The Bureau of Prisons released a memo last week declaring that feminine hygiene products would be provided to inmates for free. While this will only affect female inmates who are currently incarcerated in federal prisons, it’s a notable step forward for inmates who struggle to access basic hygienic products.

While some products were previously provided to women for free, many had to be purchased through the commissary, with the inmates’ own money. For the many prisoners who are from low income families, or those who are not able to work while behind bars, it can be incredibly difficult to obtain the money needed to purchase such items. And accessing those items through a commissary is actually difficult to begin with–for many prisons there is a long wait when it comes to placing orders. According to some reports, some women are forced to provide sexual favors to guards in order to obtain the feminine hygiene products that they need.

This announcement from the Bureau of Prisons comes right after a bill introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) that would require feminine hygiene products to be provided for free. The bill, the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, would also require other humane reforms in how female inmates are treated. Some of those reforms include easier access to visitations, a ban on shackling pregnant women, and access to OBGYNs.

In an interview with Bustle, Booker said:

Most folks don’t understand that so many women are being incarcerated are coming from environments that are not stable, that they are again survivors of violence, they might come in with an addiction. So now you’re struggling to recover from an addiction, you’re going through withdrawal, you have no resources, you have no support system and you’re struggling and all of that, and now you can’t even buy soap, toothpaste, sanitary products.

But while the new move by the Bureau of Prisons is a step in the right direction, the other issues included in the bill need to be addressed as well.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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There are few issues in Washington that attract as much bipartisan support as criminal justice reform. Across the yawning political divide, leaders have stressed the need to reform America’s sentencing laws, treatment options, and prison conditions. Billionaire donors–from the libertarian Koch brothers to the liberal George Soros–have opened their coffers to find solutions.

America is the world’s foremost jailer, especially when it comes to women–nearly one-third of all female prisoners on the planet can be found in a U.S. facility. Congress, governors, NGOs, and leaders in the private sector are beginning to recognize the importance of tackling the issue of female incarceration, and its debilitating effects on women, children, and families.

“Biggest Cancer”

On July 11, a group of Democratic senators–Cory Booker (NJ), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Richard Durbin (IL), and Kamala Harris (CA)–introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, which proposes “common-sense reforms to how the federal prison system treats incarcerated women,” according to a press release.

Female incarceration is the “biggest cancer on our body politic,” Booker said this week at an event at Washington D.C.’s Newseum called, “Women Unshackled.” Discussions with formerly incarcerated women, he said, shed a light on the issues they face before, during, and after incarceration, and led him to draft a policy to address some of those problems.

The legislation seeks to end the practice of placing incarcerated women who are pregnant–three percent of female prisoners in federal prisons are pregnant upon admission–in solitary confinement. It would also ensure all feminine hygiene products are provided free of charge, ban the shackling of pregnant women (including while they are giving birth), and allow overnight visits to children whose mothers are imprisoned.

“We’ve been offered a false choice on criminal justice policy,” Harris, also speaking at the “Women Unshackled” program, said. “A choice that suggests one is either soft on crime or tough on crime, instead of asking are we smart on crime.” As it pertains to incarcerated women in particular, she said, “we need to be smarter.”

Harris’ reform efforts continued on Thursday, when she and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bail reform bill, the Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act. In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Thursday, the two senators wrote:

Whether someone stays in jail or not is far too often determined by wealth or social connections, even though just a few days behind bars can cost people their job, home, custody of their children — or their life… Our bail system is broken. And it’s time to fix it.

Their legislation, Harris and Paul wrote, “empowers states to build on best practices” and “holds states accountable.” It also encourages better data collection to “help guarantee that reforms yield better outcomes.”

Generational Effects

Women are the fastest growing segment of America’s incarcerated population, rising by over 700 percent from 1980 to 2014. As of 2014, American jails house roughly 215,000 women, the vast majority of whom are behind bars for non-violent, low-level drug offenses. According to a 2016 report by the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice non-profit, nearly 80 percent of incarcerated women are mothers–65 percent have children under 18 years old.

“An incarcerated woman means that a family will be impacted,” Harris said. “And its effects can be generational; what impacts a woman, impacts a child.”

Booker framed the impacts of America’s female incarceration rates as a “stain” on the country’s founding values of freedom, justice, and dignity: “Do we take pregnant women and empower them? No, we shackle them, put them in solitary confinement,” he said. “This is a stain upon everything we say we stand for.”

Harris saw the effects of female incarceration up close as California’s attorney general, a position she held from 2011 to early 2017.

“If someone commits a serious and violent offense,” she said, “there is no question they need to be held accountable and there must be severe, swift, and certain consequence.” But the vast majority of imprisoned women have been convicted of non-violent crimes, and thousands of others are jailed, awaiting trial. Some wait years.

In addition to legislation, like the recent bill Harris co-sponsored with Booker, Warren, and Durbin, she said a number of steps can be taken to make the system more just. For one, Harris believes preventive measures should be undertaken to stem some of the “seemingly small issues now” that might lead to poor choices down the road.

Harris said education, beginning with elementary school, is vital to future success: “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime,” she said. Harris also sees “untreated, undiagnosed, and undetected trauma” as the seed that could lead to future incarceration–eight in 10 incarcerated women have experienced abuse.

Bipartisan Issue, State-Level Solutions

Female incarceration is an issue that has gained traction from conservatives, liberals, and libertarians alike. The federal government is following the lead of states like Texas, Georgia, Utah, and Kentucky in addressing criminal justice reform. One Republican governor, Mary Fallon of Oklahoma, is paving the path forward with innovative programs and aggressive policies.

“[There are] things that can be done on the state level,” Fallon said during the “Women Unshackled” event’s keynote address. For instance, she said, states can “prioritize treatment for women who are pregnant, for women who have children, and provide those services in a targeted way to meet their very special needs.”

Under her governorship–a mantle she has held since 2011–Oklahoma, which has the highest female incarceration rate in the nation, has opened residential treatment facilities. It has implemented community-based substance abuse programs. Fallon stressed the importance of public-private partnerships in keeping women out of prison.

Fallon highlighted a program called Women in Recovery, an “intensive outpatient alternative for women facing long prison sentences for non-violent, drug-related offenses,” she said. And in a strategy that Fallon said is the first of its kind, Oklahoma “pays for success.” The state essentially provides additional funding to private programs for each patient who is successfully treated.

Fallon is far from the only Republican to recognize criminal justice reform, and female incarceration in particular, as a pressing issue. Representative Doug Collins (R-GA), also speaking at the event in D.C., presented criminal justice reform as a moral imperative for the entire country.

“If we as a country value life as much as we say we do, then we value all life, even those who have made mistakes, and have went through the incarceration system,” he said. Second chances, he said, begin by seeing jails as places to “put people in we are scared of, not those that we are mad at.”

Last year, Congress signed into law the Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act, which Collins introduced in 2016. The legislation proposed reforms for how people with mental health issues are treated, diagnosed, and sentenced, “rather than treat prisons and jails as psychiatric facilities,” Collins said in a statement when the bill was introduced.

Now, Collins is focused on finding ways “for people to have better choices,” he said at the “Women Unshackled” event. Opportunities must be found to allow people to “recover from” mistakes, he said, “and to restore families, and to restore lives, and restore hope.”

“Hope is not a partisan issue,” Collins added. “It is for those who need to know that somebody cares.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons for federal prisoners, according to a memo from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates released on Thursday. According to Yates, the Department of Justice plans to either not renew existing private prison contracts or significantly reduce the scope of the agreements in the coming years. Over time, this will end the use of private prisons at the federal level, but that’s only part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at what this means.

Why Now?

The decision comes less than a week after the Office of the Inspector General released a harsh report about the quality of these contract prisons. According to the report, “in most key areas, contract prisons incurred more safety and security incidents per capita than comparable BOP institutions and that the BOP needs to improve how it monitors contract prisons in several areas.” The announcement also comes on the heels of an investigation from Mother Jones, which involved a reporter going undercover for multiple months in a Louisiana private prison. That story highlighted many of the security concerns involved with private prisons as well as the way that the profit motive can negatively affect prison conditions.

In her memo, Yates also points out that this move is in part a response to recent progress shrinking the size of the federal prison population. The use of private prisons was largely a product of the massive increase in federal prisoners over the past several decades. But 2014 marked the first year in which the number of federal prisoners actually decreased. The chart below shows the massive growth in the number of federal prisoners since 1980.

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, CSTAT

In 2013, the Department of Justice began its Smart on Crime Initiative, which sought to improve fairness and efficiency in the criminal justice system. An important part of the initiative was sentencing reform, which sought to ensure that sentence lengths were appropriate, particularly for nonviolent criminals. The new sentencing guidelines later became retroactive for drug offenders, which allowed inmates to challenge their sentence and get it reduced if approved by a judge. As a result, the DOJ hopes that the recent prison population decline will become a sustained trend, which in turn will reduce the need for private prisons.

How Many Prisoners Does This Affect?

While we know that the federal prison population has grown significantly over the past couple decades, how many of those prisoners are held in private prisons? Currently, private prisons account for about 11 percent of all federal prisoners, or about 22,100 prisoners. There are 13 private prisons used by the federal government, which will now be phased out over the next several years. But it’s important to note that most of the prisoners held in private prisons are at the state level. Here’s a look at the use of private prisons by states and the federal government since 1999:

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, CSTAT

What This Won’t Change

As you can see in the chart above, states use private prisons a lot more than the federal government and that won’t change with the DOJ’s recent decision. Another prominent use of private prisons is immigrant detention, which is overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Marshalls Service. Because immigration detention is not overseen by the DOJ, this decision will also not affect those facilities.

Simply put, this decision will not affect the majority of inmates in private prisons. But that doesn’t mean that the DOJ’s move will have no effect. In her memo, Assistant Attorney General Yates notes:

Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’ s Office oflnspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.

While she compares private facilities to the ones operated by the Bureau of Prisons, her comments amount to a strong statement against these prisons. Having a clear federal policy to stop using these facilities on the grounds that they are inferior to publicly controlled prisons may send a message to states to reconsider their private contracts. And shortly after the decision was announced on Thursday, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group–the two largest private prison companies–saw their stock prices plummet.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is officially reducing a big burden for American prisoners–the huge cost of prison phone calls. On October 22, the FCC voted to lower the cost of jail and prison phone calls in both and state and federal prisons.

The FCC explained its motivation for changing the rules, disclosing:

Acting on its mandate to ensure that rates for phone calls are just, reasonable and fair for all Americans, the FCC is working to rein in the excessive rates and egregious fees on phone calls paid by some of society’s most vulnerable: people trying to stay in touch with loved ones serving time in jail or prison.

In most cases, inmates’ telephone calling options are limited to one or more of the following calling types: collect, debit account or pre-paid account. Also, incarcerated persons typically may not choose their long distance service provider. These factors, combined with unrestricted long-distance rates, often result in unreasonably high phone bills for inmates’ families.

Currently, phone calls in some prisons can run as high as $14 per minute. Traditionally, prisons or jails have entered into contracts with companies that provide the phone services. Those companies get a chunk of the charges, so there’s motivation to keep upping the prices.

But under the new regulations, phone calls from inmates will be as low as 11 cents per minute in some prisons. Fifteen minute calls, both in state and out state will be capped at $1.65. Additionally, certain service charges will be capped. For example, service charges on Telecommunications Relay Service equipment–equipment that allows deaf or otherwise disabled inmates to make calls–will be prohibited. Flat rate calls will also be eliminated. These new regulations will go into effect in 2016.

These high rates were a hugely prohibitive cost for families who have loved ones in prison. It can break families apart–more than 2.7 million American children have an incarcerated parent. Moreover, it could be dangerous to cut prisoners off from their families. Evidence shows that allowing prisoners to talk to their loved ones can reduce recidivism rates. Cheryl Leanza, an advocate for reforming prison phone policies explained to the Sacramento Bee, “Society and communities are safer because they’re not going to re-offend if they stay connected with a network that can check in with them and make sure they’re alright.” The FCC did a good thing this week by making sure that families can check in with their loved ones–regardless of legal status.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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President Obama granted clemency to 46 federal prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug offenses on Monday, 14 of whom faced life sentences. This move comes amid a broader push for prison reform, in an attempt to fix issues like overcrowding and disparate minority prison populations–especially for nonviolent drug offenses. In a political atmosphere that is too often hyper-ideological and unproductive, criminal justice reform appears to be one arena where real change is happening.

President Obama has granted clemency to prisoners in the past, especially for drug-related offenses, and has made prison reform a sticking point of his presidency. Last year, the Department of Justice announced a new initiative that allows drug offenders to petition for a sentence reduction or clemency–an attempt to reflect modern sentencing practices. With the latest 46, Obama raises the total number of commutations during his presidency to 89. While some criticize Obama for not acting strongly enough on this issue, he has now granted the most commutations in the modern era. The inmates, who will be released by mid-November, are among more than 30,000 who have applied for clemency since the new initiative. Although very few of these cases will reach the President’s desk, the recent commutations mark an important step symbolically. As he approaches the last year of his presidency, President Obama’s executive actions have the power to shape the future of these issues.

There are a number of problems with the justice system that activists and politicians are currently working to address. The United States has an incarceration rate of  700 per 100,000 citizens, the highest of any nation including authoritarian countries like Russia and Cuba. Among the federal prison population, over half are serving for drug-related offenses and nearly three-fourths are nonviolent offenders with no history of violence. There is also a large racial disparity, with Blacks and Hispanics disproportionately represented in American prisons. A 2005 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found some troubling trends in recidivism. About two-thirds of released prisoners were arrested again within three years and three-quarters were arrested within five years.

President Obama is not the only one addressing criminal justice reform, as it is an issue that has generated strong bipartisan support. In 2014, the Justice Department reported the first decline in the federal prison population in 34 years. Former Attorney General Eric Holder attributed this change to new initiatives intended to improve sentencing fairness. Last year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted to reduce the penalties for most drug crimes and later made that change apply retroactively. High profile cases also highlight the need for reform, including that of Kalief Browder, a man who committed suicide after being wrongfully imprisoned for six years at Riker’s Island. As this issue rises into the public light, more and more people are calling for substantive reform.

In a political climate that is increasingly partisan, it often feels like there is no common ground that would allow for significant change. Prison reform is one issue with which Republicans and Democrats can cooperate and help people get their lives back, help prevent people from throwing their lives away, and save money that shouldn’t be spent on nonviolent criminals in the first place. In granting these prisoners clemency, President Obama sends a powerful message about his willingness to lead on this issue.

Maurin Mwombela

Maurin Mwombela is a member of the University of Pennsylvania class of 2017 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer 2015. He now blogs for Law Street, focusing on politics. Contact Maurin at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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