Justice Strategies

Downsizing Prisons is a collaborative research effort between Justice Strategies and The Sentencing Project that examines four states – Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York -- that have moved against the growth trend in state prison populations of 12% since 2000. These states achieved significant declines in prison populations and offer lessons to policymakers in other states.

This report reviews more than a decade of drug sentencing reform efforts in the states of Washington, Kansas, Michigan and New York. The positive impact of reducing reliance on incarceration in these states shows the way towards increasing opportunities for effective drug treatment, and safer, healthier communities. The report also includes a brief example of how Kansas produced a net savings to taxpayers of $7.5 million, from FY 2004 to FY2008, through reductions in prison population levels. In addition, Positive Trends surveys strategies from Massachusetts, Arizona and Wisconsin for reducing racial disparity in the criminal justice system.

The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition commissioned this report that documents how retraining staff in behavioral intervention methods, implementing system-wide organizational improvements, and restructuring probation and parole supervision around the crime related behaviors allowed Maryland’s PCS program to achieve an amazing 42 percent lower rate of re-arrests for people under supervision.

This report, prepared by Judy Greene and Russ Immarigeon, Justice Strategies consultant and editor of various national criminal justice publications, presents information about the incarceration of mentally ill people, many with co-occurring substance abuse problems. It identifies effective program models that could be used to ease the Connecticut’s prison population pressures and reverse its growth trend.

Judy Greene co-authors this report, published by the Brennan Center for Justice, that examines the imposition and collection of legal financial obligations – fines, supervision fees, court costs, and restitution – in Maryland. The report finds that billing individuals $40 per month for their parole supervision is a penny-wise, pound-foolish policy that undercuts the State of Maryland’s commitment to promoting the reentry of people into society after prison. Implemented nearly two decades ago during a national wave of new supervision fees, the Maryland policy was intended to raise extra revenue for general state functions. However, quantitative research performed by Justice Strategies shows that the fee is largely uncollectible, due to the dire financial situation in which parolees find themselves, and that the “paper debt” it creates does more harm than good.

287(g) is a tiny provision in federal immigration law that allows Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to take local police away from their mission of fighting crime, and pull them into the murky territory of targeting immigrants for arrest without suspicion of crime. ICE described the 287(g) program as a public safety measure to target “criminal illegal aliens,” but its largest impact has been on law-abiding immigrant communities. Rather than focusing on serious crime, police resources are spent targeting day-laborers, corn-vendors and people with broken tail-lights. This report details findings from a year-long investigation of 287(g) by Justice Strategies, and recommends that the ICE program be terminated.