Reports

The 225-page report, “Revoked: How Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States,” finds that supervision – probation and parole – drives high numbers of people, disproportionately those who are Black and brown, right back to jail or prison, while in large part failing to help them get needed services

This report details how policing affects Tulsa, particularly in the segregated and largely impoverished North Tulsa area. Human Rights Watch found that black people are subjected to physical force, including tasers, police dog bites, pepper spray, punches, and kicks, at a rate 2.7 times that of white people.

This report documents the unique harms of putting mothers with minor children into pretrial detention. Jailed mothers are separated from their children for days, weeks, months, a year or more with limited means of substantial contact—which compounds the already extreme pressure to accept a guilty plea.

This report documents private probation company practices in Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. These states allow private companies to supervise probation for minor crimes, including misdemeanors and criminal traffic offenses. Individuals pay their probation fees directly to the company.

This report documents the use of alternative explanations for how evidence was found, a practice known as “parallel construction.” This practice could prevent courts from scrutinizing the legality of questionable investigative methods, including surveillance.

This report tracks pledges made at a conference in London in February 2016.

This report details how about 63 percent of prisoners in California county jails in recent years were not sentenced, with many being held awaiting trial because they could not afford bail. 

This report finds that enforcement of drug possession laws causes extensive and unjustifiable harm to individuals and communities across the country.

This report documents the inadequate, haphazard, and in many cases, non-existent HIV testing, treatment, and linkage to care in the jails.

This 153-page report sets out evidence to support the main criminal charges that can be brought against those responsible for state-sanctioned torture, and challenges claims that prosecutions are not legally possible.

This 127-page report details incidents in which correctional staff have deluged prisoners with painful chemical sprays, shocked them with powerful electric stun weapons, and strapped them for days in restraining chairs or beds.

This 110-page report details the harm that results from the state’s practice of giving prosecutors full discretion to decide which children to prosecute in adult courts.

This 72-page report describes how more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation.

The 126-page report details how prosecutors throughout the United States extract guilty pleas from federal drug defendants by charging or threatening to charge them with offenses carrying harsh mandatory sentences and by seeking additional mandatory increases to those sentences.