SJC Exchange Library

The Prison Policy Initiative published A how-to guide: Critically reviewing a jail assessment calling for a bigger jail, a new resource designed to help advocates in counties discussing jail building.

As you no doubt know, local governments often hire private companies to conduct "jail assessments" (sometimes called "justice system assessments," "needs assessments" or "feasibility studies") - reports proving the need for more jail space. Our new resource is a handbook for critiquing jail assessments, and to using the data in these reports to call for decarceration rather than jail expansion.

For example, we explain how jail assessments often:

• Ignore criminal justice reforms that have passed or may soon pass, and how reforms will cause the jail population to go down rather than rise.
• Manipulate data to show a trend of increasing crime or rising jail populations where no such trend exists.
• Claim without evidence that an increased average "length of stay" in jail means a higher daily jail population.

The new piece includes excerpts from assessments in several states, as well as a glossary of common terms found in these documents.

You can find it here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/trainings/jailassessments.html