Criminal Records Those Who Commited Crimes Again and Again Led to Death

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections

The big picture

The impact of COVID

8 Myths

High costs of low-level offenses

Youth, immigration & involuntary delivery

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

Necessary reforms

Sources

Tin can it really be true that nigh people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a issue of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of individual 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 answer than you might expect. The diverse authorities agencies involved in the criminal legal organization collect a lot of data, simply very footling is designed to help policymakers or the public understand what's going on. As public back up for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes college — information technology's more important than ever that nosotros get the facts straight and understand the large picture.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn't have 1 "criminal justice organization;" instead, nosotros take thousands of federal, country, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold well-nigh two meg people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, i,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, also as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, land psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. ¹

This report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the data virtually this state'south disparate systems of confinement. Information technology provides a detailed await at where and why people are locked upwards in the U.S., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration and disregarded bug that call for reform.

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

This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus;^iv it allows us to identify important, but oft ignored, systems of solitude. The detailed views bring these overlooked systems to light, from clearing detention to civil delivery and youth confinement. In particular, local jails often receive short shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, just they play a critical role as "incarceration'southward front end door" and have a far greater bear upon 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 year, almost 600,000 people enter prison gates,^v but people become to jail over 10 million times each yr.^{half-dozen 7} Jail churn is peculiarly loftier because nigh people in jails have not been convicted.^viii Some take but been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a minor number (about 103,000 on any given twenty-four hours) accept been bedevilled, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a year. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested over again within the aforementioned year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance use disorders, whose problems just worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow 2. Swipe for more particular on pretrial detention.

With a sense of the big picture, 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 individual companies driving incarceration? Or is it actually almost public safety and keeping unsafe people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Almost have a kernel of truth, but these myths distract us from focusing on the near important drivers of incarceration.

Eight myths well-nigh mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison labor are amongst the about contentious issues in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. But they do non reply the question of why near people are incarcerated or how we can dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of confinement. Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and vehement offenses oftentimes derail important conversations about the social, economical, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. False notions of what a "trigger-happy criminal offense" confidence means about an individual's dangerousness continue to be used in an attempt to justify long sentences — even though that's not what victims want. At the aforementioned time, misguided beliefs about the "services" provided by jails are used to rationalize the structure of massive new "mental health jails." Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to community supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration frequently pb to incarceration anyhow. Focusing on the policy changes that can end mass incarceration, and not simply put a paring in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

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

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

Nevertheless, a range of individual industries and even some public agencies go along to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and canton jails rent space to other agencies, including state prison systems,¹² the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Community Enforcement (ICE). Private companies are ofttimes granted contracts to operate prison nutrient and health services (ofttimes so bad they consequence in major lawsuits), and prison house and jail telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. Past privatizing services like phone calls, medical care, and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social toll.

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

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

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

But prisons exercise 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 institute that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per twenty-four hour period for the most common prison jobs. In at least v states, those jobs pay zero at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. If they reject to work, incarcerated people face disciplinary action. For those who practise work, the paltry wages they receive often become right back to the prison, which charges them for bones necessities like medical visits and hygiene items. Forcing people to work for depression or no pay and no benefits, while charging them for necessities, allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people — hiding the truthful price of running prisons from most Americans.

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

Information technology'southward true that police force, prosecutors, and judges keep to punish people harshly for zippo more than drug possession. Drug offenses even so account for the incarceration of near 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining characteristic of the federal prison organisation. Police still make over ane 1000000 drug possession arrests each year,^fourteen many of which pb to prison sentences. Drug arrests go along to requite residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any hereafter offenses.

Withal, 4 out of five people in prison house or jail are locked upward for something other than a drug offense — either a more than serious 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 serious than drug possession. We must too end incarcerating people for behaviors that are fifty-fifty more than beneficial.

Slideshow 3. Swipe for more than detail on the State of war on Drugs

The fourth myth: By definition, "vehement criminal offense" involves concrete impairment

The distinction between "violent" and "nonviolent" crime means less than you might recollect; in fact, these terms are and then widely misused that they are mostly unhelpful in a policy context. In the public discourse about criminal offense, people typically utilise "tearing" and "nonviolent" every bit substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used equally coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-dangerous.

In reality, state and federal laws apply the term "violent" to a surprisingly broad 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 violent crimes. Burglary is mostly considered a property law-breaking, but an array of state and federal laws classify burglary equally a trigger-happy crime in certain situations, such as when information technology occurs at nighttime, in a residence, or with a weapon present. So fifty-fifty if the edifice was unoccupied, someone convicted of break-in could be punished for a violent crime and end upward with a long prison house judgement and "violent" record.

The common misunderstanding of what "tearing crime" really refers to — a legal distinction that frequently has little to practise with bodily or intended damage — is 1 of the principal barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the thought of violent crime often lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally "trigger-happy" crimes. Just over forty% of people in prison and jail are in that location for offenses classified as "violent," and so these carveouts end upwardly gutting the touch of otherwise well-crafted policies. Every bit we and many others have explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything near international norms will be impossible without irresolute how we respond to vehement offense. To start, we have to be clearer nearly what that loaded term really means.

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

Of course, many people convicted 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 reply is as well often "we judge them by their offense blazon," rather than "nosotros evaluate their individual circumstances." This reflects the specially harmful myth that people who commit violent or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or fifty-fifty a lifetime of penalty.

Every bit lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that by policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of "non-not-nons" — people convicted of non-trigger-happy, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if nosotros are serious about ending mass incarceration, nosotros will have to change our responses to more than serious and fierce criminal offence.

Backsliding data do not support the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to be locked abroad for decades for the sake of public safety. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually among the least likely to be rearrested, and those bedevilled of rape or sexual attack take rearrest rates 20% lower than all other offense categories combined. Ane reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people convicted of trigger-happy offenses: age is one of the main predictors of violence. The gamble for violence peaks in adolescence or early machismo and then declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long subsequently their risk has declined.¹⁵

Sadly, nigh state officials ignored this evidence even as the pandemic made obvious the need to reduce the number of people trapped in prisons and jails, where COVID-19 ran rampant. Instead of considering the release of people based on their age or individual circumstances, most officials categorically refused to consider people bedevilled of violent or sexual offenses, dramatically reducing the number of people eligible for earlier release.¹⁶

The sixth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors frequently invoke the proper noun of victims to justify long sentences for trigger-happy offenses. But opposite to the pop narrative, almost victims of violence want violence prevention, not incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter violent crime, and many victims believe that incarceration tin brand people more likely to appoint in offense. National survey data show that almost victims support violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that address the root causes of crime, non more than investment in carceral systems that crusade more harm.¹⁷ This suggests that they care more about the health and safety of their communities than they do nearly retribution.

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

Moreover, people bedevilled of crimes are often victims themselves, complicating the moral argument for harsh punishments as "justice." While conversations about justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of crime as two entirely separate groups, people who appoint in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, too — a fact backside the adage that "hurt people hurt people."^eighteen Every bit victims of crime know, breaking this wheel of harm volition crave greater investments in communities, not the carceral organisation.

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

It's absolutely truthful that people ensnared in the criminal legal system accept a lot of unmet needs. But we shouldn't misconstrue the "services" offered in jails and prisons as reasons to lock people upwardly. Local jails, particularly, are filled with people who need medical care 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 aid they demand. People with mental health problems are often put in lone solitude, accept limited access to counseling, and are left unmonitored due to constant staffing shortages. The result: suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Given this track record, building new "mental health jails" to respond to decades of disinvestment in customs-based services is peculiarly alarming.

Similarly, while two-thirds of people in jail have substance use disorders, jails consistently neglect to provide adequate handling. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid utilize disorder—the gold standard for care. That ways that rather than providing drug treatment, jails more than often interrupt drug treatment by cutting patients off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased by almost 400%; typically, these individuals died within just one day of admission. Jails are not prophylactic detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic surround people require 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 as an platonic "culling" to incarceration. But while remaining in the customs is certainly preferable to being locked up, the conditions imposed on those nether supervision are often so restrictive that they set people upwardly to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant surveillance (especially with electronic monitoring) result in frequent "failures," ofttimes for minor infractions similar breaking curfew or declining 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, often chosen "technical violations."^{19 twenty} Probation, in item, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to support and reward success rather than find mistakes, information technology is not a reliable "culling."

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

The loftier costs of low-level offenses

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

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

Often overlooked in discussions virtually mass incarceration are the various "holds" that keep people behind bars for administrative 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 officer suspects that someone has violated supervision atmospheric condition, they can file a "detainer" (or "hold"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives later on conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a pocket-size infraction tin be profoundly destabilizing. The nigh recent information bear witness 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 1-tertiary of the jail population. This trouble is not limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments institute that nearly 1 in iv people in state prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations. During the first year of the pandemic, that number dropped only slightly, to 1 in 5 people in state prisons.

Misdemeanors: Small-scale offenses with major consequences

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

Misdemeanor charges may sound trivial, but they conduct serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants simply also for broader order, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And then at that place 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 means that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal tape, as well every bit the heightened risk of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor arrangement that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

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

Defendants can end up in jail even if their law-breaking is not punishable with jail fourth dimension. Why? Considering if a defendant fails to appear in court or to pay fines and fees, the estimate tin can effect a "demote warrant" for their arrest, directing law enforcement to jail them in social club to bring them to court. While there is currently no national estimate of the number of active bench warrants, their use is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe County, Due north.Y., for case, over 3,000 people take an agile bench warrant at any fourth dimension, more than three times the number of people in the county jails.

But demote warrants are often unnecessary. About people who miss courtroom are not trying to avoid the constabulary; more oft, they forget, are dislocated past the court process, or have a schedule conflict. One time a bench warrant is issued, withal, defendants oft end up living as "low-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, becoming transient, and/or avoiding public life (even hospitals) to avoid having to go to jail.

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

Looking more than closely at incarceration by criminal offense type also exposes some disturbing facts about the 49,000 youth in confinement in the United States: too many are in that location for a "almost serious criminal offence" that is not fifty-fifty a law-breaking. For example, there are over 5,000 youth backside bars for non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new crime. An additional 1,400 youth are locked upwards for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are non law violations for adults such as running abroad, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ Nearly 1 in 14 youth held for a criminal or delinquent crime is locked in an adult jail or prison, and almost 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 upwardly criminally and civilly for clearing-related reasons, we observe that about 6,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of clearing offenses, and xvi,000 more are held pretrial by the U.South. Marshals. The vast bulk 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 border without permission.²²

Slideshow 5. Swipe for more detail nigh youth confinement, immigrant confinement, and psychiatric confinement.

Another 22,000 people are civilly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not for any law-breaking, but simply considering they are facing displacement.²³ 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 almost half what information technology was pre-pandemic, only it's really climbing support from a record low of 13,500 people in Water ice detention in early 2021. As in the criminal legal system, these pandemic-era trends should not be interpreted as evidence of reforms.²⁴ In fact, ICE is rapidly expanding its overall surveillance and command over the non-criminal migrant population past growing its electronic monitoring-based "alternatives to detention" program.²⁵

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

Adding to the universe of people who are confined because of justice system involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to country psychiatric hospitals and civil commitment centers. Many of these people are not even bedevilled, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are beingness evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand trial; six,000 take been found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally sick; another 6,000 are people bedevilled of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained after their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much similar prisons. Meanwhile, at least 38 states allow civil commitment for involuntary handling for substance use, and in many cases, people are sent to actual prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for treatment.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 merely a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. In that location are some other 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.9 meg people on probation. Many millions more have completed their sentences but are still living with a criminal record, a stigmatizing label that comes with collateral consequences such every bit barriers to employment and housing.

Far more people are impacted by mass incarceration than the 1.9 million currently confined. An estimated nineteen million people are burdened with the collateral consequences of a felony conviction (this includes those currently and formerly incarcerated), and an estimated 79 million have a criminal tape of some kind; even this is likely 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 i night.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice arrangement, nosotros should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind past policy modify. Poverty, for instance, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.S. population.²⁸ The criminal justice organisation punishes poverty, get-go with the high toll of money bail: The median felony bond bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained accused. As a result, people with depression incomes are more probable to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is as well frequently the event, as a criminal record and time spent in prison house destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.²⁹

It's no surprise that people of colour — who face up much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation's prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of U.S residents. The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men's, and who are often behind confined because of fiscal obstacles such equally an inability to pay bail. As policymakers keep to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avert changes that will widen disparities, every bit has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in state prisons.

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

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

• How can we effectively invest in communities to go far less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place? And what measures can assist assist 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 "vehement" 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 have to embolden policymakers and the public to practise what it takes to shrink the 2d largest piece of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what will it take to redirect public spending to smarter investments like community-based drug handling and job training?
• While the federal prison system is a small slice of the total pie, how can improved federal policies and financial incentives be used to accelerate state and county level reforms? And for their part, how tin elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges — who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — slow the period of people into the criminal justice system?
• Given that the companies with the greatest touch on on incarcerated people are not private prison operators, only service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments finish contracts that clasp money from those backside bars 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 arrangement?
• What lessons tin we learn from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local governments prepared to respond to future pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how tin states and the federal regime better utilise compassionate release and charity powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the future?

The U.s. has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the earth. Looking at the big motion picture of the 1.9 million people locked upward in the The states on any given day, nosotros can run across that something needs to alter. 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 behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Fifty-fifty narrow policy changes, like reforms to bail, can meaningfully reduce our society's use of incarceration. At the same time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising but volition accept only minimal effect, because they just transfer people from ane slice of the correctional "pie" to another or needlessly exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice issues might reasonably expect that a big moving picture analysis like this would be produced not by reform advocates, but past the criminal justice organisation itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't ane centralized criminal justice organization to do such an assay. Instead, even thinking only most adult corrections, nosotros have a federal organisation, 50 state systems, 3,000+ county systems, 25,000+ municipal systems, and and then on. Each of these systems collects data for its own purposes that may or may not exist compatible with data from other systems and that might indistinguishable or omit people counted by other systems.

This isn't to discount the work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which, despite limited resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the data on correctional facilities. And information technology's not to say that the FBI doesn't work hard to aggregate and standardize police arrest and criminal offense report data. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal agencies that carry out the work of the criminal justice system — and are the sources of BJS and FBI data — weren't set up to answer many of the simple-sounding questions nearly the "organisation."

Similarly, in that location are systems involved in the confinement of justice-involved people that might not consider themselves part of the criminal justice system, just 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 involvement are examples of this broader universe of confinement that is often ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates data from these systems to provide the most comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

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

Finally, readers who rely on this report twelvemonth after yr may be pleased to learn that since the last version was published in 2020, the delays in authorities data reports that fabricated tracking trends and so hard under the previous administration have shortened, with publications almost returning to their previous cycles. Still, having entered the third twelvemonth of the pandemic, it's frustrating that we still merely have national data from twelvemonth i for nearly systems of confinement.

The ongoing trouble of data delays is not limited to the regular information publications that this report relies on, only too special information collections that provide richly detailed, self-reported data nearly incarcerated people and their experiences in prison house 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 (concluding conducted in 2002 and as of March 2020, adjacent slated for 2022 — which would brand a 2025 report on the data nearly eighteen years off-schedule).

Information sources

This briefing uses the most recent data bachelor on the number of people in various types of facilities and the most significant charge or conviction. Because the various systems of confinement collect and report data on different schedules, this report reflects population data collected betwixt 2019 and 2022 (and some of the data for people in psychiatric facilities dates back to 2014). Furthermore, because non all types of information are updated each yr, we sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, we practical the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous yr to the current year'southward total count data. For this reason, we chose to round most labels in the graphics to the nearest thousand, except where rounding to the nearest ten, nearest ane hundred, or (in two cases in the jails detail slide) the nearest 500 was more than informative in that context. This rounding process may also event in some parts not adding upward precisely to the total.

Our information sources were:

• State prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison house in Winter 2021-22 Table 2 provides the total yearend 2021 population. This report does not include offense data, notwithstanding, and then we applied the ratio of law-breaking types calculated from the most contempo Bureau of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Table 14 (as of December 31, 2019) to the 2021 full country prison house population.
• Jails: Agency of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Table one and Table five, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2020, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002^thirty for crime types. See beneath and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why nosotros used our own analysis rather than the otherwise excellent Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of the same dataset, Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.
• Federal:
  • Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics, reporting data as of February 17, 2022 (full population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Table 18, reporting data as of September 30, 2020 (we practical the pct distribution of criminal offence types from that table to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.South. Marshals Service published its most contempo population count in its 2022 Fact Sheet, reporting the boilerplate daily population in fiscal twelvemonth 2021. It 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 non-paid facilities) in response to our public records asking. The number held in federal detention centers (8,376) came from the Fact Sheet; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table eight, and the number in individual, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2019 breakup. To estimate the number held in state prisons for the Marshals Service (two,323), nosotros calculated the difference between the total average daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and private facilities. Nosotros created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "not reported" categories") to the total average daily population in 2021. Information technology is worth noting that the U.South. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and private contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this study, equally they are not included in most of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons information sets.
• Youth: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Admission to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility information for October 23, 2019. Our information on youth incarcerated in developed prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Table 13, reporting information for December 31, 2020, and youth in developed jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 2, reporting information for the final weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian State facilities comes from the Agency of Justice Statistics report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table eight, also reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2020. For more than information on the geography of the juvenile arrangement, see the No Kids in Prison house entrada.
• Immigration 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 9,781 youth in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Conflicting Children (UAC) Program Fact Canvas, reporting the population as of February sixteen, 2022. Our estimates of how many Water ice detainees are held in federal, individual, and local facilities come up from our assay of a comprehensive Ice detention facility list from November 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center. 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 by courts after being found "not guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty simply mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for treatment every bit "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the Baronial 2017 NRI report, Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting data from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data set, and for pretrial, we chose to combine pretrial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, considering in most cases, these betoken people who have not nevertheless been convicted or sentenced. This is not a consummate view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, but we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Civil detention and commitment: (At least 20 states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of sexual crimes later their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement there are technically civil, but in reality are quite like prisons. People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they kickoff serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their solitude in the civil facility.) The ceremonious commitment counts come from an annual survey conducted by the Sexual practice Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network shared past SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for nearly states are from the 2021 survey, but for states that did not participate in 2021, we included the most recent figures available: Nebraska'south counts and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP's detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.Southward. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.Southward. Virgin Islands, and U.S. 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.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table ane, reporting data for the concluding weekday in June, 2020.
• Armed services: Prisoners in 2020 Tables 21 (for total population) and 22 (for offense types) reporting data every bit 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 United States, 2020 Tabular array 1, reporting information for December 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 also in jails is as of mid-year 2020 from Jail Inmates in 2020, Table 7. Our data on the number of people on probation or parole who were too in state or federal prisons is equally of December 31, 2019 from Correctional Populations in the U.s., 2019, Table 5. Our data on the number of people on probation who are also on parole is as of Dec 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Table ix.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control, in that location are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation equally of Dec 31, 2020.
• Private facilities: Except for local jails (which we volition explain in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" department beneath), our identification of the number of people held in individual facilities was straightforward:
  • For country prisons, the number of people in individual prisons came from Tabular array 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 5,462 in home confinement as of February 17, 2022, according to the Bureau of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consistent with the ane used by the Agency of Justice Statistics in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020, but 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-directly" and "individual, directly 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 clearing detention, we relied on the work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Middle, applying the percent held in individual facilities as of Nov 2017 to the February 2022 Ice population.

Adjustments to avert double counting

To avoid counting anyone twice, nosotros performed the post-obit adjustments:

• To avert anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, we removed the 27% (5,951) of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. Nosotros removed 34.ane% of these ICE detainees from the jail bedevilled population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (Nosotros based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our assay of the Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002, every bit detailed in our written report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avert anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison authorities from being counted twice, nosotros removed the 73,321 people — cited in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020 — bars in local jails on behalf of federal or state prison house systems from the total jail population and from the numbers nosotros calculated for those in local jails that are bedevilled. To avoid those being held by the U.Southward. 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. Nosotros removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail bedevilled population, and the balance from the unconvicted jail population. (Over again, nosotros based these percentages on our assay of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Because we removed Ice detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and state government 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 being held on behalf of state government, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, or U.Due south. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).³² Our definition of "convicted" was those who reported that they were "To serve a sentence in this jail," "To await sentencing for an offense," or "To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else." Our definition of not convicted was "To stand up trial for an offense," "To await arraignment," or "To await a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."
• For our analysis of people held in private jails for local authorities, we applied the percentage of the total custody population held in private facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Table twenty of Census of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local authorities (547,328) in 2020, afterward making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities (every bit shown in Slideshow half dozen) uses the only data source that has data for all types of adult correctional facilities: the U.S. Census. Because the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Census have not been published all the same, we used the 2019 American Community Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the four named racial and indigenous groups that account for at least two%, 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.iii%, people identifying every bit "Some other race," who business relationship for vi.3%, and those of "Ii or more than races," who brand up 4% of the total national correctional population.

Annotation that because Latinos may be of any race and because of how the Demography Bureau published race and ethnicity information in the relevant table, nosotros used the Census data for "White alone, Non Hispanic or Latino" for white people, but the Census Bureau's data for "Black or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify as both that race and Latino. Considering this particular table is non advisable for land-level analyses, but the Prison Policy Initiative will 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 land. In past decades, this data was especially useful in states where the system — especially jails — did non publish race and ethnicity data or did not publish data with more than precision than simply "white, Black and other."

Read the entire methodology

To help 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

i in iii people behind bars is in a jail. Most have yet 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://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/three

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

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

Prison population drops have leveled off since 2020

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

Jail populations are creeping dorsum to normal

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

Pretrial Detention

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

Pretrial policies bulldoze jail growth

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

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

Only 8% of confined people are held in private prisons

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

one in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug law-breaking

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/1

Law make over a million drug possession arrests each year

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/2

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

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

Nearly states rail and publish only one measure out of post-release recidivism

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

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

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

What do victims of fierce crimes actually desire?

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

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

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

Contrary to myth, people incarcerated for violent offenses and released are least likely to be arrested again

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

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/1

Almost 54,000 people are confined for immigration reasons

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

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

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

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/4

Mass incarceration direct impacts millions of people: Simply only how many, and in what ways?

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

Incarceration is just 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'southward incarceration patterns are very different than men's

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

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

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

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

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

one out of five incarcerated people in the earth is incarcerated in the U.S.

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

To assistance readers link to specific report sections or paragraphs, nosotros 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 divergence?

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

Eight myths near mass incarceration

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

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

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

Offense categories might not mean what y'all think

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

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

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

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

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

The fourth myth: Past definition, "violent law-breaking" involves physical impairment

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

The fifth myth: People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are besides 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 sixth myth: Crime victims support long prison house sentences

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

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

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

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

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

The loftier costs of low-level offenses

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

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

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

Misdemeanors: Small-scale offenses with major consequences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Each paragraph is also numbered, so y'all tin use urls in this format:

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

Learn how to link to specific images and sections

Acknowledgments

All Prison house 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 year'south study, the authors are particularly indebted to Lena Graber of the Immigrant Legal Resources Heart and Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center for their feedback and help putting the changes to clearing detention into context, Jacob Kang-Brown of the Vera Institute of Justice for sharing state prison information, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment data, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for enquiry support, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for aid with one of the visuals, and Jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow technology. Still, any errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a information visualization like this, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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

Well-nigh the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Split up: Tracking women'due south state prison growth, and the 2016 study Punishing Poverty: The high price of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems with Alexi Jones. In addition to these reports, Wendy ofttimes contributes briefings on recent data releases, bookish research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more than.

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

Well-nigh the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-turn a profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more than merely club. Alongside reports like this that aid the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation's fight to continue the prison house system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison house gerrymandering) and plays a leading function in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison house and jail telephone industry and the video visitation industry. The arrangement as well 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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