National Research Council Report on Incarceration
Prepared by committee chair Jeremy Travis, vice-chair Bruce Western, and an interdisciplinary committee of leading scholars, the National Research Council report, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences, provides the first comprehensive assessment of research on how we got to such a high incarceration rate and its impact on the population.
The report recommends that incarceration rates be significantly reduced, that prison conditions be closely monitored to ensure the rights and dignity of those incarcerated, and that social policy be buttressed to adjust to community needs in a climate of reduced prison populations. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn. 2014.
Pennsylvania Solitary Study
The Pennsylvania Solitary Study (PASS) is a unique, mixed-methods interview study of 117 men incarcerated in a solitary confinement unit (called a Restricted Housing Unit or RHU) in a maximum-security prison in Pennsylvania. Men incarcerated in this unit are locked in their cells for 23 hours each day, often for months and sometimes for years at a time. It is a collaborative study led by Bruce Western and Jessica Simes (Boston University), and data collection included a panel survey, qualitative interviews, a neurocognitive test and administrative records on criminal history. Respondents were first interviewed within two months of admission to the RHU, and a follow-up interview was conducted three months later, with a re-interview rate of 91 percent. Three-quarters of respondents had been released from solitary confinement at the time of follow-up, and about 10 percent had been released from prison, allowing an investigation of the process of reentry from a period of extreme confinement. Additional survey and semi-structured interviews were conducted with correctional officers (N=22) who worked in the solitary confinement unit, and a large state-wide administrative dataset was also assembled to study post-release outcomes.
The PASS aims to understand how harsh conditions of confinement may affect health and well-being for incarcerated populations, identify the effects of solitary confinement on social and economic outcomes after prison release, and describe the conditions of living and working in high levels of custody in a large U.S. prison system.