The Missing Link: Jail and Prison Conditions in Criminal JusticeReform

• Author: Andrea Craig Armstrong
• Position: Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law
• Pages: 1-37

Louisiana Law Review Louisiana Law Review

Volume 80

Number 1

Fall 2019

Article 6

3-3-2020

The Missing Link: Jail and Prison Conditions in Criminal The Missing Link: Jail and Prison Conditions in Criminal

JusticeReform JusticeReform

Andrea Craig Armstrong

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev

Part of the Law Commons

Repository Citation Repository Citation

Andrea Craig Armstrong,

The Missing Link: Jail and Prison Conditions in Criminal JusticeReform

, 80 La. L.

Rev. (2020)

Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/lalrev/vol80/iss1/6

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at LSU Law Digital

Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Louisiana Law Review by an authorized editor of LSU Law Digital

Commons. For more information, please contact kreed25@lsu.edu.

337366-LSU_80-1_Text.indd 7 11/27/19 9:28 AM

The Missing Link: Jail and Prison Conditions in

Criminal Justice Reform

Andrea Craig Armstrong*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...................................................................................... 1

I. Criminal Justice Reform Consensus?............................................... 4

A. Justice Reinvestment Initiative and Associated Reforms .......... 4

1. Louisiana’s Justice Reinvestment Initiative ........................6

B. Beyond Diversion and Re-entry .............................................. 10

1. Diversion........................................................................... 10

2. Re-entry............................................................................. 12

II. Prison and Jail Conditions.............................................................. 14

A. Violence and Trauma............................................................... 17

B. Medical and Mental Health Care .............................................19

C. Solitary Confinement............................................................... 22

D. Social and Economic Isolation ................................................ 25

III. Rethinking Jails and Prisons .......................................................... 30

A. General Strategies.................................................................... 33

B. Specific Strategies ................................................................... 35

Conclusion...................................................................................... 36

INTRODUCTION

Jail and prison conditions matter because they are involuntary homes

for millions of people without meaningful public oversight, transparency,

or accountability. Although there are differences between jails and prisons

Copyright 2019, by ANDREA CRAIG ARMSTRONG.

* Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law. Yale

(J.D.); Princeton (M.P.A). Sincere thanks to Caitlin Newswanger for her

tremendous research assistance and to the Louisiana Law Review Board and the

Pugh Institute for Justice for hosting this symposium on “Criminal Justice

Reform.”

337366-LSU_80-1_Text.indd 8 11/27/19 9:28 AM

2 LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 80

under the law,1 the conditions experienced are often similar for the person

caged, whether that person is pre-trial or convicted. Current criminal

justice efforts in Louisiana, consistent with national trends, have

prioritized diversion and re-entry and failed to address the actual

conditions of incarceration. The failure to pay attention to conditions of

confinement undermines—and raises questions about—our commitment

to criminal justice reform.

At any given moment in the United States, approximately 2.3 million

people are behind bars, at least a quarter of whom have not been convicted

of a crime.2 Approximately 10 million children in the United States have

experienced life with a parent in jail or prison.3 The rate of incarcerated

women has grown 14 times since 1970.4 The punishment of incarceration

also falls disproportionately on Black and Brown communities: “one in

three [B]lack men born today can expect to be incarcerated in his lifetime,

compared to one in six Latino men and one in 17 [W]hite men.”5 Louisiana

leads the way, placing second in the nation—and the world— for

incarceration rates in 2018, but it ranks last nationwide in all the

meaningful categories: health care, infant mortality, economy, education,

and infrastructure.6

1. See generally Margo Schlanger, The Constitutional Law of Incarceration,

Reconfigured, 103 CORNELL L. REV. 357 (2018) (arguing that legal standards to

evaluate use of force in pre-trial Fourteenth Amendment detainee cases should

also govern use of force in convicted prisoner Eighth Amendment cases).

2. Peter Wagner & Wendy Sawyer, Mass In carceration: The Whole Pie

2018, PRISON POL’Y INITIATIVE (Mar. 14, 2018), https://www.prisonpolicy.org/

reports/pie2018.html [https://perma.cc/ZSD5-XB2C].

3. BRYCE PETERSON ET AL., URBAN INST., CHILDREN OF INCARCERATED

PARENTS FRAMEWORK DOCU MENT (2015), https:/ /www.urban.org/sites/default

/files/publication/53721/2000256-Children-of-Incarcerated-Parents-Framework-

Document.pdf [https://perma.cc/7GYG-TS5J].

4. ELIZABETH SWAVOLA E T AL., VERA INST. OF JUST., OVERLOOKED:

WOMEN AND JAILS IN AN ERA OF REFORM (2016), https://www.vera.org/down

loads/publications/overlooked-women-and-jails-report-updated.pdf [https://perm

a.cc/7DX 4-V4VS].

5. Elizabeth Hinton et al., An Un just Burden: The Disparate Treatment of

Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System, VERA INST. JUST. (May 2018),

https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/for-the-

record-unjust-burden/legacy_downloads/for-the-record-unjust-burden-racial-dis

parities.pdf [https://perma.cc/2FBC-5S4V].

6. Peter Wagner & Wendy Sawyer, States of Incarceration: The Global

Context 2018, PRISON POL’Y INITIATIVE (June 2018), https://www.prisonpolicy

.org/global/2018.html [https://perma.cc/KU3W-RUSN]; Louisiana Rankings and