Empire State of Incarceration
February 18, 2021
All Research & Analysis
Empire State of Incarceration
For decades, thousands of New Yorkers, primarily people of color, were held in jail pretrial—sometimes for years—simply because they could not afford to pay bail. Bail reform ushered in a period of considerable decarceration across New York State, and the number of people in jail dropped even further as authorities responded to the COVID-19 pandemi ...
Second Chance Pell: Four Years of Expanding Access to Education in Prison
The Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, provides need-based Pell Grants to people in state and federal prisons. The initiative examines whether expanding access to college financial aid increases incarcerated adults’ participation in postsecondary educational opportunities. This re ...
Eight Ways to Ease the Child Detention Crisis
Immigration Brief
More than a decade after the conditions in northern Central America led to increasing numbers of families and children arriving in the United States without their parents, the federal government has failed to build a humane system to ensure their welfare and safety. As a result, children as young as six are being detained in overcrowded U.S. Border ...
Looking Beyond Conviction History
Recommendations for Public Housing Authority Admissions Policies
Safe, affordable housing is essential for the millions of people released from U.S. jails and prisons each year. But most public housing authorities (PHAs) have admissions policies that prevent formerly incarcerated people from living there. For nearly all types of convictions, housing authorities exercise their individual discretion to set eligibi ...
Implementing the Vision at the Local and State Level Summary
Advancing Universal Representation: A Toolkit for Advocates, Organizers, Legal Service Providers, and Policymakers
Universal representation—a public defender system for all immigrants facing deportation—is based on the fundamental belief that everyone deserves due process under the law. While a growing movement works toward a legally mandated and federally funded representation system, several counties, cities, and states have stepped up to fund deportation def ...
Mapping U.S. Jails' Use of Restrictive Housing
Trends, disparities, and other forms of lockdown
The use of restrictive housing (solitary confinement) in U.S. prisons and the rationales for or against it have been the subject of widespread research and debate. Much less is known, however, about restrictive housing in U.S. jails, due to lack of standardized policies, limited data, and the rapid turnover of people detained. Furthermore, many jai ...
The Impacts of Solitary Confinement
Advocacy and human rights groups, policymakers, health care professionals, faith-based organizations, and leaders in the field of corrections have condemned the widespread use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers. Research shows the serious detrimental effects of spending 22 to 24 hours per day alone and ...
Why Are People Sent to Solitary Confinement? The Reasons Might Surprise You.
Solitary confinement, a widespread practice in U.S. prisons and jails, has been shown by an extensive body of research to have harmful and long-lasting negative effects on people held there, without evidence of improved safety for the correctional facilities or the community. Many people assume that solitary confinement is used only for serious and ...
What Jails Cost: Cities
Artwork by Emilio (Massachusetts)
Unseen and Unheard
Art and Writing from Inside Prison Walls during COVID-19
A Monumental Shift: Restoring Access to Pell Grants for Incarcerated Students
After 26-year ban lifts, incarcerated students can once again receive this federal financial aid
In December 2020, Congress lifted a 26-year ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated students. The ban, enacted amid a slew of “tough-on-crime” policies in the 1990s, stripped people in prison of access to this federal financial aid. Incarcerated people earn pennies per hour for the work they do in prison, making it next to impossible for them to afford ...
What Jails Cost
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