Why Are Criminals More Likely Than Other Americans to End Up in Prison Again

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections

The big picture

The bear upon of COVID

8 Myths

High costs of low-level offenses

Youth, immigration & involuntary commitment

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

Necessary reforms

Sources

Can it really be true that most people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a event of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of individual prisons? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed decisions about how people are punished when they break the law? These essential questions are harder to answer than yous might expect. The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very little is designed to help policymakers or the public understand what'southward going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher — it's more of import than ever that we get the facts straight and sympathise the big motion-picture show.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn't have one "criminal justice organization;" instead, we have thousands of federal, country, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold nigh 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 land jails, every bit well equally in military prisons, civil delivery centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.Southward. territories. ¹

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

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

This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus;⁴ it allows us to identify important, simply often ignored, systems of solitude. The detailed views bring these disregarded systems to calorie-free, from clearing detention to civil delivery and youth solitude. In detail, local jails often receive short shrift in larger discussions nigh criminal justice, merely they play a critical function as "incarceration'due south front door" and have a far greater impact than the daily population suggests.

While this pie chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional organization, 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 past the criminal justice organization. In a typical year, almost 600,000 people enter prison house gates,⁵ just people go to jail over 10 meg times each year.^{6 7} Jail churn is particularly high because almost people in jails have non been convicted.⁸ Some have simply been arrested and will brand bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to brand bond and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small number (about 103,000 on any given 24-hour interval) have been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a year. At to the lowest degree 1 in four people who go to jail will exist arrested again inside the aforementioned year — often those dealing with poverty, mental disease, and substance apply disorders, whose issues only worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow 2. Swipe for more than detail on pretrial detention.

With a sense of the big picture, the side by side question is: why are so many people locked upwardly? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of private companies driving incarceration? Or is information technology really almost public prophylactic and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Most take a kernel of truth, but these myths distract u.s. from focusing on the well-nigh of import drivers of incarceration.

8 myths nearly mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug utilize, the apply of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison house labor are amid the near contentious issues in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. But they do not answer the question of why well-nigh people are incarcerated or how we can dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of solitude. As well, emotional responses to sexual and vehement offenses often derail important conversations nigh the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong penalty. Fake notions of what a "fierce criminal offense" conviction means about an individual'southward dangerousness continue to exist used in an endeavour to justify long sentences — fifty-fifty though that's not what victims want. At the same fourth dimension, misguided beliefs about the "services" provided past jails are used to rationalize the construction of massive new "mental wellness jails." Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such every bit moving people from jails and prisons to community supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration often lead to incarceration anyhow. Focusing on the policy changes that can finish mass incarceration, and not merely put a paring in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

The first myth: Private prisons are the decadent centre of mass incarceration

In fact, less than viii% of all incarcerated people are held in private prisons; the vast bulk are in publicly-endemic prisons and jails.¹¹ Some states have more than people in individual 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-owned arrangement — not the root of it.

Notwithstanding, a range of private industries and even some public agencies go along to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and county jails hire space to other agencies, including state prison systems,¹² the U.South. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison house food and wellness services (often then bad they issue 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 intendance, and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social price.

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

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

Simply put, individual companies using prison labor are not what stands in the style of catastrophe mass incarceration, nor are they the source of most prison jobs. Only about 5,000 people in prison — less than 1% — are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP plan, which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger portion piece of work for state-owned "correctional industries," which pay much less, just this still only represents almost 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)^xiii

Only 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 study found that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $three.45 per day for the most common prison jobs. In at least 5 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 work, incarcerated people face disciplinary activity. For those who do work, the paltry wages they receive oft go 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 cease mass incarceration

It's true that police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing more drug possession. Drug offenses nonetheless business relationship for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining characteristic of the federal prison system. Constabulary still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each yr,^fourteen many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any futurity offenses.

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

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

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

The distinction between "vehement" and "nonviolent" crime means less than you might think; in fact, these terms are so widely misused that they are by and large unhelpful in a policy context. In the public soapbox about criminal offence, people typically use "tearing" and "nonviolent" as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, simply worse, these terms are likewise used every bit coded (often racialized) linguistic communication to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-dangerous.

In reality, state and federal laws apply the term "violent" to a surprisingly wide range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve any physical harm. In some states, pocketbook-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered violent crimes. Burglary is generally considered a belongings crime, but an array of land and federal laws classify burglary as a violent crime in certain situations, such every bit when it occurs at dark, in a residence, or with a weapon present. So fifty-fifty if the edifice was unoccupied, someone bedevilled of break-in could be punished for a violent crime and end upwardly with a long prison sentence and "vehement" tape.

The common misunderstanding of what "violent crime" actually refers to — a legal distinction that often has little to practise with actual or intended damage — is one of the principal barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the thought of tearing crime ofttimes pb policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people bedevilled of legally "tearing" crimes. But over 40% of people in prison and jail are there for offenses classified as "tearing," so these carveouts end up gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies. Equally we and many others have explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything near international norms will exist impossible without changing how we respond to fierce crime. To start, nosotros have to be clearer virtually what that loaded term really ways.

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

Of course, many people convicted of fierce offenses take caused serious damage to others. Merely how does the criminal legal organisation determine the chance that they pose to their communities? Again, the answer is as well oftentimes "we estimate them by their offense type," rather than "we 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 even a lifetime of penalization.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that past policies take led to unnecessary incarceration, it's fourth dimension to consider policy changes that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" — people convicted of not-violent, not-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if we are serious near ending mass incarceration, we will take to change our responses to more serious and trigger-happy crime.

Backsliding data exercise not support the conventionalities that people who commit fierce crimes ought to exist locked away for decades for the sake of public safety. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are really amongst the to the lowest degree likely to be rearrested, and those bedevilled of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates xx% lower than all other offense categories combined. Ane reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people bedevilled of vehement offenses: historic period is i of the chief predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in boyhood or early adulthood and then declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long after their adventure has declined.^xv

Sadly, near land officials ignored this evidence even equally the pandemic fabricated obvious the demand 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 private circumstances, nearly officials categorically refused to consider people convicted of violent or sexual offenses, dramatically reducing the number of people eligible for earlier release.¹⁶

The 6th myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors often invoke the proper name of victims to justify long sentences for violent offenses. Merely contrary to the popular narrative, well-nigh victims of violence desire violence prevention, not incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter violent crime, and many victims believe that incarceration can make people more probable to engage in criminal offence. National survey data show that near 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 than impairment.¹⁷ This suggests that they care more about 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 bedevilled of crimes are oft victims themselves, complicating the moral argument for harsh punishments as "justice." While conversations most justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of law-breaking as two entirely separate groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, besides — a fact behind the adage that "hurt people hurt people."¹⁸ As victims of crime know, breaking this bicycle of impairment will require greater investments in communities, not the carceral system.

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

It's absolutely true that people ensnared in the criminal legal system have a lot of unmet needs. But we shouldn't misconstrue the "services" offered in jails and prisons every bit reasons to lock people up. Local jails, especially, are filled with people who demand medical intendance and social services, but jails have repeatedly failed to provide these services. Many people end up cycling in and out of jail without ever receiving the assist they need. People with mental health problems are often put in alone solitude, take express access to counseling, and are left unmonitored due to constant staffing shortages. The effect: suicide is the leading cause of expiry in local jails. Given this track record, building new "mental wellness jails" to respond to decades of disinvestment in customs-based services is particularly alarming.

Similarly, while 2-thirds of people in jail accept substance utilise disorders, jails consistently neglect to provide adequate treatment. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted handling (MAT) for opioid utilize disorder—the gilt standard for care. That ways that rather than providing drug treatment, jails more oft 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 past almost 400%; typically, these individuals died within just 1 twenty-four hour period of admission. Jails are not safe 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

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is ofttimes seen as a "lenient" punishment or equally an ideal "alternative" to incarceration. Only while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked upwards, the weather condition imposed on those under supervision are often so restrictive that they set people upwardly to neglect. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and abiding surveillance (peculiarly with electronic monitoring) effect in frequent "failures," frequently for minor infractions like breaking curfew or failing to pay unaffordable supervision fees.

In 2019, at least 153,000 people were incarcerated for non-criminal violations of probation or parole, oftentimes called "technical violations."^{19 20} Probation, in particular, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until information technology is reformed to support and advantage success rather than discover mistakes, it is not a reliable "alternative."

Slideshow 4. Swipe for more details almost what the data on backsliding really shows.

The high costs of low-level offenses

Nigh justice-involved people in the U.S. are non accused of serious crimes; more oft, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses, similar technical violations of probation and parole, can pb to incarceration and other serious consequences. Rather than investing in community-driven safety initiatives, cities and counties are still pouring vast amounts of public resource into the processing and punishment of these minor offenses.

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

Often disregarded in discussions almost mass incarceration are the diverse "holds" that continue people backside bars for authoritative reasons. A common example is when people on probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new criminal offense or a non-criminal (or "technical") violation. If a parole or probation officer suspects that someone has violated supervision weather, 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 greatly destabilizing. The most recent information show that nationally, virtually i in 5 (eighteen%) people in jail are there for a violation of probation or parole, though in some places these violations or detainers account for over 1-third of the jail population. This trouble is not limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of Land Governments institute that nearly one in four people in state prisons are incarcerated as a outcome of supervision violations. During the beginning twelvemonth of the pandemic, that number dropped only slightly, to 1 in 5 people in state prisons.

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

The "massive misdemeanor system" in the U.S. is another of import but overlooked contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors every bit benign as jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated 13 1000000 misdemeanor charges sweep droves of Americans into the criminal justice system each yr (and that's excluding civil violations and speeding). These low-level offenses typically account for about 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may audio trivial, just they carry serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants merely also for broader society, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And so there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are often non appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and have a probation judgement to avoid jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are then encumbered with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal record, as well 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" live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates and unpaid fines

Defendants can cease upwards in jail even if their offense is not punishable with jail fourth dimension. Why? Because if a accused fails to announced in court or to pay fines and fees, the judge tin issue a "bench warrant" for their arrest, directing police enforcement to jail them in order to bring them to court. While there is currently no national gauge of the number of active bench warrants, their utilise is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe County, N.Y., for instance, over 3,000 people have an agile bench warrant at any time, more than iii times the number of people in the county jails.

But bench warrants are ofttimes unnecessary. Nigh people who miss court are not trying to avoid the law; more often, they forget, are confused past the court process, or have a schedule disharmonize. Once a bench warrant is issued, however, defendants frequently end upwardly living as "depression-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, condign transient, and/or avoiding public life (even hospitals) to avoid having to go to jail.

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

Looking more closely at incarceration by criminal offence type also exposes some disturbing facts nigh the 49,000 youth in confinement in the United States: too many are in that location for a "most serious offense" that is not even a criminal offense. For example, at that place are over 5,000 youth backside bars for not-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An boosted i,400 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not law violations for adults such every bit running away, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ About one in fourteen youth held for a criminal or delinquent offense is locked in an adult jail or prison house, and near of the others are held in juvenile facilities that look and operate a lot similar prisons and jails.

Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for immigration-related reasons, we find that almost vi,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of immigration offenses, and 16,000 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 crime than crossing the border without permission.²²

Slideshow v. Swipe for more detail virtually youth confinement, immigrant confinement, and psychiatric confinement.

Some other 22,000 people are civilly detained by U.South. Clearing and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not for whatever offense, but simply because they are facing deportation.²³ Water ice detainees are physically confined in federally-run or privately-run immigration detention facilities, or in local jails under contract with ICE. This number is about half what it was pre-pandemic, but it's actually climbing dorsum upwards from a record low of 13,500 people in ICE detention in early 2021. As in the criminal legal arrangement, these pandemic-era trends should not exist interpreted as evidence of reforms.²⁴ In fact, ICE is chop-chop expanding its overall surveillance and control over the non-criminal migrant population by growing its electronic monitoring-based "alternatives to detention" plan.²⁵

An boosted ix,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 doubled since January of 2020. While these children are non held for whatever criminal or runaway offense, nigh are held in shelters or fifty-fifty juvenile placement facilities under detention-like conditions.²⁶

Adding to the universe of people who are bars because of justice system involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to land psychiatric hospitals and civil commitment centers. Many of these people are not even convicted, and some are held indefinitely. ix,000 are being evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand trial; half dozen,000 have been plant not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty only mentally sick; another half-dozen,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained later their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much similar prisons. Meanwhile, at least 38 states allow civil commitment for involuntary handling for substance utilise, and in many cases, people are sent to actual prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for handling.²⁷

Once we have wrapped our minds around the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, we should zoom out and note that people who are incarcerated are just a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. There are another 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.9 one thousand thousand people on probation. Many millions more than have completed their sentences but are still living with a criminal record, a stigmatizing characterization that comes with collateral consequences such equally barriers to employment and housing.

Far more than people are impacted by mass incarceration than the i.nine million currently bars. An estimated xix million people are encumbered 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; even this is probable an underestimate, leaving out many people who have been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally, FWD.us reports that 113 million adults (45%) have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least i night.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted past the criminal justice system, we should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind by policy change. Poverty, for instance, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are unduly poor compared to the overall U.South. population.²⁸ The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bail: The median felony bail bail amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of eight months' income for the typical detained defendant. Equally a effect, people with low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is as well ofttimes the result, every bit a criminal record and time 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'due south prisons and jails. These racial disparities are specially stark for Black Americans, who make up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of U.South residents. The same is truthful for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men's, and who are frequently behind bars considering of fiscal obstacles such as an inability to pay bail. As policymakers proceed to button for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that volition widen disparities, equally has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in land prisons.

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

Equipped with the full picture of how many people are locked up in the Us, where, and why, we all accept a better foundation for moving the chat about criminal justice reform forward. For case, the data makes it articulate that ending 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 up conversations about where information technology makes sense to focus our energies at the local, land, and national levels. For example:

• How can we effectively invest in communities to brand it less probable that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place? And what measures tin help assist successful reentry and end the barbarous cycle of re-incarceration that and so many individuals and families experience?
• Can we 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 broad categories of people from reforms and end up gutting the bear upon of reforms?
• What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to do what it takes to shrink the 2nd largest piece of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what volition it take to redirect public spending to smarter investments similar customs-based drug handling and job training?
• While the federal prison system is a small-scale piece of the full pie, how can improved federal policies and financial incentives be used to accelerate state 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 — slow the menstruum of people into the criminal justice arrangement?
• Given that the companies with the greatest affect on incarcerated people are not private prison operators, but service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments cease contracts that squeeze coin from those behind bars and their families?
• What reforms can nosotros implement to both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.Due south. and the well-known racial and indigenous disparities in the criminal justice system?
• What lessons tin nosotros acquire from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local governments prepared to answer to future pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how tin states and the federal government better utilize compassionate release and clemency powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the hereafter?

The United States has the dubious stardom of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Looking at the big picture of the 1.ix million people locked up in the U.s.a. on any given day, we tin can meet that something needs to change. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to advisedly consider each individual slice of the carceral pie and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group behind bars, and whether whatsoever benefit really outweighs the social and financial costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bond, can meaningfully reduce our lodge'due south use of incarceration. At the aforementioned time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising but will have only minimal effect, considering they merely transfer people from one piece of the correctional "pie" to some other or needlessly exclude wide swaths of people. Keeping the big motion-picture show in mind is disquisitional if we hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice issues might reasonably expect that a big motion picture analysis like this would be produced non by reform advocates, only by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that in that location isn't one centralized criminal justice system to do such an analysis. Instead, even thinking merely about adult corrections, we have a federal system, 50 country systems, three,000+ canton systems, 25,000+ municipal systems, and and then on. Each of these systems collects data for its ain purposes that may or may not exist uniform with information from other systems and that might indistinguishable or omit people counted by other systems.

This isn't to discount the work of the Agency 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 constabulary arrest and offense report data. But the fact is that the local, land, and federal agencies that bear out the work of the criminal justice system — and are the sources of BJS and FBI data — weren't set up to respond many of the simple-sounding questions virtually the "arrangement."

Similarly, there are systems involved in the solitude of justice-involved people that might not consider themselves part of the criminal justice system, simply should exist included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile justice, civil detention and commitment, clearing detention, and commitment to psychiatric hospitals for criminal justice involvement are examples of this broader universe of solitude that is often ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates data from these systems to provide the nigh comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

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

Finally, readers who rely on this report yr subsequently twelvemonth may be pleased to learn that since the final version was published in 2020, the delays in government data reports that made tracking trends then difficult under the previous administration have shortened, with publications almost returning to their previous cycles. Still, having entered the third year of the pandemic, it's frustrating that we still simply accept national data from twelvemonth 1 for most systems of confinement.

The ongoing problem of data delays is not limited to the regular data publications that this report relies on, but also special information collections that provide richly detailed, self-reported information about incarcerated people and their experiences in prison and jail, namely the Survey of Prison house Inmates (conducted in 2016 for the first 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 brand a 2025 report on the data about 18 years off-schedule).

Data sources

This briefing uses the most contempo data available on the number of people in various types of facilities and the most pregnant charge or conviction. Because the diverse systems of confinement collect and study data on unlike schedules, this report reflects population information collected betwixt 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 year, we sometimes had to calculate estimates; for instance, we applied the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous year to the current twelvemonth's full count data. For this reason, we chose to circular most labels in the graphics to the nearest thou, 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 besides effect in some parts not adding up precisely to the full.

Our data sources were:

• Country prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison house in Winter 2021-22 Table 2 provides the total yearend 2021 population. This report does non include criminal offence data, yet, then we applied the ratio of offense types calculated from the nigh recent Agency of Justice Statistics study on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Table fourteen (as of December 31, 2019) to the 2021 total country prison population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 1 and Tabular array five, reporting boilerplate daily population and convicted condition for midyear 2020, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002^xxx for offense types. Run across below and Who is in jail? Deep swoop for why we used our ain analysis rather than the otherwise excellent 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 February 17, 2022 (total population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Table 18, reporting data equally of September 30, 2020 (nosotros applied the percentage distribution of offense types from that table to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.Southward. Marshals Service published its most recent population count in its 2022 Fact Sheet, reporting the average daily population in fiscal year 2021. Information technology also provided a more detailed breakup of its "Prisoner Operations" population as of September 2019 by facility type (state and local, private contracted, federal, and not-paid facilities) in response to our public records request. The number held in federal detention centers (viii,376) came from the Fact Canvass; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 8, and the number in individual, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2019 breakdown. To approximate the number held in country prisons for the Marshals Service (2,323), we calculated the difference betwixt the total 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 offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "non reported" categories") to the full average daily population in 2021. It is worth noting that the U.S. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and individual contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this report, as they are not included in virtually of the Agency of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.
• Youth: Function of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for October 23, 2019. Our data on youth incarcerated in developed prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Tabular array 13, reporting information for Dec 31, 2020, and youth in adult jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array 2, reporting information for the terminal weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian Country facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-xix on the Tribal Jail Population Table 8, as well reporting data for the concluding weekday in June, 2020. For more information on the geography of the juvenile system, meet the No Kids in Prison house entrada.
• Immigration detention: The boilerplate daily population of 22,041³¹ in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice) detention comes from ICE's FY 2022 ICE Statistics spreadsheet as of February 17, 2022. The count of 9,781 youth in Part of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Programme Fact Sheet, reporting the population as of February 16, 2022. Our estimates of how many Ice detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come from our analysis of a comprehensive ICE detention facility list from November 2017, obtained past the National Immigrant Justice Middle. 7% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in private contract facilities, and 27% in urban center and county-operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary commitment:
  • State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals past courts subsequently 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 treatment as "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI study, Forensic Patients in Country Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting information from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this information set up, 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 nonetheless been convicted or sentenced. This is non a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, merely we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Ceremonious detention and commitment: (At to the lowest degree 20 states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of sexual crimes after 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 get-go serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their confinement in the ceremonious facility.) The civil commitment counts come from an annual survey conducted by the Sex Offender Civil Delivery Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for most 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'due south detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.South. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.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 Country jails (correctional facilities operated by tribal regime or the U.Due south. Department of the Interior'due south Agency of Indian Diplomacy): Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Touch of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table ane, reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2020.
• Military: Prisoners in 2020 Tables 21 (for total population) and 22 (for offense types) reporting data equally of Dec 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 Usa, 2020 Tabular array 1, reporting data for Dec 31, 2020, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only once in their most restrictive category. (Our data 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 state or federal prisons is as of December 31, 2019 from Correctional Populations in the United States, 2019, Table 5. Our data on the number of people on probation who are also on parole is as of December 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United states of america, 2020, Table 9.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional command, there are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation every bit of December 31, 2020.
• Private facilities: Except for local jails (which nosotros volition explain in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" section below), our identification of the number of people held in private facilities was straightforward:
  • For land 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 6,085 people in "privately managed facilities, the 6,561 in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses), and the v,462 in abode confinement 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 Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020, merely uses more than recent data.
  • For the U.S. Marshals Service, we used the FOIA response reporting the average daily population as of September 2019, including both "private, in-direct" and "private, direct contract" facilities.
  • For youth, we used the 2019 Demography of Juveniles in Residential Placement, which provides a breakdown of the number of youth held in publicly and privately operated facilities.
  • For clearing detention, we relied on the work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Heart, applying the per centum held in individual facilities as of November 2017 to the February 2022 Water ice population.

Adjustments to avert double counting

To avert counting anyone twice, we performed the post-obit adjustments:

• To avoid anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, we removed the 27% (5,951) of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained population that is held nether contract in local jails from the total jail population. Nosotros removed 34.1% of these Ice detainees from the jail convicted population and the residuum from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, every bit detailed in our report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why Land Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avert anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison house authorities from existence 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 we calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those existence held past 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 8. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail convicted population, and the residue from the unconvicted jail population. (Again, nosotros 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, we had to recalculate the offense distribution reported in Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "convicted" or "not convicted" without the people who reported that they were beingness held on behalf of country regime, the Federal Agency of Prisons, the U.Southward. Marshals Service, or U.South. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).³² Our definition of "bedevilled" was those who reported that they were "To serve a sentence in this jail," "To expect sentencing for an criminal offense," or "To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else." Our definition of non bedevilled was "To stand trial for an offense," "To await arraignment," or "To wait a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or customs release."
• For our assay of people held in private jails for local regime, we applied the percent of the total custody population held in private facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Table 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 ethnic disparities in correctional facilities (equally shown in Slideshow 6) uses the only information source that has data for all types of developed correctional facilities: the U.S. Census. Considering the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Census take non been published nonetheless, we used the 2019 American Community Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the four named racial and indigenous groups that account for at least 2%, nationally, of the population in correctional facilities. Not included on the graphic are Asian people, who brand up 1% of the correctional population, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, who make up 0.3%, people identifying every bit "Some other race," who account for 6.3%, and those of "Two or more than races," who brand up 4% of the total national correctional population.

Annotation that considering Latinos may be of any race and because of how the Census Agency published race and ethnicity data in the relevant table, we used the Demography data for "White lonely, Not Hispanic or Latino" for white people, but the Census Bureau'due south data for "Black or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify as both that race and Latino. Because this particular table is not appropriate for state-level analyses, simply the Prison Policy Initiative volition explore using the 2020 Demographic and Housing Characteristics file when it is published by the Census Bureau in belatedly 2022 to provide detailed racial and ethnic data for the combined incarcerated population in each state. In by decades, this information was particularly useful in states where the organisation — particularly jails — did not publish race and ethnicity information or did not publish data with more precision than just "white, Black and other."

Read the unabridged methodology

To aid readers link to specific images in this report, nosotros 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 behind confined is in a jail. Most have nonetheless to be tried in court.

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

Despite reforms, drug offenses are nonetheless a defining characteristic of the federal organization

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

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

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

Prison population drops have leveled off since 2020

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

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/slideshow2/4

Only 8% of confined people are held in individual prisons

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

1 in v incarcerated people is locked up 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/slideshow3/2

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

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

Most states track and publish just 1 mensurate of mail-release recidivism

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

Very few states rails and publish whatsoever recidivism information for people on probation

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

What practice victims of violent crimes really want?

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

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

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

Contrary to myth, people incarcerated for violent offenses and released are to the lowest degree probable to exist arrested again

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

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

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

About 54,000 people are confined for immigration reasons

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

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/3

Well-nigh people in Indian Country jails are locked upwardly for property, drug, and public order charges

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/4

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

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

Incarceration is simply i piece of the much larger system of correctional command

https://www.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'due south incarceration patterns are very different than men'due south

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

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

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

About people in prison house are poor, and the poorest are women and people of colour

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

ane out of 5 incarcerated people in the world is incarcerated in the U.S.

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/6

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

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

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

Jails vs. prisons: What'southward the divergence?

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

Eight myths about mass incarceration

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

The first myth: Individual prisons are the decadent heart of mass incarceration

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

Offense categories might not hateful what you retrieve

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

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

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

The 3rd myth: Releasing "nonviolent drug offenders" would end mass incarceration

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

The 4th myth: By definition, "violent crime" involves concrete damage

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

The fifth myth: People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are besides unsafe 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 sixth myth: Law-breaking victims support long prison sentences

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

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

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

The 8th 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://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#lowlevel

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

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

Misdemeanors: Pocket-sized offenses with major consequences

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

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

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

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

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#customs

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#paragraph1
https://world wide web.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, but 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 particularly indebted to Lena Graber of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center for their feedback and assistance putting the changes to clearing detention into context, Jacob Kang-Chocolate-brown of the Vera Institute of Justice for sharing country prison data, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment information, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for research support, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for help with one of the visuals, and Hashemite kingdom of jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow engineering science. Even so, any errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a data visualization similar this, are the sole responsibleness of the authors.

Nosotros give thanks the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Condom and Justice Challenge for their support of our research into the use and misuse of jails in this country. Nosotros also thank Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that make full primal information and messaging gaps. Finally, we'd similar to thank each of our individual donors — your commitment to ending mass incarceration makes our piece of work possible.

About the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Research Manager at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Carve up: Tracking women's land prison growth, and the 2016 written report Punishing Poverty: The loftier cost of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Abort, Release, Repeat: How police force and jails are misused to answer to social issues with Alexi Jones. In add-on to these reports, Wendy frequently contributes briefings on contempo data releases, bookish research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.

Peter Wagner is an attorney and the Executive Manager of the Prison house Policy Initiative. He co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national discussion nigh mass incarceration.

Nearly the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-turn a profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader damage of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more than just society. Alongside reports like this that help the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation'south fight to continue the prison system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.g.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading function in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison and jail telephone industry and the video visitation industry. The organization likewise 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 behind bars.

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

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