🚨NEW briefing: Rates of police use of force remain persistently high among Black people and are increasing markedly among women & older people

In 2022, almost 50 million people reported contact with police – and the data shows concerning trends 🧵
prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/12/1… Traffic stops remain the most common reason for police-initiated contact across all demographics – but Black people are more than twice as likely as people of other racial groups to be searched or arrested during a traffic stop

It's no secret that corrections departments don't want journalists to get info about their facilities – that's why they're increasingly using "gag rules" to forbid staff from interviews without approval from their supervisor or public info officer 🧵

prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/12/1… A gag rule seeks to do exactly what it sounds like: keep people from talking. In this case, gag rules deter jail and prison employees from speaking to the media.

Generally, they take three forms:

The carceral system is inundated with crises – poor conditions, escalating deaths, environmental dangers. That's why investigative journalism is more important than ever

Here are 10 stories from 2024 that shined a light inside the "black box" of mass incarceration 🧵 @IvanaSuzette & @JohnArchibald took a deep dive into Alabama's parole system, which is granting release to fewer people each year

Their series exposes a system that keeps the elderly locked up for decades & demonizes people with minor convictions
al.com/denied/

🚨NEW Briefing: Jails & prisons say they are "understaffed." They've offered raises, built new facilities & lowered employment requirements – still, nothing's worked.

Why? Because “understaffing” is not a recruitment issue. It's an untreatable symptom of mass incarceration🧵 Nearly half of correction agencies say that 20-30% of their workers leave each year. Of course, the true victims here are incarcerated people.

With fewer workers, conditions get worse: More ‘lockdowns', housing units are consolidated, less access to services, & fights break out.

If the conversation during Thanksgiving dinner turns from pie to prisons or from cranberries to crime, we’ve got you covered.

Here are some of the false claims you'll likely hear — and data to help you push back🧵 Claim #1: "Crime is skyrocketing"

This is false. Contrary to what self-serving politicians would have you believe, crime remains at historically low levels.

In fact, violent crime rates are half of what they were 30 years ago.

Worried about what topics will get served at Thanksgiving dinner? If the conversation turns from pie to prisons or from cranberries to crime, we’ve got you covered.

Here are some of the false claims you'll likely hear at the dinner table — and data to help you push back🧵 Claim #1: "Crime is skyrocketing"

This is false. Contrary to what self-serving politicians would have you believe, crime remains at historically low levels.

In fact, violent crime rates are half of what they were 30 years ago.

Rapper Young Thug is now on probation & will have to follow strict rules for the next 15yrs

Probation *can* keep people safe from the harms of imprisonment, but it's important to remember that supervision is ultimately another form of carceral control 🧵

nytimes.com/2024/11/06/art… His probation is full of "special conditions" – rules determined by the court that oftentimes end up being outrageous.

But another part of probation that is especially hard for the avg. person to navigate is standard conditions – blanket rules that everyone must follow.

Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies. While he could still be president, there are plenty of other jobs he is now barred from

As a billionaire, he’ll probably be ok – but across the US, 19 million people w/ felony convictions face job discrimination every single day 🧵 Policies across the country effectively disqualify & deter people w/ records from obtaining employment.

So when 600,000+ people return to their communities from prison each year, they are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty & policing that makes everyone less safe in the end.

Rather than trivializing what billionaire 'Diddy' has access to behind bars, it's important to remember that most incarcerated people have little to their name & are forced to spend the money they do have on basic necessities.

Commissary is an extremely exploitative system.

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1836938226004566435

Most commissary spending is on food – because prison meals are small & notoriously unhealthy.

While commissary may help supplement a lack of calories (for a price), it does not compensate for poor quality. There's no fresh food and most items are heavily processed.

It’s officially Prison Banned Books Week.

Books have connected incarcerated people to the outside world – and they’ve always been under attack by prisons.

Now, tablets are ironically further restricting access to reading materials behind bars. 🧵

With @prisonsbanbooks The number of state prisons that have or are in the process of implementing tablets has quadrupled in the last 5 years.

2 companies control most contracts w/ state prisons for tablets – the same companies that control 80% of phone & e-messaging markets behind bars.

70% of unsheltered people in California have been incarcerated.

What's more, as Gavin Newsom wages war on homeless encampments, the Cali. legislature has killed a bill that would increase long-term supportive housing for formerly incarcerated people, multiple years in a row. Here's the bill as it was introduced in 2022:

And here is the version from 2023, which also died: trackbill.com/bill/californi…
digitaldemocracy.calmatters.org/bills/ca_20232…

🚨BREAKING: The @FCC just voted to slash prison & jail calling rates and ban corporate kickbacks to prisons and jails – a major victory for incarcerated people and their loved ones!

#PeopleOverProfit Now, existing price caps for phone calls have been lowered by more than HALF. And rate caps for video calls have finally been laid out.

This will save the families of incarcerated people millions of dollars every single year.

🚨NEW report: The US has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth — worse, every single state incarcerates more people per capita than most nations.

How did the ‘land of the free’ get here? 🧵
prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.ht…
For decades, the US has been engaged in a globally unprecedented experiment to make every part of its criminal legal system more expansive & more punitive.

Now, 70% of convictions result in confinement – far more than other developed nations with comparable crime rates.

Many people are detained in jail pretrial essentially because they are too poor to afford bail.

~25% of all cases are eventually dismissed, meaning a significant number of people are arrested but never convicted of a crime – while paying into “welfare funds.” These funds are meant to benefit incarcerated people, but without regulation, they’re easily abused by prisons & jails.

Put plainly: welfare funds help jails supplement their budgets by levying fees against detained people who are only there because they cannot afford to leave.

For nearly three decades, the Prison Litigation Reform Act has created a double standard that limits incarcerated people’s access to the courts at all stages.

The PLRA makes it almost impossible for them to seek justice, even after suffering abuse or medical neglect. The PLRA essentially slammed the courthouse door on incarcerated people trying to file civil cases – making them harder to bring, harder to win, and harder to settle.

NEW report: Jail populations have exploded over the last 4 decades while getting almost none of the attention prisons do.

It’s clear the US has a reliance on excessive jailing. But how did we get here? 🧵 Nearly 500,000 people are currently in jail while being legally innocent - a massive increase in pretrial detention since the '80s. Many of these people are simply jailed because they can’t afford money bail.

NEW REPORT: Today we released the 10th anniversary edition of Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, once again providing the statistical big picture of incarceration in the U.S. and busting persistent myths about why this country locks up so many people. 🧵 1.9 million people are locked up in the U.S. In 2014, when we first published this report, it was 2.4 million. Almost all of the drop is due to changes that happened at the peak of Covid, when the gears of the justice system got jammed — changes that are now being reversed.

1.9 million people are incarcerated on any given day in the U.S. But that's only a glimpse of the devastation of mass incarceration.

Our new 50-state briefing shows more than 10.8 million people pass through the prison & jail gates each year: prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/02/2…
As they are released, they face immense obstacles: reestablishing housing, employment, and social connections while also balancing the long list of arbitrary release restrictions that set them up to fail.

Crime is at its lowest point in 60 years. But that hasn’t stopped state legislatures from passing “tough” criminal justice laws that threaten to undo a lot of the progress of the last decade. Here are just some such laws we tallied in 2023. 🧵 At least 3 states created draconian new punishments for fentanyl/other drug offenses. Wisconsin raised its “reckless homicide” penalties, for drug distribution that results in a death - including for people who use drugs together - to 60 years.
wisconsinexaminer.com/2023/03/21/rep…

Investigative journalists this year broke crucial stories about prisons and the legal system - climate crises, exploitation, surveillance, and more. Here’s an incomplete list of excellent reporting we read in 2023 on prisons and criminalization: 🧵 For @typeinvestigate and @highcountrynews, @ChrisWBlackwell and @sarahl_sax exposed how Washington state prisons are using lockdowns to “manage” the effects of extreme heat, fires, and flooding, and why decarceration is a better solution:
typeinvestigations.org/investigation/…

Over its run, @shadowproofcom has been an indispensable source of stories about prisons and criminalization that have a clear moral vision and a “long shelf life.” Here are 5 worth reading today.

https://twitter.com/shadowproofcom/status/1735317675453112425

In 2018, Shadowproof broke the news that USDA had provided $277 million in funding for counties to build new or bigger jails. For those of us working to show how our government invests in punishment rather than care, this story was/is pivotal.
shadowproof.com/2018/06/06/277…