We've The Prison Policy Initiative has added 31 new reports to the Research Library:

• When Music Takes the Stand: A Content Analysis of How Courts Use and Misuse Rap Lyrics in Criminal Cases by Erin Lutes, James Purdon, and Henry F. Fradella, May, 2019
  "The analyses demonstrate that rap evidence is routinely admitted against defendants in criminal proceedings, even in cases in which the prejudicial effect of such evidence clearly outweighs its probative value." Categories: Trials
• Road Runners: The Role and Impact of Law Enforcement in Transporting Individuals with Severe Mental Illness by Treatment Advocacy Center, May, 2019
  "Approximately one-third of individuals with severe mental illness have their first contact with mental health treatment through a law enforcement encounter." Categories: Mental Health Police and Policing
• Failing to Protect and Serve: Police Department Policies Towards Transgender People by National Center for Transgender Equality, May, 2019
  Only 9 of the 25 departments reviewed include gender identity and/or expression language in their non-discrimination policy, which is the best way to clarify that transgender people are protected. Categories: LGBT Police and Policing
• Racial Disparities in D.C. Policing: Descriptive Evidence From 2013-2017 by ACLU of the District of Columbia, May, 2019
  "From 2013 to 2017, Black individuals composed 47% of D.C.'s population but 86% of its arrestees. During this time, Black people were arrested at 10 times the rate of white people." Categories: Race and ethnicity Police and Policing
• Policing Women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force by Prison Policy Initiative, May, 2019
  "Women make up an increasing share of arrests and report much more use of force than they did twenty years ago." Categories: Police and Policing Women
• Solitary Confinement: Inhumane, Ineffective, and Wasteful by Southern Poverty Law Center, April, 2019
  "solitary is disproportionately used for people with mental illnesses, people of color, and people with disabilities." Categories: Conditions of Confinement
• People in Prison in 2018 by Vera Institute of Justice, April, 2019
  "Prison incarceration rates fell in 35 states and grew in 15 others." Categories: General
• Misdemeanors by the Numbers by Sandra Mayson and Megan Stevenson, April, 2019
  "With a single exception, the per-capita misdemeanor case-filing rate is higher for black people than for white people for every offense type, in every jurisdiction." Categories: Jails Race and ethnicity
• The Next Step: Ending Excessive Punishment for Violent Crimes by The Sentencing Project, April, 2019
  "Excessive penalties for violent crimes are not only ineffective--incapacitating people who no longer pose a public safety threat and producing little deterrent effect--they also divert investment from more effective public safety programs." Categories: Crime and Crime Rates
• Girls in the Juvenile Justice System by Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, April, 2019
  "More than half of all female delinquency cases involved black or Hispanic youth." Categories: Youth
• The Prison Industrial Complex: Mapping Private Sector Players by Worth Rises, April, 2019
  "More than half of the $80 billion spent annually on incarceration by government agencies is used to pay the thousands of vendors that serve the criminal legal system." Categories: Privatization Economics of Incarceration
• Report on the Bronx 120 Mass by Babe Howell and Priscilla Bustamante, April, 2019
  "The Bronx 120 indictments appear not only to be overbroad and unfair, but they seem profoundly unwise." Categories: Trials
• Prisoners in 2017 by Bureau of Justice Statistics, April, 2019
  "The imprisonment rate for sentenced prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction decreased 2.1% from 2016 to 2017 (from 450 to 440 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents)." Categories: General
• Jail Inmates in 2017 by Bureau of Justice Statistics, April, 2019
  "County and city jails held 745,200 inmates at midyear 2017." Categories: General Jails
• The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance by Roseanna Sommers and Vanessa K. Bohns, April, 2019
  "This is problematic because it indicates that a key justification for suspicionless consent searches--that they are voluntary--relies on an assessment that is subject to bias." Categories: Police and Policing
• The Determinants of Declining Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000-2015 by Samuel L. Myers, Jr., William J. Sabol, and Man Xu, December, 2018
  "From 2000 to 2016 there was considerable narrowing of the disparity in incarceration rates between black females and white females in America's prisons." Categories: Race and ethnicity Women
• Cellphones, Law Enforcement, and the Right to Privacy by Brennan Center for Justice, December, 2018
  "New technologies that extend the power and reach of law enforcement are likely to exacerbate existing biases in policing and add more surveillance to communities that are already extensively policed." Categories: Police and Policing
• Criminal Justice Solutions: Model State Legislation by Brennan Center for Justice, December, 2018
  "This report offers state lawmakers model legislation based on smart, bold policy solutions that would keep crime low while reducing mass incarceration." Categories: Gun Control
• Reclassified State Drug Law Reforms to Reduce Felony Convictions and Increase Second Chances by Urban Institute, October, 2018
  "Reclassifying drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor can reduce the negative impacts imposed on people and communities by felony convictions, reduce imprisonment of people convicted of drug possession, and redirect limited resources to treatment." Categories: Drug Policy
• LGBTQ People Behind Bars: A Guide to Understanding the Issues Facing Transgender Prisoners and Their Legal Rights by National Center for Transgender Equality, October, 2018
  "Transgender people are nearly ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general prison population, with an estimated 40% of transgender people in state and federal prisons reporting a sexual assault in the previous year." Categories: LGBT
• Judged for More Than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty by The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, September, 2018
  "We estimate that at least 500 women are currently on death rows around the world" Categories: Death Penalty Women
• Can We Downsize Our Prisons and Jails Without Compromising Public Safety? Findings from California's Prop 47 by Bradley J. Bartos and Charis E. Kubrin, August, 2018
  "Our findings reveal that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary. At the same time, we find that larceny and motor vehicle thefts appear to have increased moderately." Categories: Crime and Crime Rates
• Swept Up in the Sweep: The Impact of Gang Allegations on Immigrant New Yorkers by New York Immigration Coalition, May, 2018
  "By broadly casting immigrant Latinx youth as gang members to be targeted for incarceration and deportation, even the outward pretense of basic rights and due process is pushed to the side." Categories: Immigration Police and Policing Race and ethnicity
• Criminal Justice Administrative Fees: High Pain for People, Low Gain for Government by The Financial Justice Project of San Francisco, May, 2018
  "Over the last six years, more than 265,000 fines and fees have been charged to local individuals, totaling almost $57 million." Categories: Economics of Incarceration Poverty and wealth
• America Under Watch: Face Surveillance in the United States by Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, May, 2018
  "For the millions of Americans living in Detroit and Chicago, face surveillance may be an imminent reality." Categories: Police and Policing
• Neither Justice nor Treatment: Drug Courts in the United States by Physicians for Human Rights, June, 2017
  "Overall, PHR found that drug courts largely failed at providing treatment to those who truly needed it, and filled up limited treatment spaces with court-mandated patients who didn't always need the care." Categories: Drug Policy Health impact
• Examining Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes among Indigent Defendants in San Francisco by Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, June, 2017
  "The data suggest that the charges brought by the police are not, in fact, race neutral." Categories: Police and Policing
• Heat in U.S. Prisons and Jails Corrections and the Challenge of Climate Change by Daniel W. E. Holt, August, 2015
  "Correctional departments should consider not only the direct impacts of rising temperatures but also indirect impacts such as greater risks of wildfires and drought, increased burdens on the electric grid, and growing pressures on food and water supplies." Categories: General
• Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women by African American Policy Forum, July, 2015
  The failure to highlight and demand accountability for the countless Black women killed by police over the past two decades leaves Black women unnamed and thus underprotected in the face of their continued vulnerability to racialized police violence. Categories: Race and ethnicity Police and Policing Women
• Are Private Prisons to Blame for Mass Incarceration and Its Evils? Prison Conditions, Neoliberalism, and Public Choice by Hadar Aviram, January, 2015
  "Public institutions have privatized so many of their internal functions that they can hardly be differentiated from private ones. Public actors behave in ways as atrocious and neglectful, and they respond to the same market pressure, as private actors." Categories: Privatization
• Applying a racial equity lens to fines and fees in the District of Columbia by D.C. Policy Center, 2015
  "Fixed fines and fees can disproportionately harm families of color, both due to discriminatory practices in issuing fines and fees and in the systemic issues of income and wealth inequities that make it more difficult for these families to pay" Categories: Race and ethnicity