How Many People in Prison Go Back Again

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

By Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner Tweet this
March 14, 2022
Press release

Sections

The big picture

The touch of COVID

eight Myths

High costs of depression-level offenses

Youth, immigration & involuntary commitment

Beyond the Pie: Customs supervision, poverty, race, and gender

Necessary reforms

Sources

Can it really exist true that near people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs, or the turn a profit motives of individual prisons? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed decisions near how people are punished when they break the police force? These essential questions are harder to answer than you might look. The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of information, but very little is designed to assistance policymakers or the public understand what's going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher — information technology'south more important than e'er that nosotros get the facts directly and sympathize the big picture.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.South. doesn't take 1 "criminal justice system;" instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems concur almost ii one thousand thousand people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian land jails, as well as in armed services prisons, civil commitment centers, land psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.South. territories. ¹

This report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the data almost this state's disparate systems of confinement. It provides a detailed await at where and why people are locked upwardly in the U.S., and dispels some modernistic myths to focus attention on the existent drivers of mass incarceration and disregarded problems that call for reform.

Slideshow one. Swipe for more than detailed views. For source dates and links, see the Methodology.

This big-motion-picture show view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus;⁴ it allows us to identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement. The detailed views bring these overlooked systems to light, from immigration detention to civil commitment and youth confinement. In particular, local jails often receive short shrift in larger discussions nigh criminal justice, but they play a critical role as "incarceration'due south front door" and have a far greater bear on than the daily population suggests.

While this pie nautical chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional system, the graphic does not capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities, nor the far larger universe of people whose lives are afflicted by the criminal justice system. In a typical year, about 600,000 people enter prison gates,⁵ simply people get to jail over 10 million times each year.^{6 7} Jail churn is particularly high because almost people in jails have not been convicted.⁸ Some have merely been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many others are likewise poor to make bond and remain behind bars until their trial. Merely a small number (about 103,000 on any given day) accept been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a year. At least 1 in 4 people who become to jail will be arrested once more within the same yr — ofttimes those dealing with poverty, mental affliction, and substance use disorders, whose issues merely worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow 2. Swipe for more detail on pretrial detention.

With a sense of the big picture, the side by side question is: why are so many people locked up? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of private companies driving incarceration? Or is information technology really nigh public safety and keeping dangerous people off the streets? In that location are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Most take a kernel of truth, but these myths distract united states of america from focusing on the most important drivers of incarceration.

8 myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison house labor are amongst the most contentious issues in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. But they do not answer the question of why most people are incarcerated or how we tin dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of solitude. Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses often derail important conversations about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. False notions of what a "violent law-breaking" conviction means most an individual's dangerousness continue to exist used in an try to justify long sentences — fifty-fifty though that'due south not what victims desire. At the same time, misguided beliefs about the "services" provided by jails are used to rationalize the structure of massive new "mental health jails." Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to customs supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration often atomic number 82 to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that tin end mass incarceration, and non merely put a dent in information technology, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

The first myth: Private prisons are the corrupt middle of mass incarceration

In fact, less than 8% of all incarcerated people are held in individual prisons; the vast bulk are in publicly-owned prisons and jails.¹¹ Some states have more than people in private prisons than others, of course, and the industry has lobbied to maintain high levels of incarceration, only private prisons are essentially a parasite on the massive publicly-owned arrangement — not the root of it.

Notwithstanding, a range of private industries and even some public agencies proceed to profit from mass incarceration. Many metropolis and county jails rent space to other agencies, including state prison systems,¹² the U.Due south. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison food and health services (oft so bad they event in major lawsuits), and prison house and jail telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. By privatizing services similar phone calls, medical care, and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social toll.

Private prisons and jails hold less than 8% of all incarcerated people, making them a relatively pocket-size part of a mostly publicly-run correctional organization.

The 2d myth: Prisons are "factories behind fences" that exist to provide companies with a huge slave labor strength

Simply put, private companies using prison labor are not what stands in the fashion of catastrophe mass incarceration, nor are they the source of about prison house jobs. Simply about 5,000 people in prison — less than 1% — are employed by individual companies through the federal PIECP program, which requires them to pay at least minimum wage earlier deductions. (A larger portion work for state-endemic "correctional industries," which pay much less, but this still only represents virtually 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)¹³

But prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry, and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 written report found that on average, incarcerated people earn betwixt 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the well-nigh common prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover, work in prison house is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. If they refuse to work, incarcerated people face disciplinary action. For those who do work, the paltry wages they receive often become correct back to the prison, which charges them for bones necessities like medical visits and hygiene items. Forcing people to work for low or no pay and no benefits, while charging them for necessities, allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people — hiding the true cost of running prisons from most Americans.

The tertiary myth: Releasing "nonviolent drug offenders" would end mass incarceration

It'southward true that police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for null more than drug possession. Drug offenses still business relationship for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Constabulary still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year,^fourteen many of which pb to prison sentences. Drug arrests go along to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, pain their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for whatever futurity offenses.

Nevertheless, iv out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious offense or an even less serious i. To terminate mass incarceration, we volition have to change how our society and our criminal legal organisation responds to crimes more serious than drug possession. We must also stop incarcerating people for behaviors that are even more than beneficial.

Slideshow 3. Swipe for more detail on the War on Drugs

The fourth myth: By definition, "violent offense" involves physical impairment

The distinction betwixt "violent" and "nonviolent" criminal offense ways less than you might think; in fact, these terms are so widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context. In the public discourse virtually crime, people typically use "violent" and "nonviolent" equally substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used as coded (often racialized) language to label individuals equally inherently dangerous versus non-dangerous.

In reality, state and federal laws apply the term "trigger-happy" to a surprisingly broad range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve any physical harm. In some states, purse-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered trigger-happy crimes. Burglary is by and large considered a property crime, only an array of state and federal laws allocate burglary equally a vehement criminal offense in certain situations, such as when it occurs at nighttime, in a residence, or with a weapon present. So even if the building was unoccupied, someone convicted of burglary could be punished for a violent crime and cease up with a long prison sentence and "violent" record.

The common misunderstanding of what "violent crime" really refers to — a legal stardom that often has piffling to do with actual or intended harm — is one of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the idea of violent crime often lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally "fierce" crimes. But over 40% of people in prison and jail are there for offenses classified every bit "violent," and so these carveouts end up gutting the touch on of otherwise well-crafted policies. As we and many others take explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything nigh international norms volition be impossible without irresolute how nosotros respond to fierce crime. To start, we have to be clearer well-nigh what that loaded term really means.

The fifth myth: People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are likewise dangerous to exist released

Of course, many people convicted of violent offenses have caused serious impairment to others. Just how does the criminal legal system make up one's mind the take a chance that they pose to their communities? Over again, the answer is as well often "we approximate them by their law-breaking blazon," rather than "nosotros evaluate their individual circumstances." This reflects the particularly harmful myth that people who commit violent or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or fifty-fifty a lifetime of penalization.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly hold that past policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that go across the low-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" — people bedevilled of non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if we are serious about ending mass incarceration, we will take to change our responses to more serious and vehement crime.

Recidivism data do not back up the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to be locked away for decades for the sake of public safety. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually among the least likely to exist rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual set on have rearrest rates 20% lower than all other law-breaking categories combined. One reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people convicted of tearing offenses: age is one of the principal predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early on adulthood and then declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long after their risk has declined.^xv

Sadly, most state officials ignored this evidence fifty-fifty equally the pandemic fabricated obvious the need to reduce the number of people trapped in prisons and jails, where COVID-xix ran rampant. Instead of considering the release of people based on their age or individual circumstances, most officials categorically refused to consider people convicted of violent or sexual offenses, dramatically reducing the number of people eligible for earlier release.¹⁶

The sixth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors often invoke the name of victims to justify long sentences for violent offenses. Only contrary to the popular narrative, nearly victims of violence desire violence prevention, not incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter tearing crime, and many victims believe that incarceration can make people more probable to engage in criminal offence. National survey information show that most victims support violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that address the root causes of crime, not more investment in carceral systems that cause more harm.¹⁷ This suggests that they intendance more virtually the health and safety of their communities than they do about retribution.

Victims and survivors of crime prefer investments in crime prevention rather than long prison sentences.

Moreover, people convicted of crimes are frequently victims themselves, complicating the moral argument for harsh punishments every bit "justice." While conversations about justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of crime as two entirely split groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, too — a fact behind the aphorism that "hurt people injure people."¹⁸ As victims of crime know, breaking this bicycle of harm will crave greater investments in communities, not the carceral arrangement.

The 7th myth: Some people need to go to jail to go treatment and services

It's admittedly truthful that people ensnared in the criminal legal organization take a lot of unmet needs. Merely we shouldn't distort the "services" offered in jails and prisons as reasons to lock people up. Local jails, especially, are filled with people who need medical intendance and social services, but jails have repeatedly failed to provide these services. Many people terminate upward cycling in and out of jail without always receiving the help they need. People with mental health problems are often put in solitary confinement, have limited admission to counseling, and are left unmonitored due to abiding staffing shortages. The result: suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Given this track record, edifice new "mental health jails" to answer to decades of disinvestment in community-based services is particularly alarming.

Similarly, while 2-thirds of people in jail have substance use disorders, jails consistently fail to provide adequate handling. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder—the gilded standard for care. That means that rather than providing drug handling, jails more often interrupt drug treatment by cutting patients off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased by near 400%; typically, these individuals died within just one solar day of admission. Jails are non rubber detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic surround people crave for long-term recovery and healing.

The eighth myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to reduce incarceration

Customs supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is often seen as a "lenient" penalty or as an ideal "alternative" to incarceration. Merely while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked up, the conditions imposed on those under supervision are often and then restrictive that they fix people up to neglect. The long supervision terms, numerous and crushing requirements, and abiding surveillance (especially with electronic monitoring) result in frequent "failures," oft for small infractions like breaking curfew or declining to pay unaffordable supervision fees.

In 2019, at least 153,000 people were incarcerated for non-criminal violations of probation or parole, frequently called "technical violations."^{19 20} Probation, in particular, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to support and advantage success rather than find mistakes, it is non a reliable "alternative."

Slideshow 4. Swipe for more than details virtually what the information on recidivism really shows.

The high costs of low-level offenses

Most justice-involved people in the U.S. are non accused of serious crimes; more often, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Still even low-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, tin lead to incarceration and other serious consequences. Rather than investing in community-driven safety initiatives, cities and counties are still pouring vast amounts of public resources into the processing and penalization of these minor offenses.

Probation & parole violations and "holds" lead to unnecessary incarceration

Often overlooked in discussions about mass incarceration are the diverse "holds" that keep people backside bars for authoritative reasons. A mutual example is when people on probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new criminal offence or a not-criminal (or "technical") violation. If a parole or probation officeholder suspects that someone has violated supervision conditions, they can file a "detainer" (or "hold"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bond. For people struggling to rebuild their lives after conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a minor infraction can be profoundly destabilizing. The most contempo information show that nationally, near one in five (eighteen%) people in jail are there for a violation of probation or parole, though in some places these violations or detainers business relationship for over one-third of the jail population. This problem is not limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments constitute that nearly one in 4 people in state prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations. During the first twelvemonth of the pandemic, that number dropped only slightly, to i in 5 people in state prisons.

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

The "massive misdemeanor organization" in the U.S. is some other important just overlooked contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as beneficial every bit jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated thirteen million misdemeanor charges sweep droves of Americans into the criminal justice arrangement each year (and that'south excluding civil violations and speeding). These low-level offenses typically business relationship for about 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more than in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may sound piffling, but they comport serious financial, personal, and social costs, particularly for defendants but likewise for broader social club, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And then there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are oft non appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and have a probation sentence to avoid jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal record, as well as the heightened risk of hereafter incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

"Low-level fugitives" live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates and unpaid fines

Defendants tin can end upward in jail even if their offense is not punishable with jail time. Why? Because if a accused fails to appear in courtroom or to pay fines and fees, the estimate tin consequence a "bench warrant" for their arrest, directing law enforcement to jail them in order to bring them to court. While at that place is currently no national estimate of the number of active bench warrants, their employ is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe County, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an agile bench warrant at whatever time, more than than 3 times the number of people in the county jails.

But demote warrants are often unnecessary. Well-nigh people who miss court are non trying to avoid the law; more often, they forget, are confused past the court process, or have a schedule conflict. Once a bench warrant is issued, notwithstanding, defendants frequently end up living as "depression-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, becoming transient, and/or fugitive public life (even hospitals) to avoid having to become to jail.

Lessons from the smaller "slices": Youth, immigration, and involuntary delivery

Looking more closely at incarceration by offense type too exposes some disturbing facts about the 49,000 youth in confinement in the United States: also many are there for a "most serious criminal offence" that is not even a crime. For example, in that location are over 5,000 youth behind confined for not-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An additional 1,400 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not police violations for adults such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ Well-nigh i in fourteen youth held for a criminal or delinquent offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and nigh of the others are held in juvenile facilities that await and operate a lot similar prisons and jails.

Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for clearing-related reasons, we observe that almost 6,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of immigration offenses, and xvi,000 more are held pretrial by the U.Southward. Marshals. The vast majority of people incarcerated for criminal clearing offenses are accused of illegal entry or illegal reentry — in other words, for no more serious crime than crossing the border without permission.²²

Slideshow 5. Swipe for more than detail almost youth solitude, immigrant confinement, and psychiatric confinement.

Another 22,000 people are civilly detained by U.Due south. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) not for any crime, merely simply considering they are facing deportation.²³ ICE detainees are physically confined in federally-run or privately-run clearing detention facilities, or in local jails nether contract with Water ice. This number is almost half what it was pre-pandemic, but it's actually climbing support from a record low of 13,500 people in ICE detention in early 2021. Equally in the criminal legal system, these pandemic-era trends should not be interpreted as evidence of reforms.²⁴ In fact, Water ice is chop-chop expanding its overall surveillance and control over the non-criminal migrant population past growing its electronic monitoring-based "alternatives to detention" programme.²⁵

An additional 9,800 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family members, or friends. Their number has more than than doubled since Jan of 2020. While these children are not held for any criminal or delinquent offense, most are held in shelters or fifty-fifty juvenile placement facilities under detention-similar atmospheric condition.²⁶

Adding to the universe of people who are bars because of justice system involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to country psychiatric hospitals and civil delivery centers. Many of these people are not even bedevilled, and some are held indefinitely. ix,000 are beingness evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand trial; half dozen,000 have been establish not guilty past reason of insanity or guilty only mentally ill; another half dozen,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained after their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much like prisons. Meanwhile, at to the lowest degree 38 states allow civil delivery for involuntary treatment for substance use, and in many cases, people are sent to actual prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for handling.²⁷

One time we have wrapped our minds around the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, we should zoom out and note that people who are incarcerated are only a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. There are some other 822,000 people on parole and a staggering ii.9 meg people on probation. Many millions more accept completed their sentences but are even so living with a criminal tape, a stigmatizing label that comes with collateral consequences such as barriers to employment and housing.

Far more people are impacted by mass incarceration than the one.9 million currently bars. An estimated 19 1000000 people are burdened with the collateral consequences of a felony conviction (this includes those currently and formerly incarcerated), and an estimated 79 million have a criminal record of some kind; fifty-fifty this is likely an underestimate, leaving out many people who have been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally, FWD.us reports that 113 1000000 adults (45%) have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least 1 night.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice system, nosotros should besides focus on who is nigh impacted and who is left behind past policy change. Poverty, for instance, plays a key office in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.S. population.²⁸ The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bond: The median felony bond bail amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of eight months' income for the typical detained defendant. As a result, people with depression incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is besides oftentimes the outcome, as a criminal record and fourth dimension spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.²⁹

It's no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation's prisons and jails. These racial disparities are specially stark for Black Americans, who make upwards 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing merely 12% of U.South residents. The same is truthful for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men'southward, and who are often backside bars because of financial obstacles such as an inability to pay bail. As policymakers continue to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile solitude and with women in state prisons.

Slideshow six. Swipe for more particular about race, gender, and income disparities.

Equipped with the full motion picture of how many people are locked up in the United States, where, and why, we all take a better foundation for moving the conversation about criminal justice reform forward. For case, the data makes it clear that catastrophe the war on drugs will not alone end mass incarceration, though the federal government and some states have taken an important step by reducing the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Looking at the "whole pie" of mass incarceration opens upwards conversations about where it makes sense to focus our energies at the local, land, and national levels. For example:

• How can nosotros finer invest in communities to go far less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place? And what measures can help aid successful reentry and end the roughshod cycle of re-incarceration that so many individuals and families experience?
• Can nosotros persuade government officials and prosecutors to revisit the reflexive, simplistic policymaking that has served to increase incarceration for "violent" offenses? How can nosotros eliminate policy "carveouts" that exclude wide categories of people from reforms and cease upward gutting the impact of reforms?
• What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to exercise what information technology takes to shrink the 2nd largest slice of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what volition information technology take to redirect public spending to smarter investments like customs-based drug treatment and job training?
• While the federal prison organization is a small-scale slice of the total pie, how tin improved federal policies and financial incentives be used to advance state and county level reforms? And for their function, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges — who all command larger shares of the correctional pie — slow the catamenia of people into the criminal justice arrangement?
• Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are not private prison house operators, but service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments cease contracts that clasp money from those behind bars and their families?
• What reforms can we implement to both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.Due south. and the well-known racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system?
• What lessons can we learn from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local governments prepared to respond to futurity pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and the federal authorities better apply compassionate release and clemency powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the futurity?

The The states has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the earth. Looking at the big picture of the 1.nine million people locked up in the United States on any given day, we can see that something needs to alter. Both policymakers and the public take the responsibility to carefully consider each individual slice of the carceral pie and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each grouping behind bars, and whether whatever benefit actually outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bail, tin meaningfully reduce our gild's employ of incarceration. At the same time, nosotros should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising merely will have only minimal effect, considering they just transfer people from one slice of the correctional "pie" to another or needlessly exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in mind is disquisitional if we hope to develop strategies that really shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice issues might reasonably expect that a big picture assay like this would be produced not by reform advocates, but by the criminal justice arrangement itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't one centralized criminal justice organization to practice such an assay. Instead, even thinking just about developed corrections, we take a federal organisation, 50 state systems, 3,000+ county systems, 25,000+ municipal systems, and so on. Each of these systems collects information for its own purposes that may or may not be compatible with data from other systems and that might duplicate or omit people counted by other systems.

This isn't to discount the work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which, despite limited resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the data on correctional facilities. And it'due south not to say that the FBI doesn't work hard to aggregate and standardize police arrest and crime report data. Just the fact is that the local, land, and federal agencies that conduct out the work of the criminal justice system — and are the sources of BJS and FBI data — weren't set up to answer many of the simple-sounding questions virtually the "system."

Similarly, at that place are systems involved in the confinement of justice-involved people that might not consider themselves part of the criminal justice system, but should be included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile justice, ceremonious detention and commitment, immigration detention, and commitment to psychiatric hospitals for criminal justice interest are examples of this broader universe of solitude that is often ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates data from these systems to provide the most comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

To produce this report, we took the most recent data available for each part of these systems, and, where necessary, adjusted the data to ensure that each person was only counted one time, merely in one case, and in the right place.

Finally, readers who rely on this study twelvemonth subsequently year may be pleased to acquire that since the last version was published in 2020, the delays in regime data reports that made tracking trends so difficult under the previous administration have shortened, with publications about returning to their previous cycles. Notwithstanding, having entered the third yr of the pandemic, it's frustrating that we still but accept national data from yr one for nearly systems of confinement.

The ongoing problem of data delays is non express to the regular information publications that this study relies on, but also special data collections that provide richly detailed, self-reported information about incarcerated people and their experiences in prison house and jail, namely the Survey of Prison house Inmates (conducted in 2016 for the offset time since 2004) and the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (last conducted in 2002 and as of March 2020, side by side slated for 2022 — which would make a 2025 study on the data about eighteen years off-schedule).

Data sources

This briefing uses the most recent information bachelor on the number of people in diverse types of facilities and the most significant charge or conviction. Because the diverse systems of confinement collect and report data on unlike schedules, this report reflects population data nerveless between 2019 and 2022 (and some of the data for people in psychiatric facilities dates back to 2014). Furthermore, considering not all types of information are updated each twelvemonth, nosotros sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, we practical the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous year to the current year's full count data. For this reason, we chose to circular near labels in the graphics to the nearest 1000, except where rounding to the nearest ten, nearest one hundred, or (in two cases in the jails item slide) the nearest 500 was more informative in that context. This rounding process may also effect in some parts non adding up precisely to the total.

Our information sources were:

• Land prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison house in Winter 2021-22 Table two provides the full yearend 2021 population. This report does not include offense data, withal, so we applied the ratio of law-breaking types calculated from the most recent Agency of Justice Statistics written report on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Table 14 (as of December 31, 2019) to the 2021 total state prison house population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array i and Table 5, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2020, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002³⁰ for law-breaking types. Come across beneath and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why nosotros used our ain assay rather than the otherwise excellent Agency of Justice Statistics analysis of the aforementioned dataset, Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.
• Federal:
  • Agency of Prisons: Federal Agency of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics, reporting data equally of February 17, 2022 (total population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Table xviii, reporting information every bit of September 30, 2020 (we applied the pct distribution of law-breaking types from that table to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.S. Marshals Service published its virtually recent population count in its 2022 Fact Sheet, reporting the average daily population in fiscal yr 2021. It as well provided a more than detailed breakdown of its "Prisoner Operations" population every bit of September 2019 by facility type (state and local, individual contracted, federal, and non-paid facilities) in response to our public records request. The number held in federal detention centers (8,376) came from the Fact Sheet; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table viii, and the number in private, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2019 breakdown. To estimate the number held in state prisons for the Marshals Service (2,323), we calculated the difference between the total boilerplate daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and private facilities. We created our ain estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "not reported" categories") to the total average daily population in 2021. It is worth noting that the U.South. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and private contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this report, as they are not included in virtually of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.
• Youth: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for Oct 23, 2019. Our information on youth incarcerated in adult prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Table 13, reporting information for December 31, 2020, and youth in developed jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table ii, reporting data for the concluding weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian State facilities comes from the Agency of Justice Statistics study Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 8, also reporting data for the final weekday in June, 2020. For more information on the geography of the juvenile arrangement, see the No Kids in Prison campaign.
• Immigration detention: The average daily population of 22,041³¹ in Clearing and Customs Enforcement (Water ice) detention comes from ICE'south FY 2022 ICE Statistics spreadsheet every bit of February 17, 2022. The count of 9,781 youth in Part of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program Fact Canvass, reporting the population as of Feb 16, 2022. Our estimates of how many ICE detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come from our analysis of a comprehensive Water ice detention facility list from November 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Heart. 7% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in private contract facilities, and 27% in city and county-operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary delivery:
  • Land psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by courts after being found "not guilty past reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty but mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for handling as "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI written report, Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting data from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data set, and for pretrial, we chose to combine pretrial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, considering in most cases, these betoken people who take not nevertheless been convicted or sentenced. This is not a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, but we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Civil detention and commitment: (At least 20 states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people bedevilled of sexual crimes later on their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement at that place are technically civil, but in reality are quite like prisons. People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they start serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their solitude in the civil facility.) The civil delivery counts come from an annual survey conducted past the Sex Offender Ceremonious Commitment Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for most states are from the 2021 survey, just for states that did not participate in 2021, we included the virtually contempo figures bachelor: Nebraska's counts and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP's detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.South. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.Due south. Virgin Islands, and U.Southward. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2020 Table 23, reporting data for December 31, 2020.
• Indian State jails (correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior's Agency of Indian Diplomacy): Jails in Indian Land, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 1, reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2020.
• Military machine: Prisoners in 2020 Tables 21 (for full population) and 22 (for crime types) reporting data equally of December 31, 2020.
• Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Agency of Justice Statistics report Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020 Table 1, reporting data for Dec 31, 2020, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only once in their nigh restrictive category. (Our data on the number of people on probation and on parole who were also in jails is as of mid-twelvemonth 2020 from Jail Inmates in 2020, Tabular array 7. Our data on the number of people on probation or parole who were likewise in state or federal prisons is as of December 31, 2019 from Correctional Populations in the United States, 2019, Table v. Our data on the number of people on probation who are also on parole is every bit of Dec 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Tabular array 9.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control, in that location are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation as of Dec 31, 2020.
• Individual facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explicate in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" section below), our identification of the number of people held in individual facilities was straightforward:
  • For country prisons, the number of people in private prisons came from Table 12 in Prisoners in 2020.
  • For the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we included the six,085 people in "privately managed facilities, the half dozen,561 in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses), and the 5,462 in abode confinement as of February 17, 2022, co-ordinate to the Agency of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consistent with the one used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020, but uses more recent data.
  • For the U.S. Marshals Service, nosotros used the FOIA response reporting the boilerplate daily population every bit of September 2019, including both "private, in-directly" and "individual, straight contract" facilities.
  • For youth, we used the 2019 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, which provides a breakdown of the number of youth held in publicly and privately operated facilities.
  • For immigration detention, nosotros relied on the piece of work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Centre, applying the pct held in individual facilities as of November 2017 to the Feb 2022 Ice population.

Adjustments to avoid double counting

To avoid counting anyone twice, we performed the following adjustments:

• To avoid anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, nosotros removed the 27% (5,951) of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained population that is held nether contract in local jails from the full jail population. We removed 34.1% of these ICE detainees from the jail convicted population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for Water ice on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, as detailed in our report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison government from existence counted twice, we removed the 73,321 people — cited in Tabular array 12 of Prisoners in 2020 — bars in local jails on behalf of federal or state prison systems from the total jail population and from the numbers we calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those being held by the U.Southward. Marshals Service from being counted twice, we removed from the jail total 31,500 Marshals detainees reported as held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array 8. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail convicted population, and the balance from the unconvicted jail population. (Again, we based these percentages on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Because nosotros removed ICE detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and state authorities from the jail population, nosotros had to recalculate the criminal offense distribution reported in Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "convicted" or "not convicted" without the people who reported that they were existence held on behalf of country government, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.South. Marshals Service, or U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.South. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).³² Our definition of "convicted" was those who reported that they were "To serve a sentence in this jail," "To await sentencing for an offense," or "To await transfer to serve a judgement somewhere else." Our definition of not bedevilled was "To stand trial for an criminal offense," "To await arraignment," or "To await a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."
• For our analysis of people held in private jails for local authorities, we applied the percentage of the total custody population held in private facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Tabular array 20 of Demography of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local authorities (547,328) in 2020, after making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and indigenous disparities in correctional facilities (as shown in Slideshow six) uses the only data source that has data for all types of adult correctional facilities: the U.S. Census. Considering the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Census accept non been published yet, we used the 2019 American Community Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the four named racial and ethnic groups that business relationship for at least 2%, nationally, of the population in correctional facilities. Not included on the graphic are Asian people, who make up 1% of the correctional population, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, who make up 0.3%, people identifying as "Some other race," who business relationship for half-dozen.3%, and those of "Two or more races," who make up iv% of the full national correctional population.

Note that because Latinos may exist of any race and because of how the Census Bureau published race and ethnicity data in the relevant tabular array, we used the Census information for "White alone, Not Hispanic or Latino" for white people, simply the Demography Agency's data for "Blackness or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify every bit both that race and Latino. Because this particular tabular array is not advisable for state-level analyses, but the Prison Policy Initiative will explore using the 2020 Demographic and Housing Characteristics file when information technology is published past the Demography Bureau in belatedly 2022 to provide detailed racial and indigenous data for the combined incarcerated population in each state. In past decades, this information was particularly useful in states where the system — particularly jails — did not publish race and ethnicity data or did non publish data with more precision than just "white, Black and other."

Read the entire methodology

To aid readers link to specific images in this study, we created these special urls:

How many people are locked up in the United States?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/1

1 in 3 people backside bars is in a jail. Most have yet to exist tried in court.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/ii

Despite reforms, drug offenses are still a defining characteristic of the federal organisation

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/three

Across "federal prison," multiple agencies and thousands of local facilities confine people for the federal authorities

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/4

Prison population drops have leveled off since 2020

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#covid

Jail populations are creeping back to normal

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#covid

Pretrial Detention

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/1

Pretrial policies drive jail growth

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/2

Local Jails: The real scandal is the churn

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/3

Why are so many people detained in jails before trial?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/iv

Only viii% of confined people are held in individual prisons

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#private_facilities

1 in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/1

Constabulary brand over a meg drug possession arrests each twelvemonth

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/two

Some states have largely ended the War on Drugs. Other states, not so much.

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/three

Nearly states track and publish only ane mensurate of post-release recidivism

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#releaserecidivism

Very few states track and publish any recidivism data for people on probation

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#probationrecidivism

What do victims of fierce crimes really want?

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#victimswant

Not-criminal (or "technical") violations are the main reason for incarceration of people on probation and parole

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow4/ane

Opposite to myth, people incarcerated for vehement offenses and released are least likely to exist arrested over again

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow4/1

Most bars youth are held for non-person offenses, many for acts that are not "crimes" at all

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/1

Nigh 54,000 people are bars for clearing reasons

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/ii

Psychiatric facilities confine 22,000 justice-involved people every day

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/3

Near people in Indian Country jails are locked up for property, drug, and public order charges

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/iv

Mass incarceration directly impacts millions of people: But just how many, and in what ways?

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#impacted

Incarceration is simply one piece of the much larger arrangement of correctional command

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/1

Racial and indigenous disparities in correctional facilities

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/2

Women's incarceration patterns are very different than men'due south

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/3

Women'due south prison populations have grown faster than men's (and before the pandemic, women's populations were declining more than slowly)

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/iv

Most people in prison are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/5

1 out of v incarcerated people in the world is incarcerated in the U.S.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/6

To assistance readers link to specific report sections or paragraphs, nosotros created these special urls:

What really happened to prison and jail populations during the pandemic?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#covid

Jails vs. prisons: What's the difference?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#jailsvprisons

8 myths almost mass incarceration

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#myths

The commencement myth: Private prisons are the corrupt heart of mass incarceration

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#firstmyth

Offense categories might not mean what you think

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#offensecategories

The 2nd myth: Prisons are "factories backside fences" that exist to provide companies with a huge slave labor force

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#secondmyth

The third myth: Releasing "irenic drug offenders" would end mass incarceration

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#thirdmyth

The fourth myth: By definition, "violent crime" involves physical damage

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fourthmyth

The 5th myth: People in prison for vehement or sexual crimes are too dangerous to be released

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth

Backsliding: A slippery statistic

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#recidivism_measures

The 6th myth: Crime victims support long prison house sentences

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth

The seventh myth: Some people need to go to jail to become handling and services

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth

The eighth myth: Expanding customs supervision is the all-time way to reduce incarceration

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth

The high costs of low-level offenses

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#lowlevel

Probation & parole violations and "holds" pb to unnecessary incarceration

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#holds

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#misdemeanors

"Low-level fugitives" live in fearfulness of incarceration for missed court dates and unpaid fines

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#benchwarrants

Lessons from the smaller "slices": Youth, immigration, and involuntary commitment

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#smallerslices

Beyond the "Whole Pie": Community supervision, poverty, and race and gender disparities

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#community

Each paragraph is likewise numbered, so you can apply urls in this format:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#paragraph1
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#paragraph2
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#paragraph3
etc…

Acquire how to link to specific images and sections

Acknowledgments

All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, just this report builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 versions. For this year's report, the authors are particularly indebted to Lena Graber of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center for their feedback and help putting the changes to immigration detention into context, Jacob Kang-Brown of the Vera Institute of Justice for sharing country prison data, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment data, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for research support, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for aid with one of the visuals, and Jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow applied science. Yet, any errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a information visualization like this, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Nosotros thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Claiming for their support of our inquiry into the use and misuse of jails in this state. We besides thank Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that fill cardinal data and messaging gaps. Finally, nosotros'd similar to thank each of our individual donors — your delivery to catastrophe mass incarceration makes our work possible.

Well-nigh the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Enquiry Managing director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Dissever: Tracking women's state prison house growth, and the 2016 report Punishing Poverty: The high toll of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems with Alexi Jones. In addition to these reports, Wendy ofttimes contributes briefings on recent data releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.

Peter Wagner is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. He co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national word nearly mass incarceration.

Well-nigh the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-turn a profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more than just lodge. Aslope reports like this that help the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation's fight to keep the prison system from exerting undue influence on the political procedure (a.1000.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading role in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison and jail telephone industry and the video visitation manufacture. The organization also sounded the alarm in 2020 on the danger of COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails, and throughout the pandemic has provided frequent updates on releases, vaccines, and other prison policies critical to saving lives backside confined.

christiannoing1976.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

Share this post