Perspectives and Challenges in the Analysis of Prison Systems Data: A Systematic Mapping

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews how prison system data is produced, used, and shared in research, highlighting the predominance of restricted data and the need for more transparent, multidisciplinary approaches.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive mapping of prison data usage in research, emphasizing the scarcity of openly available data and the importance of transparency and multidisciplinary analysis.

Findings

75% of studies used restricted data

Only 9% provided open data

Limited data availability hampers replication

Abstract

Context: Open public data enable different stakeholders to perform analysis and uncover information from different perspectives. The identification and analysis of data from prison systems is not a trivial task. It raises the need for the research community to know how these data have been produced and used. Goal: Analyze prison systems data for the purpose of characterizing its use with respect to data sources, purpose and availability. Method: We performed a systematic mapping on existing evidence on prison systems original data from peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2019. Results: Out of the 531 records, 196 articles were selected from the literature. Conclusion: The vast majority of the analyzed papers (75%) used restricted data. Only 18 studies (9%) provided data, which hampers replication initiatives. This indicates the need to analyze prison system in an integrated fashion, in which multidisciplinary and transparency are relevant issues to consider in such studies.