If You Get Arrested Again Your Inmate Id Number

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections

The big picture

The bear on of COVID

viii Myths

High costs of depression-level offenses

Youth, clearing & involuntary commitment

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

Necessary reforms

Sources

Tin can it really exist true that most people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of private prisons? How has the COVID-xix pandemic changed decisions well-nigh how people are punished when they break the law? These essential questions are harder to answer than you might wait. The diverse regime agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very little is designed to help policymakers or the public sympathise what's going on. Equally public back up for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher — it'due south more important than always that we become the facts straight and empathize the big film.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn't accept one "criminal justice organisation;" instead, nosotros have thousands of federal, country, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold well-nigh 2 million people in one,566 land prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, one,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in armed services prisons, civil commitment centers, land psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. ^one

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

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

This big-motion-picture show view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus;⁴ it allows us to identify of import, merely ofttimes ignored, systems of confinement. The detailed views bring these overlooked systems to lite, from immigration detention to civil delivery and youth confinement. In particular, local jails often receive brusque shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, but they play a critical role every bit "incarceration's forepart door" and have a far greater touch than the daily population suggests.

While this pie chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional system, the graphic does not capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities, nor the far larger universe of people whose lives are affected past the criminal justice system. In a typical year, well-nigh 600,000 people enter prison gates,⁵ but people go to jail over 10 million times each yr.^{vi 7} Jail churn is peculiarly high because nigh people in jails have non been bedevilled.⁸ Some have simply been arrested and will make bail inside hours or days, while many others are besides poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small-scale number (about 103,000 on any given day) have been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences nether a yr. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested again within the same year — frequently those dealing with poverty, mental affliction, and substance use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.

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

With a sense of the big picture, the adjacent question is: why are so many people locked up? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of private companies driving incarceration? Or is it really about public safe and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Most accept a kernel of truth, just these myths distract united states of america from focusing on the well-nigh important drivers of incarceration.

Eight myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the apply of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison labor are amid the most contentious problems in criminal justice today considering they inspire moral outrage. But they do not answer the question of why most people are incarcerated or how nosotros can dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of confinement. Besides, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses often derail important conversations about the social, economical, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. Faux notions of what a "violent offense" conviction means about an private'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 past jails are used to rationalize the construction of massive new "mental health jails." Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to customs supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration ofttimes atomic number 82 to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that tin finish mass incarceration, and not but put a dent in it, requires the public to put these bug into perspective.

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

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

Nevertheless, a range of private industries and even some public agencies proceed to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and canton jails hire space to other agencies, including state prison house systems,¹² the U.S. Marshals Service, and Clearing and Customs Enforcement (Water ice). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison nutrient and wellness services (oftentimes then bad they result in major lawsuits), and prison and jail telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. By privatizing services like telephone 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 price.

Individual prisons and jails agree less than 8% of all incarcerated people, making them a relatively small part of a by and large publicly-run correctional organisation.

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

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

Just 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 found that on average, incarcerated people earn betwixt 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the virtually mutual prison jobs. In at to the lowest degree v states, those jobs pay cypher at all. Moreover, work in prison house is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers accept few rights and protections. If they reject to work, incarcerated people face disciplinary action. For those who do work, the paltry wages they receive often get right back to the prison house, which charges them for bones necessities similar 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 virtually Americans.

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

It's truthful that law, prosecutors, and judges proceed to punish people harshly for nothing more than than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining characteristic of the federal prison house system. Police notwithstanding make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year,¹⁴ many of which lead to prison house sentences. Drug arrests go on to requite residents of over-policed communities criminal records, pain their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.

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

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

The fourth myth: By definition, "tearing crime" involves physical impairment

The distinction between "violent" and "nonviolent" crime means less than you might think; in fact, these terms are so widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context. In the public discourse about crime, people typically employ "fierce" and "irenic" as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That solitary is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used as coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus not-dangerous.

In reality, land and federal laws apply the term "tearing" to a surprisingly wide range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve whatsoever physical harm. In some states, handbag-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered vehement crimes. Burglary is generally considered a property offense, just an array of state and federal laws classify burglary as a violent law-breaking in certain situations, such as when it occurs at night, in a residence, or with a weapon nowadays. And then even if the edifice was unoccupied, someone convicted of break-in could be punished for a violent crime and stop upward with a long prison sentence and "violent" record.

The common misunderstanding of what "violent crime" really refers to — a legal distinction that oft has little to practise with bodily or intended damage — is one of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the idea of violent crime often atomic number 82 policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally "violent" crimes. But over 40% of people in prison house and jail are there for offenses classified as "vehement," then these carveouts end up gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies. Every bit we and many others take explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything nearly international norms volition exist impossible without changing how we respond to violent crime. To start, we have to be clearer about what that loaded term really means.

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

Of grade, many people convicted of violent offenses have acquired serious damage to others. Simply how does the criminal legal system make up one's mind the risk that they pose to their communities? Once more, the answer is as well often "nosotros guess them by their law-breaking type," rather than "we evaluate their individual circumstances." This reflects the particularly harmful myth that people who commit fierce or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or fifty-fifty a lifetime of penalty.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that past policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that get beyond the depression-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" — people convicted of non-violent, non-serious, not-sexual offenses. Once more, if nosotros are serious virtually catastrophe mass incarceration, we will have to change our responses to more serious and tearing crime.

Recidivism data do not support the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to exist locked abroad for decades for the sake of public rubber. People convicted of vehement and sexual offenses are really amid the least likely to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual attack take rearrest rates 20% lower than all other criminal offense categories combined. One reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people convicted of trigger-happy offenses: age is one of the main predictors of violence. The take a chance for violence peaks in adolescence or early machismo and so declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long after their risk has declined.^fifteen

Sadly, most state officials ignored this testify 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 private circumstances, most officials categorically refused to consider people convicted of violent or sexual offenses, dramatically reducing the number of people eligible for earlier release.¹⁶

The sixth myth: Offense victims support long prison house sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors frequently invoke the name of victims to justify long sentences for violent offenses. But contrary to the popular narrative, almost victims of violence want violence prevention, not incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter violent criminal offence, and many victims believe that incarceration can make people more probable to appoint in criminal offence. National survey data show that most victims back up violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that accost the root causes of crime, not more than investment in carceral systems that cause more harm.¹⁷ This suggests that they care more well-nigh the health and safety of their communities than they practise about retribution.

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

Moreover, people convicted of crimes are often victims themselves, complicating the moral argument for harsh punishments equally "justice." While conversations well-nigh justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of crime every bit ii entirely separate groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, as well — a fact behind the adage that "injure people hurt people."^eighteen Every bit victims of crime know, breaking this cycle of harm volition crave greater investments in communities, not the carceral organization.

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

It's admittedly true that people ensnared in the criminal legal organisation have a lot of unmet needs. Simply nosotros shouldn't misconstrue the "services" offered in jails and prisons as reasons to lock people upwards. Local jails, specially, 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 e'er receiving the aid they need. People with mental health problems are oft put in lone solitude, have 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 particularly alarming.

Similarly, while two-thirds of people in jail have substance apply disorders, jails consistently fail to provide adequate treatment. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted handling (MAT) for opioid use disorder—the aureate standard for care. That ways that rather than providing drug treatment, jails more often interrupt drug treatment by cutting patients off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased by almost 400%; typically, these individuals died within just i solar day of access. Jails are not safe detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic environment people require for long-term recovery and healing.

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

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is often seen equally a "lenient" punishment or as an ideal "alternative" to incarceration. Simply while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked up, the atmospheric condition imposed on those under supervision are often and then restrictive that they set people upwardly to neglect. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant surveillance (specially with electronic monitoring) upshot in frequent "failures," often for minor infractions like 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 called "technical violations."^{19 20} Probation, in item, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to back up and reward success rather than detect mistakes, it is not a reliable "alternative."

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

The high costs of low-level offenses

Most justice-involved people in the U.S. are not accused of serious crimes; more than often, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Even so fifty-fifty depression-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, can lead to incarceration and other serious consequences. Rather than investing in customs-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 about mass incarceration are the diverse "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 officeholder suspects that someone has violated supervision weather condition, they can file a "detainer" (or "hold"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bail. 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 data show that nationally, almost one in 5 (18%) people in jail are in that location for a violation of probation or parole, though in some places these violations or detainers account for over one-third of the jail population. This trouble is not express to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments found that virtually one in 4 people in country prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations. During the first year of the pandemic, that number dropped simply slightly, to one in 5 people in state prisons.

Misdemeanors: Small-scale offenses with major consequences

The "massive misdemeanor system" in the U.S. is another of import simply overlooked correspondent to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as benign every bit jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated 13 million 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 business relationship for well-nigh 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more than in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may sound footling, but they bear serious financial, personal, and social costs, peculiarly for defendants only also for broader club, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And then there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are frequently not appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and take a probation judgement to avoid jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come up with a criminal record, as well as the heightened hazard of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

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

Defendants can end up in jail even if their offense is non punishable with jail fourth dimension. Why? Because if a defendant fails to appear in court or to pay fines and fees, the judge can issue a "demote warrant" for their arrest, directing police enforcement to jail them in order to bring them to court. While at that place is currently no national estimate of the number of active bench warrants, their utilise is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe Canton, Northward.Y., for case, over iii,000 people have an active bench warrant at any time, more than three times the number of people in the county jails.

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

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

Looking more closely at incarceration past offense type likewise exposes some disturbing facts about the 49,000 youth in solitude in the United States: as well many are there for a "virtually serious offense" that is not even a offense. For case, there are over 5,000 youth backside bars for non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An additional i,400 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not police violations for adults such as running abroad, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ About one in 14 youth held for a criminal or runaway offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and virtually 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 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 past 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 law-breaking than crossing the border without permission.²²

Slideshow v. Swipe for more detail most 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 criminal offence, only merely because they are facing deportation.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, just it's really climbing support 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, Water ice is rapidly expanding its overall surveillance and control over the non-criminal migrant population by growing its electronic monitoring-based "alternatives to detention" program.²⁵

An additional 9,800 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Part of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family members, or friends. Their number has more than than doubled since January of 2020. While these children are not held for any criminal or delinquent offense, most are held in shelters or even juvenile placement facilities nether detention-similar weather.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 ceremonious commitment centers. Many of these people are not fifty-fifty convicted, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are existence evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand up trial; 6,000 have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill; another half dozen,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained after their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much similar prisons. Meanwhile, at to the lowest degree 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 only a fraction of those impacted past the criminal justice organisation. There are some other 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.ix million people on probation. Many millions more than accept 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 meg 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 one thousand thousand have a criminal tape of some kind; fifty-fifty this is likely an underestimate, leaving out many people who have been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally, FWD.u.s. reports that 113 million adults (45%) take had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice system, we should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind by policy change. Poverty, for case, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.S. population.²⁸ The criminal justice system punishes poverty, first with the loftier toll of money bail: The median felony bail bail amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained defendant. Equally a result, people with depression incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is also frequently the event, equally a criminal tape and fourth dimension spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.²⁹

It's no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation's prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who brand upwards 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'south, and who are oft backside confined because of financial obstacles such as an disability to pay bond. As policymakers go along to button for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avert changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile solitude and with women in country prisons.

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

Equipped with the total motion picture of how many people are locked upward in the United states of america, where, and why, we all have a amend foundation for moving the conversation virtually criminal justice reform forward. For instance, the data makes it clear that ending the war on drugs volition non alone end mass incarceration, though the federal government and some states accept taken an important footstep by reducing the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Looking at the "whole pie" of mass incarceration opens up conversations nearly where it makes sense to focus our energies at the local, state, and national levels. For example:

• How tin we effectively invest in communities to make it less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place? And what measures can assist aid successful reentry and end the vicious cycle of re-incarceration that so many individuals and families experience?
• Tin can we persuade government officials and prosecutors to revisit the reflexive, simplistic policymaking that has served to increase incarceration for "violent" offenses? How can we eliminate policy "carveouts" that exclude broad categories of people from reforms and end up gutting the bear on of reforms?
• What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to exercise what it takes to shrink the second largest slice of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what volition it have to redirect public spending to smarter investments like customs-based drug treatment and job training?
• While the federal prison organisation is a small slice of the full pie, how can improved federal policies and financial incentives be used to advance 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 — boring the flow of people into the criminal justice system?
• Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are non private prison operators, merely service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments end contracts that squeeze money from those behind 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 system?
• What lessons can we learn from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local governments prepared to respond to hereafter pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and the federal government improve utilise compassionate release and clemency powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the time to come?

The United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration charge per unit in the world. Looking at the big picture of the i.ix million people locked up in the The states on any given day, we can see that something needs to change. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each private piece of the carceral pie and ask whether legitimate social goals are served past putting each grouping behind confined, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bail, tin can meaningfully reduce our gild'southward use of incarceration. At the aforementioned time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising but will have merely minimal effect, because they only transfer people from one piece of the correctional "pie" to another or needlessly exclude wide swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we promise to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice bug might reasonably expect that a big picture assay like this would be produced not by reform advocates, just by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't ane centralized criminal justice organization to do such an analysis. Instead, even thinking merely about developed corrections, we accept a federal system, fifty country 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 be compatible with data from other systems and that might indistinguishable or omit people counted by other systems.

This isn't to discount the piece of work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which, despite express resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the information on correctional facilities. And information technology'southward not to say that the FBI doesn't work hard to aggregate and standardize police abort and crime written report data. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal agencies that carry out the work of the criminal justice organisation — and are the sources of BJS and FBI information — weren't ready to respond many of the simple-sounding questions about the "system."

Similarly, at that place are systems involved in the confinement of justice-involved people that might not consider themselves office of the criminal justice organisation, just should be included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile justice, civil detention and delivery, clearing detention, and delivery 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 most comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

To produce this study, we took the most recent data bachelor for each part of these systems, and, where necessary, adjusted the data to ensure that each person was but counted in one case, only once, and in the correct identify.

Finally, readers who rely on this study twelvemonth later year may be pleased to larn that since the last version was published in 2020, the delays in regime data reports that fabricated tracking trends so difficult under the previous administration have shortened, with publications near returning to their previous cycles. Even so, having entered the third year of the pandemic, it's frustrating that we still only take national data from year one for nigh systems of confinement.

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

Data sources

This briefing uses the nearly recent data available on the number of people in various types of facilities and the most significant charge or conviction. Because the diverse systems of confinement collect and report information on different schedules, this study reflects population data collected between 2019 and 2022 (and some of the information for people in psychiatric facilities dates back to 2014). Furthermore, because not all types of information are updated each year, we sometimes had to summate estimates; for example, we applied the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous yr to the electric current year's total count data. For this reason, nosotros chose to round well-nigh labels in the graphics to the nearest yard, except where rounding to the nearest x, nearest one hundred, or (in two cases in the jails particular slide) the nearest 500 was more informative in that context. This rounding process may too result in some parts not adding up precisely to the full.

Our data 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, nevertheless, so we practical the ratio of criminal offense types calculated from the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Table 14 (as of December 31, 2019) to the 2021 full state prison population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array i and Table 5, reporting boilerplate daily population and bedevilled status for midyear 2020, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002³⁰ for offense types. See below and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why we used our own assay rather than the otherwise excellent Agency 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 every bit of Feb 17, 2022 (full population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Table 18, reporting data as of September xxx, 2020 (we applied the percentage distribution of offense types from that table to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.Southward. Marshals Service published its virtually recent population count in its 2022 Fact Sheet, reporting the average daily population in fiscal year 2021. It as well provided a more detailed breakdown of its "Prisoner Operations" population equally 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 (eight,376) came from the Fact Sheet; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array 8, and the number in private, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2019 breakdown. To judge the number held in country prisons for the Marshals Service (ii,323), nosotros calculated the departure betwixt the full average daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and private facilities. We created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported crime types (excluding the vague "other new criminal offense" and "not reported" categories") to the total average daily population in 2021. Information technology is worth noting that the U.S. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and private contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this report, as they are not included in almost of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.
• Youth: Role of Juvenile Justice and Malversation Prevention, Easy Access to the Demography of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for Oct 23, 2019. Our information on youth incarcerated in adult prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Table thirteen, reporting information for December 31, 2020, and youth in developed jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 2, reporting data for the last weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian Land facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics written report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 8, as well reporting data for the concluding weekday in June, 2020. For more than information on the geography of the juvenile system, encounter the No Kids in Prison house entrada.
• Immigration detention: The average daily population of 22,041³¹ in Immigration and Community Enforcement (ICE) detention comes from ICE's FY 2022 Ice Statistics spreadsheet as of February 17, 2022. The count of nine,781 youth in Function of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program Fact Canvass, reporting the population every bit of February 16, 2022. Our estimates of how many Ice detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come up from our assay of a comprehensive ICE detention facility listing from Nov 2017, obtained past the National Immigrant Justice Eye. seven% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in individual contract facilities, and 27% in urban center and county-operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary delivery:
  • State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals past courts later on existence found "not guilty by 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 up trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI written report, Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting data from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data set, and for pretrial, we chose to combine pretrial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, because in most cases, these signal people who take non yet been convicted or sentenced. This is not a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, but we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Ceremonious detention and commitment: (At least 20 states and the federal authorities operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people bedevilled of sexual crimes after their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement at that place are technically ceremonious, merely in reality are quite like prisons. People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they outset serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their confinement in the ceremonious facility.) The civil delivery counts come up from an annual survey conducted past the Sex activity Offender Ceremonious Delivery Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for near states are from the 2021 survey, but for states that did not participate in 2021, we included the near recent figures bachelor: Nebraska's counts and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP's detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2020 Table 23, reporting data for December 31, 2020.
• Indian Country jails (correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Bear on of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 1, reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2020.
• Military machine: Prisoners in 2020 Tables 21 (for total population) and 22 (for offense types) reporting data equally of December 31, 2020.
• Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Agency of Justice Statistics study Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020 Tabular array 1, reporting data for December 31, 2020, and were adapted 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 besides 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 besides on parole is as of Dec 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Table 9.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring whatsoever double-counting with other forms of correctional control, at that place are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation as of December 31, 2020.
• Private facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explain in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" department below), our identification of the number of people held in private facilities was straightforward:
  • For state prisons, the number of people in private prisons came from Tabular array 12 in Prisoners in 2020.
  • For the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we included the half dozen,085 people in "privately managed facilities, the 6,561 in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses), and the 5,462 in home confinement every bit of February 17, 2022, according to the Bureau of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consequent with the one used past the Agency of Justice Statistics in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020, simply uses more 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, straight contract" facilities.
  • For youth, we used the 2019 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, which provides a breakup of the number of youth held in publicly and privately operated facilities.
  • For immigration detention, nosotros relied on the work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Center, applying the percentage held in individual facilities as of November 2017 to the February 2022 Ice population.

Adjustments to avoid double counting

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

• To avert anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, we removed the 27% (5,951) of the Immigration and Community Enforcement (ICE) detained population that is held nether contract in local jails from the full jail population. Nosotros removed 34.ane% of these Water ice detainees from the jail convicted population and the residuum from the unconvicted population. (Nosotros based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, as detailed in our study, Era of Mass Expansion: Why Country Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison authorities from 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 country prison systems from the total jail population and from the numbers we calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those being held past the U.S. Marshals Service from being counted twice, we removed from the jail total 31,500 Marshals detainees reported as held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2020 Table viii. Nosotros removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail convicted population, and the balance from the unconvicted jail population. (Again, we based these percentages on our analysis of the Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Because we removed ICE detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and land 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 authorities, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, or U.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 law-breaking," or "To await transfer to serve a judgement somewhere else." Our definition of non convicted was "To stand trial for an offense," "To await arraignment," or "To look a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or customs release."
• For our assay of people held in private jails for local authorities, nosotros practical the percentage of the total custody population held in individual facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Table 20 of Census of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local regime (547,328) in 2020, subsequently making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and indigenous disparities in correctional facilities (as shown in Slideshow 6) uses the only data source that has data for all types of adult correctional facilities: the U.S. Demography. Considering the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Demography take not 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 to the lowest degree 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.three%, people identifying as "Some other race," who business relationship for six.3%, and those of "Two or more races," who make up 4% of the full national correctional population.

Note that because Latinos may be of any race and because of how the Census Bureau published race and ethnicity data in the relevant table, we used the Census information for "White alone, Not Hispanic or Latino" for white people, simply the Census Bureau'southward information for "Blackness or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify every bit both that race and Latino. Because this particular table is not appropriate for country-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 tardily 2022 to provide detailed racial and indigenous information for the combined incarcerated population in each land. In past decades, this data was particularly useful in states where the organization — particularly jails — did non publish race and ethnicity data or did not publish data with more precision than simply "white, Blackness and other."

Read the entire methodology

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

How many people are locked up in the Usa?

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

1 in iii people behind bars is in a jail. Most have all the same to be tried in courtroom.

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

Despite reforms, drug offenses are yet a defining characteristic of the federal arrangement

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/3

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/4

Prison population drops have leveled off since 2020

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

Jail populations are creeping back to normal

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

Pretrial Detention

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/1

Pretrial policies drive jail growth

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

Local Jails: The existent scandal is the churn

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

Why are so many people detained in jails earlier trial?

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

Just viii% of confined people are held in private prisons

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

1 in v incarcerated people is locked up for a drug criminal offence

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

Police make over a million drug possession arrests each year

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

Some states have largely ended the State of war on Drugs. Other states, not and then much.

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

About states rails and publish just one mensurate of mail-release recidivism

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

Very few states rail and publish whatsoever backsliding data for people on probation

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

What practice victims of trigger-happy crimes really want?

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/i

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

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

Almost bars 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/ane

Almost 54,000 people are confined for immigration reasons

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/2

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

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

Nearly people in Indian Country jails are locked upwards for belongings, drug, and public order charges

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

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

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

Incarceration is just one slice of the much larger system of correctional command

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

Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 out of 5 incarcerated people in the world is incarcerated in the U.Due south.

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

To assist 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's the difference?

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

Eight myths nigh mass incarceration

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

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

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

Law-breaking categories might not mean what you think

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recidivism: A slippery statistic

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

The sixth myth: Offense victims support long prison sentences

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

The 7th 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 way 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" lead to unnecessary incarceration

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

Misdemeanors: Small 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://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#smallerslices

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

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

Each paragraph is as well numbered, then y'all can utilize 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…

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 twelvemonth'due south 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 assist putting the changes to clearing detention into context, Jacob Kang-Brown of the Vera Constitute of Justice for sharing state prison house data, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment data, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for research support, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for help with one of the visuals, and Hashemite kingdom of jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow engineering science. However, any errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a data visualization like this, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

We thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge for their support of our research into the use and misuse of jails in this country. Nosotros also give thanks Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that fill up key data and messaging gaps. Finally, we'd similar to thank each of our individual donors — your commitment to ending mass incarceration makes our 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 Divide: Tracking women's state prison house growth, and the 2016 report Punishing Poverty: The high cost 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 frequently contributes briefings on contempo information releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.

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

Virtually the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader impairment of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more but guild. Alongside reports similar this that help the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organisation leads the nation'southward fight to go on the prison house organization from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading role in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison house and jail phone industry and the video visitation industry. The organization besides sounded the alert 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 confined.

parduepachise.blogspot.com

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

Bagikan Artikel ini