Emily Widra | August 19, 2025

New study finds confined neurodivergent youth of color are particularly vulnerable to physical assault by staff

A new study analyzing a national survey of youth in custody reveals stark disparities in rates of staff physical assault among Black and neurodivergent youth.

Emily Widra | December 19, 2024

Despite fewer people experiencing police contact, racial disparities in arrests, police misconduct, and police use of force continue

New Bureau of Justice Statistics data reveal that concerning trends in policing persisted in 2022, even while fewer people interacted with police than in prior years.

Emily Widra and Wendy Sawyer | November 27, 2024

Who is jailed, how often, and why: Our Jail Data Initiative collaboration offers a fresh look at the misuse of local jails

Using a novel data source, we examine the flow of individuals booked into a nationally-representative sample of jails along lines of race, ethnicity, sex, age, housing status, and type of criminal charge.

Emily Widra | October 8, 2024

New, expanded data on Indian country jails show concerning trends extend to tribal lands

In Indian country jails, populations have rebounded from pandemic lows, the detention of women and older adults is increasing, and new offense type data raise questions about why so many people are incarcerated on tribal lands.

Sarah Staudt | February 15, 2024

Oregon shouldn’t go backwards on drug decriminalization

Oregon is in danger of repealing one of the most important criminal legal system reforms of recent years: here’s why the state should keep Measure 110 intact.

Emma Ruth | January 8, 2024

Force multipliers: How the criminal legal and child welfare systems cooperate to punish families

Child protective service agencies position themselves as providers of welfare, but their relationship to the criminal legal system demonstrates their shared role in punishing families and exacerbating the conditions that lead to system involvement in the first place.

Emmett Sanders | October 30, 2023

Not an alternative: The myths, harms, and expansion of pretrial electronic monitoring

The expansion of pretrial electronic monitoring across 70 counties threatens to undermine Illinois’ groundbreaking Pretrial Fairness Act, despite both the lack of evidence of EM's efficacy and its well-documented flaws and harms.

Leah Wang | September 27, 2023

Updated data and charts: Incarceration stats by race, ethnicity, and gender for all 50 states and D.C.

New data visualizations and updated tables show the national landscape of persistent racial disparity in state prisons and local jails.

Leah Wang | March 7, 2023

Racial disparities in diversion: A research roundup

Research shows diversion “works,” reducing harmful outcomes and increasing access to social services. However, studies also suggest diversion is routinely denied to people of color, sending them deeper into the criminal legal system. We review the research and remind practitioners that most diversion programs aren’t designed around racial equity — but should be.

Leah Wang | December 22, 2022

New data: Police use of force rising for Black, female, and older people; racial bias persists

New survey data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on police interactions in 2019 and 2020 provide the broadest look at relations between police officers and the public. The findings leave a lot to be desired (as they’re primarily pre-pandemic), but the message is clear: police are still a massive presence in our communities, and they don’t always provide the solutions and safety we need.

Leah Wang | October 8, 2021

The U.S. criminal justice system disproportionately hurts Native people: the data, visualized

We’re lucky when criminal justice data is broken down by race and ethnicity enough to see how Native populations are criminalized and incarcerated. Here’s a roundup of what we know.

Wanda Bertram | September 10, 2021

New data: Wisconsin jails and telecom giants profiting from high phone rates that keep families apart

Emily Widra | July 12, 2021

New data: People with incarcerated loved ones have shorter life expectancies and poorer health

Katie Rose Quandt and Alexi Jones | March 18, 2021

Research roundup: Violent crimes against Black and Latinx people receive less coverage and less justice

We explain the research showing that violent crimes against Black Americans - especially those in poverty - are less likely to be cleared by police and less likely to receive news coverage than similar crimes against white people.

Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer | March 17, 2021

New data on jail populations: The good, the bad, and the ugly

A new BJS report shows that U.S. jails reduced their populations by 25% in the first few months of the pandemic. But even then, the U.S. was still putting more people in local jails than most countries incarcerate in total.

Emily Widra, Wanda Bertram and Wendy Sawyer | October 30, 2020

New BJS data reveals a jail-building boom in Indian country

Across the country, local governments are building more jail space rather than working to reduce incarceration. New data shows that this trend is especially visible on tribal lands.

Emily Widra and Wendy Sawyer | August 28, 2020

Policing resource round-up: Where to find data, advocacy materials, and more information about American policing

A list of the most valuable online resources from organizations focused on policing.

Wendy Sawyer | July 27, 2020

Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration

Racial inequality is evident in every stage of the criminal justice system - here are the key statistics compiled into a series of charts.

Wendy Sawyer | June 5, 2020

Ten key facts about policing: Highlights from our work

Police disproportionately target Black and other marginalized people in stops, arrests, and use of force; and are increasingly called upon to respond to problems, such as homelessness, that are unrelated to public safety.

Alexi Jones | May 5, 2020

Stagnant populations and changing demographics: what the new BJS reports tell us about correctional populations

New BJS reports show that jail and prison populations remain stubbornly high despite decreasing crime rates, and point to the shifting demographics of correctional populations.

Roxanne Daniel | April 22, 2020

Since you asked: What data exists about Native American people in the criminal justice system?

Problems with data collection - and an unfortunate tendency to group Native Americans together with other ethnic and racial groups in data publications - have made it hard to understand the effect of mass incarceration on Native people.

Wendy Sawyer | October 9, 2019

How race impacts who is detained pretrial

The government hasn’t collected national data on the race or ethnicity of people awaiting trial in jail since 2002. We review the academic literature published since then to offer a more current assessment of racial disparities in pretrial detention.

Prison Policy Initiative | May 14, 2019

Policing Women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force

We analyze gender and racial disparities in traffic and street stops, including arrests, searches, and use of force that occurs during stops.

Daiana Griffith | January 22, 2019

LGBTQ youth are at greater risk of homelessness and incarceration

Homelessness is the greatest predictor of involvement with the juvenile justice system. And since LGBTQ youth compose 40% of the homeless youth population, they are at an increased risk of incarceration.

Alexi Jones | October 12, 2018

Police stops are still marred by racial discrimination, new data shows.

So why does Trump continue to endorse stop-and-frisk?

Lucius Couloute | March 22, 2018

New data highlights pre-incarceration disadvantages

New research illustrates that many formerly incarcerated people never received a fair first chance at economic mobility, never mind a second one.

Lucius Couloute | January 24, 2018

New poll shows mass incarceration is a Latinx issue

A new poll from Latino Justice PRLDEF shows that the Latinx community is deeply concerned about mass incarceration.

Emily Widra | September 8, 2017

The parallel epidemics of incarceration & HIV in the Deep South

HIV disproportionately impacts communities that are already marginalized by poverty, inadequate resources, discrimination — and mass incarceration.

Lucius Couloute | June 13, 2017

For families of incarcerated dads, Father’s day comes at a premium

Over 1.5 million children have a father incarcerated in prison today. As Father's day approaches, millions of children will be without their fathers, and without the ability to pay the outrageous fees associated with speaking to them. State lawmakers should take the initiative to better regulate prison telecom companies, and most importantly, reduce the number of incarcerated people.

Lucius Couloute | June 8, 2017

Data confirms that police treat Black Americans with less respect

New research out of Stanford University substantiates what Black America has always known – that police officers treat Blacks differently than they do whites.

Wendy Sawyer and Emily Widra | May 8, 2017

Unpacking the connections between race, incarceration, and women’s HIV rates

Current research points to an unexpected contributor to the high rates of HIV infection among Black women: the mass incarceration of Black men.

Joshua Aiken | September 15, 2016

Why do we lock juveniles up for life and throw away the key? Race plays a big part.

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences people under 18 to die behind bars. Which states do it, and why?

Alison Walsh | August 15, 2016

The criminal justice system is riddled with racial disparities

These 5 graphs break down just how riddled the U.S. criminal justice system is with racial disparities.

Meredith Booker | April 26, 2016

The wealth of incarcerated versus non-incarcerated men over a lifetime, visualized

We make two graphs from Zaw, Hamilton, and Darity's groundbreaking dataset to illustrate the racial, ethnic and wealth disparities in incarceration.

Rachel Gandy | July 10, 2015

In prisons, Blacks and Latinos do the time while whites get the jobs

The Attica prison rebellion resulted from a racial/ethnic disparity between the incarcerated and the staff. Decades later, that disparity still hasn't changed.

Peter Wagner | March 17, 2015

The demographics of computer ownership and high-speed internet access

The poor, the elderly, and African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to have computers or high-speed internet at home. Replacing regular jail visits with computer video chats is a bad idea.