The Justice Policy Lab (JPL) at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University is a research and mentoring collective focused on ending and reducing racial, economic, and health disparities by critically examining the causes of placed-based inequality.

JPL creates and sustains mapping that offers the public targeted research towards creating equity and justice around our most pressing issues like reintegrating the formally incarcerated, reducing the footprint of the prisons, jails, and immigrant detention, and reducing mass incarceration/school to prison pipeline. We offer creative solutions to address these issues that cut across the rural-urban interface. JPL uses multi/mixed methods approach in research. Although rigorous academic publications are expected, the lab is moving beyond conventional academic endeavors with public facing tools.

Currently, we focus on the political economy of prison building in the U.S. and how prisons affect the communities where they are located. We employ data and evidence-based strategies to guide communities in transitioning away from dependency on cages toward sustainable economic development. Led by Urban Institute senior fellow and Brown University professor John M. Eason, it emerged from the National Science Foundation–supported Prison Proliferation Project, which collects extensive data on US prisons, including their locations, histories, and impacts on local economies, to lay bare the ripple effects of America’s prison boom.