A basic principle of the Pennsylvania System was an emphasis on social interaction among prisoners

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the objective, balanced, and responsible use of current research and the best available data to guide policy and practice decisions, such that outcomes for consumers are improved. Used originally in the health care and social science fields, evidence-based practice focuses on approaches demonstrated to be effective through empirical research rather than through anecdote or professional experience alone.

An evidence-based approach involves an ongoing, critical review of research literature to determine what information is credible, and what policies and practices would be most effective given the best available evidence. It also involves rigorous quality assurance and evaluation to ensure that evidence-based practices are replicated with fidelity, and that new practices are evaluated to determine their effectiveness.

In contrast [to the terms "best practices" and "what works," evidence-based practice implies that 1) there is a definable outcome(s); 2) it is measurable; and 3) it is defined according to practical realities (recidivism, victim satisfaction, etc.). Thus, while these three terms are often used interchangeably, EBP is more appropriate for outcome-focused human service disciplines.

(Source: Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice (2009). Implementing Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Community Corrections, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections.)

Acknowledgments

There are many people and institutions to thank for the Reimagining Prison Project, and for this report that comes out of it. Before Vera began the project, the project team brainstormed with Katharine Huffman and Robert Raben of The Raben Group, who remained steadfast supporters of the work. We began the actual work of reimagining in June 2016 with an event at the historic Eastern State Penitentiary. The launch event was followed by a daylong workshop bringing together stakeholders across the system. In addition to thanking our partners at Eastern, we also are grateful to those who traveled from across the country to launch this effort, particularly those who participated in the event and the working sessions that took place the next day. We extend our gratitude to Michael Ashe, sheriff (now retired), Hampden County, Massachusetts; Neil Barsky, founder and chairman, The Marshall Project; Leann Bertsch, director, North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and president, Association of State Correctional Administrators; Michela Bowman, co-director, National Resource Center for the Elimination of Prison Rape; Jamira Burley, senior campaigner, Amnesty International USA; Alex Busansky, president, Impact Justice; William Cobb, founder, Redeemed; Michele Deitch, senior lecturer, LBJ School of Public Affairs and UT School of Law; Craig DeRoche, senior vice president, Advocacy & Public Policy, Prison Fellowship; Wayne Dicky, jail administrator, Brazos County, Texas, and former president, American Jail Association; Baz Dreisinger, professor, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Richard Dudley, Jr., clinical and forensic psychiatrist; Sara Jane (Sally) Elk, president and CEO, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site; Jamie Fellner, senior advisor, Human Rights Watch; Elizabeth Gaynes, president and CEO, Osborne Association; Saul A. Green, senior counsel, Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone, P.L.C.; David Guice, commissioner, North Carolina Department of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice; Craig Haney, professor of psychology, University of California Santa Cruz; J. Jondhi Harrell, executive director, The Center for Returning Citizens; Carrie Johnson, justice correspondent, National Public Radio; Sean Kelley, senior vice president, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site; Max Kenner, founder and executive director, Bard Prison Initiative; Jim Kenney, mayor, City of Philadelphia; Scott Kernan, secretary, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (now retired); Glenn E. Martin, founder, JustLeadershipUSA; Gary Maynard, principal, Criminal Justice Institute, Inc.; Vivian Nixon, executive director, College and Community Fellowship; Barbara Owen, professor emerita of criminology, California State University, Fresno; Vikrant Reddy, senior research fellow, Charles Koch Institute; Laurie Robinson, Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University; Margo Schlanger, Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School; Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., chief counsel, Brennan Center for Justice; Darcella Sessomes, assistant commissioner, New Jersey Department of Corrections; Ryan Shanahan, research director, Center on Youth Justice, Vera Institute of Justice; Ronald Simpson-Bey, director of outreach and alumni engagement, JustLeadershipUSA; A.T. Wall, director, Rhode Island Department of Corrections (now retired); John Wetzel, secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections; Reginald Wilkinson, president, Connecting the Dots, LLC; and Jon Wool, director of public policy, New Orleans office, Vera Institute of Justice.*

Recognizing that prisons are part of communities and need engagement with—and oversight by—the communities outside the walls, Vera worked with 17 corrections departments around the country on National Prison Visiting Week in November 2016. We thank the corrections departments in the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the cities of New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And we also thank those citizens who joined the visits to show their support for breaking down the walls between prisons and the communities they are in, as well as the communities from which people in prison come. We thank the administration of President Barack Obama for lending support to Prison Visiting Week, in particular Roy Austin, Jr., then director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, Justice and Opportunity, and Ashley Allison, then deputy director, White House Office of Public Engagement. We are grateful to former White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and former White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough for demonstrating their support and joining us at facility visits.

This project was in part the outgrowth of Vera’s work studying prisons in Germany. Our first trip, in 2013, was part of a project initiated by Michael Jacobson, former director of Vera and now director, Institute for State and Local Governance, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York; and Peggy McGarry, former director of Vera’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections, with support from the Prison Law Office and its executive director, Don Specter. This laid the groundwork for our 2015 trip, and we thank Jeremy Travis, senior vice president of criminal justice, Laura and John Arnold Foundation and former president, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, for co-leading Vera’s 2015 trip there. We also thank our gracious and giving German hosts: Jörg Jesse, director general, Prison and Probation Administration, Ministry of Justice Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany; and Gero Meinen, director general, Department of Prison Service, Social Services of the Courts and Petition for Clemency of the Senate Administration of Justice, Berlin (now retired), currently, director general, Department for Civil Law and Administrative Law, for arranging and hosting these visits. The trip to Germany inspired Vera’s work with the Connecticut Department of Correction, and we thank Governor Dannel P. Malloy; Mike Lawlor, undersecretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning; Commissioner Scott Semple; and Warden Scott Erfe for their vision in reimagining prison for young adults there, as well as the residents and staff of the T.R.U.E. unit at the Cheshire Correctional Institution for sharing their experiences with us.

A project taking on this charge and the associated activities demands visionary staff. Vera was fortunate to have Cara Compani and Sarah Lustbader sign on to imagine these activities and make them a reality. We thank them for their hard work and dedication. Many other Vera staff played important roles, but special recognition is owed to Terrell Blount, Léon Digard, Margaret diZerega, Nancy Fishman, Alex Frank, Alison Hastings, Kaitlin Kall, Jessica Lasso, Insha Rahman, Charlie Ramirez, Alex Roth, Ryan Shanahan, Sara Sullivan, Elena Vanko, Rosanna Volpe, and Hayne Yoon, as well as former Vera staff John Bae, Kathleen Culhane, David Hanbury, and Scarlet Neath. The authors would also like to thank Fred Patrick and Mary Crowley for their leadership on the project and input into the final report. The report itself is the work of many, and the authors thank Cindy Reed for editing and project management, Maris Mapolski for cite checking and research, Paragini Amin for design and layout, Michael Mehler for design of the accompanying web report, Tim Merrill for proofreading, and Khusbu Bhakta, Gloria Mendoza, and Karina Schroeder for editorial and production support.

In addition, over the course of more than a year, we convened several roundtables of different groups—prison reform advocates, conservative leaders, victim rights groups, prosecutors, people who have been incarcerated and people who are currently incarcerated, and prison staff and leaders—to probe their ideas. We also met individually with leaders in the field to solicit their input. Thanks are due to all who gave freely of their time and ideas to join us, listed below.

Advocate convening:

Dara Baldwin, senior public policy analyst, National Disability Rights Network; Amelia Collins, policy analyst, National Council of La Raza; Marissa McCall Dodson, public policy director, Southern Center for Human Rights; Laura Markle Downton, director of U.S. prisons policy & program, National Religious Campaign Against Torture; David Fathi, director, American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project; Tara Graham, senior program director, Just Detention International; Ian Head, senior legal worker, Center for Constitutional Rights; Andrea James, founder, National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls; Marc Mauer, executive director, The Sentencing Project; Jesselyn McCurdy, ACLU Washington Legislative Office; Carlton Meyers, NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Alison Parker, co-director, U.S. Program, Human Rights Watch; Danyelle Solomon, director, Progress 2050, Center for American Progress; Nkechi Taifa, advocacy director for criminal justice, Open Society Foundations; and Sara Totonchi, executive director, Southern Center for Human Rights.

Conservative convening:

Adam Bates, policy analyst, Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice; Craig DeRoche, president, Justice Fellowship; Timothy Head, executive director, Faith and Freedom Coalition; Mike Leland, officer, State Campaigns Government Performance Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts; Marc Levin, policy director, Right on Crime and director of the Center for Effective Justice, Texas Public Policy Foundation; James Nolan; Pat Nolan, director, American Conservative Union Foundation, Center for Criminal Justice Reform; Vikrant Reddy, senior research fellow, Charles Koch Institute;

Kevin Ring, president, Families Against Mandatory Minimums; Arthur Rizer, director of criminal justice policy, R Street Institute; Gerard Robinson, then-resident fellow, Education Policy Studies, AEI; John-Michael Seibler, legal fellow, Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Institute for Constitutional Government (Heritage Foundation); and Bob Woodson, founder and president, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.

Convenings with incarcerated people and corrections staff: Vera wishes to thank the incarcerated people and staff who took part in Reimagining Prison focus groups at the City of Philadelphia Detention Center and the Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan.

Fortune Society:

Vera wishes to thank the residents and staff of the Fortune Academy and Fortune Society who took part in Reimagining Prison focus groups.

Government stakeholders:

Chris Asplen, executive director, National Criminal Justice Association; Erin Hustings, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials; Stefan LoBuglio, director, corrections and reentry, CSG Justice Center; Jeff Locke, program director, Homeland Security and Public Safety Division, National Governors Association; and Hadi Sedigh, director, NACo Counties Futures Lab, National Association of Counties.

Framing document review and project-scoping conversations:

Richard Aborn, president, Citizens Crime Commission of New York City; Lenore Anderson, founder and executive director, Californians for Safety and Justice; Jim Isenberg, executive director, NAFI NY; Norris Henderson, founder and executive director, Voice of the Experienced (VOTE); Susan Herman, deputy commissioner for collaborative policing, New York Police Department; Marty Horn, distinguished lecturer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and executive director of NYS Sentencing Commission; Bruce Western, professor, Harvard University; and leadership and staff across all units of Vera.

Prosecutor convening:

Bruce Brown, district attorney, Fifth Judicial District, Colorado; Darcel Clark, district attorney, Bronx County, New York; Megan Clark, commonwealth attorney, Prince Edward County, Virginia; Catie Wilkes Delligatti, prosecuting attorney, Berkeley County, West Virginia; Bridget Dinvaut, district attorney, St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana; Mark Dupree, district attorney, Wyandotte County, Kansas; Kim Gardner, circuit attorney, City of St. Louis, Missouri; Gurbir Grewal, county prosecutor, Bergen County, New Jersey; Michael Jackson, district attorney, Dallas County, Alabama; Keith Kaneshiro, prosecuting attorney, City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii; Beth McCann, district attorney, Denver County, Colorado; Hillar Moore, district attorney, East Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Margaret Moore, district attorney, Travis County, Texas; Melissa Nelson, state attorney, Fourth Judicial Circuit, Florida; Kim Ogg, district attorney, Harris County, Texas; Ismael Ozanne, district attorney, Dane County, Wisconsin; Darius Pattillo, district attorney, Henry County, Georgia; Matthew Redle, prosecuting attorney, Sheridan County, Wyoming; Mitch Roth, prosecuting attorney, Hawaii County, Hawaii; Marco Serna, district attorney, First Judicial District, New Mexico; James Stewart, district attorney, Caddo Parish, Louisiana; Rod Underhill, district attorney, Multnomah County, Oregon; Andrew Warren, state attorney, Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, Florida; and Amy Weirich, district attorney general, Shelby County, Tennessee.

Victim/survivor convening:

Ericka Dixon, policy programs coordinator, Black Women’s Blueprint; Amy Ellenbogen, director, Crown Heights Community Mediation Center; Mai Fernandez, director, National Center for Victims of Crime; Lisa Fleming, COO, Rose Brooks Center; Loretta Frederick, senior legal policy advisor, Battered Women’s Justice Project; Meg Garvin, executive director, National Crime Victim Law Institute; Kenton Kirby, director of clinical and trauma support services, Crown Heights Community Mediation Center; Gina Scaramella, executive director, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center; Farah Tanis, co-founder and executive director, Black Women’s Blueprint; and Verna Wyatt, executive director, Tennessee Voices for Victims.

This project and the report coming out of it were inspired and enriched by all those listed above. If we have omitted someone, we apologize sincerely as our gratitude to all is deep. Radical reform of how we incarcerate requires broad and continual engagement. We are grateful to this vanguard, and ask you to continue to support this work as ambassadors of the audacious idea that you have all embraced in one way or another of reimagining prison.

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors. Acknowledgment does not reflect endorsement of the final report by any of the individuals or organizations listed above.

This project was made possible in part by the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust. Both during his lifetime and currently through his charitable trust, Mr. Wilson supported Vera’s work with government partners around the country to reduce our nation’s reliance on solitary confinement and improve conditions of confinement.

About Citations

As researchers and readers alike rely more and more on public knowledge made available through the Internet, “link rot” has become a widely-acknowledged problem with creating useful and sustainable citations. To address this issue, the Vera Institute of Justice is experimenting with the use of Perma.cc (//perma.cc/), a service that helps scholars, journals, and courts create permanent links to the online sources cited in their work.

Credits

Cover illustration: BrianStauffer.com
Original graphics: Paragini Amin

The Vera Institute of Justice is a justice reform change agent. Vera produces ideas, analysis, and research that inspire change in the systems people rely upon for safety and justice, and works in close partnership with government and civic leaders to implement it. Vera is currently pursuing core priorities of ending the misuse of jails, transforming conditions of confinement, and ensuring that justice systems more effectively serve America’s increasingly diverse communities. For more information, visit www.vera.org.

For more information about this report, contact Ram Subramanian, editorial director, at .

Photo Credits

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis Premium Historical/Getty Images; Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images News/Getty Images; Sean Kernan/In Prison, //www.seankernan.com/in-prison; Julia Rendleman/Reportage Archive/Getty Images; Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images; The Washington Post/The Washington Post/Getty Images; iStock.com/Bastiaan Slabbers; Ed Clark/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images; JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/Archive Photos/Getty Images; AFP/Getty Images; Peter Merts; Knut Egil Wang/ Moment/INSTITUTE; Peter Merts; Peter Merts courtesy of the California Arts Council; www.artsincorrections.org; ©Andy Richter; Lili Kobielski; Karsten Moran

Suggested Citation

Ruth Delaney, Ram Subramanian, Alison Shames, and Nicholas Turner. Reimagining Prison. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2018.