Wendy Sawyer
@wendyppi.bsky.social
Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative, New Englander, dog person.
🚨NEW: Shaming doesn’t reduce crime. Despite this, nearly half of all states have conviction-based registries, tracking thousands of Americans for things from white-collar crime to DWIs. Registries don't make communities safer. In fact, they cause harm 🧵
NEW: Report from @prisonpolicy.org documents the growth of conviction-based registries based on sex offense registries, and their presumed similar shortcomings in creating public safety www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2026/08...
When bad policies spread: The expansion of the “sex offense registry” model to other convictions
Shaming doesn't prevent crime.
prisonpolicy.org
The fact that people with openly racist views support mass surveillance and more police should give people pause about supporting mass surveillance and more police.
an under-examined truth right here -- if folks want to talk about labor exploitation etc.
jon ben-menachem@jbenmenachem.com · 2w agoOne of the most important topics in the credible messengers research space is the fact that these guys are heavily exploited in the labor sense. The work is traumatizing, difficult, physically risky, and systematically underpaid. nextcity.org/urbanist-new...
In 1991, Dee Farmer handwrote a pro se complaint from a prison cell. 3 years later the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Farmer v. Brennan that officials can be liable for failing to protect people in custody. It's now cited in tens of thousands of cases. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/07/17/f...
In Prison, She Changed Constitutional Law. Meet the Trans Woman Behind the Case.
Farmer v. Brennan is one of the most cited Supreme Court cases of all time. Few people know just how revolutionary Dee Farmer was.
themarshallproject.org
“A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.” ysph.yale.edu/news-article...
Universal Health Coverage Could Save $1 Trillion and 114,000 Lives Every Year, Yale Study Projects
A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it
ysph.yale.edu
Our blog post this month comes from board member and researcher Regan Moss and collaborator and co-researcher Madeeha Anjum. They discuss how requiring people to purchase basic necessities in prison drives period poverty.
Priced Out of Dignity: How Labor Injustice Creates Period Poverty in Carceral Settings
Regan Moss, MPH (Columbia University), is a doctoral student at Tulane University where she is a doctoral leader with the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health, a researcher with the Ma…
prisonflowproject.org
HUGE thanks to @elizabethweill.bsky.social, @ethanscorey.bsky.social for their commissary database in @theappeal.org. Check it out here: theappeal.org/commissary-d...
Locked In, Priced Out: Commissary Database
The Appeal has published the first national database of prison commissary lists, including prices from nearly all U.S. states.
theappeal.org
Also thanks to @wendyppi.bsky.social and @prisonpolicy.org for their info on prison wages! More here: www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04...
How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?
Prison wages come up again and again in the context of prison conditions and policies. So, we found the most up-to-date information for each state.
prisonpolicy.org
"The latest in a decades-long pattern of redesigns that promise humanity without addressing the harm of incarceration itself." This "oasis" is nothing more than a multi-million-dollar attempt to rebrand carceral harm as care.
The Cook County jail’s new $7 million visitation center
Cook County wants to create an oasis inside the infamous jail. But the renovation will do little to address the harm of incarceration itself
chicagoreader.com
MA caps prison and jail temps at 78 degrees, but only from Sept through June. In summer, there's no limit. We've never heard of a facility being sanctioned for failing to cool the people inside.
As Massachusetts prisons heat up, lawmakers sit on extreme heat regulations - The New Bedford Light
Inmates and guards at New Bedford’s Ash Street jail swelter in summer heat waves, with no end in sight.
newbedfordlight.org
The @chicagoreader.com is and has been consistently excellent. I really hope that they get the resources they need to continue for 50 more years. Why are rich progressives not funding local independent media? This piece is excellent and would only be written by a local outlet.
The Cook County jail’s new $7 million visitation center
Cook County wants to create an oasis inside the infamous jail. But the renovation will do little to address the harm of incarceration itself
chicagoreader.com
Feed: "Prison Policy Initiative Blog" By: Emily Widra on Tuesday, June 9, 2026
New research: How past incarceration affects people later in life
Two recent studies authored by Professor Carmen Gutierrez and her colleagues show that prior incarceration is associated with various geriatric health conditions and reduced life ...
prisonpolicy.org
Mass. plans to spend $1.7 billion next year on its jails and a prison system that has been under federal oversight since 2020. People are still dying in custody from preventable causes. PLS and allied orgs are demanding that the legislature invest in people, not prisons. More: plsma.org/takeaction
Addressing Deaths in MA Prisons and Jails - Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts
Together, we can dismantle systems that cause harm and build systems that create healing.
plsma.org
This Thursday, I'll be on a Drug Policy Alliance panel talking about how to conduct and disseminate timely research for immediate impact. The other panelists are rock stars, or as close as we get in this space. Come join us! bit.ly/April2026Web...
Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: How to Conduct and Disseminate Timely Research For an Immediate Impact -- Session 3 of We've Been Here Before: How to Do Drug Research in Challenging Times....
We've Been Here Before: How to Do Drug Research in Challenging Times Research plays a critical role in documenting overdose deaths, identifying effective interventions to reduce drug-related harms, an...
bit.ly
Alabama is set to kill Sonny Burton on Thursday for a murder that everyone agrees he did not commit. Governor Kay Ivey must stop it. This weekend at Law Dork:
Alabama is set to kill Sonny Burton on Thursday. Governor Kay Ivey must stop it.
Sonny Burton did not kill anyone, but Alabama put him on death row and his execution is scheduled to be carried out this week — unless Ivey grants clemency or courts intervene.
lawdork.com
GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE IS HEALTH CARE. Thank you to the NY Attorney General’s Office for affirming our community.
N.Y. Attorney General Orders Hospital to Resume Youth Transgender Care
nytimes.com
The first Fight for $15 action I covered was in 2012. Critics at the time bemoaned how it was "too much" and "unrealistic." It wasn't enough then in many places, and 14 years later most of the country still doesn't even have that and it's nowhere near enough to live on almost anywhere.
Brian Goldstone@brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe numbers are staggering: Rent is now unaffordable for a record *half* of U.S. renters. Some 30 million jobs pay less than $15 an hour. The average wage needed to afford a one-bedroom apartment has climbed to $28.17 — nearly four times the federal minimum wage, which hasn't gone up in 16 years.
We can't push justice policy into the future if we're making decisions about people rooted in the past. That's a problem with #riskassessments that advocates have raised for years and that Robert Sampson's research sheds new light on. From @vitalcitynyc.bsky.social👇🏽. #criminaljustice #publicpolicy
Vital City | Criminal Risk Assessment and the Character Trap
People born in different years, even not that far apart, have wildly different outcomes.
vitalcitynyc.org
PLS: "Massachusetts communities do not need more strongly worded statements or symbolic gestures of solidarity. We need lawmakers to take decisive action to cut off the contracts, bedspace, funding, and interagency collaboration that will continue to fuel ICE’s violence across the Commonwealth..."
vt7abbnab.cc.rs6.net
Navigating #probation is like trying to cross a minefield. Blindfolded. Imagine doing that while worrying about where your next meal is coming from—or if it's coming at all. In 39 states, that's not hypothetical. It's what someone is dealing with as you read this. New report from @prisonpolicy.org👇🏽
Hunger as punishment: How states restrict SNAP benefits for people on probation
A patchwork of statutes and administrative choices limits access to the food assistance program SNAP for some people on probation.
prisonpolicy.org
AG Keith Ellison: "The surge is contributing to violent crime. Two of the three homicides committed in Minneapolis in 2026 have come at the hands of federal immigration agents."
"No one feels good following cancer treatments like chemotherapy, but recovering in prison is a unique kind of hell" A harrowing must-read from @prisonjournalism.bsky.social:
Cancer in Confinement
PJP writers on suffering from the leading killers in behind bars — a problem of neglect, delayed care, and poor coordination
prisonjournalismproject.org
