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2013
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The State of Sentencing 2012: Developments in Policy and Practice
By Porter, Nicole D..
The Sentencing Project (Washington, DC).
“State lawmakers in at least 24 states adopted 41 criminal justice policies that in 2012 may contribute to downscaling prison populations and eliminating barriers to reentry while promoting effective approaches to public safety. This report provides an overview of recent policy reforms in the areas of sentencing, probation and parole, collateral consequences, and juvenile justice” (p. 1). Some of the sentencing changes involve relaxed mandatory minimums, the death penalty, sentence modification... Read More
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26 pages
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2013
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The State of Sentencing 2012: Developments in Policy and Practice
By Porter, Nicole D..
The Sentencing Project (Washington, DC).
“State lawmakers in at least 24 states adopted 41 criminal justice policies that in 2012 may contribute to downscaling prison populations and eliminating barriers to reentry while promoting effective approaches to public safety. This report provides an overview of recent policy reforms in the areas of sentencing, probation and parole, collateral consequences, and juvenile justice” (p. 1). Some of the sentencing changes involve relaxed mandatory minimums, the death penalty, sentence modification... Read More
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26 pages
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2013
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The Green Corrections Project: Action Plans and Lessons Learned
By Davidson, Stephanie.
National Institute of Corrections (Washington, DC).
This report is a great description of the three-phase Green Corrections project, sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC). The following sections comprise this publication: overview of the project; “The Greening of Corrections: Creating a Sustainable System”—the publication and its dissemination; developing a community of practice and providing technical assistance to states; application process; Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington addressing a different technical assistance need... Read More
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6 pages
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2013
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The Green Corrections Project: Action Plans and Lessons Learned
By Davidson, Stephanie.
National Institute of Corrections (Washington, DC).
This report is a great description of the three-phase Green Corrections project, sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC). The following sections comprise this publication: overview of the project; “The Greening of Corrections: Creating a Sustainable System”—the publication and its dissemination; developing a community of practice and providing technical assistance to states; application process; Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington addressing a different technical assistance need... Read More
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6 pages
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2012
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Administrative Segregation
Colorado Dept. of Corrections (Colorado Springs, CO).
This administrative regulation (AR) establishes criteria and guidelines for placing offenders on administrative segregation status. Administrative segregation is an offender management process and is not used as a punitive measure” (p. 1). Procedures cover: assignment to administrative segregation; behavior warranting administrative segregation review after admission to the DOC; multi-disciplinary staffing; administrative segregation hearings and due process; offender appeal; general conditions ... Read More
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16 pages
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2012
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Survivor's Manual: Survival in Solitary: A Manual Written by and for People Living in Control Units
By Kerness, Bonni, editor.
American Friends Service Committee. Prison Watch Project (Newark, NJ).
Advice, observations, and thoughts about being housed in solitary confinement are shared. Contents include: introduction—a powerful community of resistance (excerpt from a presentation by Bonnie Kerness); letters from prisoners—life in a control unit; letters from prisoners—survival; poetry from solitary; past times—long ago, but not so far away; and the community outside.... Read More
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94 pages
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2012
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Locked Down: Gangs in the Supermax
By Montgomery, Michael.
American RadioWorks (St. Paul, MN).
The activities of gangs in the supermax at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison are investigated. Resultant findings are posted to this website. Here you can listen to an hour long documentary regarding gangs in the supermax, read the transcript, hear extended interviews from former gang members and prison staff, read about the author’s experience inside the prison, and read a three part expose.... Read More
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2012
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Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal and Public Safety Consequences
U.S. Congress. Senate Judiciary Committee. Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights (Washington, DC).
Access to the webcast of the hearing “Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal and Public Safety Consequences” can be found on this website. Copies of witness testimony from Charles Samuels, Christopher Epps, Stuart M. Andrews, Anthony Graves, Craig Haney, and Pat Nolan, and subcommittee member statements from Patrick Leahy and Dick Durban are also provided.... Read More
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2012
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Testimony from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Human Rights, and Civil Rights for Hearing on “Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences,” June 19, 2012
Solitary Watch (Washington, DC).
This website provides the full transcript for the hearing “Reassessing Solitary Confinement: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences.” It also includes copies of written testimony submitted to the subcommittee from 87 organizations and individuals.... Read More
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2012
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An American Gulag—The Mentally Ill at Supermax
By Cohen, Andrew.
The Atlantic (Washington, DC).
“An ongoing series explores allegations of abuse at ADX-Florence, the country's most secure prison.” Issues covered include: Part One: Descending into Madness at Supermax; Part Two: The Faces of a Prison's Mentally Ill; Part Three: The Constitution and Mentally Ill Prisoners; Part Four: A Prison Chief's Unnerving Suicide-Prevention Memo; and Related Story: Death, Yes, but Torture at Supermax?... Read More
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2012
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Suicide Prevention
By Samuels, Charles E., Jr..
U.S. Bureau of Prisons (Washington, DC).
“In this message, I [Director Samuels] would like to specifically address your [the inmate’s] state of mind, an important part of your overall well-being … Incarceration is difficult for many people … If you are unable to think of solutions other than suicide, it is not because solutions do not exist; it is because you are currently unable to see them … Bureau staff are a key resource available to you … I want you to succeed. I want your life to go forward in a positive direction – a direction p... Read More
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1 page
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2012
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Lifetime Lockdown: How Isolation Conditions Impact Prisoner Reentry
By Lowen, Matthew; Isaacs, Caroline; Williams, Brackette F..
American Friends Service Committee--Arizona (Tucson, AZ).
The relationship between long-term solitary confinement and prisoner reentry is examined. Sections following an executive summary are: key findings; recommendations; Project Homecoming; defining forms of isolation and lockdown, increased use of solitary. who is held in lockdown; conditions, policies, and practices of isolation; ACLU suit over poor medical and mental health care in Arizona’s prisons; the elimination of rehabilitative programming; the lasting effects of lockdown; life on the outsi... Read More
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44 pages
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2012
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Life in Solitary Confinement
NPR Online (Washington, DC).
This website has access to some excellent videos regarding various issues surrounding the use of solitary confinement. Segments include: “Overview: Thousands Spend Years in Isolation”; “PART 1: At Pelican Bay Prison, a Life in Solitary”; “Part 2: As Populations Swell, Prisons Rethinking Supermax”; “Making it on the Outside”: “Working the Isolation Unit: A Prison Officer’s Tale”; and “Q&A: Solitary Confinement & Human Rights.”... Read More
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2012
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Invisible in Isolation: The Use of Segregation and Solitary Confinement in Immigration Detention
By Perlmutter, Alexis; Corrdini, Mile; Fujio, Christy.
Heartland Alliance. National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) (Chicago, IL); Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) (Cambridge, MA).
'This report, the first of its kind, aims to examine the use of segregation and solitary confinement in the immigration detention system, share individual experiences, and provide concrete recommendations to eradicate the use of solitary confinement, a practice that has proven unnecessary, costly, and harmful to detainees' physical and mental health' (p. 3). It is extremely important to remember that the 'purpose of immigration detention is not to punish people who have violated immigration laws... Read More
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40 pages
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2012
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Effective Community-Based Supervision of Young Offenders
By Trotter, Chris.
Australian Institute of Criminology (Canberra, NSW).
The impact of seven evidence-based practices by individuals supervising juvenile offenders on the level of these offenders reoffending is examined. It offers valuable information for guiding the performance of individuals working with young offenders. This report includes these sections: literature review; methodology; results according to use of skills by workers and client recidivism, the use of other skills and client recidivism, and staff role and qualifications; and discussion. “It was foun... Read More
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7 pages
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2012
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Seeking Safety: An Intervention for Trauma-Exposed Incarcerated Women?
By Lynch, Sharron M.; Heath, Nicole M.; Mathews, Kathleen C.; Cepeda, Galatia J. .
“Recent guidelines for incarcerated women's programming have called for interventions that address offenders' traumatic experiences, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance use in an integrated manner. Seeking Safety (SS) is an empirically supported cognitive behavioral manualized treatment for individuals with PTSD and substance use disorders” (p. 88). This article reports on the effectiveness of SS with incarcerated women. The research shows that SS is an effective intervention for... Read More
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14 pages
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2012
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Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons
By Kim, Scarlet; Pendergrass, Taylor; Zelon, Helen; Lieberman, Donna; Eisenberg, Art; Dunn, Christopher.
New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLA) (New York, NY).
“The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) uses the term “extreme isolation” throughout this report to capture New York’s particular practice of subjecting one or two prisoners in a cell to the conditions most commonly understood as “solitary confinement” … The NYCLU set out to investigate New York’s use of extreme isolation. We explored the history that led to the emergence and expansion of the practice in New York. We asked who New York subjects to extreme isolation, for what reasons, and for... Read More
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72 pages
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2012
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Addressing Women’s Victimization Histories in Custodial Settings
By Stathopoulos, Mary; Quadara, Antonia; Fileborn, Bianca; Clark, Haley.
Australian Institute of Family Studies. Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA) (Melbourne, VIC).
“This paper explores the prison as a possible site of re-traumatization. The reasoning behind this is that prisons are built on an ethos of power, surveillance and control, yet trauma sufferers require safety in order to begin healing. A trauma-informed approach may offer an alternative to delivering a less traumatic prison environment and experience for female criminal offenders with a history of sexual abuse and assault” (p. 1). Sections following key messages include: introduction; the profil... Read More
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20 pages
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2012
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Addressing Women’s Victimization Histories in Custodial Settings
By Stathopoulos, Mary; Quadara, Antonia; Fileborn, Bianca; Clark, Haley.
Australian Institute of Family Studies. Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA) (Melbourne, VIC).
“This paper explores the prison as a possible site of re-traumatization. The reasoning behind this is that prisons are built on an ethos of power, surveillance and control, yet trauma sufferers require safety in order to begin healing. A trauma-informed approach may offer an alternative to delivering a less traumatic prison environment and experience for female criminal offenders with a history of sexual abuse and assault” (p. 1). Sections following key messages include: introduction; the profil... Read More
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20 pages
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2011
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Prisons Within Prisons: The Use of Segregation in the United States
By Browne, Angela; Cambier, Alissa; Agha, Suzanne.
Vera Institute of Justice (New York, NY).
This article is a great introduction to the use of solitary confinement in the United States and efforts to reduce the use of segregation. “Segregation is used for a variety of reasons, most commonly as a form of punishment for rule violations, as a way to remove prisoners from the general prison population who are thought to pose a risk to security or safety, and as a way to provide safety to prisoners believed to be at risk in the general prison population … In effect, segregation is a second... Read More
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4 pages
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2011
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Strategic Segregation in the Modern Prison
By Dolovich, Sharon.
'In the Los Angeles County Jail'the biggest jail system in the country'officials have found a way to increase the personal security of gay men and trans women detainees without forcing them to choose between safety and community. For more than two decades, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department (the Department), which runs the County's jail system, has been systematically separating out the gay men and trans women admitted to the L.A. County Jail (the Jail) and housing them wholly apart from GP [g... Read More
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110 pages
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2011
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Masculinity as Prison: Sexual Identity, Race, and Incarceration
By Robinson, Russell K..
“The Los Angeles County Men’s Jail segregates gay and transgender inmates and says that it does so to protect them from sexual assault. But not all gay and transgender inmates qualify for admission to the K6G unit. Transgender inmates must appear transgender to staff that inspect them. Gay men must identify as gay in a public space and then satisfactorily answer a series of cultural questions designed to determine whether they really are gay” (p. 1309). The author argues that the policy governin... Read More
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100 pages
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2010
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Parole, Snitch, or Die: California’s Supermax Prisons & Prisoners, 1987-2007
By Reiter, Keramet.
University of California, Berkeley. Institute for the Study of Social (Berkeley, CA); University of California eScholarship.
This report “provides one of the first evaluations of how supermaxes function, in terms of whom they detain and for how long, and how these patterns relate to their originally articulated purposes”. Sections of this document include: background—supermaxes, California, and parole; California—a special case; paroling (and snitching and dying); methodology—demographic and key informant interviews; findings—a design gone wrong—best intentions at inception, what we know about people in California’s s... Read More
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65 pages
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2009
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Prolonged Solitary Confinement and the Constitution
By Lobel, Jules.
University of Pittsburgh. School of Law (Pittsburgh, PA).
The "increasing practice of prolonged or permanent solitary confinement [i.e., supermax prisons] constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution, and whether it violates the due process rights of the prisoners so confined" is addressed (p. 116). This article is divided into three parts: indefinite, permanent solitary confinement and the Eighth Amendment; meaningful review and the Constitution; and mental pain and the Eighth Amendment. The author finds that prolonged s... Read More
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25 p.
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2009
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Towards a Fair and Balanced Assessment of Supermax Prisons
By Mears, Daniel P.; Watson, Jamie.
This article examines the impacts of supermax prisons, unintended outcomes, the achievement of goals, barriers to effectiveness, and elements needed to be evaluated for supermax need. A fair and balanced assessment of supermax effectiveness should be based on political, moral, and fiscal dimensions.... Read More
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39 p.
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2009
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Impact of a Mental Health Training Course for Correctional Officers on a Special Housing Unit
By Parker, George F..
The effectiveness of a training program about mental illness created by the Indiana chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI-Indiana) for correctional officers on a prison special housing ("supermax") unit is examined. Other agencies may find the use of this training program useful in their own facilities. “The NAMI training curriculum, which provided ten hours of education on mental illness to all of the correctional officers who worked on an Indiana special housing, or supermax... Read More
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6 pages
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2009
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Hellhole: The United States Holds Tens of Thousands of Inmates in Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Is This Torture?
By Gawande, Atul.
Issues surrounding the use of long-term isolation in prisons are discussed. If you are interested in learning about the experiences of individuals housed in solitary, this article is a great introduction to the personal side of the issue. Even though this article is geared for the general reader, a correctional professional will get some valuable insights into supermaxes and administrative segregation. This article also provides information regarding the use of isolation in correctional faciliti... Read More
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27 pages
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2004
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Supermax Prisons and the Constitution: Liability Concerns in the Extended Control Unit
By Collins, William C..
National Institute of Corrections (Washington, DC).
A monograph "intended to help prisons operate ultra-high-security facilities in a way that minimizes liability in litigation" is presented (p. v). Section contained in this manual include: executive summary; introduction; supermax and case law background; mental health; medical services; other conditions of confinement; use of force; the 14th Amendment due process and placement; access to the courts; the First Amendment religion, speech, and the press; and closing thoughts.... Read More
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86 p.
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1999
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Contemporary Issues in Prison Management: Additional Readings
National Institute of Corrections. Prisons Division (Washington, DC); National Institute of Corrections Academy (Longmont, CO).
Seven articles comprise this document: "The Transformation of Corrections: 50 Years of Silent Revolutions" by Simon Dinitz; by Dick Franklin -- "Culture Is. . .as Culture DOES", "Protective Custody: A Window to Institution Culture", "Supermax: More of the Same in the 21st Century?", and "Writing Made Easy. .[sic] [strike out Easy, replace with] Easier"; "In-Service Training: Missed Opportunities or Instrument of Change" by Gary C. Mohr; and "Managing Prisons in the 21st Century" by Richard P. Se... Read More
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82 p.
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1999
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Supermax Prisons: Overview and General Considerations
By Riveland, Chase.
National Institute of Corrections (Washington, DC).
National Institute of Corrections (Washington, DC).
The author discusses the history and definition of extended control facilities and addresses their operational and staffing issues as well as those of siting, construction and design. He concludes that the purpose of such facilities should not be to exact additional punishment or to function as a repository for bothersome, self-destructive, mentally ill inmates or those who need protection or have an infectious disease, but should be operated with the assumption that the inmate must be denied ac... Read More
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35 p.
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1997
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Supermax Housing: A Survey of Current Practice
National Institute of Corrections (Washington, DC).
National Institute of Corrections Information Center (Longmont, CO); LIS, Inc. (Longmont, CO); National Institute of Corrections. Prisons Division (Washington, DC).
Results of a nationwide survey of supermax housing practice identify current and planned supermax housing, explore issues in inmate management in supermax, and examine programming provided to inmates in supermax housing. Difficulties in defining supermax housing are discussed, and availability of programs such as mental health care and law library access are summarized. Tables detail characteristics of supermax facilities by state, and a list of DOC contacts on supermax issues is also included. ... Read More
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13 p.
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1990
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Special Needs Inmates: A Survey of State Correctional Systems
By Hall, Marie.
National Institute of Corrections National Academy of Corrections (Boulder, CO).
Illinois Dept. of Corrections (Springfield, IL).
The Illinois Department of Corrections conducted a survey of all 50 states to determine the prevalence of inmates who have special medical or mental health needs. Within the 31 states responding, .08 percent to 8.2 percent of prison inmates fell into various special housing categories. These categories included chronic illness, terminally ill, advancing age, ambulation difficulties, and mental health problems.... Read More
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34 p.
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