state of mass incarceration

New Orleans

• Orleans Parish Judicial Accountability Report 
• New Orleans: Who’s in Jail and Why? ​​ 

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Louisiana

• ACLU Smart Justice Louisiana’s Prisons 
• 50 State Incarceration Profiles and Louisiana​ ​​

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United States - Adult ​

• Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 
• Vera Institute - People in Prison 
• Incarceration and supervision by state

United States - Juvenile

• Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 
• Impact of Juvenile Justice Reform
• Why do we lock juveniles up for life and throw away the key? Race plays a big part.​

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International

• World Prison Population List 
• States of Incarceration: The Global Context 

policies & structures that drive mass incarceration

Law Enforcement

• A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States  
• What "Stop-and-Frisk" Really Means: Discrimination & Use of Force​

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Sentencing Laws

• The Immediate Consequences of Federal Pretrial Detention 
• Still Life: America’s Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences 
• The Impact of Mandatory Minimum Penalties in Federal Sentencing 
• Mandatory sentencing was once America’s law-and-order panacea. Here’s why it’s not working

School-to-Prison Pipeline

• The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Black and White 
• Suspended Childhood: An Analysis of Exclusionary Discipline of Texas' Pre-K and Elementary School Students 
• Disproportionate Impact of K-12 School Suspension and Expulsion on Black Students in Southern States

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The War on Drugs

• Ending driver's license suspensions for drug offenses unrelated to driving 
• Reaching too far, coming up short: How sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark 
• Department of Justice Report on DEA Encounters and Racial Profiling 
• The War on Drugs: Wasting Billions and Undermining Economies

Prison Profiteering

• Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration: U.S. Growth in Private Prisons 
• Police Brutality Bonds How Wall Street Profits from Police Violence 
• Following the Money of Mass Incarceration

Prison practices & conditions 

General Health

• Linkages Between Incarceration and Health 
• The steep cost of medical co-pays in prison puts health at risk 
• The life-threatening reality of short jail stays 
• Reproductive Injustice: The State of Reproductive Health Care for Women in New York State Prisons ​

Solitary Confinement

• Louisiana on Lockdown: A Report on the Use of Solitary Confinement in Louisiana State Prisons, With Testimony From the People Who Live It 
• A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement
• ​Aging Alone: Uncovering the risk of solitary confinement for people over 45

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Death Penalty

• The CaliforniaDeath Penalty is Discriminatory, Unfair, and Officially Suspended. So Why Does Los AngelesDistrict Attorney Jackie Lacey Still Seek to Use It? 
• Judged for More Than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty 
• Prisoners in Ohio's Execution List Defined By Intellectual Impairment, Mental Illness, Trauma, and Young Age​​

impact of mass incarceration on different people

People of Color

• Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System 

• Black Disparities in Youth Incarceration 

• The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons 

• Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies  ​​
• The Criminal Justice System is Riddled with Racial Disparities
• The Racial Geography of Mass Incarceration​
• Racial Disparities in D.C. Policing

Poor and Working-Class People

• Commercialized (In)Justice: Consumer Abuses in the Bail And Corrections Industry 
• Return to Nowhere: The Revolving Door Between Incarceration and Homelessness 
• No Credit For Time Served? Incarceration and Credit-Driven Crime Cycles 
• How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time 
• Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the pre-incarceration incomes of the imprisoned 
• A Lifetime of Punishment: The Impact of the Felony Drug Ban on Welfare Benefits

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People with Mental Health Conditions

• Locked Up and Locked Down: Segregation of Inmates with Mental Illness   
• The Burden of Mental Illness Behind Bars 
• How Often and How Consistently do Symptoms Directly Precede Criminal Behavior Among Offenders With Mental Illness?  ​

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People who Migrate

• The State of Black Immigrants 
• Criminal Immigrants in 2017: Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin 
• The Cost of Crimmigration: Exploring the Intersection Between Criminal Justice and Immigration 
• Indefensible: A Decade of Mass Incarceration of Migrants Prosecuted for Crossing the Border 
• Isolated in Essex: Punishing immigrants through solitary confinement 
• "Do You See How Much I'm Suffering Here?" Abuse against Transgender Women in US Immigration Detention

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LGBTQ+ and Transgender People

• Failing to Protect and Serve: Police Department Policies Towards Transgender People 
• LGBTQ People Behind Bars: A Guide to Understanding the Issues Facing Transgender Prisoners and Their Legal Rights 
• Unjust: LGBTQ Youth Incarcerated in the Juvenile Justice System 
• Unjust: How the broken criminal justice system fails LGBT people of color 
• LGBTQ Individuals with Criminal records Face Challenges to Rebuilding Their Lives 
• Exploring Healthcare Experiences for Incarcerated Individuals Who Identify as Transgender in a Southern Jail

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Women

• States of Women’s Incarceration: The Global Context 
• Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 
• The Gender Divide: Tracking Women's State Prison Growth 
• Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected​ ​

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Families

• State of Phone Justice: Local jails, state prisons and private phone providers 
• Protecting Written Family Communication in Jails: A 50-State Survey 
• Separation by Bars and Miles: Visitation in state prisons 
• Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families 
• Screening Out Family Time: for-profit video visitation​
• ​Jail will separate 2.3 million mothers from their children this year
• Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children​

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post-incarceration barriers 

Housing

• ​Return to Nowhere: The Revolving Door Between Incarceration and Homelessness 
• Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people

​Education

• Educational exclusion and attainment among formerly incarcerated people 
• Boxed Out: Criminal History Screening and College Application Attrition

Voting

• Felony Disenfranchisement: A Primer  
• 6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement

Employment

• Unemployment among formerly incarcerated people 
• Work and opportunity before and after incarceration

Socioeconomic Status

• Too Poor to Pay: How Arkansas's Offender-Funded Justice System Drives Poverty & Mass Incarceration 
• "Set up to Fail": The Impact of Offender-Funded Private Probation on the Poor 
• Punishing Poverty: The high cost of probation fees in Massachusetts 
• Court Fines and Fees: Criminalizing Poverty in North Carolina​ ​

​POSSIBILITIES FOR A BETTER FUTURE

• Preventing Suicide and Self-Harm in Jail: A Sentinel Events Approach
• Study Finds Treating Inmates’ Mental Health Reduces Their Risk of Returning to Jail 
• A Better Way: Community-Based Programming As An Alternative To Immigrant Incarceration 
• Grading the parole release systems of all 50 states 
• A Way Out: Abolishing Death by Incarceration in Pennsylvania 
• Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences 
• Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth 
• Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights 
• Study on Drug Policy Change in NY (allowing alternatives to mandatory minimums) 
• Eliminating Racial Inequity in the Criminal Justice System (Reform Strategy) 
• How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records ​​

​For an even larger database of reports on incarceration policies, visit The Prison Policy Initiative