Facts to Disprove People Have Been Relesed and Killed Again

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections

The big flick

The impact of COVID

viii Myths

High costs of depression-level offenses

Youth, immigration & involuntary commitment

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

Necessary reforms

Sources

Tin can it actually exist true that most people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a outcome of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of individual prisons? How has the COVID-xix pandemic changed decisions almost how people are punished when they break the constabulary? These essential questions are harder to answer than yous might expect. The various authorities agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very piddling is designed to help policymakers or the public understand what's going on. Equally public support for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher — it's more important than ever that we go the facts straight and understand the big picture.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn't have i "criminal justice organization;" instead, we have thousands of federal, land, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold virtually 2 million people in 1,566 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 military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.South. territories. ¹

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

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

This big-flick view is a lens through which the chief drivers of mass incarceration come up into focus;⁴ information technology allows us to identify important, but frequently ignored, systems of solitude. The detailed views bring these overlooked systems to light, from immigration detention to ceremonious commitment and youth confinement. In particular, local jails oft receive brusk shrift in larger discussions well-nigh criminal justice, but they play a critical role as "incarceration'south front door" and have a far greater impact than the daily population suggests.

While this pie chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional 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 afflicted by the criminal justice system. In a typical yr, nigh 600,000 people enter prison gates,⁵ just people go to jail over ten million times each year.^{6 7} Jail churn is peculiarly high because most people in jails accept not been convicted.⁸ Some take but been arrested and will brand bond within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small number (well-nigh 103,000 on any given 24-hour interval) accept been bedevilled, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a twelvemonth. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail volition be arrested again within the same year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow two. Swipe for more particular on pretrial detention.

With a sense of the big picture, the adjacent question is: why are and so many people locked upwards? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of private companies driving incarceration? Or is information technology actually near public safety and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths most incarceration. Most have a kernel of truth, but these myths distract us from focusing on the nearly important drivers of incarceration.

Eight myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison house labor are among the virtually contentious issues in criminal justice today considering they inspire moral outrage. But they practice not respond the question of why most people are incarcerated or how nosotros tin can dramatically — and safely — reduce our employ of confinement. Besides, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses often derail important conversations about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. Imitation notions of what a "violent criminal offense" conviction means about an individual's dangerousness continue to exist used in an attempt to justify long sentences — even though that'south non what victims want. At the same time, misguided beliefs about the "services" provided by jails are used to rationalize the construction of massive new "mental health jails." Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to customs supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration often lead to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that tin terminate mass incarceration, and not just put a dent in it, requires the public to put these bug into perspective.

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

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

Nevertheless, a range of private industries and fifty-fifty some public agencies go along to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and county jails rent space to other agencies, including state prison systems,¹² the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison food and health services (oft so bad they outcome in major lawsuits), and prison and jail telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. By 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 cost.

Individual prisons and jails hold less than 8% of all incarcerated people, making them a relatively small part of a more often than not publicly-run correctional system.

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

Merely 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 about 5,000 people in prison house — less than 1% — are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP program, which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger portion piece of work for land-endemic "correctional industries," which pay much less, but this still but represents about 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)¹³

But prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry, and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2022 study found that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $three.45 per day for the most common prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay nix 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 do piece of work, the paltry wages they receive often go right back to the prison, which charges them for bones necessities similar medical visits and hygiene items. Forcing people to piece of 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 truthful toll of running prisons from virtually Americans.

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

It's truthful that constabulary, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police nevertheless make over 1 1000000 drug possession arrests each twelvemonth,^fourteen many of which lead to prison house sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, pain their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for whatever future offenses.

Nevertheless, 4 out of five people in prison or jail are locked upwardly for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious criminal offense or an fifty-fifty less serious one. To end mass incarceration, we volition have to change how our society and our criminal legal organisation responds to crimes more serious than drug possession. Nosotros must also stop incarcerating people for behaviors that are even more benign.

Slideshow three. Swipe for more particular on the War on Drugs

The quaternary myth: By definition, "violent criminal offence" involves concrete impairment

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

In reality, land and federal laws apply the term "violent" to a surprisingly wide range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve any concrete harm. In some states, purse-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered vehement crimes. Burglary is generally considered a property crime, simply an assortment of land and federal laws classify burglary as a tearing crime in certain situations, such equally when it occurs at nighttime, in a residence, or with a weapon nowadays. Then fifty-fifty if the building was unoccupied, someone convicted of burglary could be punished for a fierce criminal offense and end up with a long prison sentence and "violent" record.

The mutual misunderstanding of what "violent crime" really refers to — a legal distinction that frequently has petty to do with bodily or intended harm — is i of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the idea of violent crime often lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally "violent" crimes. Just over forty% of people in prison house and jail are there for offenses classified as "violent," so these carveouts cease up gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies. As we and many others take explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything near international norms will be impossible without changing how we respond to trigger-happy crime. To showtime, nosotros have to exist clearer nearly what that loaded term actually means.

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

Of class, many people convicted of trigger-happy offenses have caused serious impairment to others. But how does the criminal legal system determine the risk that they pose to their communities? Over again, the respond is also often "we guess them by their offense blazon," rather than "we evaluate their private circumstances." This reflects the particularly harmful myth that people who commit tearing or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or fifty-fifty a lifetime of punishment.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that by policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that get beyond the low-hanging fruit of "non-not-nons" — people convicted of non-tearing, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if we are serious well-nigh catastrophe mass incarceration, we will have to modify our responses to more serious and violent criminal offense.

Recidivism data practice not back up the belief that people who commit vehement crimes ought to be locked away for decades for the sake of public safe. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually among the least likely to be rearrested, and those bedevilled of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates 20% lower than all other offense categories combined. Ane reason for the lower rates of backsliding amid people convicted of fierce offenses: historic period is one of the main predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early on adulthood and and so declines with age, nonetheless nosotros incarcerate people long after their take a chance has declined.¹⁵

Sadly, virtually country officials ignored this evidence fifty-fifty 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 before release.^xvi

The sixth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

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

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

Moreover, people convicted of crimes are often victims themselves, complicating the moral argument for harsh punishments as "justice." While conversations about justice tend to care for perpetrators and victims of crime as 2 entirely separate groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, too — a fact backside the adage that "injure people hurt people."¹⁸ As victims of crime know, breaking this cycle of harm volition crave greater investments in communities, not the carceral system.

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

It's admittedly truthful that people ensnared in the criminal legal system take a lot of unmet needs. Merely we shouldn't misconstrue the "services" offered in jails and prisons every bit reasons to lock people up. Local jails, especially, are filled with people who need medical intendance and social services, but jails have repeatedly failed to provide these services. Many people terminate up cycling in and out of jail without ever receiving the aid they demand. People with mental health bug are often put in solitary confinement, take express admission 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 tape, building new "mental health jails" to respond to decades of disinvestment in community-based services is particularly alarming.

Similarly, while two-thirds of people in jail take substance use disorders, jails consistently fail to provide adequate handling. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder—the golden standard for care. That means that rather than providing drug treatment, jails more often interrupt drug handling by cut 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 inside just one day of admission. Jails are not safe detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic environment people crave for long-term recovery and healing.

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

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is frequently seen every bit a "lenient" punishment or as an ideal "culling" to incarceration. But while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to existence locked upwardly, the conditions imposed on those nether supervision are oft so restrictive that they set people up to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and abiding surveillance (specially with electronic monitoring) effect in frequent "failures," often for small-scale infractions like breaking curfew or declining to pay unaffordable supervision fees.

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

Slideshow 4. Swipe for more than details almost what the information on recidivism actually shows.

The high costs of depression-level offenses

Almost justice-involved people in the U.Due south. are not defendant of serious crimes; more ofttimes, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Nevertheless 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" pb to unnecessary incarceration

Often overlooked in discussions about mass incarceration are the various "holds" that keep people behind bars for administrative reasons. A common example is when people on probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new criminal offence 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 "concur"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bond. For people struggling to rebuild their lives later on conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a minor infraction can exist profoundly destabilizing. The most recent information evidence that nationally, almost 1 in 5 (18%) people in jail are there 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 problem is not express to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments found that virtually 1 in 4 people in land prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations. During the beginning year of the pandemic, that number dropped only slightly, to 1 in 5 people in state prisons.

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

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

Misdemeanor charges may sound picayune, simply they conduct serious financial, personal, and social costs, particularly for defendants simply too for broader society, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. Then there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are often not appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and accept a probation sentence to avoid jail fourth dimension. This ways that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal record, every bit well every bit the heightened risk of futurity 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 fearfulness of incarceration for missed courtroom dates and unpaid fines

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

But bench warrants are frequently unnecessary. Most people who miss courtroom are not trying to avoid the law; more than ofttimes, they forget, are confused by the courtroom process, or have a schedule conflict. In one case a bench warrant is issued, even so, defendants frequently end upwardly living equally "depression-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, clearing, and involuntary commitment

Looking more closely at incarceration by offense blazon also exposes some disturbing facts nearly the 49,000 youth in confinement in the United States: too many are at that place for a "most serious offense" that is not even a offense. For example, in that location are over 5,000 youth behind bars for non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An boosted 1,400 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are non law violations for adults such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ About 1 in xiv youth held for a criminal or delinquent offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and most of the others are held in juvenile facilities that look and operate a lot like prisons and jails.

Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for immigration-related reasons, nosotros detect that almost vi,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of immigration offenses, and 16,000 more are held pretrial by the U.S. Marshals. The vast majority of people incarcerated for criminal immigration offenses are defendant of illegal entry or illegal reentry — in other words, for no more serious law-breaking than crossing the border without permission.²²

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

Another 22,000 people are civilly detained past U.Southward. Clearing and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not for any law-breaking, but simply because they are facing deportation.²³ Water ice detainees are physically confined in federally-run or privately-run clearing detention facilities, or in local jails under contract with ICE. This number is about half what information technology was pre-pandemic, just it'south actually climbing back up from a record depression of xiii,500 people in ICE detention in early on 2021. As in the criminal legal organization, these pandemic-era trends should not be interpreted as prove 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 Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family unit members, or friends. Their number has more than doubled since Jan of 2020. While these children are non held for any criminal or delinquent crime, most are held in shelters or fifty-fifty juvenile placement facilities under detention-like conditions.²⁶

Adding to the universe of people who are confined because of justice organisation involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to land psychiatric hospitals and civil commitment centers. Many of these people are non even convicted, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are existence evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand trial; 6,000 take been found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty merely mentally ill; some other 6,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained later their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much similar prisons. Meanwhile, at least 38 states allow civil commitment for involuntary handling for substance use, and in many cases, people are sent to actual prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for handling.²⁷

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

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

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice organisation, 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.South. population.²⁸ The criminal justice organisation punishes poverty, kickoff with the high cost of money bail: The median felony bail bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained defendant. Equally a result, people with low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; information technology is as well frequently the outcome, as a criminal record and fourth dimension spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates chore opportunities.²⁹

Information technology's no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation'due south prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who brand upward 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing merely 12% of U.S residents. The aforementioned is true for women, whose incarceration rates take for decades risen faster than men's, and who are often behind bars considering of financial obstacles such equally an disability to pay bond. Equally policymakers continue to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in state prisons.

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

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

• How can we finer invest in communities to go far less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal organization in the first place? And what measures tin aid aid successful reentry and end the savage 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 nosotros eliminate policy "carveouts" that exclude wide categories of people from reforms and finish up gutting the impact of reforms?
• What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to practise what it takes to shrink the 2nd largest piece of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what volition it accept to redirect public spending to smarter investments like customs-based drug treatment and chore training?
• While the federal prison arrangement is a small piece of the total pie, how can improved federal policies and financial incentives exist used to advance state and canton level reforms? And for their part, how tin elected sheriffs, commune attorneys, and judges — who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — slow the period of people into the criminal justice arrangement?
• Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are non private prison operators, but service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments end contracts that squeeze money from those behind bars and their families?
• What reforms tin can we implement to both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.Southward. and the well-known racial and indigenous disparities in the criminal justice arrangement?
• What lessons tin we larn from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local governments prepared to respond to futurity pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and the federal government better utilize compassionate release and charity powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the futurity?

The Us has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Looking at the big moving picture of the 1.9 million people locked upwardly in the United States on any given day, we can see that something needs to change. Both policymakers and the public accept 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 confined, 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 simply will have only minimal result, considering they simply transfer people from one slice of the correctional "pie" to another or needlessly exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in heed is critical if we promise to develop strategies that really shrink the "whole pie."

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

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

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

To produce this report, we took the well-nigh recent data bachelor for each office of these systems, and, where necessary, adjusted the data to ensure that each person was only counted in one case, simply one time, and in the correct place.

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

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

Data sources

This briefing uses the most recent information available on the number of people in various types of facilities and the near significant charge or conviction. Because the various systems of confinement collect and report data on unlike schedules, this study reflects population data collected between 2022 and 2022 (and some of the data for people in psychiatric facilities dates back to 2014). Furthermore, because not all types of data are updated each twelvemonth, we sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, we applied the percentage distribution of crime types from the previous year to the current year's total count information. For this reason, we chose to round most labels in the graphics to the nearest chiliad, 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 result in some parts non adding up precisely to the total.

Our data sources were:

• Land prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison in Winter 2021-22 Table 2 provides the total yearend 2022 population. This report does not include offense data, however, and so we practical the ratio of offense types calculated from the nigh recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2022 Table 14 (as of December 31, 2019) to the 2022 total state prison house population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2022 Table 1 and Table 5, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2020, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002³⁰ for law-breaking types. Encounter below and Who is in jail? Deep swoop for why nosotros used our own analysis rather than the otherwise excellent Bureau of Justice Statistics assay of the aforementioned 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 (total population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2022 Table 18, reporting data every bit of September 30, 2022 (we applied the pct distribution of offense types from that tabular array to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.S. Marshals Service published its most recent population count in its 2022 Fact Canvas, reporting the average daily population in financial year 2021. It likewise provided a more than detailed breakdown of its "Prisoner Operations" population as of September 2022 by facility type (state and local, private contracted, federal, and non-paid facilities) in response to our public records request. The number held in federal detention centers (8,376) came from the Fact Sheet; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2022 Table 8, and the number in private, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2022 breakdown. To estimate the number held in state prisons for the Marshals Service (two,323), we calculated the difference between the total average daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and private facilities. We created our own estimated criminal offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "not reported" categories") to the total boilerplate daily population in 2021. It 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 nearly of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons information sets.
• Youth: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Piece of cake Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for Oct 23, 2019. Our information on youth incarcerated in adult prisons comes from Prisoners in 2022 Table xiii, reporting data for Dec 31, 2020, and youth in adult jails from Jail Inmates in 2022 Tabular array two, reporting information for the final weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian Country facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-xix on the Tribal Jail Population Table viii, also reporting information for the terminal weekday in June, 2020. For more information on the geography of the juvenile system, see the No Kids in Prison entrada.
• Immigration detention: The average daily population of 22,041³¹ in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice) detention comes from Ice'southward FY 2022 Water ice Statistics spreadsheet as of February 17, 2022. The count of nine,781 youth in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Programme Fact Sheet, reporting the population as of February 16, 2022. Our estimates of how many Ice detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come up from our assay of a comprehensive Water ice detention facility list from Nov 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center. 7% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in individual contract facilities, and 27% in city and county-operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary delivery:
  • Country psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by courts after being plant "non guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty but mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for treatment equally "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2022 NRI study, Forensic Patients in Land Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting information from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data set, and for pretrial, we chose to combine pretrial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, because in most cases, these indicate people who have not even so been bedevilled or sentenced. This is non 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 to the lowest degree 20 states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of sexual crimes after their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement there are technically civil, but in reality are quite similar prisons. People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they start serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their solitude in the civil facility.) The ceremonious delivery counts come from an almanac survey conducted by the Sex activity Offender Civil Delivery Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for about states are from the 2022 survey, but for states that did non participate in 2021, we included the most recent figures available: Nebraska's counts and the Federal Agency of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP'south detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.Due south. Virgin Islands, and U.Due south. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2022 Table 23, reporting information for December 31, 2020.
• Indian Country jails (correctional facilities operated past tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Touch of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table one, reporting data for the terminal weekday in June, 2020.
• Military: Prisoners in 2022 Tables 21 (for total population) and 22 (for offense types) reporting data as of December 31, 2020.
• Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Probation and Parole in the United States, 2022 Table i, reporting data for December 31, 2020, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only once in their nigh restrictive category. (Our data on the number of people on probation and on parole who were also in jails is as of mid-year 2022 from Jail Inmates in 2020, Table 7. Our data on the number of people on probation or parole who were also in state or federal prisons is every bit of Dec 31, 2022 from Correctional Populations in the United states of america, 2019, Table v. Our information on the number of people on probation who are also on parole is every bit of December 31, 2022 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Table 9.) For readers interested in knowing the full number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional command, there are 862,100 people on parole and iii,053,700 people on probation equally of Dec 31, 2020.
• Private facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explain in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" section 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 Table 12 in Prisoners in 2020.
  • For the Federal Agency 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 abode confinement every bit of February 17, 2022, according to the Agency of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consistent with the one used past the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Tabular array 12 of Prisoners in 2020, only uses more recent data.
  • For the U.S. Marshals Service, nosotros used the FOIA response reporting the average daily population every bit of September 2019, including both "individual, in-direct" and "private, direct contract" facilities.
  • For youth, we used the 2022 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, which provides a breakup of the number of youth held in publicly and privately operated facilities.
  • For clearing detention, we relied on the piece of work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Center, applying the pct held in private facilities every bit of November 2022 to the Feb 2022 Ice population.

Adjustments to avert double counting

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

• To avoid anyone in clearing detention being counted twice, nosotros removed the 27% (5,951) of the Immigration and Community Enforcement (ICE) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. We removed 34.i% of these ICE detainees from the jail convicted population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for Water ice on our assay of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, every bit 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 being counted twice, we removed the 73,321 people — cited in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2022 — bars in local jails on behalf of federal or country prison house systems from the full jail population and from the numbers nosotros calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those being held by the U.S. Marshals Service from being counted twice, nosotros removed from the jail total 31,500 Marshals detainees reported every bit held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2022 Table 8. We removed 75.nine% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail bedevilled population, and the balance from the unconvicted jail population. (Over again, we based these percentages on our analysis of the Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Because we removed Ice detainees and people nether the jurisdiction of federal and land authorities from the jail population, we had to recalculate the offense distribution reported in Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "bedevilled" or "not convicted" without the people who reported that they were being held on behalf of state government, the Federal Agency of Prisons, the U.South. Marshals Service, or U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.Due south. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).³² Our definition of "bedevilled" was those who reported that they were "To serve a sentence in this jail," "To await sentencing for an offense," or "To look transfer to serve a judgement 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 individual jails for local government, we applied the percentage of the full custody population held in individual facilities in midyear 2022 (calculated from Table 20 of Census of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local government (547,328) in 2020, after making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and ethnic 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.Due south. Census. Because the relevant tables from the 2022 decennial Census have not been published yet, we used the 2022 American Community Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the four named racial and ethnic groups that account for at least 2%, nationally, of the population in correctional facilities. Not included on the graphic are Asian people, who make up ane% of the correctional population, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, who make upwardly 0.iii%, people identifying as "Some other race," who account for half-dozen.3%, and those of "Two or more races," who make up 4% of the full national correctional population.

Annotation 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 data for "White alone, Non Hispanic or Latino" for white people, just the Demography Agency'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. Because this detail table is not appropriate for state-level analyses, simply the Prison Policy Initiative will explore using the 2022 Demographic and Housing Characteristics file when it is published by the Census Bureau in late 2022 to provide detailed racial and indigenous data for the combined incarcerated population in each state. In past decades, this information was specially useful in states where the organisation — especially jails — did not publish race and ethnicity data or did not publish data with more than precision than just "white, Black and other."

Read the entire methodology

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

How many people are locked up in the United States?

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

1 in iii people behind bars is in a jail. Almost have nevertheless to be tried in court.

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

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

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 government

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

Prison population drops take 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/slideshow2/1

Pretrial policies drive jail growth

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

Local Jails: The real scandal is the churn

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

Why are and then many people detained in jails before trial?

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

Only 8% of confined people are held in private prisons

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

1 in five incarcerated people is locked up for a drug criminal offense

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

Police brand over a 1000000 drug possession arrests each year

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

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

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

About states track and publish just one measure out of post-release recidivism

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

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

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

What do victims of fierce crimes actually want?

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

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

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

Reverse to myth, people incarcerated for violent offenses and released are least likely to exist arrested again

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

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

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

Almost 54,000 people are confined for immigration reasons

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

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

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

Nearly people in Indian Land jails are locked upwardly for property, drug, and public order charges

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

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

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

Incarceration is but one slice of the much larger system of correctional control

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

Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities

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

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

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

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

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

Almost 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.S.

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

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

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

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

Jails vs. prisons: What'southward the deviation?

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

Eight myths about mass incarceration

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

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

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

Crime categories might not mean what you remember

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Backsliding: A glace statistic

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

The 6th myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

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

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

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

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

https://world wide web.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" atomic number 82 to unnecessary incarceration

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

Misdemeanors: Modest offenses with major consequences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Each paragraph is too numbered, so you can use urls in this format:

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

Acquire how to link to specific images and sections

Acknowledgments

All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, but this report builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022 versions. For this year'south study, the authors are especially 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 immigration detention into context, Jacob Kang-Brown of the Vera Institute of Justice for sharing country prison information, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and delivery 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 Jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow technology. Withal, any errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a data visualization similar this, are the sole 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 land. We also thank Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that make full cardinal data and messaging gaps. Finally, we'd like to give thanks each of our individual donors — your commitment to catastrophe mass incarceration makes our work possible.

Most 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 Divide: Tracking women'due south state prison house growth, and the 2022 study Punishing Poverty: The high cost of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Abort, Release, Echo: How police and jails are misused to answer to social issues with Alexi Jones. In add-on to these reports, Wendy frequently contributes briefings on recent information releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more than.

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

About the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison house Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. Alongside reports similar this that aid the public more than fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organisation leads the nation'due south fight to keep the prison house system 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 also sounded the alarm in 2022 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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