The National Criminal Justice Association announces the release of PJIL's latest publication, "Canary in the Coal Mine: A Profile of Staff COVID Deaths in the Texas Prison System."

Updating and expanding upon Michele’s 50-state inventory of prison oversight models published in 2010, this article provides background information about the nature, value, and history of correctional oversight; documents the shifting landscape and increasing momentum around the oversight issue over the last decade; and provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of prison and jail oversight in the US today.

Georgia ranks among 17 state governments with no mechanism for oversight of local jails, according to research by Reuters and Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist at the University of Texas.

Seventeen states have no rules or oversight mechanisms for local jails, according to Reuters research and a pending study by Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. In five other low-population states, all detention facilities are run by state corrections agencies. The other 28 have some form of standards, such as assessing inmates’ health on arrival or checking on suicidal inmates at prescribed intervals. Yet those standards often are minimal, and in at least six of the states, the agencies that write them lack enforcement power or the authority to refer substandard jails for investigation.

Michele and Alycia researched and drafted a chapter of NIC’s Desktop Guide to Quality Practice for Working with Youth in Confinement on ways to manage the behavior of youth in confinement.

Michele's research conducted an extensive literature review and consulted with a wide variety of national experts in the field, including current and former administrators of other state juvenile systems.

This Article examines what the operational and fiscal impact on Texas would be if the age of juvenile jurisdiction were to be raised from seventeen to eighteen years old.

This report aims to provide a clearer picture of the conditions for certified juveniles in county jails based on the findings of this survey. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of how certified juveniles are housed in county jails in Texas, and the challenges faced by jail administrators when they confine certified youth.

This report examines all available Texas data with respect to certified juveniles and compares them to the population of juveniles who receive determinate sentences and are placed in TYC. It also compares the significant differences in programming and services for the two populations of juvenile offenders.

This report offers set of recommendations directed to policy-makers to reconsider policies that allow for the trial and harsh sentencing of pre-adolescent children in the adult criminal justice system. It was the focus of a lead editorial in the New York Times, "12 and Under in Prison."