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Our study findings are relevant for understanding the impacts of imprisonment in both the criminal and immigration legal contexts. However, they may be especially critical to understanding the specific impacts and policy context of immigration detention. Because immigration law is administrative law, detention lacks many of the basic constitutional protections usually applied to the criminal law context, including the right to publicly appointed counsel and the ability to appeal a detention decision. This can result in prolonged detention without trial, lasting months or years in conditions that can be harmful or even deadly to detainees’ health and wellbeing. Furthermore, there is often little oversight or
accountability when violations of detention standards occur. Our study can therefore
provide critically important context for policy makers to reconsider immigration detention
practices. In particular, given the potential health benefits of release, our results strongly support policies that prioritize alternatives to detention rather than imprisonment.......[Citing TRAC data and research].
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