event. A SER seeks to identify systemic opportunities for improving processes. NIJ has made investments over the years in applying the SER process in the criminal justice field. The implementation of SER in criminal justice has involved the review of negative outcomes along with “near misses” and even successful outcomes to better understand the specific conditions contributing to negative outcomes. This report discusses the application of the SER process to the Successful Transition and Reentry Together (START) program in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the first SER in the federal criminal justice system. The SER of START reviewed four cases of individuals who participated in the program. The reviews took reentry failure as their sentinel event, although two of the four cases were successes that the SER team defined as “near misses.

Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 2024. 72p.

By Switchback

The report focuses on prison-leavers’ mental health. We know that the experience of prison-release can cause high levels of anxiety. At the same time mental health care in prison and especially after release is minimal and worsening.

Meanwhile at Switchback, over the last two years we have seen a 15% rise in the number of our Trainees with identified mental health needs (from 29% to 44%).

This report highlights the urgent need for us to reshape the way we release people from prison. We are calling for better mental health support for people leaving prison and for a prison release system that responds to the emotional challenges that people leaving prison are facing. A system that supports people to live life differently.

The experiences included within the report demonstrate inequities in access to care for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, with 90% of Switchback Trainees being from an ethnic minority background. Importantly mental health was a repeated topic of discussion in our Experts by Experience meetings, and together we decided we wanted to do something about it.

London: Switchback, 2024. 24p.

By Matthew S Johnston , Rosemary Ricciardelli

Public safety personnel are at an elevated risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors relative to the general public. Correctional workers in particular report some of the highest prevalence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. To better understand this phenomenon, the current study draws on qualitative, open-ended survey response data (n = 94) that explores three distinct themes (occupational environment, lack of support, social silence) and how entrenched notions of mental health stigma and occupational culture inform how Canadian correctional workers understand their experiences with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. We conclude with a brief discussion of the research and policy implications, with an emphasis on mobilizing efforts to normalize mental health discussion in correctional workplaces, bolstering peer support resources, and collaboration, and assessing the limited organizational supports available to struggling staff.

Front Psychol.. 2023 Jan 4:13:1026821. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1026821. eCollection 2022.