Research and Publications

  • The Silicon Hills Have Eyes: How ARIC Fusion Center Surveillance Makes Austin Less Safe

    Daniela Hargus, Cristina Moreno, Kennedy Barber-Fraser— Students from the Boston University School of Law, July 2021

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  • Cruelty and Corruption: Contracting to Lock Up Immigrant Women for Profit at the Hutto Detention Center

    Co-published with the Texas Law Immigration Clinic, March 2021.

    Read more here

    Spanish Version here

  • Austin's Big Secret: How Big Tech and Surveillance Are Increasing Policing

    Jacinta Gonzalez, Claudia Muñoz, and Julie Mao, August 2020

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  • Ending the War on Drugs in Travis County, Texas: How Low-Level Drug Possession Arrests are Harmful and Ineffective

    Co-published with Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, and University of Texas School of Law Civil Rights Clinic, February 2020

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  • Care Not Cages: Stop Racist Policing and Jailing in Harris County

    Chris Harris, Holly Kirby, and Dianna Williams, October 2019

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  • Homes Not Handcuffs: How Austin Criminalizes Homelessness

    Norma A. Herrera, October 2018

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  • Travis County Jail in 2015: Data points to racism and longer confinement of African Americans

    Chris Harris, July 2017

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  • Beyond Alternatives to Incarceration and Confinement

    Cate Graziani, Liat Ben-Moshe, & Haile Eshe Cole, April 2017

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  • Indefensible: A Decade of Mass Incarceration of Migrants Prosecuted for Crossing the Border

    Judith A. Greene, Bethany Carson, and Andrea Black, July 2016

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  • InCorrect Care: A Prison Profiteer Turns Care into Confinement

    Cate Graziani and Eshe Cole, March 2016.

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  • Locked Up and Shipped Away: Winter 2016 Update

    Holly Kirby, January 2016

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  • Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota

    Bethany Carson and Eleana Diaz, April 2015

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  • Locked Up & Shipped Away: Paying the Price for Vermont's Response to Prison Overcrowding

    Holly Kirby, December 3, 2014

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  • The Treatment Industrial Complex: How For-Profit Prison Corporations are Undermining Efforts to Treat and Rehabilitate Prisoners for Corporate Gain

    Co-Published with Caroline Issacs (American Friends Service Committee) and Southern Center for Human Rights, November 2014

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  • Video Visitation: How Private Companies Push for Visits by Video and Families Pay the Price

    Co-Published with Jorge Antonio Renaud (Texas Criminal Justice Coalition), October 2014

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  • For-Profit Family Detention: Meet the Private Prison Companies Making Millions by Locking Up Refugee Families

    Co-published with Justice Strategies, October 2014

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  • Shadow Report of Grassroots Leadership and Justice Strategies to The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Regarding Criminal Prosecutions of Migrants for Immigration Offenses and Substandard Privately-Operated Segregated Prisons

    Co-published with Justice Strategies, July 2014

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  • Locked Up and Shipped Away: Interstate Prisoner Transfer and the Private Prison Industry

    Holly Kirby, November 20, 2013

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  • The Dirty Thirty: Nothing to Celebrate About 30 Years of Corrections Corporation of America

    Holly Kirby, Bob Libal, Piper Madison, Julia Morris, Kymberlie Quong Charles, June 2013

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  • Dawson State Jail: The Case for Closure

    Co-Published with Nicole Porter (The Sentencing Project), January 2012

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  • Operation Streamline: Costs and Consequences

    Alistair Graham Robertson, Rachel Beaty, Jane Atkinson, Bob Libal, September 2012

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  • Operation Streamline: Drowning Justice and Draining Dollars along the Rio Grande

    Tara Buentello, Sarah V. Carswell, Nicholas Hudson, Bob Libal, July 2010

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  • Considering a Private Jail, Prison or Detention Center? A Resource Packet for Community Members and Public Officials

    Second Edition, September 2009

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  • Lax Oversite Plagues Privates Prison in Texas, "Watch Your Assets"

    Co-published with Texans for Public Justice, February 6, 2008

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  • GROUND ZERO: The Laredo Superjail and the No Action Alternative

    Nicholas Hudson, July 2006

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  • Progress or Profit? Positive Alternatives to Privatization in Shelby County, TN

    By Dana Kaplan, Center for Constitutional Rights, and Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership. Co-published with Coalition Against Private Prisons (CAPP), 2006

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  • Protecting the Future: Moderating West Virginia's Budget Crisis

    Co-published with the West Virginia Council of Churches and the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling Jesuit University, 2005

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  • Prescription for Disaster: Commercializing Prison Health Care in South Carolina

    Marguerite G. Rosenthal, Ph.D. A Grassroots Leadership South Carolina Fair Share Special Report, 2004

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  • Prescription for Recovery: Keeping South Carolina‘s Prison Health Care Public and Making It Better

    Marguerite G. Rosenthal, Ph.D. A Grassroots Leadership South Carolina Fair Share Special Report, 2004

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  • Correction Corporation of America: A Critical Look at its First Twenty Years

    By Philip Mattera and Mafruza Khan, Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First, and Stephen Nathan, Prison Privatisation Report International. December 2003

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  • Borrowing Against the Future: The Impact of Prison Expansion on Arizona Families, Schools and Communities

    Kevin Pranis. Co-published with the Arizona Advocacy Network, April 2003

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  • Education v. Incarceration: A Mississippi Case Study

    Exposes some key issues about the state and its preferential treatment of the for-profit private prison industry. May 20, 2002

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Short Films + Videos

Cruelty Exposed: Operation Lone Star's Impact at the Border

LOVE ON THE BORDER: part 2: SULMA, SONIA, EDUARDO, & ARIANY

LOVE ON THE BORDER part 1: EDIS & PAOLA

What happened after the Austin City Council vote?

Que paso después de la votación del concilio municipal de Austin?

ICYMI - Care Not Cages Houston Report by Texas Advocates for Justice and Grassroots Leadership

Support cash transfers for Austin vulnerable families!

Six COVID-19 cases at T. Don Hutto detention center, according to woman recently released

Lo que debes saber sobre la ley SB4

Homes Not Handcuffs - Steve

Homes Not Handcuffs - Xavier

Homes Not Handcuffs - Bree

Homes Not Handcuffs - Dalton

Sketch17 on the Austin homeless ordinances

Leo on the Austin homeless ordinances

Homes Not Handcuffs Austin ordinance explainer

In solidarity with Arlene and Phillip

Friends of Crystal City 2019

FUERZA Texas 2019

Community members win! #NoNewJail for women in Travis County

#ICEonTrial - T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, TX

Homes Not Handcuffs - Alvin

(In)securus Technology: An Assault on Prisoner Rights

Crystal City to Dilley: Satsuki Ina on Immigrant Family Detention