David Pitts

What We Learned about Participatory Research in Prisons This report for the Urban Institute’s Prison Research and Innovation Initiative (PRII) documents the challenges and opportunities in improving prison living …

Above all, trust was the foundation for every success.
Participatory research proved most effective where relationships were strong and communication consistent.

Read the full PRII report here: www.urban.org/research/pub...

#PRII #CriminalJustice #Reform #Research

5. Pair research with early wins.
Small, low-cost improvements—better staff training, clearer grievance communication—build trust and show that feedback leads to change.

6. Work beyond the walls.
Reform strengthens when DOCs connect with policymakers and community partners.

3. Identify a project champion.
A trusted staff leader who bridges groups can sustain progress and morale.

4. Use efficient, inclusive research methods.
Short surveys, interviews, and walkabouts reduce burden and encourage participation.

1. Leadership buy-in matters.
Lasting change requires ongoing support from the top and middle levels of management, as well as daily reinforcement from staff who carry reforms forward.

2. Address “us vs. them” dynamics early.

Across five states, PRII partners found that change in prisons depends on relationships, transparency, and follow-through. Engagement must include everyone: commissioners, wardens, line staff, and incarcerated people.

We found that participatory approaches can work in prisons when leadership and staff are engaged, trust is built over time, and both staff and incarcerated people see tangible results from their input.

After six years of work across five state DOCs, @urbaninstitute.bsky.social and partners share key findings from the Prison Research and Innovation Initiative (PRII), a study of how community-engaged methods can improve prison operations and culture. 🧵

Spotlight: How the government uses private companies to house immigration detainees As the Trump administration ramps up deportations, the facilities that ICE uses to detain people are reaching their max capacity. Plus how did private for-profit prisons become such a big part of ICE ...

Watch our staff writer @shannonheffernan.bsky.social on MSNBC’s 11th Hour explain how for-profit detention facilities are cashing in on Trump’s mass deportation plans:

The true cost of prisons and jails is higher than many realize, researchers say A new report tries to capture the true cost of incarceration to families of people behind bars. It found it costs them around $350 billion every year — almost four times the government's estimate for ...

New research by @fwd.us found that people with an immediate family member in prison spend over $4,000 every year on their loved one who is incarcerated.

Our families deserve better.

Meet Joshua Smith, New Deputy Director Of Bureau Of Prisons Josh Smith’s first experience with federal prison was not running a prison, but being incarcerated in one. Now he's slated to become the Deputy Director of BOP.

“According to an internal memo from the BOP, Joshua Smith was named Deputy Director at the BOP. Smith’s first experience with federal prison was not running one but being incarcerated in one.”

Why I Use the Word “Corrections” (Even Though It Makes Me Uneasy) Although corrections is one of my primary scholarly research areas, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the term. And yet, I still use it. So, what do most scholars, practitioners, and journalis...

My latest blog post, "Why I Use the Word 'Corrections' (Even Though It Makes Me Uneasy)" jeffreyianross.com/why-i-use-th... #corrections #criminology #criminaljustice #incarceration #prisons #jails #probation #parole

A paper I always teach my students:

An empirical sound model that indicates harsher conditions either have no effect on crime or, quite possibly, make things worse.

Harshness is not about safety. It's about cruelty. With the data to show it.

CDC Teams That Study Gun Violence and Collect Data Are Decimated by Layoffs The Trump’s administration’s cuts come after the field of gun violence research saw renewed federal support during the Biden era.

www.thetrace.org/2025/04/cdc-...

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025 The big picture on how many people are locked up in the United States and why

Have reforms really triggered a crime wave? How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs or the profit motives of private prisons?

On International Fact-Checking Day, we're busting some of the biggest myths in the criminal legal system🧵
buff.ly/S8yZTrC

The “clearance rate” of reported crimes is a weak statistic that is concerned with one outcome: was an arrest made? That, by definition, includes both true & false positives. “Accurate investigations” as a desired outcome understands that a false positive is a grave error that should be prevented.

Our research partners have already been publishing findings across a variety of academic journals, but as we close out this six-year initiative at the end of 2025, be on the lookout for even more research describing what we learned and charting a path forward for reform.

Prison Research and Innovation Initiative participants on stage in front of the backdrop for the Symposium on Prison Research and Innovation at the Urban Institute.

Closing out an incredibly rewarding two-day symposium on prison research and innovation. Over 100 attendees joined us in person at the Urban Institute, including all of the individuals below who were part of our Prison Research and Innovation Initiative. 1/2

#corrections #criminaljustice #prison

Prison Food Is a Growing Billion-Dollar Industry. Many Meals Are Inedible. As private food providers' contracts grow, the meager and moldy portions behind bars have forced some people to eat toothpaste and toilet paper.

“Most states spend less than $3 per person per day on prison food — and some as little as $1.02 — according to the analysis by Impact Justice. Even Maine, widely seen as a model for providing good quality food in its prisons, only spends $4.05 per person, per day.”

@davidpitts.bsky.social

We should ask people
in prison what they think is
helpful, don't assume

#apls2025

I know it's Puerto Rico and I know it's Saturday morning, but do not miss the closing plenary with me and David Pitts of the Urban Institute. Even if corrections isn't your "thing," the core message (spoiler alert) is about collaboration. We'll meet you at 10:45 AM in San Juan 4-8. #AP-LS2025

Symposium on Prison Research and Innovation: Lessons Learned and Future Directions Join the Urban Institute for a two-day conversation on correctional policy and research.

US prisons are uniquely closed systems and often lack the data or research capacity required for much-needed evidence-based improvement.

Join Urban on 3/20 & 3/21 for an in-person symposium on what research and data do in a #prison environment and how lessons learned can drive change. #LiveatUrban

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025 The big picture on how many people are locked up in the United States and why

🚨NEW: US prisons & jails are locking up MORE people after a decade of decline, growing the incarcerated population by 2%

But why? We answer that & bust the biggest myths of the carceral system in 2025's edition of Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie👇
buff.ly/NDqIQ2i

Cover of American Psychology-Law Society Annual Conference 2025, along with photo of colorful San Juan buildings

Excited to be in San Juan for this year’s AP-LS conference, a first for me and a fantastic meeting so far. I’ll be talking about collaboration and translational research in corrections at Saturday’s plenary. Come by if you are attending!

#corrections #criminaljustice

Year end 2023-2024 showing homicide drop from 7797 to 6520

2019 = 6406, 2020 = 8545

2017 = 6932, 2018 = 6388

2016 = 6957, 2015 = 6296

‼️ THE COVID HOMICIDE WAVE HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED (at least in cities) ‼️

The quietly-released Major Cities Chief Assn violent crime data showed homicides fell by ~17%, to levels below those in 2020; higher still than 2019 (w 2 fewer agencies reporting), but lower than 2016 and 2017.

This is BIG NEWS!

This a screenshot of the abstract of our paper, called Conviction, Incarceration and Recidivism: Understanding the Revolving Door. It says "Noncarceral conviction is a common outcome of criminal court cases: for every individual incarcerated, there are approximately three who were recently convicted but not sentenced to prison or jail. We extend the binary-treatment judge IV framework to settings with multiple treatments and use it to study the consequences of noncarceral conviction. We outline assumptions under which widely-used 2SLS regressions recover margin-specific treatment effects, relate these assumptions to models of judge decision-making, and derive an expression that provides intuition about the direction and magnitude of asymptotic bias when a key assumption on judge decision-making is not met. We find that noncarceral conviction (relative to dismissal) leads to a large and long-lasting increase in recidivism for felony defendants in Virginia. In contrast, incarceration (relative to noncarceral conviction) leads to a short-run reduction in recidivism, consistent with incapacitation. Our empirical results suggest that noncarceral felony conviction is an important and overlooked driver of recidivism."

Paper🧵!

We....

1) develop a framework for identification w/ multiple treatments in a judge IV design
2) find that felony conviction (without incarceration) increases recidivism relative to dismissal

with @johneric.bsky.social Aurelie Ouss @winnievd.bsky.social and Kamelia Stavreva
1/

Vera is hiring a graduate student intern for the summer on my team. We’re researching incarceration and inequality, and looking for ~20 hours a week, in Brooklyn. Please share with graduate students you know who might be interested. boards.greenhouse.io/verainstitut...

Staff at West Virginia federal prison resign after retention pay cuts in federal prisons Recruitment and retention pay that has been used to address severe staff shortages at federal prisons across the country is being cut, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.

Here we go…

Bureau Of Prisons To Cancel Staff Retention Bonuses The Bureau of Prisons had a retention bonus to keep workers on the job as the agency was losing employees. Now, the retention bonus has become another casualty of DOGE.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented prison staffing crisis. Those staff are crucial to prisons’ ability to offer programming, provide medical care, and help incarcerated people prepare for reentry. This will harm those in prison more than the staff.

#corrections #criminaljustice

Searching for a big score: Analyzing drug yield from search warrant executions In this study, we investigated the extent to which law enforcement efforts predicted drug and other kinds of illicit yield in search warrant execution…

Interesting new paper from a team including my @urbaninstitute.bsky.social colleague, @waltercamp.bsky.social, finding that "high effort" investigative activities (e.g., drug buys, surveillance) do not produce higher drug yields from search warrants. Important implications for police resourcing.

Symposium on Prison Research and Innovation: Lessons Learned and Future Directions Join the Urban Institute for a two-day conversation on correctional policy and research.

Please join us in person at @urbaninstitute.bsky.social March 20-21 for a two-day symposium featuring a fantastic lineup of speakers from research and practice!