Originally written in 2003, last update: January 14, 2011
In putting together The Prison Index and working with attorneys, advocates and other researchers, we're finding that there are a lot of obvious questions that we don't have answers for. In some cases, what we want doesn't exist. But in many others, its either in an obscure academic publication or its something that, with some effort, could be answered with appropriate data analysis.
If you know where to find the answer to a question on this page, please email . If you are a graduate student or other researcher and are looking for a project, feel free to take one of these. Your work will have a guaranteed audience.
- The death penalty and public defenders. Of the people on death row right now (or any other time), how many were able to hire their own attorney?
- Prisoner life expectancy and how each year of incarceration affects life expectancy. This question was suggested by an Assistant Defender working on criminal appeals hoping to include the data in appelate briefs. S/he wrote "I believe that the addition of
such data might add immediacy to dry, technical discussions of the
sentencing statutes (which I attack on a regular basis)." I wondered if last minute mercy paroles would skew the life expectancy statistics, but s/he wrote that "I believe that the addition of
such data might add immediacy to dry, technical discussions of the
sentencing statutes (which I attack on a regular basis).
Even if the
statistics on the former were skewed by early releases/mercy paroles and
the like, I expect that prison chips years off the life of the average
prisoner." That should be a no brainer, except we can't prove it. Anybody?
Jan 2011 update: The question might not be life expectancy, but life acceleration. See the interview with Professor Turley in this NPR story: Aging Prison Population Poses Unique Challenges:"And as Laura sort of pointed out, there's a lot of studies that indicate that people age faster in prison. In fact, many studies say that you're about seven years older if you have long-term incarceration in a prison. It's due to the stress. It's often due to bad lifestyles, with chemical dependency and other issues."
Framing the question as life-acceleration not instead of shortening of life expectancy makes sense from the perspective of the medical establishment that I presume would be doing this research. Somebody needs to collect and review those studies.