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Our mission is to empower activists, journalists, and policymakers to shape effective criminal justice 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 highlights the newest additions to this database.
Research that caught our eyes in 2025
Friends,
2025 was a challenging year on many fronts. One of the difficulties that has flown under the radar is the rapidly shrinking support for research and nonprofit advocacy that highlights the horrors of the criminal legal system. This reduction has occurred at a time when multiple crises are rocking the system.
Despite these challenges, though, determined researchers and advocates have published essential data and reports about the harms of mass incarceration and criminalization. So, before we ring in the new year, we wanted to highlight a few of the pieces published this year that caught our attention.
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Immigration detention: Understanding the conditions and use of immigrant detention is more important than ever. This investigation published in JAMA Network Open found that longer stays in immigrant detention centers (which are less deeply studied compared to state prisons and local jails) were associated with poorer self-reported physical and mental health.
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Aging prison populations: This overview by Meghan Novisky and colleagues provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between incarceration, health, and aging, laying out a research agenda to further understand and improve care. And the ACLU and Prison and Jail Innovation Lab put out their own report with state-level data and important policy solutions for alleviating this “silent crisis.”
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Incarceration and climate change: Katherine LeMasters and colleagues surveyed people who experienced climate-related disasters while incarcerated or navigating reentry, revealing a severe lack of essential resources (like potable water) in cramped and dangerous conditions, in addition to deep uncertainty and confusion around communicating with loved ones or evacuating to safety. Meanwhile, an interdisciplinary investigation added to the evidence that unbearable heat can fuel violence, finding that domestic violence-related calls for service are more frequent during extreme heat events.
This, of course, only scratches the surface of the important research that was published this year. For more, I encourage you to peruse our full Research Library, with more than 4,000 reports and publications.
Now, on to this month’s newest additions to our library. We’ve added 24 new reports that examine solitary confinement, the relationship between bail and recidivism, women’s incarceration, and more.
Thanks for subscribing, and on behalf of everyone at the Prison Policy Initiative, we hope you have a very happy new year.
— Leah Wang, Senior Research Analyst
P.S. If you find this newsletter and other research from the Prison Policy Initiative valuable, we hope you’ll consider making a contribution as part of your end-of-year giving. This work is only possible thanks to the support of people who are committed to ending mass incarceration in America, like you. Thanks for your consideration!
We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 24 new reports to the Research Library:
See 119 reports on the impact of the criminal legal system on housing, schools, employment, neighborhoods, and more.
See 289 reports on prison and jail conditions such as solitary confinement, labor, discipline, food, and more.
See 156 reports on capital punishment and executions.
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Death Row U.S.A. Fall 2025 by NAACP Legal Defense Fund, October, 2025
This quarterly report lists the number of prisoners on death rows, executions to date, and Supreme Court cases related to the death penalty.
See 244 reports on access to healthcare, chronic and infectious disease, mortality, and more.
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Barriers and Facilitators to Delivering Cancer Care in US Prisons by Christopher R. Manz et al, October, 2025
"Security restrictions also prohibit family members from attending clinic visits or clinicians from calling family, such that incarcerated patients must process complex information about their prognosis alone."
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Incarceration and Quality of Cancer Care by Oluwadamilola T. Oladeru et al, October, 2025
"In the incarcerated group, the median time to treatment was 33 days for those with local and regional stage at diagnosis, compared with 31 days in the postrelease group and 21 days in the never incarcerated group."
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Trapped in Time: The Silent Crisis of Elderly Incarceration by ACLU and the Prison & Jail Innovation Lab, September, 2025
"In 2012, a court ruling led to the negotiated release of 178 elderly, life-sentenced people in Maryland...in the four years following the court ruling, not a single person was rearrested for a crime more serious than a traffic offense."
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Estimating Health Condition Prevalence Among a Statewide Cohort with Recent Homelessness or Incarceration by Lucas Zellmer et al, September, 2025
"Substance use disorders among individuals with recent homelessness or jail or prison incarceration, including opioid use disorder, were higher compared to the general population."
See 79 reports on the incarceration and detainment of immigrants.
See 302 reports on jail populations, jail conditions, jail construction, and more.
See 96 reports on the prevalence and treatment of mental illness in the criminal legal system.
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Implementation of Kendra's Law Continues to be Severely Biased by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, March, 2025
"From its inception, Kendra's Law was not an appropriate response to this tragedy by New York lawmakers, who should instead have focused on addressing the well-known, long-standing, and persistent lack of mental health services in the state."
See 148 reports on the costs and outcomes of detaining people before trial.
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Examining the Impact of Eliminating Bail on Recidivism in the New York City Suburbs and Upstate Regions: A Difference-in-Differences Study by Data Collaborative for Justice, November, 2025
The fifth report in DCJ's Bail Reform & Recidivism Series, this study examines the impact of New York's initial 2020 bail reform law in the NYC suburbs and upstate regions.
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Testing the Long-Term Impact of Bail Reform Across New York State: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation by Data Collaborative for Justice, October, 2025
"Over the 50-month follow-up period, people [in New York City] released under reform had significantly lower rates of overall re-arrest (57% vs. 66%), felony re-arrest (33% vs. 40%), and violent felony (VFO) re-arrest (20% vs. 25%)."
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Alignment with New York City's Pretrial Release Assessment: Results for the Five Boroughs by Data Collaborative for Justice, September, 2025
"From 2021 to 2023, judges infrequently followed ROR recommendations for violent felony cases (30%), only followed such recommendations about half the time (51%) in nonviolent felony cases, while adhering at a high rate for misdemeanors (83%)."
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Does New York's Bail Reform Law Impact Recidivism? A Quasi-Experimental Test in the State's Suburban and Upstate Regions by Data Collaborative for Justice, February, 2024
"Bail reform tended to reduce recidivism for people facing less serious charges and with limited or no recent criminal history, but tended to increase recidivism for people facing more serious charges and with recent criminal histories."
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Counsel at First Appearance Evaluation by Georges Naufal et al, August, 2023
"The presence of defense counsel lowered the average bond amount from about $15,000 to around $12,500 (in Hays County) and from about $11,400 to around $10,700 (in Potter County)."
See 141 reports on community supervision policies, conditions, violations, and more.
See 152 reports on the rise and impact of excessive criminal sentences.
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Life Sentences in the United States by Wilson Center for Science and Justice, November, 2025
This dashboard compiles presents two decades of data on people serving life sentences in the United States, including state-level and demographic data.
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The Role of Second Look Policies in Reforming California's Approach to Incarceration by California Policy Lab, September, 2025
"People released due to resentencing policies were less likely to be convicted of new crimes within the first year than total releases, and the majority of new convictions were for misdemeanors. The one-year new conviction rates ranged from 3% to 29%."
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Sentencing Reform in Washington State: Progress and Pitfalls by Katherine Beckett and Allison Goldberg, January, 2024
"Many people serving long and life sentences [in Washington State] who pose no threat to public safety remain ineligible for review for technical and/or arbitrary reasons."
See 153 reports on gender disparities in the criminal legal system.
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Work To Be Done: Women's Incarceration in the 21st Century by National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls and the FreeHer Institute, October, 2025
"Black and Latina women are incarcerated at higher rates than white women (1.6x and 1.2x respectively), although it is worth noting that white women's rate of incarceration is on the rise compared to other groups."
See 403 reports on youth in the criminal legal system.
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