Prison Fellowship is the world's largest Christian nonprofit organization for prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, and a leading advocate for justice reform.
Thomas Mott Osborne was an American prison officer, prison reformer, industrialist and New York State political reformer. In an assessment of Osborne's life, a New York Times book reviewer wrote: "His career as a penologist was short, but in the interval of the few years he served he succeeded in revolutionizing American prison reform, if not always in fact, then in awakening responsibility.... He was made of the spectacular stuff of martyrs, to many people perhaps ridiculous, but to those whose lives his theories most closely touched, inspiring and often godlike."
Incarceration in the United States is one of the primary means of punishment for crime in the United States. In 2023, over five million people were under supervision by the criminal justice system, with nearly two million people incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world, it has 5% of the world’s population, and 20% of the world’s incarcerated persons. China, with four times more inhabitants, has fewer persons in prison. Prison populations grew dramatically beginning in the 1970s, but began a decline around 2009, dropping 25% by year-end 2021.
The prison abolition movement is a network of groups and activists that seek to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with systems of rehabilitation and education that do not focus on punishment and government institutionalization. The prison abolitionist movement is distinct from conventional prison reform, which is intended to improve conditions inside prisons.
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been trained to extinguish it. Recidivism is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is the penal law enforcement agency of the government of California responsible for the operation of the California state prison and parole systems. Its headquarters are in Sacramento.
The American juvenile justice system is the primary system used to handle minors who are convicted of criminal offenses. The system is composed of a federal and many separate state, territorial, and local jurisdictions, with states and the federal government sharing sovereign police power under the common authority of the United States Constitution. The juvenile justice system intervenes in delinquent behavior through police, court, and correctional involvement, with the goal of rehabilitation. Youth and their guardians can face a variety of consequences including probation, community service, youth court, youth incarceration and alternative schooling. The juvenile justice system, similar to the adult system, operates from a belief that intervening early in delinquent behavior will deter adolescents from engaging in criminal behavior as adults.
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are confined against their will and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state, generally as punishment for various crimes. Authorities most commonly use prisons within a criminal-justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those who have pled or been found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment.
The Women's Prison Association (WPA), founded 1845, is the oldest advocacy group for women in the United States. The organization has historically focused on New York City and New York State issues. Since 2004 it has developed the Institute on Women & Criminal Justice, to focus a national conversation on women and criminal justice.
The United States incarcerates more of its youth than any other country in the world, although reports claim China has around 600,000 juveniles imprisoned which would be more than the US, through the juvenile courts and the adult criminal justice system, which reflects the larger trends in incarceration practices in the United States. In 2010, approximately 70,800 juveniles were incarcerated in youth detention facilities alone. As of 2006, approximately 500,000 youth were brought to detention centers in a given year. This data does not reflect juveniles tried as adults. As of 2013, around 40% were incarcerated in privatized, for-profit facilities.
Michael Gerard Santos is an advocate for criminal justice reform and an author of several books and courses. He teaches strategies that justice-impacted people can use to prepare for success after prison.
The incarceration of women in the United States refers to the imprisonment of women in both prisons and jails in the United States. There are approximately 219,000 incarcerated women in the US according to a November 2018 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, and the rate of incarceration of women in the United States is at a historic and global high, with 133 women in correctional facilities per every 100,000 female citizens. The United States is home to just 4% of the world's female population, yet the US is responsible for 33% of the entire world's incarcerated female population. The steep rise in the population of incarcerated women in the US is linked to the complex history of the war on drugs and the US's prison–industrial complex, which lead to mass incarceration among many demographics, but had particularly dramatic impacts on women and especially women of color. However, women made up only 10.4% of the US prison and jail population, as of 2015.
Relationships of incarcerated individuals are the familial and romantic relations of individuals in prisons or jails. Although the population of incarcerated men and women is considered quite high in many countries, there is relatively little research on the effects of incarceration on the inmates' social worlds. However, it has been demonstrated that inmate relationships play a seminal role in their well-being both during and after incarceration, making such research important in improving their overall health, and lowering rates of recidivism.
Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.
Gender-responsive prisons are prisons constructed to provide gender-specific care to incarcerated women. Contemporary sex-based prison programs were presented as a solution to the rapidly increasing number of women in the prison industrial complex and the overcrowding of California's prisons. These programs vary in intent and implementation and are based on the idea that female offenders differ from their male counterparts in their personal histories and pathways to crime. Multi-dimensional programs oriented toward female behaviors are considered by many to be effective in curbing recidivism.
Jeremy Travis is an American academic administrator who served as the fourth president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a senior college of the City University of New York, starting on August 16, 2004. On October 25, 2016, Travis announced that he would step down from his position as president the next year. In August 2017, he joined the Arnold Ventures LLC as Senior Vice President of Criminal Justice.
Prisoner reentry is the process by which prisoners who have been released return to the community. Many types of programs have been implemented with the goal of reducing recidivism and have been found to be effective for this purpose. Consideration for the conditions of the communities formerly incarcerated individuals are re-entering, which are often disadvantaged, is a fundamental part of successful re-entry.
Norway's criminal justice system focuses on the principles of restorative justice and the rehabilitation of prisoners. Correctional facilities in Norway focus on maintaining custody of the offender and attempting to make them functioning members of society. Norway's prison system is renowned as one of the most effective and humane in the world.
Society and Prisons: Some Suggestions for a New Penology is a book by Thomas Mott Osborne that was first published in 1916 by Yale University Press. In this book, Osborne describes the state of the prison system in the United States and proposes recommendations for prison reform. Drawing on his personal experience as a voluntary prisoner, he discusses the purpose of incarceration, treatment of inmates, and the potential for rehabilitation. The book influenced the discussion of prison reform and contributed to a change in societal perceptions of incarcerated individuals.
