This document—unlike anything we have ever produced at the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera)—is about the possibility of radical change. It asserts a dramatic reconsideration of the most severe criminal sanction we have: incarceration. It articulates a view that is sure to be alien to many. Yet we need not accept as a given the way we do things now, and we encourage you to envision a different path. Indeed, our vision has concrete reference points. It is in the hope, daring, and promise of a small unit for young adults in a Connecticut maximum-security facility. It is inspired by what we learned studying and visiting prisons in Germany, where the very conditions and operations of that entire system are defined by a commitment to uphold human dignity—a commitment born of that country’s coming to terms with the Holocaust. And it is rooted in our own obligation—now physically exhibited in a museum and memorial in Montgomery, Alabama—to acknowledge and atone for our brutal history of dehumanization and racial oppression and to understand how it has shaped what we do today in our justice system. Our mission is to link these things and suggest a path forward that is as much about reconciliation as it is about criminal justice reform.

In October of last year, John,*^[]* Name has been changed to protect the individual's privacy a young adult in Cheshire Correctional Institution where—most people spend 22 hours a day in their cells—was accepted into a new small housing unit. Though the unit is within the same facility, John was handcuffed and shackled and placed in a prison van, subjected to strip searches, and given a medical assessment. In transit, John spent time in a kind of purgatorial interstitial space, waiting in what he described as “a full cage from top to bottom, something like on the show Lockup or Hard Time.”

But once inside the new unit, John entered a different world. The corrections officers greeted him and shook his hand. They asked him and the other young men in the unit serious questions about their goals and expressed genuine interest in their thoughts, feelings, and plans. In a letter to his family, John described this place as “not a regular prison environment [but] an open, caring, hopeful environment.” He began to develop relationships both with older men who act as mentors in the unit and corrections officers, with whom he played chess, talked, and reflected on visits with his family. Each day, John attends group discussions with other young men and older mentors, he participates in town hall meetings where everyone gathers to talk about and resolve issues, and he joins programs that teach him about conflict resolution and money management. He spends the majority of his days outside his cell—attending programs, moving freely around the unit, and playing basketball in the outside courtyard. John, like all the men in the unit, is learning about responsibility and actively working to become a better person for himself and society. 

John’s prison experience spans two possible futures for America’s prison systems: the continuation of the punitive, retributive, and dehumanizing routines of the past; and the possibility of a reimagined future built on a wholly different set of foundational principles, designed to promote safety and success. The new unit John found himself in—called T.R.U.E., an acronym that stands for Truthfulness (to oneself and others), Respectfulness (toward the community), Understanding (ourselves and what brought us here), and Elevating (into success)—is a groundbreaking model in which we and our partners in Connecticut reimagine incarceration for young men aged 18 to 25. It was inspired by a visit to a young adult facility in Germany, where corrections officials from Connecticut were first exposed to what could be, not just what had always been. It represents a hopeful possibility for change in the way America handles incarceration. According to one of its participants, “the T.R.U.E. program is dedicated to the reclamation of moral integrity,” inherent in which “is the recognition of the dignity of all prisoners in general.” 

Unfortunately, while T.R.U.E. has inspired several other similar efforts, at the moment its goals and practices are shared by only a tiny fraction of prisons in America. At the vast majority of the facilities in the massive network of prisons across the country, people spend endless days in cells; they are marched to and from their limited activities; and their names and identities are lost, replaced with numbers, uniforms, and a stultifying idleness and isolation that impede cognition and fundamentally alters social-psychological processes. And for those who work behind the walls, the daily existence can hardly be described as enviable. It is telling that in American prisons, staff count down the years to retirement using the same language as those they are paid to keep locked up. In prison, everyone is serving a sentence.  

More than a decade ago, Vera’s own Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons tried to bring life behind bars fully into focus. We detailed the punishing and often inhumane conditions of confinement suffered by the hundreds of thousands of men and women who are held in our nation’s prisons. We did so because we believed the country was malignly ignorant of what was going on behind those grey walls. While we painted a picture of these harms, we did not sufficiently examine the deep roots that our current practices have in this country’s history of legalized slavery and racial oppression. We do so here.  

Today, in America, we are in a different moment that demands such an examination. We owe it to those on whose behalf we work to be more forthright and more searching. We owe it to the millions of Americans who are grappling with our racism and its implications to a degree that has not existed for decades. We are indebted to the scholars and advocates who have brought these roots painfully and inexorably to the surface over the last few years, as well as to those who dug deep in the century before, but with a less attentive or welcoming audience. The day in which these hard and shameful truths can be spoken—and must be examined—is here. With the opening in Montgomery, Alabama, of the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, and the National Memorial to Peace and Justice, which memorializes the lives of those lynched in our nation’s campaign of racial terror, Americans are being newly asked to reckon with the truth about our nation’s past and to sow seeds of hope for the future. 

Our reckoning must include a deep consideration of the purpose and use of incarceration in this country. While policymakers, the public, and our reform allies now express dissatisfaction with the overwhelming costs—in outright expenditures, persistently high recidivism rates, and opportunities lost—of the current system of incarceration, reform efforts have tended to focus on stanching the flow into our system of mass incarceration. This is good, and right. We must, however, also evaluate our prison practices and include a critical re-envisioning of the purpose and experience of incarceration. Despite the lowest crime rates in decades, we have 1.5 million people behind prison bars. One and a half million—2.2 million if you count jails. Let those numbers sink in. We have lost generations of young men and women, particularly young men of color, to long and brutal prison terms. Even when they return home, they remain lost, as deplorable prison conditions and treatment seriously impair their ability to live productive and healthy lives long after release. And so, we find ourselves at an important crossroads. 

In June 2016, we launched this initiative, Reimagining Prison. We sought to explore how America could do things differently—how we could fundamentally alter the way we view people who make mistakes and come into contact with the justice system and how we could fundamentally alter our conception of the obligations we have to them as fellow human beings in this shared enterprise of democracy. This project, and the resulting report, is—as I said above—nothing like any that Vera has ever done in the past. It was an elaborate and challenging thought experiment, which brought together voices and ideas of corrections chiefs, formerly incarcerated people, scholars, thought leaders from across the political spectrum, and members of the public. Through these discussions and through policy, academic, and practical research, we have settled on a singular foundational value—human dignity—on which a new prison system, and new ethos of confinement, should be based. This report presents a vision of what could come to pass should we decide as a country that incarceration will no longer be used as a tool of racial oppression. It presents a vision of what could come to pass should we decide as a country that those whom society fears—those for whom incarceration is the last and only tool we can muster to redress the harms they may have done—are not banished as members of our human family and forever retain the inalienable right of human dignity. 

Nicholas Turner

President, Vera Institute of Justice

“‘I’m beginning to believe that ‘U.S.A.’ stands for the Underprivileged Slaves of America,’ wrote a 20th-century prisoner from Mississippi in a letter detailing the daily violence he witnessed behind prison walls. His statement resounds with a long tradition of prisoners, particularly African-American prisoners, who have used the language and narrative of slavery to describe the conditions of their imprisonment.”  

~ Kim Gilmore, “Slavery and Prison: Understanding the Connections,” Social Justice, 2000^[]Kim Gilmore, “Slavery and Prison: Understanding the Connections,” Social Justice 27, no. 3 (2000), 195-205, 195 (quoting Prison Slavery, edited by Barbara Esposito and Joe Wood (Washington, DC: Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery, 1982), which collects a number of prison narratives; in the letter at issue one incarcerated person had just observed another’s death due to guards’ failure to provide required medication to manage a seizure disorder).

"Daily degradations grind away at men's souls. As one prisoner explained, the [South Carolina] Corrections Department has reduced visits from family members, limited their ability to send food and there are now only 'two meals a day on weekends' . . . One man . . . sent pictures of the metal plates that prison officials put over the windows, meaning too little light and fresh air gets into this sweltering and filthy prison. Others have sent photos of the food they are served, which in contrast to the menu that the Department of Corrections posts publicly, looks barely nutritional. The men say it is sometimes moldy, and for those on lockdown, it is served erratically and cold." 

~Heather Anne Thompson, "How a South Carolina Prison Riot Really Went Down," New York Times, 2018.^[]Thompson, "South Carolina Prison Riot," 2018.

Life in America’s prisons is dismal, and the brunt of these dismal conditions falls overwhelmingly on people of color and those who are socially and economically disadvantaged, the result of their systematic and historic economic and social exclusion from mainstream—predominantly white—American society.^[]For more scholarship on the links between historical and modern policies, see Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 2010; Wacquant, “Rethinking Race and Imprisonment,” 2002; Loïc Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh,” Punishment & Society 3, no. 1 (2001), 95-134; Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Austin Sarat and Charles J. Ogletree Jr., From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America (New York: NYU Press, 2006). Also see Ava DuVernay, Howard Barish, and Spencer Averick, 13^th, directed by Ava DuVernay (2016).  Once in prison, their ties to that mainstream society are severed—often irreversibly—through prolonged separation from family and community. While behind bars, incarcerated people are subjected to degrading treatment, inhumane conditions, and abusive interactions—all of which result in substantial social, behavioral, and cognitive trauma that handicap them in their efforts to reintegrate into society upon release. In short, prison thwarts their chances for a successful and fulfilling life.

While some advocates, organizations, and policymakers have focused on improving conditions within prison in recent years, the isolation of prison facilities and the staff who work within them make wholesale change a slow and difficult process.^[]For example, in 2003, George W. Bush signed into federal law the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), S. 1435, 108^th Congress (2003). The law requires corrections agencies to comply with minimum criteria to protect incarcerated people from sexual victimization and provides for federal oversight of implementation. Through separate federal contracts, the Bureau of Justice Assistance has also provided technical assistance to states implementing the law through the National PREA Resource Center, https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/. This combination of legislation, implementation assistance, and federal oversight in some ways creates the ideal conditions for compliance. Fifteen years of implementation, however, have not yet produced full compliance or protections across the country. In the last three years, allegations of sexual abuse within Delaware, Florida, and New Jersey women’s prisons have reached the media, and in two states, corrections officers have been charged with crimes in relation to allegations. Despite agency commitments to enforce the provisions of PREA, efforts to implement it with fidelity, and federal oversight, these agencies have not succeeded in changing the conditions in their prisons. This highlights the extreme difficulty of changing prison culture and conditions. Nick Muscavage, “Two Former Edna Mahan Inmates Suing State Department of Corrections,” mycentraljersey.com, March 11, 2018, https://perma.cc/37AH-XWPA; Cris Barrish, “Sex Behind Bars: Women Violated in Delaware Prison,” News Journal, July 31, 2015, https://perma.cc/X9BH-KD7M; and Julie Brown, “Bartered Sex, Corruption and Cover-Ups Behind Bars in Nation’s Largest Women’s Prison,” Miami Herald, December 13, 2015, http://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-reports/florida-prisons/article49175685.html. Changes to practices are introduced slowly and the implementation of new policies and practices is imperfect. Still, in recent years, some corrections agencies have sought to improve life behind bars, for instance by limiting their use of solitary confinement and increasing the number of in-prison postsecondary educational programs.^[]Alison Shames, Jessa Wilcox, and Ram Subramanian, Solitary Confinement: Common Misconceptions and Emerging Safe Alternatives (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2015), 6-8, https://perma.cc/KC6D-C3UL; and Alex Boldin, Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative Update (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2018), https://perma.cc/B58C-Q6AL.  Despite these efforts, prison life by and large remains rife with deprivation, isolation, and violence.

Who ends up in America’s prisons is the result of decisions made by numerous actors in the criminal justice system. Legislators enact laws that define crimes and set sentence lengths. Police make arrests. Prosecutors negotiate plea deals. Once a person is convicted of a criminal offense—whether as a result of a jury trial or, more likely, by plea—the judge must determine the punishment. Generally, judges are statutorily permitted to impose sentences within a range of lengths and types, such as probation or prison. Those sentences aren’t always served in full. Historically, and in most states still, after a minimum amount of time served, people sentenced to prison may be paroled at the discretion of a parole board based on behavior, evidence of self-improvement, and other factors.^[]Ram Subramanian and Ruth Delaney, Playbook for Change? States Reconsider Mandatory Sentences (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2014), 6, https://perma.cc/Z8KP-PP4G.  But between the 1970s and 1990s, the federal government and many state legislatures passed laws limiting judicial and parole board discretion.^[] As of 2017, 16 states had abolished discretionary parole; of the other states, Colorado, Connecticut, and Mississippi had abolished discretionary parole and then reinstated it. Andres F. Rengifo and Don Stemen, “The Unintended Effects of Penal Reform: African American Presence, Incarceration, and the Abolition of Discretionary Parole in the United States,” Crime & Delinquency 61, no. 5 (2012), 719-41, 736. Also see Timothy A. Hughes, Doris James Wilson, and Allen J. Beck, Trends in State Parole, 1990-2000 (Washington, DC: BJS, 2001), https://perma.cc/M99Q-2VE3.  Policies in many jurisdictions shifted toward more structured and transparent sentencing schemes—meaning that the sentence for a crime was predetermined by law, and judges could do little to vary it. This generally resulted in longer sentences for all types of crimes.^[]Subramanian and Delaney, Playbook for Change?, 2014, 6.  These new laws included sentencing guidelines, determinate sentences (fixed prison terms and no parole), and mandatory penalties (such as mandatory minimum sentences, automatic sentence enhancements, or habitual offender laws).^[]Although estimates vary, there are approximately 17 states plus the District of Columbia with sentencing guidelines, of which 15 have what are characterized as “strong” robustly used systems (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Washington). Florida and Tennessee have sentencing guidelines, but no longer have sentencing commissions. An eighteenth state—New Mexico—just established a commission with the mandate to develop guidelines in 2017. See Kelly Lyn Mitchell “State Sentencing Guidelines: A Garden Full of Variety,” Federal Probation 81, no. 2 (2017), 28-36, 28-29, http://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/81_2_5_0.pdf. Although many states retain indeterminate sentencing systems, this has not prevented some of them from adopting mandatory penalties as means of producing a “zone of hyper-determinacy” in sentencing for specified offenses. See Kevin R. Reitz, “The Disassembly and Reassembly of U.S. Sentencing Practices,” in Sentencing and Sanctions in Western Countries, edited by Michael Tonry and Richard Frase (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 229 & 231. Also see Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), National Assessment of Structured Sentencing (Washington, DC: BJA, 1996), 5-18. Regarding the roll out of mandatory penalties on the federal level, see for example Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Public Law 98-473, 98 Stat. 1976; Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, Public Law 99-570, 100 Stat. 3207; and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Public Law 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796, https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355. On the state level, see for example Cal. Penal Code § 667 (West Supp. 1998).  Many jurisdictions also passed so-called “truth-in-sentencing” policies, which required individuals to serve a substantial portion of their sentences—often 85 percent—before they could be considered for release.^[]Subramanian and Delaney, Playbook for Change?, 2014, 6. For information on truth-in-sentencing, see Paula Ditton and Doris James, Truth in Sentencing in State Prisons (Washington, DC: BJS, 1999), https://perma.cc/C4MY-Y8FS. Efforts on the state level were supported by the federal government. The federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 authorized incentives to states that enacted truth-in-sentencing statutes. See Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Public Law 103-322.  By the turn of the 21^st century, longer sentences, combined with more aggressive policing strategies for quality-of-life and low-level drug crimes in many urban centers, resulted mostly in more people going to prison—and staying there for longer periods of time.^[]For an in-depth discussion of the growth of incarceration, its impact in increasing racial disparities in imprisonment rates, and the policies and practices that contributed to this growth, see Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 33-103.

These people are disproportionately Americans of color. This is most visible in the number of black Americans behind bars, although other groups—such as Latino and Native American people—are also overrepresented in prison in comparison with their presence in the general population.^[]In 2015, there were 1,745 black people, and 820 Hispanic people, in state and federal prisons per 100,000 U.S. residents, compared to 312 white people. E. Ann Carson and Elizabeth Anderson, Prisoners in 2015 (Washington, DC: BJS, 2016), 8, https://perma.cc/273U-4PPN. Native American people are admitted to prison more than four times as often as white people. Christopher Hartney and Linh Vuong, Created Equal: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the US Criminal Justice System (Oakland, CA: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2009), https://perma.cc/7HWH-BXYA.  Today, black men and women make up just 13 percent of the country’s population, but they represent more than 35 percent of those incarcerated in American prisons—making black Americans the largest racial or ethnic group in state or federal prisons.^[]State and federal prisons incarcerate 523,000 black (35.4 percent), 499,400 white (33.8 percent), and 319,400 Hispanic people (21.6 percent). The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not report regular figures on incarcerated members of other races or ethnicities. See Carson and Anderson, Prisoners in 2015, 2016, 6. White people who do not identify as Hispanic or Latino make up 61.3 percent of the U.S. population; Hispanic/Latino people make up 17.8 percent, and black or African American people make up 13.3 percent. See U.S. Census Bureau, “U.S. Census QuickFacts,” https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US#viewtop.

Other groups of people with characteristics that put them in the minority of American society—such as their sexual orientation or gender identity—are also admitted to prison at disproportionate rates. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women go to prison at three times the rate of their heterosexual counterparts.^[]Ilan H. Meyer, Andrew R. Flores, Lara Stemple, et al., “Incarceration Rates and Traits of Sexual Minorities in the United States: National Inmate Survey, 2011–2012,” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 2 (2017), 267-73, https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303576. For incarceration rates of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people generally, see Center for American Progress (CAP) and Movement Advancement Project (MAP), Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People (Washington, DC: CAP/MAP, 2016), 3, https://perma.cc/PR6N-THLY.  When women are examined alone, that rate jumps to eight to 10 times.^[]Meyer, Flores, Stemple, et al., “Incarceration Rates and Traits of Sexual Minorities,” 2017, 234-40.  In addition, transgender and gender nonconforming men and women report spending time in jail or prison at rates double to quadruple the rates of the general population.^[]These rates are 21 percent for transgender women and 10 percent for transgender men, as compared to 5 percent of all people nationally. Jaime M. Grant, Lisa A. Mottet, and Justin Tanis, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011), 163. Also see CAP/MAP, Unjust, 2016, 3.

The people who enter prison today are also characterized by social and economic vulnerability. 

1. 
   They are poorer than the average American.

   People in prison report substantially lower incomes prior to incarceration than their non-incarcerated counterparts. Before going to prison, incarcerated people earn incomes that are 41 percent lower than people who do not go to prison.^[]Bernadette Rabuy and Daniel Kopf, Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the Pre-Incarceration Incomes of the Imprisoned (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2015), https://perma.cc/4TYQ-ZTVH.

2. 
   They have lower levels of education.

   Nearly 75 percent of those in state prison, and 60 percent of those in federal prison, have no high school credential—and only about a third of those without it successfully obtain one during their prison terms.^[]Caroline Wolfe Harlow, Education and Correctional Populations (Washington, DC: BJS, 2003, 3) https://perma.cc/VQ2E-K8WQ.

3. 
   They experience higher rates of mental illness.

   More than half of incarcerated individuals report mental illness: 56 percent of people in state prisons and 45 percent of people in federal prisons report mental illness, with the more severe measure of "serious mental illness" reported at rates three to four times that of the general population. The likelihood of mental illness of any degree is more prevalent among incarcerated women and youth.^[]Doris James and Lauren Glaze, Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates (Washington, DC: BJS, 2006), 1, https://perma.cc/7K44-CUCM. According to James and Glaze, 15 percent of those incarcerated in state prisons and 10 percent of those incarcerated in federal prisons reported at least one symptom of a psychotic disorder. Meanwhile, in 2016, there were an estimated 10.4 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with a serious mental illness. This number represented 4.2 percent of all U.S. adults. See National Institute of Mental Health, "Mental Illness," https://perma.cc/NN5E-T5ZA. Also see generally Seth Prins, "Prevalence of Mental Illnesses in U.S. State Prisons: A Systematic Review," Psychiatry Services 65, no. 7 (2014), 862-72, 863 & figure 2, https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ps.201300166.

4. 
   They have been victims and experienced trauma themselves.

   Incarcerated people also report high rates of past trauma and victimization.^[]Although the most recent national survey of victimization among people in prison is nearly 20 years old, its findings show that incarcerated people experienced child abuse at twice the rate of the general population, a rate that increases if victimization beyond childhood is included. A survey published in 1999 found that 14 percent of all men in prison and 36 percent of women in state prison had been abused as children. Women experienced higher rates of victimization, including into adulthood. Among women in state prisons, 57 percent had experienced physical or sexual abuse—or both—in their lifetimes, as compared to 16 percent of men. See Caroline Wolfe Harlow, Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers (Washington, DC: BJS, 1999), 2, https://perma.cc/GA82-6SW7. Trauma occurs when a person witnesses an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury to the self or others that involves fear, helplessness, or horror. Bruce Western, “Lifetimes of Violence in a Sample of Released Prisoners,” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 1, no. 2 (2015), 14-30, 20-21 & figure 2 (discussing how, empirically, formerly incarcerated people have been surrounded by serious violence since early  childhood), https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/brucewestern/files/lifetimes_of_violence_in_a_sample_of_released_prisoners.pdf. More recent localized studies of incarcerated persons have revealed similarly high rates of victimization and more detailed accounts of experiences likely to be considered trauma. One study of incarcerated people in Massachusetts found that more than 40 percent had witnessed the killing of another person in childhood, in addition to experiencing or witnessing serious violence. Ibid. (discussing how, empirically, formerly incarcerated people have been surrounded by serious violence since early childhood). Also see Nena Messina and Christine Grella, “Childhood Trauma and Women's Health Outcomes in a California Prison Population,” American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 10 (2006), 1842-48, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1586137/.  Indeed, the profiles of those who are convicted of crimes and those who are victims of crimes parallel—they are, in many respects, two sides of the same coin.^[]See generally Abbe Smith, “The ‘Monster’ in All of Us: When Victims Become Perpetrators,” Suffolk University Law Review 38, no. 2 (2005), 367-94, https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1218&context=facpub.  (See “Listening to victims.”)

5. 
   They suffer from substance use issues at higher rates.

   More than half of the people in state prisons meet the criteria for drug dependence or abuse, as compared to approximately five percent of the total general population age 18 or older.^[]Jennifer Bronson, Jessica Stroop, Stephanie Zimmer, and Marcus Berzofsky, Drug Use, Dependence, and Abuse Among State Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2007-2009 (Washington, DC: BJS, 2017), 1, https://perma.cc/R695-VZLY.

6. 
   They are more likely to have a disability.

   Nearly 32 percent of people in prison report having hearing, vision, cognitive, or ambulatory disabilities, as compared to approximately 11 percent of the general public.^[]For rates of disability among incarcerated people, see Jennifer Bronson, Laura M. Maruschak, and Marcus Berzofsky, Disabilities Among Prison and Jail Inmates, 2011–12 (Washington, DC: BJS, 2015), 3, https://perma.cc/C89G-MDJF. For rates in the United States population see Matthew W. Brault, Americans with Disabilities: 2010 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), https://perma.cc/2ZA8-PNVR.

"[The correctional facility], like countless other penal facilities across the country, is overcrowded and the men held inside have been trying to bring attention to the inhumane conditions they live under for a long time now. But this facility, again like so many others, is far, far away from where most of the prisoner families live as well as far from the media's gaze. People on the outside can't see the 'spoiled food, severe overcrowding, indifference to inmate grievances' that the men inside have been enduring. They don't know the extent of the gang problem plaguing the prison, and how desperately prisoners have been asking for help, because prison management manipulates its own data—for example . . . assaults on prisoners are written up as 'mutual fights' in order to make them seem better, less predatory, to legislators in the state capitol." 

~Heather Ann Thompson, "Prisons Are Erupting and Why it Matters," Daily Beast, 2016^[]Heather Ann Thompson, "Prisons Are Erupting and Why it Matters," Daily Beast, October 21, 2016, https://perma.cc/RAA7-SGTV.  

"The cell was so small that I could stand in one place and touch both walls simultaneously. The ceiling was so low that I could reach up and touch the hot light fixture. My bed took up the length of the cell, and there was no other furniture at all. . . . The walls were solid steel and painted all white. . . . Shortly after I arrived, the prison staff began construction, adding more bars and other security measures to the cell while I was within it. . . . It is hard to describe the horror I experienced during this construction process. As they built new walls around me it felts like I was being buried alive. . . . Due to the unchanging bright artificial lights and not having a wristwatch or clock, I couldn't tell if it was day or night. Frequently, I would fall asleep and when I woke up I would not know if I had slept for five minutes or five hours, and would have no idea of what day or time of day it was. . . . I now know that I was housed there for about four years, but I would have believed it was a decade if that is what I was told. It seemed eternal and endless and immeasurable." 

~Thomas Silverstein, describing his experience in solitary confinement to Jean Casella and James Ridgeway, in "Five Unforgettable Stories From Inside Solitary Confinement," Solitary Watch, 2017^[]James Casella and James Ridgeway, "Five Unforgettable Stories From Inside Solitary Confinement," Solitary Watch, November 27, 2017 (quoting Thomas Silverstein describing his experience in solitary confinement) https://perma.cc/Y8R3-KCSQ.

The prison experience in America today is harsh, restrictive, and dehumanizing. No matter what the underlying purpose for imprisonment—retribution, incapacitation, and/or deterrence—prison by its very nature is intended to remove people from society and subject them to state control. That control is all-encompassing—the prison dictates the size, look, and feel of a person’s living space; the necessities a person can obtain (such as food, clothing, and medical care); and the activities a person can participate in, be they social, work, or educational.^[]Erving Goffman, “Characteristics of Total Institutions,” in The Prison: Studies in Institutional Organization and Change, edited by Donald R. Cressey (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 15-64, https://perma.cc/P8CK-LVN8; and Gresham Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958). Also see Victor Hassine, Life Without Parole: Living and Dying in Prison Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 7 (“To fully understand the prison experience requires a personal awareness of how bricks, mortar, steel, and the endless enforcement of rules and regulations animate a prison into a living, breathing entity designed to manipulate its inhabitants. . . . Prison designers and managers have developed a precise and universal alphabet of fear that is carefully assembled and arranged – bricks, steel, uniforms, colors, odors, shapes, and management style – to effectively control the conduct of whole prison populations”).

In reinforcing state control, prison policies and practices are designed to diminish the self and weaken the individual. Prison life largely emphasizes two things: 

• the loss of each incarcerated person’s sense of self, autonomy, and capacity to control his or her own destiny; and
• the inculcation of a carceral identity—one reinforced by the strict social arrangements inside prisons and the power imbalance between corrections officers and incarcerated people.^[]Erving Goffman termed these “mortification processes.” See Goffman, “Total Institutions,” 1961, 15-64. Also see John Irwin and Barbara Owen, “Harm and the Contemporary Prison,” in The Effects of Imprisonment, edited by Alison Liebling and Shad Maruna (New York: Routledge, 2011), 94-117; and Sykes, The Society of Captives, 1958 (arguing that imprisonment is synonymous with deprivations, specifically the loss of goods and services, personal relationships, security, and autonomy).

People carry the prison experience and the identities they developed under prison duress with them as they return home, and this impacts their future success, their communities, and their loved ones.^[]Irwin and Owen, “Harm and the Contemporary Prison,” 2011.  For many, they remain branded as a criminal—both in their own minds and by society. Elements of the current prison experience contribute to these results, including the architecture of prison facilities, overcrowding within them, and the use of solitary confinement. The experience of incarceration is further marked by a lack of basic necessities, meaningful activities, and connections with the outside world. All of this is compounded by the trauma of the prison experience itself and the loss of the incarcerated person’s constitutional rights. These features of the American prison experience are detailed in the subsections that follow.

Prison design and physical layout

By their very design and aesthetics, the physical buildings and layout of American prisons cultivate feelings of institutionalization, immobilization, and lack of control among the people who live there.^[]See Philip Hancock and Yvonne Jewkes, “Architectures of Incarceration: The Spatial Pains of Imprisonment,” Punishment & Society 13, no. 5 (2011), 611-29, 617. Noting that Sykes in The Society of Captives, 1958, 7-8, recognized the physical compression induced by typical prison environments served a further function—the concomitant psychological compression of incarcerated people—the authors argued that “such compression is not only experienced as a pain, a deprivation, a restriction, but . . . also leads to the production of an institutionalized mode of subjectivity; one congruent with the demands of docility and dependency continually placed upon the prison population.”  A typical cell is a small cement and brick box—the size of a typical parking space—with a metal or cement bed (sometimes a bunk bed) covered with a thin mattress, an open metal sink and toilet, perhaps a fixed metal desk, and a small window that is often sealed shut.^[]The American Correctional Association publishes standards detailing the size and minimum furnishings of detention rooms or cells. In 1981, as the prison construction boom was well underway, people held in single occupant cells were to be provided with 60 square feet of space if confined for fewer than 10 hours per day; otherwise they were entitled to 70 square feet. Temporary holding facilities might give an incarcerated person as few as 50 square feet. Little distinction in cell size is made between restrictive housing and ordinary facilities; the expected difference is not in the cell, but in the amount of time spent outside of it and the activities available. American Correctional Association, Standards for Adult Local Detention Facilities (Second Edition) (College Park, MD: American Correctional Association, 1981), 30-34, https://perma.cc/3N7W-UPNU. For a survey of current conditions, see for example Joanna Weschler and Theodore Zang, Prison Conditions in the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991), https://perma.cc/SL4K-53B6. Also see Jamie Fellner, Cold Storage: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Indiana (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1997), https://perma.cc/B7UK-7ZF9; and Jamie Fellner, Red Onion State Prison: Super-Maximum Security Confinement in Virginia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), https://perma.cc/3BLA-WJRZ.  Other interior spaces are similarly utilitarian in nature, with hard fixtures and fittings, cinder blocks, and little color, ornamentation, or natural light.^[]Hancock and Jewkes, “Architectures of Incarceration,” 2011.[/foonote] Because the spaces are designed to maximize control of people’s movement, they are configured in highly segmented and rigid ways—with clearly delineated boundaries that are reinforced through gates, locks, bars, and Plexiglas or Lexan.^[] Ibid.  These common prison architectural designs do not encourage positive individual or group experiences.^[]Ibid., 620-21 & 626; and Megan Fowler, The Human Factor in Prison Design: Contrasting Prison Architecture in the United States and Scandinavia (paper presented at Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Annual Meeting, March 19-21, 2015), https://perma.cc/LA5A-8MTR.  Even recreation spaces are designed in this way—with little or no access to green spaces, often as covered cages, sometimes outdoors, but too often simply as another indoor space, such as a gymnasium.^[]Fellner, Cold Storage, 1997.  In Madrid v. Gomez—a case challenging the constitutionality of conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison in California—the court remarked that the sight of incarcerated people in the facility’s barren exercise pens created an image “hauntingly similar to that of caged felines pacing in a zoo.”^[]See Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp. 1146, 1229 (N.D. Cal. 1995), https://perma.cc/27A3-227W.  

Overcrowding

Many American prisons are housing the maximum number of people they can hold—or more. In 2015, 27 states and the federal government operated their prisons near or above 100 percent capacity.^[]Carson and Anderson, Prisoners in 2015, 2016, 27.  Because of the sheer number of people corrections staff must manage, overcrowding can cause reductions in opportunities for rehabilitative programming and lead to limits on out-of-cell time, recreation, meal times, visitation, and access to staff. Moreover, in overcrowded conditions, individuals experience extreme deprivation of privacy—they may be forced to sleep dozens to a room in dayrooms, classrooms, or gymnasiums; receive inadequate medical care; be subject to victimization at higher rates; and commit suicide at higher rates.^[]John Gibbons, Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, Confronting Confinement: A Report of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2006), 23-27, https://perma.cc/X78Q-TVEU; and Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 181. Also see Craig Haney, The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2002), 78, https://perma.cc/ML33-CDNY.  In Brown v. Plata, the Supreme Court found that overcrowding in California prisons was the “primary cause” of suffering and deaths among those incarcerated, stemming from the “grossly inadequate provision of medical and mental health care.”^[]Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493, 502 (2011), https://perma.cc/7VE6-LM2D.

Solitary Confinement 

Tens of thousands of people in U.S. prisons are now held in solitary confinement either as punishment for rule breaking or, for a small number, as a preventive safety measure. The precise number of people held in these conditions on any given day is not known, but estimates range from 80,000 to 100,000, and there are indications that the use of such housing has grown substantially in recent years—perhaps by as much as 42 percent between 1995 and 2005.^[]Association of State Correctional Administrators, Time-In-Cell: The ASCA-Liman 2014 National Survey of Administrative Segregation in Prison (New Haven, CT: Yale Law School, 2015), 2-3, https://perma.cc/B3S7-K2ES; and Shames, Wilcox, and Subramanian, Solitary Confinement: Misconceptions and Alternatives, 2015, 6.  Conditions for people held in solitary are dire. Although conditions can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and even from facility to facility, people held in solitary often are forced to live in cramped cells for 22 to 24 hours per day. They typically cannot participate in programming or other group activities and may be barred from access to reading materials.^[]For a description of the conditions faced in solitary confinement, see Shames, Wilcox, and Subramanian, Solitary Confinement, 2015, 8-12.  There is often little or no natural light and artificial lights may be left on day and night.^[]Ibid., 8.  Long-term isolation also takes a mental and emotional toll: it has been shown to create or exacerbate mental illness and physical health problems, from which some people never recover.^[]See Sasha Abramsky and Jamie Fellner, Ill-Equipped: US Prisons and Offenders With Mental Illness (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003), 151-53, https://perma.cc/U2HK-9VVG; and David Lovell, “Patterns of Disturbed Behavior in a Supermax Population,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 3, no. 8 (2008), 985-1004, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247745192_Patterns_of_Disturbed_Behavior_in_a_Supermax_Population.  Nor does solitary enhance safety. Incarcerated people may take on the expected behaviors of the security levels to which they are assigned. Researchers have discussed this as evidence that labeling theory (the theory that individual behavior is influenced by the social expectations of others) applies to prison classification.^[]See Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 194-95; Lawrence L. Bench and Terry D. Allen, “Investigating the Stigma of Prison Classification: An Experimental Design,” Prison Journal 83, no. 4 (2003), 367-82; and John L. Worrall and Robert G. Morris, “Inmate Custody Levels and Prison Rule Violations,” Prison Journal 91, no. 2 (2011), 131-57.  This suggests that restrictive housing units can actually create or escalate behavioral issues and violence among incarcerated people, rather than contain or reduce them.^[]See for example, Kate King, Benjamin Steiner, and Stephanie Ritchie Breach, “Violence in the Supermax: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” Prison Journal 88, no. 1 (2008), 161-63, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249707618_Violence_in_the_Supermax_A_Self-Fulfilling_Prophecy; and Chad S. Briggs, Jody L. Sundt, and Thomas C. Castellano, “The Effect of Supermaximum Security Prisons on Aggregate Levels of Institutional Violence,” Criminology 41, no. 4 (2003), 1341-76, 1342 (finding that the effectiveness of supermaximum-security confinement as a mechanism to enhance prison safety remains largely speculative and that the implementation of supermaximum security in the locations studied was associated with a temporary increase in assaults against staff).

Basic necessities

Although prisons are constitutionally required to provide their residents with basic necessities—from hygiene to clothing, food, and medical care—many do so in ways that make prison more taxing and dehumanizing.^[]The U.S. Supreme Court has held, for example, that the government must provide people living in prison with medical care, adequate nutrition, a safe environment, and an acceptable standard of sanitation. See Rex D. Glensy, “The Right to Dignity,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 43, no. 1 (2011), 65-142, 112 (citing Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 103-04 (1976) (medical care); Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 315-16 (1982) (safety); and Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 686-87 (1978) (lengthy deprivation of nutrition and sanitation issues including overcrowding)).  For example, the hygienic supplies prisons provide to all residents can be limited in volume and poor in quality, with reports of people running out of toilet paper and other basic necessities—including sanitary pads and tampons.^[]For reports on the lack of toilet paper, see Taylor Elizabeth Eldridge, “The Big Business of Prisoner Care Packages,” The Marshall Project, December 12, 2017, https://perma.cc/D5L2-LHLG; and Mary Ellen Klas, “Florida Prisons Have Toilet Paper, But They’re Not Supplying It to Some Inmates,” Miami Herald, July 19, 2017, https://perma.cc/8JGB-8X4T. Access to menstrual hygiene products is a widespread problem. See Zoe Greenberg, “In Jail, Pads and Tampons as Bargaining Chips,” New York Times, April 20, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/nyregion/pads-tampons-new-york-womens-prisons.html; and Chandra Bozelko, “Prisons that Withhold Menstrual Pads Humiliate Women and Violate Basic Rights, Guardian, June 12, 2015, https://perma.cc/9FMW-Y4T9. Things may be changing soon. The Dignity Act, a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate to improve the treatment of people held in federal prisons, mandates making tampons and sanitary napkins available to incarcerated people free of charge. S. 1524, 115^th Congress (2017-2018), https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1524/text. In August 2017, the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued guidance on a new requirement to provide free sanitary products to incarcerated persons at all federal facilities. Federal Bureau of Prisons, Memorandum on Provision of Feminine Hygiene Products (Washington DC: Federal Bureau of Prisons, August 1, 2017), https://perma.cc/3RAN-X6H9. In Arizona, HB 2222, intended to provide a free, unlimited supply of hygiene products to incarcerated people, won approval from the House Military, Veterans and Regulatory Affairs Committee in early 2018; the Chairman of the Rules Committee, however, has announced that he does not intend to hear the bill, claiming that administrative changes in the meantime that doubled the number of free pads from 12 to 24 made the bill redundant. Incarcerated people must purchase tampons if they want them. Kaila White, “Arizona Legislator Kills Bill that Would Have Given Female Inmates Free Feminine Products,” The Republic, February 12, 2018, https://perma.cc/2W3N-BGTR. Virginia and Maryland have both passed legislation making menstrual hygiene products available to incarcerated people at no charge. Virginia HB 83 (2018), https://perma.cc/V26C-Y3LA; and Maryland SB 598 (2018), https://perma.cc/3PYC-HB9N.  Several facilities have begun issuing uniforms or other items of clothing in colors designed to humiliate the wearer, or using fabrics that cause discomfort.^[]Susie Neilson, “Prison Uniforms Make It Harder to ‘Go Straight,’” Newsweek, March 7, 2016, https://perma.cc/F2KH-VK6Q.  A growing number of jurisdictions have returned to issuing people striped uniforms for their purported “punitive” effect.^[] Issuing uniforms designed to make incarcerated people uncomfortable or alter their behavior is not an uncommon practice in the United States. One newspaper article described this practice as “the ultimate humiliation as the final shred of dignity is stripped away.” See Dan Glaister, “Pink Prison Makes Texan Inmates Blush,” Guardian, October 10, 2006, https://perma.cc/J8MQ-H8EY. For a discussion of trends in uniforms, see Thomas Vinciguerra, “The Clothes That Make the Inmate,” New York Times, October 1, 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/01/weekinreview/the-clothes-that-make-the-inmate.html.  

Even meals may be limited. Access to food has become more restricted in recent years as many states have reduced meals from three to two on some days, or reduced the number of overall calories served in prison.^[]For example, in fiscal year 2010, seven surveyed states, and in fiscal year 2011, 13 surveyed states, reported reducing food services as a cost-saving measure. See Alison Shames, Michael Woodruff, Alissa Cambier, et al., The Continuing Fiscal Crisis in Corrections: Setting a New Course (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2010), https://perma.cc/FUE4-AAHJ; and Christine S. Scott-Hayward, The Fiscal Crisis in Corrections: Rethinking Policies and Practices (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2009), https://perma.cc/BGF6-YZKJ. Also see “Ohio Introduces Two-Meal Plan to Reduce Costs,” Correctional News, December 1, 2009, http://perma.cc/SF2Z-36S5; Manny Fernandez, “In Bid to Cut Costs at Some Texas Prisons, Lunch Will Not Be Served on Weekends,” New York Times, October 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/us/texas-reduces-weekend-meals-for-prisoners.html; and Hanna Raskin, “Feeding the Prison System: Some Inmates Buy Way Around 'Institutional Cooking,’” Post and Courier, December 14, 2014, http://perma.cc/BSL5-XL45.  In the past decade, reports of insufficient quantities of food have become more widespread.^[]Raskin, “Feeding the Prison System,” 2014. For this practice in jails, see Alysia Santo and Lisa Iaboni, “What’s in a Prison Meal?” The Marshall Project, July 7, 2015, http://perma.cc/U3D2-SBJM.  Poor quality food and improper food handling have also contributed to a rate of foodborne illnesses among people in prison at six times the rate of the free population.^[]Joe Fassler and Claire Brown, “Prison Food is Making U.S. Inmates Disproportionately Sick,” Atlantic, December 27, 2017, http://perma.cc/F2VA-NWK9. For more on foodborne illness in prison, see Mariel A. Marlow, Ruth E. Luna-Gierke, Patricia M. Griffin, and Antonio R. Vieira, “Foodborne Disease Outbreaks in Correctional Institutions-United States, 1998-2014,” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 7 (2017), 1150-56.  The food supplied is also highly processed, often low in fiber and high in cholesterol and sodium, and tends not to include fresh fruits and vegetables or lean proteins, contributing to chronic medical conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, from which black people are more likely to suffer.^[]Wendy Sawyer, “Food for Thought: Prison Food is a Public Health Problem,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 3, 2017, https://perma.cc/W49W-YPGV.

At the same time, prison medical staff struggle to appropriately respond to the medical needs of the incarcerated population. The failure to provide adequate medical care and its extreme consequences is well documented and has been a frequent subject of litigation in recent years.^[]To cite just two recent instances, two Vermont men died of cancer, one without being diagnosed with or treated for the disease by prison medical staff despite requesting care and suffering increasing debilitation of movement and cognition, as well as significant pain. The other man was diagnosed only after his femur snapped while he was dressing; he died within a year. Taylor Dobbs, “The Slow and Painful Prison Death of Roger Brown,” Vermont Public Radio, November 14, 2017, https://perma.cc/G94A-HLEA; and Taylor Dobbs, “'They Killed Him': As a Vermont Inmate Suffered from Untreated Cancer, Officials Delayed Care,” Vermont Public Radio, November 13, 2017, https://perma.cc/5L89-VQ58. Also see Brown v. Plata, 563 U.S. 493 (2011).  Yet incarcerated people continue to report health problems at higher rates than the general population in a wide range of areas.^[]Specifically, incarcerated people experience higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, heart problems, asthma, kidney problems, stroke, arthritis, and sexually transmitted infections. Laura M. Maruschak, Marcus Berzofsky, and Jennifer Unangst, Medical Problems of State and Federal Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011-12 (Washington, DC: BJS, 2016), 2-3, http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5219. Also see Margaret Noonan, Harley Rohloff, and Scott Ginder, Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000–2013 - Statistical Tables (Washington, DC: BJS, 2013), 1, 4, & table 24 (finding that the leading causes of death in prisons are cancer, heart disease, and liver disease), https://perma.cc/N2M5-22YX.  Prison environmental conditions, including poor air quality and high temperatures, can exacerbate existing health problems—or create new ones.^[]Poor air quality has also caused lung and breathing disorders at prisons in Pennsylvania. See Environmental Protection Agency, “EPA Settlement Will Reduce Air Pollution from Four Pennsylvania Prisons,” Environmental Protection Agency, January 4, 2011, http://perma.cc/NT4P-EPH2. High temperatures and inadequate cooling systems have been reported as the cause of death for people in prison facilities in Arizona, California, Michigan, and Texas. See James Ridgeway and Jean Casella, “When Summer is Torture,” Mother Jones, July 27, 2010, http://perma.cc/2YMN-496C; Manny Fernandez, “In Texas, Arguing That Heat Can Be a Death Sentence for Prisoners,” New York Times, July, 28, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/us/in-texas-arguing-that-heat-can-be-a-death-sentence-for-prisoners.html; Alice Speri, “‘Deadly Heat’ in U.S. Prisons is Killing Inmates and Spawning Lawsuits,” The Intercept, August 24, 2016, http://perma.cc/3LR3-E62L; and Maurice Chammah, “Cooking Them to Death: The Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons,” The Marshall Project, October 11, 2017, http://perma.cc/739C-3PH3.  

Meaningful Activities 

As prison life has become more restricted and punitive, it has simultaneously become more monotonous. Higher levels of security are generally the most restrictive, with more closely supervised movement, less time outside of cells, fewer options for leisure or programming, and more rigorously controlled rules regarding personal property.^[]For the defining characteristics of minimum-, medium-, and maximum-security prisons, see James J. Stephan, Census of State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 2005 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2009), 8, http://perma.cc/CXT4-N8A7.  However, no matter where someone is placed—whether a minimum-, medium-, or maximum-security facility—opportunities for paid work, as well as rehabilitative, vocational, and postsecondary programming, have declined across the board—although opportunities for postsecondary education have been increasing in certain jurisdictions.^[]While the number of individual programs has increased for some types of educational opportunities (notably, vocational training), the actual number of seats available to people in prison has decreased, and many incarcerated people may be restricted or prohibited from enrolling because of disciplinary infractions or other administrative reasoning. See Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 191-92. However, over the last several decades, some educational programs became more available as a result of mandatory education policies requiring those who enter prison without a high school credential to participate in adult basic education. These policies exist in 22 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons. See ibid., 190. Postsecondary education opportunities have become less accessible since 1994, when federal student aid in the form of Pell grants was made unavailable to incarcerated persons. Ruth Delaney, Ram Subramanian, and Fred Patrick, Making the Grade: Developing Quality Postsecondary Education Programs in Prison (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016), 5, https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/publications/making-the-grade-postsecondary-education-programs-in-prison/legacy_downloads/making-the-grade-postsecondary-education-programs-in-prison.pdf. However, in 2016, the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program launched to make need-based financial aid available to students in prison for the first time in 20 years. See Vera Institute of Justice, “Bringing College Back to Prison,” http://perma.cc/7LZL-TN2C; and U.S. Department of Education, “U.S. Department of Education Launches Second Chance Pell Pilot Program for Incarcerated Individuals,” press release (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, July 31, 2015), http://perma.cc/VA38-TP2Y. The fate of that program, which must be renewed each year, is uncertain under the Trump administration. See Nicole Lewis, “The Uncertain Fate of College in Prison,” The Marshall Project, March 28, 2018, http://perma.cc/6KQS-TW3C.  This leads not only to a worsening daily existence in prison, but it also hinders the chances of success for people after they leave prison. And fully 95 percent of people in prison will eventually be released—around 600,000 each year.^[]Jeremy Travis, Amy Solomon, and Michelle Waul, From Prison to Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Reentry (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001), 9, http://perma.cc/KY7V-GEYF. Also see Joan Petersilia, When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). For eventual release figures see E. Ann Carson and Daniela Golinelli, Prisoners in 2012: Trends in Admissions and Releases, 1991-2012 (Washington, DC: BJS, 2013), 4 & table 2, http://perma.cc/32TN-9ED3.  But despite research showing that prison violence tends to go down when education and vocational programs are introduced, and that cognitive behavioral and other rehabilitative programming may alleviate the negative impacts of incarceration and improve post-release employment prospects and earnings, in-prison therapeutic programming has become less—not more—available over time.^[]See for example Katherine M. Auty, Aiden Cope, and Alison Liebling, “Psychoeducational Programs for Reducing Prison Violence: A Systematic Review,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 33 (2017), 126-143, 140; Grant Duwe and Valerie A. Clark, “Nothing Will Work Unless You Did: The Predictors of Postprison Employment,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 44, no. 5, (2017), 657-77; and Delaney, Subramanian, and Patrick, Making the Grade, 2016, 8-11. For the decline in in-prison programming, see Faye Taxman, April Pattavina, and Michael Caudy, “Justice Reinvestment in the United States: An Empirical Assessment of the Potential Impact of Increased Correctional Programming on Recidivism,” Victims & Offenders 9, no. 1 (2014), 50-75, 56-58.  In fact, a study conducted in 2005 and 2006 found that although substance abuse treatment programs are available in a majority of facilities, less than 10 percent of people in prison were able to participate in treatment services.^[]Taxman, Pattavina, and Caudy, “Justice Reinvestment,” 2014, 68 & table 2.

Where work opportunities do exist in prison, many are now institutional jobs such as food service, laundry, or janitorial assignments that benefit the prison, rather than jobs in which incarcerated individuals can learn or apply new skills to prepare them for the workforce on release.^[]Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 192.  Even among those who do obtain jobs, the average number of hours they work has decreased from 40 to 20 per week and median pay has declined to 86 cents per day.^[]In the United States, the vast majority of in-prison work opportunities fall into two categories: (1) regular prison jobs that support the prison facility; and (2) jobs in state-owned businesses, which produce goods that are sold to government agencies (often known as correctional industries). Data on average wages paid to people in prison are difficult to calculate, but one source found that the average hourly rate for regular jobs ranged from $0.14 to $0.63; and the average hourly rate for correctional industries jobs ranged from $0.33 to $1.41. See Wendy Sawyer, How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn In Each State? (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2017), https://perma.cc/6BNT-TH5A. Also see Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 192.  People in prison are thus able to buy fewer personal items from the prison store or commissary to supplement the limited supplies the prison provides.^[] Items they may need to purchase include food, toiletries, and hygienic supplies, and supplemental articles of clothing such as undergarments, socks, or shoes. Purchasing supplemental food is particularly important in prisons that have cut meals and calories. See note 89, above. Also see Eldridge, “The Big Business of Prisoner Care Packages,” 2017.[/footnotes]

Connections with the outside 

Another reality of the prison experience is loneliness. During the prison boom of the 1990s, many new prisons were constructed in poor, rural areas.^[]Before 1980, only 36 percent of prisons were located in rural areas. From the 1970s to the 1980s, the average number of new prisons constructed in rural areas each year went from four to 16, and in the 1990s that number grew again to 25. Almost 60 percent of new prisons built between 1992 and 1994 were in located in rural areas, although those areas accounted for only approximately 20 percent of the national population, and 53 percent of all people sentenced to newly built prisons from 1980 to 1991 were housed in rural facilities. Between 1990 and 1999, 245 new prisons were built in rural areas. See Calvin L. Beale, "Prisons, Population, and Jobs in Nonmetro America," Rural Development Perspectives 8, no. 3 (1993), 16-19; Calvin L. Beale, "Rural Prisons: An Update," Rural Development Perspectives 11, no. 2 (1996), 25-27; Tracy Huling, “Building a Prison Economy in Rural America,” in Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, edited by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind (New York: The New Press, 2002), 197-213; Amy K. Glasmeier and Tracey L. Farrigan, "The Economic Impacts of the Prison Development Boom on Persistently Poor Rural Places," International Regional Science Review 30, no. 3 (2007), 274-99; Terry L. Besser and Margaret M. Hanson, “Development of Last Resort: The Impact of New State Prisons on Small Town Economies in the United States,” Journal of the Community Development Society 35, no. 2 (2004), 1-16; Susan H. Packard and Kevin E. Courtright, “Exploring Satisfaction and the Perception of Economic Impact Among Communities Hosting Correctional Institutions: A Qualitative Examination of Four Rural Communities in Pennsylvania,” International Journal of Business and Social Science 6, no. 8(1) (2015), 1-13; and Suzanne M. Kirchhoff, Economic Impacts of Prison Growth (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2010), 16. For example, between 1982 and 2010, New York constructed 40 new state prisons and located all of them in rural areas. Rebecca U. Thorpe, "Perverse Politics: The Persistence of Mass Imprisonment in the Twenty-first Century," Perspectives on Politics 13, no. 3 (2015), 618-37, 624. In Pennsylvania, between 1990 and 2000, the number of people in rural prisons rose by 187 percent (compared to a growth in the number of people in urban prisons of only 46 percent). At the turn of this century, rural areas had 11 incarcerated people per 1,000 residents and urban areas had only five per 1,000 residents. “Just the Facts: Prison Population Growth,” Center for Rural Pennsylvania Newsletter, November/December 2001, https://perma.cc/SMQ2-KPML; and Kirchhoff, Economic Impacts of Prison Growth, 2010, 16.  Siting prisons in rural areas—especially when coupled with restrictive visitation and furlough policies—has made it all the more difficult for people in prison to sustain personal relationships with their families and friends. With prisons farther from population centers, many more people are forced to serve their sentences in places that may be unreachable by public transit—and where visiting can place a substantial cost burden on friends and family, who may have to miss work, pay for childcare, and cover the costs of travel, including a place to stay, food, and gas.^[]Léon Digard, Margaret diZerega, Allon Yaroni, and Joshua Rinaldi, A New Role for Technology? Implementing Video Visitation in Prison (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016), 2 & 4, https://perma.cc/3XQ2-V4CW.  Receiving fewer visits from family and friends not only exacerbates the isolating experience of prison, but it also implicates community safety, as regular visitation is associated with a reduction in future criminal justice contact after prison.^[]Meghan Mitchell, Kallee Spooner, Di Jia, and Yan Zhang, “The Effect of Prison Visitation on Reentry Success: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Criminal Justice 47 (2016), 74-83 (finding that experiencing visitation resulted in a 26 percent decrease in recidivism).

On top of this, many state corrections agencies enforce strict visitation policies—including denying physical contact between individuals (even parents and their children), limiting the number of approved visitors, especially non-family visitors, limiting the length of each visit, and restricting the days on which visits are permitted.^[]See Chesa Boudin, Trevor Stutz, and Aaron Littman, “Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty-State Survey,” Yale Law & Policy Review 32, no. 1 (2013), 149-89, 160-61 (number and duration of visits), 163-65 (number and nature of visitors) & 167 (physical contact). For people in prison who are parents of young children, these policies are particularly destructive. Research indicates that parent-child visits are most successful for both parent and child when, among other things, they allow physical contact and are conducted in a child-friendly setting—provided by only a few facilities. See Lindsey Cramer, Margaret Goff, Bryce Peterson, and Heather Sandstrom, Parent-Child Visiting Practices in Prisons and Jails: A Synthesis of Research and Practice (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2017), 7, https://perma.cc/FBJ7-5TTK.  For those people who are able to visit their loved ones in prison, they often must undergo invasive search procedures—standard at most maximum-security facilities, even for children—which can be a traumatic experience that may deter future visits.^[]The state of Florida recently enhanced its search procedures, subjecting 2,350 people—more than 97 percent of whom are women—to strip searches when their clothing set off metal detectors. Ben Conrack, “Women Describe ‘Degrading’ Strip Searches at Baker Prison Visitation,” Florida Times-Union, March 22, 2018, https://perma.cc/QW5J-NYU7. Also see Cramer, Goff, Peterson, and Sandstrom, Parent-Child Visiting Practices, 2017, 7-8; and Boudin, Stutz, and Littman, “Prison Visitation Policies,” 2013, 149 & 166-69.  And while advancements in technology theoretically should make it easier for people to stay in touch remotely through phone, email, and video calls, these opportunities are also often restricted and can be quite costly.^[]Digard, diZerega, Yaroni, and Rinaldi, A New Role for Technology?, 2016. Additionally, some facilities foreclose in-person visitation after they introduce video visitation: it is estimated that nearly 75 percent of local jails institute policies that reduce or eliminate in-person visits once video calling is installed. Bernadette Rabuy and Peter Wagner, Screening Out Family Time: The For-Profit Video Visitation Industry in Prisons and Jails (Northampton, MA: Prison Policy Initiative, 2015), https://perma.cc/JJG6-MLVD. Video calls can be anywhere between $10 and $15 for a 30-minute computer connection; telephone calls are nearly $25 for only 15 minutes.^[]Digard, diZerega, Yaroni, and Rinaldi, A New Role for Technology?, 2016, 13. According to one report, before the FCC instituted an 11 cents per minute rate cap in 2015, the average rate for in-state phone calls was $2.96 for 15 minutes, and the average rate for calls between states was $3.15 for 15 minutes. Under the Trump administration, the FCC has declared that it will no longer enforce the cap on in-state calls. Ann E. Marimow, “FCC Made a Case for Limiting Cost of Prison Phone Calls. Not Anymore,” Washington Post, February 5, 2017, https://perma.cc/2H5D-XTL8. Also see Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy, “Following the Money of Mass Incarceration,” Prison Policy Initiative, January 25, 2017 (prison phone companies may charge up to $24.95 for a 15-minute call), https://perma.cc/EL8N-GJ66.

Trauma

The prison experience in America not only crushes one’s individual identity and robs one of dignity; it also produces long-term effects—including social and psychological adaptations to prison conditions and the lasting effects of trauma resulting from incarceration.^[]“Prisonization,” a condition identified among incarcerated people as early as the 1950s, is the process of internalizing behaviors and values associated with prison life in an effort to cope with the requirements of institutional life. For a discussion of the psychological impacts of incarceration see Haney, The Psychological Impact of Incarceration (2002). Also see Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 176-78.  The National Academy of Sciences explains that this social adaptation to prison arises from two primary causes: (1) the “structure and routines [of prison] that can erode personal autonomy;” and (2) “the threat of victimization.”^[]Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 177. The result of adaptation to prison routines is a set of behaviors and cognitive patterns that make life outside, where myriad decisions must be made daily, increasingly challenging the longer the person is incarcerated. To fend off victimization, incarcerated people may adopt physically and sexually aggressive behaviors or gang affiliations. Ibid.  The latter cause is key, as violence remains a regular occurrence within prisons. One study of 7,528 incarcerated people in 13 prisons found that nearly 40 percent of men and women in prison had experienced physical or sexual assault by staff or another incarcerated person within the previous six months, a finding echoed by other research.^[]Nancy Wolff, Jing Shi, and Jane A. Siegel, “Patterns of Victimization Among Male and Female Inmates: Evidence of An Enduring Legacy,” Violence and Victims 24, no. 4 (2009), 469-84, 474 & table 1, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793850/. Also see for example Tawandra L. Rowell-Cunsolo, Roderick J. Harrison, and Rawha Haile, “Exposure to Prison Sexual Assault Among Incarcerated Black Men,” Journal of African American Studies 18, no. 1 (2014), 54-62, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203380/.  In addition, the rate of violence stemming from other incarcerated people—the most approximate measure of community-level violence in prison—was 10 times the rate of assault outside prison.^[]Wolff, Shi, and Siegel, “Patterns of Victimization,” 2009, 470. Also see Nancy Wolff, Cynthia L. Blitz, Jing Shi, et al., “Physical Violence Inside Prisons: Rates of Victimization,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 34, no. 5 (2007), 588-99.

Both the fear and actual experience of victimization can result in deep and long-lasting distrust of others, inability to express or share emotions, feelings of anger, and an outsider mentality that can make it difficult for people to seek help from others.^[]Rochelle F. Hanson, Genelle K. Sawyer, Angela M. Begle, and Grace S. Hubel, “The Impact of Crime Victimization on Quality of Life,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 23, no. 2 (2010), 189-97 (finding that crime victimization, especially of violence, impacts role functioning in parenting, intimate relationships, jobs, and social roles).  Psychologists have identified rates of PTSD among those incarcerated in prisons that are two to 10 times the rate of the general population, and they have discovered evidence of compounded versions of this condition in prison populations.^[]Travis, Western, and Redburn, The Growth of Incarceration, 2014, 174-76. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is defined as a set of related symptoms resulting from a specific or recurrent trauma, these include re-experiencing the trauma or flashbacks, avoidance or emotional numbing, negative cognitions such as loss of memory or depression, and aggressive, self-destructive, or hypervigilant behavior. See American Psychiatric Association, “What is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” https://perma.cc/92CL-AV3B. Suicide rates are one of the few harms that are consistently measured by prison authorities: after years of holding steady, suicide rates in state prisons rose sharply in 2013—increasing by 30 percent from 2013 to 2014. Margaret E. Noonan, Mortality in State Prisons, 2001-2014 – Statistical Tables (Washington, DC: BJS, 2016), https://perma.cc/E64Y-6BWZ.  This “complex” PTSD results specifically from the repeated harms and “deformations of personality” that occur in captivity.^[]Judith Herman’s proposed diagnosis of Complex PTSD would include “protracted depression, apathy, and the development of a deep sense of hopelessness.” See Judith Herman, “A New Diagnosis,” in Trauma and Recovery, edited by Judith Herman (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 115-29. Also see Craig Haney, Reforming Punishment: Psychological Limits to the Pains of Imprisonment (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006), 185.  In addition to trauma arising from personal victimization, vicarious trauma—trauma that is incurred when one is exposed to other people’s suffering and need—also occurs in prison, meaning that few escape the effects of violence behind bars.^[]Hearing about or witnessing serious bodily injury or the killing of another person can have significant consequences for bystanders. According to Nancy Wolff and colleagues, “research has found that even such passive activity is associated with emotional and behavioral effects similar to those found among direct victims of violence.” Wolff, Shi, and Siegel, “Patterns of Victimization,” 2009, 469 & 479. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists among the criteria for diagnosing PTSD: “Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways: . . . Experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(s) (e.g., first responders collecting human remains; police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse).” Work-related exposure through “electronic media, television, movies, or pictures” is also considered adequate to cause PTSD. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5^th ed.) (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013), Diagnostic Criteria 309.81 (F43.10).

Loss of constitutional rights 

The current prison experience further isolates incarcerated people from society through civic exclusion and the denial of constitutional rights guaranteed to those outside of prison. Incarcerated individuals generally lose their right to privacy in prison, and they are not protected from warrantless searches of their persons or cells.^[]Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984), https://perma.cc/G7LQ-9NBR.  In all but two states, they are deprived of their right to vote while incarcerated, a ban that can follow them back into the community and sometimes last their whole lives.^[]Maine and Vermont are the only U.S. states that provide incarcerated people with the opportunity to vote. Dozens of countries, including Canada, Germany, Ireland, Norway, and South Africa, allow most people in prison to vote. See “International Comparison of Felon Voting Laws,” ProCon.org, https://perma.cc/Q56Q-JWRP. For U.S.-specific laws, see “State Felon Voting Laws,” ProCon.org, https://perma.cc/W6CU-LEG4.  Although people in prison retain some due process rights and are protected against unequal treatment or cruel and unusual punishment, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, together with rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, serve to deny incarcerated people meaningful access to courts due to a host of unique restrictions and strict legal standards.^[]The PLRA’s restrictions include: (1) a strict interpretation of “exhaustion of internal prison remedies”; (2) a mandatory showing of physical, not just psychological, injury; (3) the strict application of the grievance exhaustion requirement to detained or incarcerated children, who must act on their own behalf rather than through a guardian; (4) limited court oversight of prison conditions; and (5) a limitation on attorney fees, making it difficult for potential applicants to obtain legal representation. See David Fathi, No Equal Justice: The Prison Litigation Reform Act in the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009), https://perma.cc/VMN3-5BGY. Also see Gibbons and Katzenbach, Confronting Confinement, 2006, 84-87. Additionally, although the United States Supreme Court has affirmed that solitary confinement is a form of punishment subject to scrutiny under Eighth Amendment standards, most federal courts have been unreceptive to limiting its use. This is because to succeed, an incarcerated person must satisfy a particularly onerous two-part test: first, his or her alleged suffering must be reasonably serious; and second, prison officials must have acted with “deliberate indifference to the prisoner’s health and safety”—where “deliberate indifference” is only proved if it is shown that prison officials “kn[e]w that inmates face[d] a substantial risk of serious harm,” but “fail[ed] to take reasonable measures to abate it.” See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), https://perma.cc/PQ4Q-M9LT.  In-prison administrative procedures do not provide people with an adequate substitute forum: weak internal complaint processes limit a person’s ability to alert officials to staff misconduct or other wrongful behavior by the prison administration or staff that violates peoples’ rights.^[]Gibbons and Katzenbach, Confronting Confinement, 2006, 86-87.  Few jurisdictions have the sort of robust prison oversight mechanisms that might allow for independent inspections or investigations that could examine the treatment of people in prison and inquire into specific allegations of wrongdoing.^[]See Michele Deitch, “The Need for Independent Prison Oversight in a Post-PLRA World,” Federal Sentencing Reporter 24, no. 4 (2012), 236-44; and David C. Fathi, “The Challenge of Prison Oversight,” American Criminal Law Review 47, no. 4 (2010), 1453-1577.  For incarcerated people, the right to justice is all but nonexistent.

"We can nevertheless respect human dignity by enabling the effort to struggle for it. We can provide help—with education, sobriety, anger management, parenting, wellness, and so on—even if the outcome is uncertain. Among those who are greatly disadvantaged, the struggle for dignity itself is intrinsically meaningful, both for them as they envision a better future for themselves and for their community, which will have done something more than abandon the poorest among them."

~ Bruce Western, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison, 2018^[]Bruce Western, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2018).

Our vision of a system committed to human dignity is indeed a generational, audacious goal. We do not believe it can be achieved over the course of a few years. No corrections systems has the ready financial means, much less the human capacity and political support, to redesign entire prison facilities, introduce new training, recruit more staff, or provide the new types of services required.^[]Hinds, Kang-Brown, and Lu, People in Prison in 2017, 2018, 3.  In that sense, a comprehensive human dignity-based model is a North Star.

However, we also believe that even if one could wave a magic wand and in 10 years’ time the American corrections system reflected the three principles we’ve enunciated above, we do not think that alone would be satisfactory. Three changes are essential. We must end mass incarceration, reducing the total prison population to a pre-1970s level of one person per 1,000 residents (or lower, if possible). We must end the practice of locating prisons in the remote rural periphery for economic gain. And we must end the practices that lead to disproportionate impact of incarceration on people of color. Put differently, we do not advocate for a prison and jail system of 2.2 million people, characterized by massive racial disparities, where people remain isolated from family and community, but which has human dignity at its core. These characteristics of our current system are also inimical to human dignity.

• System size. Efforts to date have stabilized the size of the prison population nationally, and in some places led to modest reductions.^[]Ibid., 2 (finding that, as of December 2017, there were 125,900 fewer people in prison since the peak population in 2009, representing an 8 percent reduction. Researchers also found that the Bureau of Prisons and 30 states had reduced the number of people held in prison in 2017. However declines were not universal.).  But far more is needed: from sentencing reform to scale back the volume of people sent to prison as well as reduce the extreme sentence lengths for some crimes that were put into place during the “tough on crime” era; to police reforms that reduce overall contact with law enforcement, especially for noncriminal infractions among urban residents; to reentry services that provide meaningful supports for those leaving prison. A smaller system allows for better quality control and permits the expenditures required to achieve things like higher pay, more training for corrections staff, and better-designed facilities.

• Rural siting. Second, we must reject further arguments to build prisons as a means of economic development for rural, depressed communities if we ever hope to reduce the isolation that so many people in prison currently experience. Little has been done to place prisons in regions closer to where the majority of the population originates, which in many cases would result in an increase in facilities closer to metropolitan centers. Such a move would place people in prison closer to family and friends, likely make access to community-based services easier, increase collaborations with a wider variety of local organizations and community groups who may be able to provide more extensive in-prison supports, and enable correctional facilities to hire officers from a greater pool of potential employees.^[]DOJ, Issues in Siting Correctional Facilities (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1992) (finding that remote sites can make it difficult to attract qualified personnel, hinder family visits, and create problems during medical emergencies), https://perma.cc/K7EF-S6GZ. Also see Kevin E. Courtright, Michael J. Hannan, Susan H. Packard, and Edward T. Brennan, Prisons and Rural Communities: Exploring Economic Impact and Community Satisfaction (Harrisburg, PA: Center for Rural Pennsylvania, 2006) (finding that rural siting of prisons suffers from a lack of adequate infrastructure, making it particularly difficult to attract and retain qualified employees, particularly people of color), https://perma.cc/3WFX-4FM5.  
  
  The challenge is primarily an economic one: since 1980, the majority of new prisons built have been placed in rural areas, mainly to serve as a vehicle of economic growth—or at least slow economic downturn—in depressed locales.^[]See note 157. Also see John M. Eason, “Prisons as Panacea or Pariah? The Countervailing Consequences of the Prison Boom on the Political Economy of Rural Towns,” Social Science 6, no. 1 (2017), 1-23.  And, despite the lack of evidence demonstrating that prisons deliver a sustained economic boost to their hometowns, even when the prison population drops sufficiently to justify the closure of a prison, the political economy of many rural towns is such that continued financial straits and limited alternative development options may push them to support the continued operation of a local prison as the “least-worst economic development option” for the area.^[]Eason, “Panacea or Pariah?,” 2017, 20.  Until local economies reorient away from the corrections industry and toward more sustainable employment models, prisons in rural areas are likely here to stay.
• Racial disparities. Finally, we must address the pernicious use of prisons to lock up our nation’s people of color. A system that continues our racist history can never be considered truly reimagined, even if human dignity forms its basis. This will require efforts at every phase of the criminal justice system, which unjustly burdens particularly black Americans through the unequal enforcement of seemingly race-neutral laws, and further compounds their entanglement with law enforcement and the courts through the biases that seep into decisions made by police, prosecutors, judges, and juries.^[]See generally Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, 2016, 1-3 & 6. Also see Hinton, Henderson, and Reed, An Unjust Burden, 2018.

Despite the challenges of this aspirational goal, movement toward human dignity in America’s prisons is possible today. Every jurisdiction in this country—local, state, and federal—can take tangible steps to begin infusing human dignity into their correctional operations. This is already occurring. On five separate visits over the last five years, Vera and the Prison Law Office, together and separately, have introduced officials from at least a dozen states to several different Northern European corrections systems where human dignity plays a central role, with the aim of inspiring change in correctional approaches here.^[]In 2013, Vera and the Prison Law Office (PLO) jointly led delegations from three different states to prisons in Germany and the Netherlands. See Subramanian and Shames, Sentencing and Prison Practices in Germany and the Netherlands, 2013. In 2015, Vera brought together delegations from four different states (Connecticut, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Washington) and visited Germany. See Maurice Chammah, “How Germany Does Prison,” The Marshall Project, June 16, 2015, https://perma.cc/T76L-FDWC. In 2015, 2016, and 2017, the PLO hosted prison administrators from five states (Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, and Oregon) and visited prisons in Norway. See Prison Law Office, “The European Prison Project,” https://perma.cc/VWU7-L37W.  During each visit and in each country, the American delegations toured prisons, met with incarcerated people, and engaged with corrections leaders working within systems founded on the central tenets of resocialization and rehabilitation. The visitors witnessed firsthand systems that were oriented toward building the fundamental skills that incarcerated people would need in the community, including concrete training, education, and job skills, as well as opportunities to make decisions about their own lives, from the clothes they wore to the meals they prepared.^[]Subramanian and Shames, Sentencing and Prison Practices in Germany and the Netherlands, 2013.

Those who participated in these trips came back with a new outlook on the role and purpose of corrections. Many states have taken steps—both big and small—to infuse human dignity into their correctional facilities starting now.

• Leann Bertsch, the corrections director of North Dakota, left Norway with a resolution to “implement our humanity” and create conditions inside prisons that more directly related to outside life.^[]Dashka Slater, “North Dakota’s Norway Experiment,” Mother Jones, July/August 2017, https://perma.cc/STW5-KQSM. The Missouri River Correctional Center in North Dakota—a facility that houses people convicted of lesser crimes or those approaching the end of lengthy sentences in the state’s maximum-security state prison—is now equipped with housing units that include up to 36 private rooms, each with toilets, showers, desks, real mattresses, and bulletin boards. Incarcerated people are free to close and lock their doors and wear civilian clothes. Through positive expressions of autonomy and responsibility, they can now earn more freedoms, like shopping excursions and day passes home. They can also serve on the resident committee and have input into the facility’s “Phases System” and, depending on where they are in these phases, they may be permitted to walk a network of trails without accompaniment, ride bikes on the property, shop online for groceries and prepare their own food, take escorted trips into the community for social interaction or to obtain job services counseling, and earn passes to leave the facility unescorted for overnight visits home. The facility also scaled up an existing work-release program so more men could be employed in meaningful jobs outside of prison prior to release.^[]Ibid.; and Prison Law Office, The US-European Criminal Justice Innovation Program, 2015-16 Program Evaluation (Berkeley, CA: Prison Law Office, 2016), https://perma.cc/2JWQ-V53P.  People coming out of solitary confinement spend time in a new behavioral therapy unit in order to transition back to the general population.^[]Slater, “North Dakota’s Norway Experiment,” 2017.   
• John Wetzel, Pennsylvania’s corrections director, attributes his changed attitude to corrections to his trip to Germany and the Netherlands: “We talk more now about the humanity of inmates, and the impact of harsh environments on both staff and inmates.”^[]Maurice Chammah, “I Did It Norway,” The Marshall Project, October 31, 2017, https://perma.cc/72SN-VLNP.  Following Wetzel’s trip, Pennsylvania launched new transitional housing units that focus on normalization and reintegration. Residents of the units are given access to enhanced reentry services, more individualized need-based support, and specialized vocational programming in high-demand fields.^[]Subramanian and Shames, Sentencing and Prison Practices in Germany and the Netherlands, 2013. Also see Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Transitional Housing Units and Reentry Services Offices, brochure available at http://www.cor.pa.gov/Initiatives/Reentry/Documents/Transitional%20Housing%20Units%20and%20Reentry%20Services%20Brochure.pdf.
• After a visit to Norway in 2016, Idaho Corrections Director Kevin Kempf said, “We came back totally converted,” and he is committed to reforming prison practices to better reflect community norms and expectations.^[]Rebecca Boone, “Prison Chief Aims to Make ‘Hard Time’ a Rehearsal for Home,” AP News, November 25, 2016, https://perma.cc/QY5G-GAE6.  While Idaho hasn’t yet launched a new unit or developed a new program, it has taken many small steps that serve to recognize the humanity of its incarcerated people and corrections staff. Idaho has reduced its use of solitary confinement and has created robust incentive systems to reward positive behavior among the incarcerated population. Prison administrators have also allowed staff and incarcerated people to invite their families to meet one another, repainted cafeterias and dayrooms, and replaced metal and plastic chairs with throw rugs and couches.^[]Chammah, “I Did It Norway,” 2017.

Nowhere is the impact of these European visits more apparent than at the Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut. Inspired by how the German prison system treats young adults aged 18 to 25, the Connecticut Department of Corrections (CT DOC) established the T.R.U.E. program in early 2017 with assistance from Vera. The program’s name, developed by residents of the unit, is an acronym for Truthfulness (to oneself and others), Respectfulness (toward the community), Understanding (ourselves and what brought us here), and Elevating (into success). In Germany, young adults are often adjudicated as juveniles and, if incarcerated, are separated from the rest of the adult population. Building on this model, T.R.U.E. is a therapeutic unit for young men that focuses on developing their sense of self, autonomy, and responsibility, and keeps a clear focus on preparing for life after prison. This undertaking has required a firm sense of purpose and a commitment to stay the course from CT DOC, which decided to implement this approach not with its most rule-abiding population, but with its most disruptive group: within the state prison system, the highest number of behavioral infractions and violence stems from those aged 18 to 25.

The T.R.U.E. unit exemplifies many of the practice principles set out in this report, and it serves to demonstrate not only that a corrections system can prioritize human dignity as a central value, but also that such a practice can lead to transformational results.

The first practice principle—respect the intrinsic worth of each human being—is at the core of the unit’s existence. The T.R.U.E. unit strives to cultivate a sense of community and camaraderie between staff and the young adults. In T.R.U.E., officers and young men shake hands, play cards, tell jokes and, above all, respect and support each other. Mentorship is key to the unit’s model. A group of older men who are serving life sentences act as mentors to the young men. The mentors live in the unit among their mentees and work together with the staff to develop and lead therapeutic programs. They also work with staff and mentees to establish and enforce agreed-upon rules and multiple systems of accountability. Together, the staff, mentors, and mentees have created an atmosphere of kindness, compassion, and trust—one that recognizes the intrinsic worth of each person who lives or works within its walls. 

Unlike in the other units inside the same prison—where officers and young men alike describe an “us versus them” environment, where “tans” (the incarcerated) are always wrong and the “uniforms” (the officers) are always the “bad guys”—the T.R.U.E. unit elevates and supports the development of personal relationships—this report’s second practice principle. This has had a profound impact not only on the mentees and the mentors, but also on the staff—corrections officers and counselors—who work with the men day in and day out. All of the staff who work with T.R.U.E. volunteered for the role, taking what the warden described as the “biggest risk in their career,” swimming against long-established institutional culture and a certain level of fear. Staff received specialized training on topics like family engagement, conflict resolution, motivational interviewing, and mediation. The staff members—many of whom had a dozen or more years of experience working in other units in Connecticut—admitted they had themselves experienced trauma and extreme stress over years of violence, recidivism, and difficult working conditions. On the first anniversary of the T.R.U.E. program, staff and counselors described openly their deep feelings of care toward the men, the pride they took in their work in the unit, and the joy they had in coming to work each day. This change in their attitude toward work has made them better employees, better friends, and better parents.

The unit’s commitment to supporting personal relationships extends to proactively taking steps to involve mentees’ families in the prison experience and helping to build those fundamental connections. This starts with an orientation night for family members where staff explain the T.R.U.E. program, what to expect, and the role they hope family will play during a family member’s term in prison. When family members visit, they are allowed to sit side by side with their loved one, and mentees are encouraged to hold their children and embrace their family members—actions usually prohibited by typical prison visiting rules. Staff and mentors are also encouraged to mingle throughout the visiting period to meet the families, talk about how the mentees are doing, and establish genuine relationships. 

This report’s third practice principle—respecting a person’s capacity to grow and change—underlies the bulk of the activities that take place in the T.R.U.E. unit. The programs and sessions attempt to give young adults an opportunity to establish an adult identity that is based on a deep awareness of their relationships with others and society. This approach attempts to generate in the young men a sense of self-worth and individual and social responsibility, and to encourage and prepare them for responsible action within society after release. Some salient manifestations of this approach in the T.R.U.E. unit include the following practices: 

• The day begins and ends with a healing circle in which staff and incarcerated people participate. These circles are based on principles of restorative justice and require each participant to share at least one word describing his thoughts or feelings at that time, and they place incarcerated people and staff on equal footing in sharing their experiences. At these circles, issues of importance to the community often surface and are dealt with throughout the day. These circles become places in which participants can share individual-level stresses or hurts, as well as those that affect the full community. Young men often share anxieties or sadness about visits with family or other common hardships of incarceration, about which other participants, mentors, or staff then reach out to check in or offer support throughout the day.  
• For 13 hours each day, cell doors are open and the young adults are free to be in the common space, a dedicated outdoor area, or one of many converted cells within the housing unit that serve as a library, study room, meeting room, and quiet space. Their day is heavily structured—filled with therapeutic sessions, school, and life-skills programs. 
• The mentees are expected to hold themselves and each other accountable. When traveling to the other parts of the prison for work assignments, school or college, or to see visitors, young men in the T.R.U.E. unit wait at the “bus stop,” where a corrections officer is ready to escort them to the other part of the facility. If a young man does not arrive at the “bus stop” on time, he misses the activity for the day and, if he misses on too many days, may lose the opportunity altogether. This is in direct contrast with movement strategies in other units, where individuals are called out of their cells for their required activities. While it is rare for someone to “miss” work in these other units, neither do the incarcerated men within them build a sense of responsibility about meeting obligations.
• Behavioral issues are also dealt with differently at T.R.U.E. If a mentee acts in a manner that is inconsistent with the unit’s policies and rules, he works with his mentor and a counselor to create a “corrective action plan.” This is developed in collaboration as a suitable response to the level or seriousness of the transgression. T.R.U.E. does not force anyone to change. Instead, it creates the circumstances and environment in which change is possible.  
• As part of its commitment to restorative justice, staff and residents in T.R.U.E. have also delved into the history of racial oppression in the United States and its connections to mass incarceration. Having frank discussions about race inside an American prison between staff and incarcerated people encapsulates the unit’s achievements, in the warden’s view. In other units, these discussions would have been avoided for fear of violence, but in T.R.U.E. they were met with respect and openness.   

The framework under which the T.R.U.E. unit operates—including the structure of the mentor/mentee units, the programs and groups offered during the day, the physical alterations to the unit, and the time in and out of locked cells—was developed as a collaboration between incarcerated people, corrections officers and counselors, administrators, and Vera staff. During these planning sessions, staff and incarcerated people engaged in healing circles. During one of these sessions, a formerly hardline corrections officer overcame one of the fundamental barriers to operationalizing human dignity in prison when he asked the incarcerated men to see him, too, as a whole person and to meet him at the start of this project as someone who is capable of change. A truly dignity-based system recognizes the integrity and capacity of every person within its walls—a commitment that must go both ways. In the year since, this officer has undergone a radical shift in his view of himself within the corrections system. The difficulty he experienced in asking for acceptance during the planning stages and the professional and personal growth he has experienced since has become emblematic of the changes underway in Connecticut and the benefits that can come from such efforts. 

Inspired by the success of its T.R.U.E. program—where CT DOC has witnessed striking results across measures of safety and wellness for both young adults and staff in the unit—Connecticut opened a similar unit in May 2018 at York Correctional Institution, the state’s only prison for women, and plans to create another one at Cheshire.^[]Research results regarding the impact of T.R.U.E, on file with Vera (report forthcoming). For information about the new unit at York Correctional Institution, see Clarice Silber, “New Prison Unit Opens to Help Young Female Inmates,” Connecticut Mirror, July 9, 2018, https://perma.cc/TF3K-EQ9F.  Other jurisdictions are also joining the movement to reimagine the purpose of young adult confinement from punishment and retribution to accountability, restoration, and healing. In the fall of 2017, Vera began a partnership with the Middlesex County Sheriff’s Office in Massachusetts, which has since opened a similar young adult unit in its jail in February 2018. Shortly after that, through a competitive application process, South Carolina was selected to join these partners in transforming custody for young adults.

Though T.R.U.E. is an enormously promising model, it does not completely reimagine prison in the way this report envisions. The unit, however altered, is a slightly renovated wing of a prison. It still looks and feels like prison. Only one age group is eligible for its benefits—an advantage that doesn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the prison’s population. The people in the unit still wear uniforms, and the food and hygiene products that are offered remain the same as those offered to the rest of the prison. But it is emphatically a place to begin.