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In March 2014, the Prison Policy Initiative released a graphic visually clarifying the amount of people incarcerated within systems of federal, state, local, and other types of confinement in America. These various systems hold over 2.4 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories. The briefing reveals fascinating statistics on the enormous churn in and out of American prisons and jails, on the amount of people incarcerated for drug-related crimes, on the vast number of children behind bars for minor offenses, and on immigration-related detentions. The sources behind the graphic are multiple, but they include the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The Editorial Board at the New York Timespublished an editorial on September 21st, 2014, pointing to the obstacles individuals with criminal records face in being admitted to higher education programs. The editorial states: “There is a widely overlooked obstacle to higher education that confronts at least 70 million Americans who have criminal records – often […]

As James Kilgore reveals in a recent article in Counterpunch, “The Persistence of Mass Incarceration,” despite growing optimism over the past four years that mass incarceration was on the decline, the 2013 Bureau of Justice annual statistics report revealed that incarceration numbers (for state and federal prisons combined) have in fact risen for the first time since 2009–a rise of about .3%. Importantly, the report details that the number of people in federal facilities actually declined for the first time since 1980 with 1,900 fewer prisoners in 2013 than in 2012; however, the increase of 6,300 individuals (0.5%) incarcerated in state facilities contributed to the overall rise. In Massachusetts specifically, the number of men imprisoned also fell from 2012 to 2013, while the number of women imprisoned remained consistent.

The Petey Greene Program was founded in 2008 in Princeton, New Jersey. Currently in partnerships with universities in New Jersey, and expanding to those inWashington, D.C., Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, the program supports educational achievement in prisons by providing free, one-on-one tutoring for students pursuing their degrees while incarcerated. Although studies have shown that […]

A new report written by a Research Analyst at The Sentencing Project, Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., reveals that white Americans’ association of people of color with criminality influences criminal justice policies, allowing for the creation of more punitive policies that disproportionately impact black and Latino Americans. The report, “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies,” interrogates how racial perceptions of crime serve as a key driving force of criminal justice outcomes; it also offer recommendations and remedies for various stakeholders, including the media and researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, for how to limit their own and the public’s perceived linkages between race and crime, and temper its influence on criminal justice.