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Solitary confinement is a harsh form of custody involving isolation from the general prison population and highly restricted access to visitation and programs. Using detailed prison records covering three decades of confinement practices in Kansas, we find solitary confinement is a normal event during imprisonment. Long stays in solitary confinement were rare in the late 1980s with no detectable racial disparities, but a sharp increase in capacity after a new prison opening began an era of long-term isolation most heavily affecting Black young adults. A decomposition analysis indicates that increases in the length of stay in solitary confinement almost entirely explain growth in the proportion of people held in solitary confinement. Our results provide new evidence of increasingly harsh prison conditions and disparities that unfolded during the prison boom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 600,000 people leave prison and become residents of neighborhoods across the United States annually. Using a longitudinal survey of people returning to Greater Boston, this study examines disparities in neighborhood attainment after prison. Accounting for levels of pre-prison neighborhood disadvantage, Black and Hispanic respondents moved into significantly more disadvantaged areas than Whites. Neighborhood residence was not attained by all: One-quarter of respondents left prison and entered formal institutional settings or lived in extreme social marginality throughout Boston. Neighborhood attachment was patterned by criminal justice involvement and experiences of material hardship in the year after prison. Findings indicate that housing insecurity, re-incarceration, and profound racial disparities in neighborhood context explain the ecological structure of social inequality in urban neighborhoods in an era of mass incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Cash bail reforms that end pretrial detention due to the inability to afford bail have been highly debated across the US. A major concern cited by bail reform opponents is that reducing pretrial detention will increase community violence, particularly violence against women. The objective of this study was to assess if New Jersey's cash bail reform was associated with changes in rates of fatal violence against women. Methods This study used synthetic control methods to evaluate the impact of bail reform on rates of fatal violence against women in New Jersey compared with a weighted combination of 21 control states with no bail reform from 2015-2019. Outcome data were from the National Violent Death Reporting System and included intimate partner violence (IPV)-related homicides, pregnancy-associated homicides, and overall homicides of adult women. Outcomes were measured for all adult women and within racialized groups. Analyses were performed in 2024. Results There were no significant changes in rates of IPV-related homicide (average treatment effect on the treated [ATT], -0.11 deaths per 100,000 women, p-value=0.1), pregnancy-associated homicide (0.28 deaths per 100,000 births, p=0.8), and overall homicide (-0.03 deaths per 100,000, p=0.1) during the post-policy period. There were also no significant changes within racialized groups. Conclusion Violence against women and mass incarceration are urgent and interconnected public health crises. These findings demonstrate the potential for policies to reduce the number of people incarcerated pretrial without increasing fatal violence against women. Addressing these public health crises requires holistic structural interventions, like housing and economic support, that reduce violence without criminalization., (Copyright © 2025. Published by Elsevier Inc.)