Mass Incarceration - Literature and Resources for Teaching

A weekly series of first-person essays from people who are incarcerated or work in the criminal justice system. From the Marshall Project

The Innocence Project's mission is to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.

BJS is the primary statistical agency of the Department of Justice. It is one of the thirteen principal federal statistical agencies throughout the Executive Branch, agencies whose activities are predominantly focused on the collection, compilation, processing, or analysis of information for statistical purposes.

This report offers some much needed clarity by piecing together this country’s disparate systems of confinement. The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. This report provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration, including exceedingly punitive responses to even the most minor offenses.

Publishes reports about a variety of Criminal Justice-related topics, such as mass incarceration, phone justice (phone companies regularly over-charge people who are incarcerated to make phone calls), unemployment, and incarceration. Reports are generally written for a general audience

Produces excellent graphics and reports on sentencing, incarceration, felony disenfranchisement, racial disparity, drug policy, juvenile justice, women, and collateral consequences.

The World Prison Brief is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is a unique resource, which supports evidence-based development of prison policy and practice globally.