Prison reform in United States
3 initiatives · 3 reports
Reform initiatives
- Expanded indigent defence funding
pre trial detention · active · 2019–ongoing
California significantly increased state funding for county public defender offices from 2019 onward, including grants tied to early-representation (within 24 hours of arrest) and bail-review advocacy.
- First Step Act
sentencing · active · 2018–ongoing
Bipartisan federal legislation that reduced mandatory minimums for some drug offences, expanded earned-time credits for participation in rehabilitative programmes, and retroactively applied the Fair Sentencing Act's crack/powder cocaine disparity reduction.
- Proposition 47 â reclassifying nonviolent drug/property crimes
sentencing · active · 2014–ongoing
California voters approved Proposition 47 in 2014, downgrading six categories of nonviolent property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanours, with savings reinvested in mental health, drug treatment, and victim services.
Country reports
- Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024 · 2024
PPI's annual single-snapshot analysis of the US carceral system: 1.9 million people behind bars across federal prisons, state prisons, local jails, immigration detention, juvenile facilities, and military / territorial prisons. Counters the common claim that 'most prisoners are non-violent drug offenders' by breaking down offense categories, and exposes the churn of pre-trial detention in local jails.
- Incarceration Trends · 2024
An interactive county-level dataset of US jail and prison incarceration from 1970 to present. Reveals that the post-2000 growth in incarceration has shifted from large urban centres to small and rural counties, and that pre-trial jail populations remain the fastest-growing segment.
- Nothing But Time: Elderly Americans Serving Life Without Parole · 2022
Documents the explosion of US life-without-parole (LWOP) sentences since the 1980s. More than 56,000 people are serving LWOP, with the elderly and infirm population growing rapidly while posing minimal public safety risk. Argues that 'compassionate release' and parole-eligibility reforms could safely return thousands.