If You Get Arrested Again Your Inmate Id Number

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections

The large picture

The touch on of COVID

8 Myths

Loftier costs of low-level offenses

Youth, clearing & involuntary commitment

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

Necessary reforms

Sources

Tin it really be true that virtually 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 private prisons? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed decisions almost how people are punished when they intermission the police? These essential questions are harder to respond than you might look. The various authorities agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, simply very piddling is designed to assist policymakers or the public sympathize what's going on. Equally public back up for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher — it'due south more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn't have ane "criminal justice organization;" instead, we have thousands of federal, country, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems concur almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, two,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, too as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. ¹

This written report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the information nigh this country's disparate systems of confinement. It provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.Due south., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration and overlooked issues that call for reform.

Slideshow 1. Swipe for more detailed views. For source dates and links, encounter the Methodology.

This big-picture view is a lens through which the primary drivers of mass incarceration come up into focus;^four it allows united states of america to identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement. The detailed views bring these disregarded systems to lite, from immigration detention to ceremonious commitment and youth confinement. In particular, local jails often receive brusque shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, merely they play a critical role as "incarceration's front end door" and accept a far greater touch than the daily population suggests.

While this pie nautical chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional organisation, 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 affected past the criminal justice system. In a typical twelvemonth, nigh 600,000 people enter prison house gates,⁵ but people go to jail over x one thousand thousand times each year.^{six vii} Jail churn is specially loftier considering almost people in jails have not been convicted.^eight Some accept just been arrested and volition brand bail within hours or days, while many others are besides poor to make bail and remain backside bars until their trial. Only a small number (about 103,000 on any given solar day) have been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a year. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested once again within the same twelvemonth — oft those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance utilize disorders, whose bug only worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow 2. Swipe for more detail on pretrial detention.

With a sense of the large picture show, the next question is: why are so many people locked up? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the turn a profit motives of private companies driving incarceration? Or is it really virtually public safety and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Most have a kernel of truth, merely these myths distract u.s.a. from focusing on the most important drivers of incarceration.

Eight myths nigh mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison labor are amidst the nigh 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 confinement. Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and tearing offenses often derail of import conversations nigh the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. Imitation notions of what a "violent crime" conviction ways nearly an individual's dangerousness go along to be used in an endeavor to justify long sentences — even though that's not what victims want. At the same time, misguided beliefs about the "services" provided by jails are used to rationalize the construction of massive new "mental health jails." Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such equally moving people from jails and prisons to customs supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration often lead to incarceration anyhow. Focusing on the policy changes that can end mass incarceration, and non just put a dent in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

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

In fact, less than 8% of all incarcerated people are held in individual prisons; the vast majority are in publicly-endemic prisons and jails.^xi Some states take more people in private prisons than others, of course, and the industry has lobbied to maintain high levels of incarceration, but private prisons are essentially a parasite on the massive publicly-endemic organization — not the root of it.

Nevertheless, a range of individual industries and even some public agencies continue to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and county jails hire space to other agencies, including state prison house systems,¹² the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison food and wellness services (ofttimes so bad they result in major lawsuits), and prison 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 cost.

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

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

Simply put, private companies using prison house labor are not what stands in the way of catastrophe mass incarceration, nor are they the source of almost prison jobs. Only about five,000 people in prison — less than i% — are employed past private companies through the federal PIECP program, which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger portion work for land-owned "correctional industries," which pay much less, but this still simply represents about 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)¹³

Just prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for nutrient service, laundry, and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 study constitute that on boilerplate, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the most mutual prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. If they refuse to piece of work, incarcerated people face disciplinary activity. For those who do work, the paltry wages they receive often get correct back to the prison, which charges them for basic 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 third myth: Releasing "nonviolent drug offenders" would end mass incarceration

Information technology's truthful that law, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for aught more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of well-nigh 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison house system. Police still make over ane million drug possession arrests each year,^xiv many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests proceed to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, pain their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for whatever futurity offenses.

Even so, 4 out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious criminal offense or an even less serious one. To end mass incarceration, we will have to change how our society and our criminal legal system responds to crimes more than serious than drug possession. We must also stop incarcerating people for behaviors that are even more benign.

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

The fourth myth: By definition, "vehement crime" involves physical harm

The distinction between "violent" and "nonviolent" crime means less than yous might think; in fact, these terms are then widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context. In the public discourse about law-breaking, people typically use "fierce" and "nonviolent" as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That lonely is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used every bit coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-unsafe.

In reality, state and federal laws apply the term "trigger-happy" to a surprisingly wide range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve any physical damage. In some states, purse-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered tearing crimes. Break-in is generally considered a property criminal offence, but an array of state and federal laws classify break-in as a vehement law-breaking in certain situations, such equally when it occurs at night, in a residence, or with a weapon nowadays. So even if the building was unoccupied, someone convicted of burglary could be punished for a violent crime and end up with a long prison house sentence and "fierce" record.

The mutual misunderstanding of what "tearing crime" really refers to — a legal distinction that ofttimes has piddling to do with actual or intended harm — is 1 of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the idea of violent crime often atomic number 82 policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally "tearing" crimes. Merely over twoscore% of people in prison and jail are there for offenses classified as "vehement," and then these carveouts end upwards gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies. As we and many others have explained earlier, cut incarceration rates to anything well-nigh international norms will exist impossible without changing how nosotros respond to fierce criminal offence. To start, nosotros have to be clearer about what that loaded term really means.

The fifth myth: People in prison for tearing or sexual crimes are too unsafe to be released

Of course, many people bedevilled of violent offenses have caused serious impairment to others. But how does the criminal legal system determine the risk that they pose to their communities? Once again, the answer is as well often "we judge them by their offense type," rather than "we evaluate their private 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 even a lifetime of punishment.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that past policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's fourth dimension to consider policy changes that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" — people bedevilled of non-violent, not-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if we are serious about catastrophe mass incarceration, nosotros volition take to modify our responses to more serious and violent crime.

Backsliding information do not back up the conventionalities that people who commit fierce crimes ought to exist locked abroad for decades for the sake of public condom. People bedevilled of violent and sexual offenses are really amidst the least likely to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates xx% lower than all other law-breaking categories combined. One reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people convicted of tearing offenses: age is 1 of the main predictors of violence. The take chances for violence peaks in adolescence or early adulthood and then declines with historic period, yet nosotros incarcerate people long later their risk has declined.^xv

Sadly, well-nigh country officials ignored this testify even every bit the pandemic made obvious the need to reduce the number of people trapped in prisons and jails, where COVID-19 ran rampant. Instead of because the release of people based on their age or individual circumstances, nigh officials categorically refused to consider people convicted of violent or sexual offenses, dramatically reducing the number of people eligible for earlier release.^xvi

The 6th myth: Crime victims back up long prison house sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors ofttimes invoke the proper name of victims to justify long sentences for tearing offenses. Merely contrary to the popular narrative, most victims of violence want violence prevention, non incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter violent criminal offence, and many victims believe that incarceration tin make people more likely to appoint in crime. National survey data testify that well-nigh victims support violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that address the root causes of criminal offense, not more investment in carceral systems that crusade more harm.¹⁷ This suggests that they intendance more about the health and rubber of their communities than they do about retribution.

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

Moreover, people convicted of crimes are often victims themselves, complicating the moral statement for harsh punishments as "justice." While conversations about justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of crime as two entirely split up groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, as well — a fact behind the adage that "hurt people hurt people."¹⁸ As victims of law-breaking know, breaking this cycle of impairment will require greater investments in communities, non the carceral arrangement.

The seventh myth: Some people need to go to jail to get treatment and services

It's absolutely truthful that people ensnared in the criminal legal system take a lot of unmet needs. But we shouldn't distort the "services" offered in jails and prisons equally reasons to lock people up. Local jails, peculiarly, are filled with people who need medical intendance and social services, but jails take repeatedly failed to provide these services. Many people end up cycling in and out of jail without ever receiving the help they demand. People with mental wellness issues are oftentimes put in lonely confinement, have limited admission to counseling, and are left unmonitored due to abiding staffing shortages. The outcome: suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Given this track record, edifice new "mental wellness jails" to respond to decades of disinvestment in community-based services is peculiarly alarming.

Similarly, while ii-thirds of people in jail take substance use disorders, jails consistently neglect to provide adequate handling. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted handling (MAT) for opioid use disorder—the gold standard for care. That means that rather than providing drug treatment, jails more often interrupt drug treatment by cut patients off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased by well-nigh 400%; typically, these individuals died inside just one solar day of access. Jails are not safety detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic environs people require for long-term recovery and healing.

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

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is often seen as a "lenient" punishment or as an ideal "alternative" to incarceration. But while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked upward, the weather imposed on those under supervision are oft so restrictive that they set people up to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant surveillance (especially with electronic monitoring) outcome in frequent "failures," often for minor infractions like breaking curfew or failing to pay unaffordable supervision fees.

In 2019, at to the lowest degree 153,000 people were incarcerated for non-criminal violations of probation or parole, oftentimes called "technical violations."^{nineteen 20} Probation, in item, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until information technology is reformed to support and reward success rather than detect mistakes, it is not a reliable "alternative."

Slideshow four. Swipe for more details nearly what the information on recidivism actually shows.

The high costs of low-level offenses

Nigh justice-involved people in the U.S. are not defendant of serious crimes; more ofttimes, they are charged with misdemeanors or not-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, tin can lead to incarceration and other serious consequences. Rather than investing in customs-driven condom initiatives, cities and counties are still pouring vast amounts of public resources into the processing and punishment of these minor offenses.

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

Often overlooked in discussions well-nigh mass incarceration are the various "holds" that keep people behind confined for authoritative reasons. A mutual example is when people on probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new crime or a non-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 bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives later conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a small-scale infraction can exist profoundly destabilizing. The most recent data show that nationally, almost 1 in 5 (18%) people in jail are at that place for a violation of probation or parole, though in some places these violations or detainers account for over one-tertiary of the jail population. This problem is not limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments found that nearly 1 in 4 people in state prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations. During the get-go year of the pandemic, that number dropped simply slightly, to 1 in 5 people in land prisons.

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

The "massive misdemeanor system" in the U.S. is another important merely overlooked correspondent to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as benign as jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated xiii one thousand thousand misdemeanor charges sweep droves of Americans into the criminal justice system each year (and that's excluding civil violations and speeding). These low-level offenses typically account for well-nigh 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may sound picayune, merely they behave serious fiscal, personal, and social costs, peculiarly for defendants but as well for broader society, 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 often not appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and accept a probation sentence to avoid jail time. This ways that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come up with a criminal record, too as the heightened risk of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

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

Defendants can cease up in jail even if their crime is not punishable with jail time. Why? Considering if a defendant fails to appear in court or to pay fines and fees, the gauge can issue a "bench warrant" for their arrest, directing constabulary enforcement to jail them in lodge to bring them to court. While in that location is currently no national estimate of the number of active demote warrants, their use is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe Canton, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an active bench warrant at any time, more than iii times the number of people in the canton jails.

But demote warrants are often unnecessary. Near people who miss court are non trying to avoid the law; more oft, they forget, are confused by the court process, or have a schedule conflict. One time a bench warrant is issued, however, defendants often end up living as "low-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, condign transient, and/or avoiding public life (fifty-fifty hospitals) to avoid having to go to jail.

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

Looking more closely at incarceration past offense blazon besides exposes some disturbing facts about the 49,000 youth in solitude in the United States: as well many are there for a "most serious offense" that is not fifty-fifty a criminal offense. For example, there are over five,000 youth behind bars for non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new criminal offense. An boosted 1,400 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not police force violations for adults such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ About 1 in fourteen youth held for a criminal or runaway criminal offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and most of the others are held in juvenile facilities that look and operate a lot like prisons and jails.

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

Slideshow five. Swipe for more particular well-nigh youth confinement, immigrant confinement, and psychiatric solitude.

Another 22,000 people are civilly detained by U.S. Immigration and Community Enforcement (ICE) non for any crime, simply simply because they are facing displacement.²³ Ice detainees are physically bars in federally-run or privately-run immigration detention facilities, or in local jails under contract with ICE. This number is about half what information technology was pre-pandemic, but information technology's actually climbing back up from a record low of 13,500 people in ICE detention in early 2021. As in the criminal legal system, these pandemic-era trends should not be interpreted every bit bear witness of reforms.²⁴ In fact, ICE is apace expanding its overall surveillance and control over the non-criminal migrant population past growing its electronic monitoring-based "alternatives to detention" program.²⁵

An boosted ix,800 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Role of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), pending placement with parents, family members, or friends. Their number has more than than doubled since January of 2020. While these children are not held for any criminal or delinquent offense, most are held in shelters or even juvenile placement facilities under detention-like conditions.²⁶

Adding to the universe of people who are confined because of justice organization involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to state psychiatric hospitals and civil delivery centers. Many of these people are not fifty-fifty convicted, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are being evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand up trial; half-dozen,000 have been constitute non guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill; another 6,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained afterwards their prison house sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much like prisons. Meanwhile, at least 38 states allow civil delivery for involuntary treatment for substance use, and in many cases, people are sent to bodily prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for treatment.²⁷

In one case we accept wrapped our minds effectually the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, nosotros should zoom out and notation that people who are incarcerated are only a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. There are another 822,000 people on parole and a staggering ii.9 meg people on probation. Many millions more take completed their sentences but are still living with a criminal record, 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.nine one thousand thousand currently confined. An estimated 19 million people are encumbered with the collateral consequences of a felony conviction (this includes those currently and formerly incarcerated), and an estimated 79 1000000 accept a criminal record of some kind; even this is probable an underestimate, leaving out many people who have been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally, FWD.usa reports that 113 million adults (45%) have had an firsthand family member incarcerated for at least one dark.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted past the criminal justice system, we should likewise focus on who is most impacted and who is left backside by policy change. Poverty, for case, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.South. population.²⁸ The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of coin bail: The median felony bond bond amount ($x,000) is the equivalent of eight months' income for the typical detained defendant. As a event, people with low incomes are more than likely to confront the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not but a predictor of incarceration; it is likewise frequently the outcome, as a criminal tape and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates chore opportunities.²⁹

Information technology'south 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 just 12% of U.Due south residents. The same is truthful for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men'south, and who are frequently behind bars because of fiscal obstacles such as an disability to pay bail. As policymakers continue to push button for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, every bit has happened with juvenile solitude and with women in country prisons.

Slideshow half dozen. Swipe for more item about race, gender, and income disparities.

Equipped with the full motion-picture show of how many people are locked up in the United states, where, and why, nosotros all have a improve foundation for moving the conversation about criminal justice reform forward. For example, the data makes it clear that catastrophe the war on drugs will non lone end mass incarceration, though the federal government and some states accept taken an of import footstep by reducing the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Looking at the "whole pie" of mass incarceration opens up conversations about where it makes sense to focus our energies at the local, state, and national levels. For example:

• How can we effectively invest in communities to make information technology less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal arrangement in the first place? And what measures can help assistance successful reentry and end the vicious cycle of re-incarceration that so many individuals and families experience?
• Can we persuade regime officials and prosecutors to revisit the reflexive, simplistic policymaking that has served to increment incarceration for "violent" offenses? How can we eliminate policy "carveouts" that exclude broad categories of people from reforms and end up gutting the bear on of reforms?
• What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to practise what it takes to shrink the 2nd largest slice of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what will it take to redirect public spending to smarter investments like customs-based drug handling and job grooming?
• While the federal prison system is a small slice of the total pie, how tin can improved federal policies and financial incentives be used to accelerate land and county level reforms? And for their part, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges — who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — ho-hum the menstruation of people into the criminal justice organisation?
• Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are non private prison operators, just service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments end contracts that squeeze coin from those behind confined and their families?
• What reforms can we implement to both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. and the well-known racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system?
• What lessons can we learn from the pandemic? Are federal, land, and local governments prepared to respond to future pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and the federal government meliorate apply compassionate release and clemency powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the future?

The United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Looking at the big picture show of the one.nine meg people locked up in the Us on whatever given twenty-four hours, we tin can see that something needs to modify. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each individual slice of the carceral pie and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group backside bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bail, tin can meaningfully reduce our society's utilize of incarceration. At the aforementioned time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising merely volition have only minimal effect, because they but transfer people from one piece of the correctional "pie" to another or needlessly exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the large picture in mind is disquisitional if nosotros hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice bug might reasonably look that a big picture analysis like this would be produced non past reform advocates, but by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't ane centralized criminal justice organization to do such an analysis. Instead, even thinking just about adult corrections, we accept a federal system, 50 land systems, 3,000+ county systems, 25,000+ municipal systems, and then 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 piece of work of the Agency of Justice Statistics, which, despite express resources, undertakes the Herculean chore of organizing and standardizing the information on correctional facilities. And it's non to say that the FBI doesn't work difficult to aggregate and standardize constabulary arrest and offense report data. But the fact is that the local, country, and federal agencies that acquit out the work of the criminal justice system — and are the sources of BJS and FBI data — weren't ready to answer many of the uncomplicated-sounding questions about the "organization."

Similarly, there are systems involved in the confinement of justice-involved people that might not consider themselves part of the criminal justice system, but should exist included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile justice, civil detention and commitment, immigration detention, and delivery to psychiatric hospitals for criminal justice interest are examples of this broader universe of confinement that is frequently ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates information from these systems to provide the virtually comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

To produce this written report, we took the nigh recent data available for each role of these systems, and, where necessary, adjusted the information to ensure that each person was only counted one time, only once, and in the correct place.

Finally, readers who rely on this report year later on year may be pleased to acquire that since the last version was published in 2020, the delays in government data reports that fabricated tracking trends then hard nether the previous administration have shortened, with publications almost returning to their previous cycles. Still, having entered the tertiary year of the pandemic, it'due south frustrating that we still only have national data from yr one for most systems of confinement.

The ongoing problem of data delays is not express to the regular data publications that this study relies on, merely as well special data collections that provide richly detailed, cocky-reported data about incarcerated people and their experiences in prison house and jail, namely the Survey of Prison Inmates (conducted in 2016 for the first time since 2004) and the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (last conducted in 2002 and equally of March 2020, next slated for 2022 — which would make a 2025 report on the data well-nigh 18 years off-schedule).

Data sources

This conference uses the virtually recent data available on the number of people in diverse types of facilities and the most pregnant charge or conviction. Considering the various systems of confinement collect and study data on different schedules, this written report reflects population data nerveless between 2019 and 2022 (and some of the information for people in psychiatric facilities dates dorsum to 2014). Furthermore, considering not all types of information are updated each year, we sometimes had to summate estimates; for example, nosotros applied the per centum distribution of offense types from the previous year to the electric current year's full count data. For this reason, we chose to round virtually labels in the graphics to the nearest one thousand, except where rounding to the nearest ten, nearest one hundred, or (in two cases in the jails detail slide) the nearest 500 was more informative in that context. This rounding process may too result in some parts non adding upward precisely to the total.

Our data sources were:

• Country prisons: Vera Establish of Justice, People in Prison house in Winter 2021-22 Table 2 provides the total yearend 2021 population. This report does non include offense data, however, so we applied the ratio of criminal offense types calculated from the nearly recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Table xiv (equally of December 31, 2019) to the 2021 total state prison population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array 1 and Table 5, reporting average daily population and bedevilled status for midyear 2020, and our assay of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002³⁰ for law-breaking types. See below and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why we used our own analysis rather than the otherwise fantabulous Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of the same dataset, Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002.
• Federal:
  • Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics, reporting data as of Feb 17, 2022 (total population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Table 18, reporting data as of September xxx, 2020 (we practical the percent distribution of law-breaking types from that tabular array to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.S. Marshals Service published its well-nigh recent population count in its 2022 Fact Canvas, reporting the average daily population in financial twelvemonth 2021. Information technology too provided a more detailed breakdown of its "Prisoner Operations" population as of September 2019 by facility type (land and local, private 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 Canvas; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table eight, 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 (two,323), we calculated the deviation between the full average daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and private facilities. We created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported criminal offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "not reported" categories") to the total boilerplate daily population in 2021. Information technology is worth noting that the U.S. 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 most of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.
• Youth: Role of Juvenile Justice and Malversation Prevention, Easy Access to the Demography of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for October 23, 2019. Our data on youth incarcerated in adult prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Table 13, reporting data for December 31, 2020, and youth in developed jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table two, reporting information for the last weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian Country facilities comes from the Agency of Justice Statistics written report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-xix on the Tribal Jail Population Tabular array 8, also reporting data for the final weekday in June, 2020. For more information on the geography of the juvenile system, meet the No Kids in Prison campaign.
• Clearing detention: The average daily population of 22,041³¹ in Clearing and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention comes from ICE's FY 2022 Ice Statistics spreadsheet as of February 17, 2022. The count of nine,781 youth in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program Fact Sail, reporting the population as of February sixteen, 2022. Our estimates of how many ICE detainees are held in federal, individual, and local facilities come from our assay of a comprehensive 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 metropolis and county-operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary delivery:
  • State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to land psychiatric hospitals past courts later on being found "not guilty past reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty simply mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for treatment equally "incompetent to stand up trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI report, Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting information 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, because in most cases, these indicate people who take not however been bedevilled or sentenced. This is non a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, just nosotros believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Civil detention and commitment: (At to the lowest degree 20 states and the federal authorities operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people bedevilled of sexual crimes afterward their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement there are technically ceremonious, but in reality are quite like prisons. People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they kickoff serving their judgement at a correctional facility through their confinement in the ceremonious facility.) The civil commitment counts come up from an annual survey conducted by the Sex Offender Ceremonious Delivery Programs Network shared past SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for near states are from the 2021 survey, simply for states that did not participate in 2021, we included the most recent figures available: Nebraska's counts and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP'south detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.Due south. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2020 Tabular array 23, reporting data for December 31, 2020.
• Indian Country jails (correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior'southward Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-xix on the Tribal Jail Population Table 1, reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2020.
• Military: Prisoners in 2020 Tables 21 (for full population) and 22 (for offense types) reporting data as of December 31, 2020.
• Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Probation and Parole in the The states, 2020 Table 1, reporting information for December 31, 2020, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only in one case in their most restrictive category. (Our information on the number of people on probation and on parole who were likewise in jails is as of mid-year 2020 from Jail Inmates in 2020, Table 7. Our information on the number of people on probation or parole who were also in country or federal prisons is as of December 31, 2019 from Correctional Populations in the United states of america, 2019, Table five. Our data on the number of people on probation who are as well on parole is as of December 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Table 9.) For readers interested in knowing the full number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control, there are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation as of December 31, 2020.
• Private facilities: Except for local jails (which nosotros volition explicate in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" section below), our identification of the number of people held in individual facilities was straightforward:
  • For land prisons, the number of people in individual prisons came from Table 12 in Prisoners in 2020.
  • For the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we included the 6,085 people in "privately managed facilities, the six,561 in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses), and the 5,462 in home solitude as of February 17, 2022, according to the Agency of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consistent with the one used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Tabular array 12 of Prisoners in 2020, but uses more contempo information.
  • For the U.S. Marshals Service, we used the FOIA response reporting the average daily population as of September 2019, including both "private, in-straight" and "private, direct 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, we relied on the work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Center, applying the percentage held in private facilities as of November 2017 to the February 2022 Ice population.

Adjustments to avert double counting

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

• To avoid anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, we removed the 27% (v,951) of the Immigration and Community Enforcement (Ice) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. We removed 34.1% of these ICE detainees from the jail bedevilled population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, as detailed in our report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why Country Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison authorities from beingness counted twice, we removed the 73,321 people — cited in Tabular array 12 of Prisoners in 2020 — confined in local jails on behalf of federal or land prison systems from the total jail population and from the numbers nosotros calculated for those in local jails that are bedevilled. To avert those being held by the U.S. Marshals Service from being counted twice, nosotros removed from the jail total 31,500 Marshals detainees reported as held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2020 Table eight. 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 assay of the Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Considering we removed Ice detainees and people nether the jurisdiction of federal and state authorities from the jail population, we had to recalculate the offense distribution reported in Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "bedevilled" or "not convicted" without the people who reported that they were being held on behalf of country authorities, the Federal Agency of Prisons, the U.Southward. Marshals Service, or U.South. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.S. Clearing and Community 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 look transfer to serve a judgement somewhere else." Our definition of not bedevilled was "To stand trial for an crime," "To await arraignment," or "To await a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."
• For our assay of people held in individual jails for local authorities, we practical the percentage of the total custody population held in private facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Tabular array twenty of Census of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local authorities (547,328) in 2020, subsequently making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities (equally shown in Slideshow 6) uses the only data source that has information for all types of adult correctional facilities: the U.Southward. Census. Because the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Census have not been published yet, we used the 2019 American Customs Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the four named racial and ethnic groups that account for at least ii%, 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 account for half-dozen.3%, and those of "2 or more races," who make up 4% of the total national correctional population.

Notation that considering Latinos may exist of any race and because of how the Census Bureau published race and ethnicity data in the relevant table, we used the Census data for "White solitary, Not Hispanic or Latino" for white people, simply the Census Agency'southward data for "Black or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify equally both that race and Latino. Because this particular tabular array is not advisable for state-level analyses, but the Prison Policy Initiative volition explore using the 2020 Demographic and Housing Characteristics file when it is published by the Census Bureau in late 2022 to provide detailed racial and indigenous data for the combined incarcerated population in each state. In by decades, this data was peculiarly useful in states where the organization — peculiarly jails — did not publish race and ethnicity data or did not publish data with more precision than just "white, Black and other."

Read the entire methodology

To help readers link to specific images in this report, we created these special urls:

How many people are locked up in the United States?

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

1 in 3 people backside bars is in a jail. Virtually take even so to be tried in courtroom.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/2

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/3

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

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

Pretrial Detention

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

Pretrial policies bulldoze jail growth

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

Local Jails: The real scandal is the churn

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/3

Why are so many people detained in jails earlier trial?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/4

Just 8% of confined people are held in private prisons

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

1 in v incarcerated people is locked upwardly for a drug offense

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

Police make over a million drug possession arrests each twelvemonth

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

Some states have largely ended the War on Drugs. Other states, non so much.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/3

About states runway and publish just ane mensurate of postal service-release recidivism

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

Very few states track and publish any backsliding information for people on probation

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

What do victims of violent crimes really want?

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

Non-criminal (or "technical") violations are the primary reason for incarceration of people on probation and parole

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

Contrary to myth, people incarcerated for violent offenses and released are least likely to exist arrested once more

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow4/1

Most confined youth are held for non-person offenses, many for acts that are non "crimes" at all

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

Almost 54,000 people are confined for clearing reasons

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/2

Psychiatric facilities confine 22,000 justice-involved people every 24-hour interval

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/iii

Most 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://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#impacted

Incarceration is simply one piece of the much larger system of correctional control

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/1

Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities

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

Women'south incarceration patterns are very dissimilar than men's

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/3

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/4

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

i out of 5 incarcerated people in the earth is incarcerated in the U.Due south.

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

To help readers link to specific report sections or paragraphs, we created these special urls:

What actually 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

Eight myths almost mass incarceration

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

The showtime myth: Private prisons are the decadent middle of mass incarceration

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

Criminal offense categories might not mean what yous think

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

The second myth: Prisons are "factories behind fences" that be to provide companies with a huge slave labor force

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

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

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

The quaternary myth: By definition, "violent crime" involves physical harm

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

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

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

Recidivism: A slippery statistic

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

The 6th myth: Offense victims support long prison sentences

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

The seventh myth: Some people need to go to jail to get treatment and services

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

The eighth myth: Expanding customs supervision is the best mode to reduce incarceration

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

The loftier costs of depression-level offenses

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

Probation & parole violations and "holds" atomic number 82 to unnecessary incarceration

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

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

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

"Depression-level fugitives" live in fright of incarceration for missed courtroom dates and unpaid fines

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

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

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

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

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

Each paragraph is also numbered, so you can employ urls in this format:

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

Learn how to link to specific images and sections

Acknowledgments

All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, merely this report builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 versions. For this twelvemonth's report, the authors are peculiarly 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 Plant of Justice for sharing land prison house data, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment data, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for research back up, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for assistance with one of the visuals, and Jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow technology. However, whatsoever errors or omissions, and final responsibleness for all of the many value judgements required to produce a data visualization like this, are the sole responsibleness of the authors.

We give thanks the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Prophylactic and Justice Claiming for their support of our inquiry into the use and misuse of jails in this state. We besides give thanks Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that fill primal data and messaging gaps. Finally, we'd like to give thanks each of our individual donors — your commitment to ending mass incarceration makes our work possible.

About the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Enquiry Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Split up: Tracking women's state prison house growth, and the 2016 report Punishing Poverty: The loftier cost of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Abort, Release, Echo: How police and jails are misused to reply to social problems with Alexi Jones. In improver to these reports, Wendy frequently contributes briefings on contempo data releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.

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

Nearly the Prison Policy Initiative

The not-turn a profit, not-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to betrayal the broader impairment of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. Alongside reports like this that help the public more fully appoint in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation'due south fight to proceed the prison system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.thousand.a. prison house 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 industry. The arrangement as well sounded the alarm in 2020 on the danger of COVID-nineteen outbreaks in prisons and jails, and throughout the pandemic has provided frequent updates on releases, vaccines, and other prison policies disquisitional to saving lives behind confined.

kilburnrumant.blogspot.com

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

Share this post