Our mission is to empower activists, journalists, and policymakers to shape effective criminal legal system policy, so we go beyond our original reports and analyses to curate a database of the best empirical research on the criminal legal system available online. This newsletter includes just the newest additions to this database.

Kids and the criminal legal system

Friends,

Across the country, most students are returning to the classroom, yet over 30,000 are held under lock and key in the juvenile “justice” system. This month, we’re taking a closer look at mass incarceration’s impacts on kids, both directly and indirectly, highlighting some of the best research on the topic.

Before we dive in, though, if you haven’t done so already, I hope you’ll check out our new report, Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2025. In it, we take a big picture look at the state of youth confinement in America, explain that too many kids are still locked up and that racial disparities in the system are getting worse, and highlight the ways that the juvenile criminal legal system overlaps with the adult system. It provides a strong foundation for people who are unfamiliar with how the youth confinement system works.

• Impacts of school suspension: Discipline in schools reverberates far outside the classroom, as this 2023 report shows. It looked at the impacts of school suspensions on kids from different racial and ethnic groups and future arrests. The researchers found that Black and Hispanic kids who were suspended from school were at higher risk of future arrest. Why? One of the main theories is that they’re labeled as “bad kids” more often than their white peers who are suspended.
• Pushed into debt: Fees aren’t just an unjust cornerstone of the adult criminal legal system; they’re also common in the juvenile systems. Reports out of Florida and Virginia take a closer look at the impact of these charges, and they found that Black and Hispanic kids and their families were especially harmed. Even more infuriating, these charges bring a host of additional consequences to these kids, including making it harder for them to participate in job corps programs or get their driver’s license.
• Far-reaching impacts: It isn’t just the kids directly entangled in the criminal legal system that feel its pain. This 2024 study looked at electronic health records for thousands of kids. It found that kids who had family members ensnared in the criminal legal system had up to 16 times higher prevalence of mental or physical health diagnoses.

There is hope, though. More and more, schools and teachers recognize that punitive approaches of the past aren’t serving kids or communities. That’s why the National Juvenile Justice Network has put together a guide to help educators ensure that the classroom remains a place that prioritizes promise and opportunity, rather than punishment.

Now, onto the rest of the recent additions to our Research Library. We’ve added 22 new reports that look at voting in prison, the power of court watch programs, immigration policy, and much more. We hope they’re useful in your work.

-Leah Wang, Senior Research Analyst

P.S. If you’re a teacher, looking to educate students about the mass incarceration crisis, we’ve put together a collection of resources to help you develop lessons on the carceral system.

We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 22 new reports to the Research Library:

Community impact

See 117 reports on the impact of the criminal legal system on housing, schools, employment, neighborhoods, and more.

• How states can lead on community safety: Five recommendations for preventing and reducing violence by Brookings Institution, May, 2025
  "Especially during a time of scarce resources, state leaders cannot afford such backsliding--nor can they afford a resulting uptick in gun violence, which already costs the United States $557 billion each year."

Conditions of confinement

See 283 reports on prison and jail conditions, such as solitary confinement, labor, discipline, food, and more.

• Climate and the Impact on CDCR by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, June, 2025
  "In 2024, the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) adopted a new indoor heat standard specific to all indoor work areas...State and local detention facilities were excluded from those regulations."
• The Dark Figure of Prison Violence: A Multi-Strategy Approach to Uncovering the Prevalence of Prison Violence by H. Daniel Butler et al., December, 2024
  "We examined almost a decade worth of administrative data (2012-2020), comprising almost 3.5 million guilty rule violations, of which 13% consisted of violence... violent rule infractions ranged from 7% to 29% of all guilty infractions across the states."
• Sources and Consequences of Prison Violence: Key Findings and Recommendations from the Prison Violence Consortium by Nancy Rodriguez et al., December, 2024
  "Prison violence was concentrated among a small subset of persons, as 10% of the population accounted for more than 50% of guilty violent infractions."

Courts and trials

See 172 reports on prosecutors, judges, public defense, court caseloads, and more.

• Imposing Instability: How Court Fines and Fees Destabilize Government Budgets and Criminalize Those Who Cannot Pay by Fines and Fees Justice Center, July, 2025
  "Between 2018 and 2022, the number of new court cases dropped by 20 percent, yet the amount of fines and fees imposed increased by 3 percent."

Crime

See 288 reports on crime, crime rates, and victimization.

• The Power of Courtwatch by Courtwatch PG, May, 2025
  "In 2024, our [Prince George's County, Md.] court watchers observed and took notes on nearly 3000 bond hearings, including a controlled sample of 1399 hearings for the purpose of developing accurate statistics."

Economics of incarceration

See 185 reports on the economic drivers and consequences of mass incarceration.

• Paying for One's Own Incarceration: National Landscape of "Pay-to-Stay" Fees by Campaign Zero, June, 2025
  "48 states allow for the imposition of at least one category of pay-to-stay fees; only the states of California and Illinois have repealed fees for all categories in state correctional facilities."

Families

See 160 reports on the criminal legal system's impacts on families.

• We Can't Afford It: Mass Incarceration and the Family Tax by FWD.us, June, 2025
  "Incarceration is costing families with incarcerated loved ones almost $350 billion every year...people with an immediate family member in prison are spending an average of nearly $4,200 annually to stay in touch."

Felony disenfranchisement and voting rights

See 94 reports on laws barring people from the polls because of criminal convictions.

• Voting From Prison: Lessons from Maine and Vermont by Sentencing Project, July, 2025
  "Only 14% of survey respondents said they were reminded by facility staff about important voting dates and deadlines."

General

See 171 reports on the criminal legal system.

• Incarceration on Rikers Island in the Aftermath of the New York State Corrections Officers Strike by Data Collaborative for Justice, July, 2025
  "As of June 2025, [NY DOCCS] prison staffing included 3,000 fewer lieutenants, sergeants, and officers--a 21% reduction from the average in 2024."

Immigration

See 78 reports on the incarceration and detainment of immigrants.

• Prices for all Americans are set to unnecessarily rise by FWD.us, June, 2025
  "Recent and proposed immigration policies will result in American families paying an additional $2,150 for goods and services each year by the end of 2028."

Jails

See 298 reports on jail populations, jail conditions, jail construction, and more.

• Urgent Need for New D.C. Jail by Center for Court Excellence and Office of the D.C. Auditor, May, 2025
  "There were at least 790 - an average of more than two per day - reported assaults on staff and residents during the audit period."
• Immigration policy, immigrant detention, and the U.S. jail system by Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes and Mary J. Lopez, March, 2022
  "Using data from the 2006-2018 Annual Survey of Jails, we find that increases in the number of detainees held for ICE are related to higher noncitizen jailed populations that are not offset by reductions in their citizen counterparts."

Policing

See 276 reports on arrests, traffic stops, law enforcement interactions, and more.

• Police Militarization in San Francisco Bay Area by Magali Ruer, American Friends Service Committee, June, 2025
  This interactive StoryMap contains data on assault rifle holdings and other militarization efforts in police departments around the Bay Area.

Pretrial detention

See 137 reports on the costs and outcomes of detaining people before trial.

• The Indispensable Role of Judges in Curtailing Excessive Pretrial Detention and Closing Rikers Island by Close Rikers, April, 2025
  "Judges must change an array of pretrial practices that do not advance either public safety or the statutory goal of assuring return to court."

Probation and parole

See 129 reports on community supervision policies, conditions, violations, and more.

• New York Must Rethink Its Parole Release System by Vera Institute of Justice, September, 2023
  "In 2022, the release rate for Black parole-seekers was 29 percent, slightly lower than for Latino parole-seekers (31 percent) and substantially lower than for white parole-seekers (40 percent)."

Reentry and recidivism

See 259 reports on the challenges and outcomes for people released from incarceration, including collateral consequences.

• The Impacts of Clean Slate Laws in Pennsylvania, Utah, and Michigan by Clean Slate Initiative, June, 2025
  "Among respondents who had their records sealed through an automated system, close to half (42%) reported improvement in work, employment, personal finances, or public assistance."
• Impact of Debt-Based License Suspension Reform on Statewide Employment by Robert Apel and Colleen Chien, April, 2025
  "When analyzed as a categorical or continuous score, states that pass more comprehensive debt-based license suspension reform benefit from growth of 1 percentage point or more in statewide employment."

Women and gender

See 149 reports on gender disparities in the criminal legal system.

• Evaluation Report: Implementation of Minnesota's Healthy Start Act by Rebecca Shlafer, PhD, MPH and Ingie Osman, MPH, May, 2025
  "Many individuals expressed that - particularly in the beginning - there was not a clear, uniform process of informing individuals about HSA, its screening criteria, or what the policy would mean for their potential clients." Minnesota passed the Healthy Start Act in 2021, allowing the conditional release of sentenced, pregnant and postpartum people into community-based alternatives for the duration of the pregnancy and up to one year postpartum.
• The Hidden Heart of Reentry by Essie Justice Group, May, 2025
  "In the early years of the bail outs, Essie focused primarily on securing release without structured support...by 2019, Essie [was] providing more comprehensive support tailored to the specific needs of each mama."
• Mental Health Care Barriers for Women Involved in the Criminal Legal System With Substance Use Disorders: A Qualitative Study by Emma M. Skogseth et al., March, 2025
  "While women expressed concern about stigma around seeking mental health medications, some of the professionals expressed stigmatizing views about potential misuse of medications."

Youth and juvenile justice

See 401 reports on youth in the criminal legal system.

• From Punishment to Prevention: A Better Approach to Addressing Youth Gun Possession by Sentencing Project, June, 2025
  "In our national survey [of public defenders and youth justice professionals], 57% characterized the courts' handling of gun possession cases in their jurisdictions as "a major concern.""