What Is It Called When Someone Is Put in Jail Again

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections

The large picture

The impact of COVID

eight Myths

Loftier costs of low-level offenses

Youth, clearing & involuntary delivery

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

Necessary reforms

Sources

Tin can it really be truthful that most people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a consequence of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of private prisons? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed decisions almost how people are punished when they break the police force? These essential questions are harder to respond than you might look. The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal arrangement collect a lot of data, but very trivial is designed to help policymakers or the public understand what's going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build — and every bit the pandemic raises the stakes higher — it'southward more of import than always that we get the facts straight and sympathize the large flick.

Farther complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn't have 1 "criminal justice organisation;" instead, nosotros take thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold almost 2 1000000 people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, ii,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 clearing detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. ¹

This report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the data most this country'due south disparate systems of solitude. Information technology provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration and overlooked issues that telephone call for reform.

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

This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come into focus;^four it allows the states to identify important, simply frequently ignored, systems of confinement. The detailed views bring these overlooked systems to light, from clearing detention to civil delivery and youth solitude. In item, local jails oftentimes receive short shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, but they play a critical part as "incarceration's front door" and have a far greater impact 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, about 600,000 people enter prison house gates,⁵ but people go to jail over ten million times each twelvemonth.^{6 vii} Jail churn is particularly high because most people in jails have not been bedevilled.⁸ Some take just been arrested and will make bond within hours or days, while many others are as well poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small number (about 103,000 on any given day) accept been convicted, and are more often than not serving misdemeanors sentences under a year. At least one in 4 people who go to jail volition be arrested again within the same year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance utilise disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow 2. Swipe for more item on pretrial detention.

With a sense of the big motion-picture show, the next question is: why are then 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 prophylactic and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths most incarceration. Nearly have a kernel of truth, merely these myths distract u.s.a. from focusing on the almost important drivers of incarceration.

Eight myths nigh mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug apply, the utilise of private prisons, and depression-paid or unpaid prison labor are among the nigh contentious issues in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. Just they exercise not answer the question of why most people are incarcerated or how nosotros can dramatically — and safely — reduce our apply of confinement. Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and vehement offenses ofttimes derail important conversations near the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. False notions of what a "tearing crime" confidence means about an individual'south dangerousness go on to be used in an endeavour to justify long sentences — fifty-fifty though that's not what victims want. At the same time, misguided beliefs near 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 community supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration oftentimes lead to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that can end mass incarceration, and non just put a dent in it, requires the public to put these problems into perspective.

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

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

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

Private prisons and jails concord less than 8% of all incarcerated people, making them a relatively modest office of a mostly publicly-run correctional organisation.

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

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

But prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for nutrient service, laundry, and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 written report found that on boilerplate, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $iii.45 per day for the most mutual prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay zilch at all. Moreover, work in prison house is compulsory, with trivial regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers take few rights and protections. If they refuse to work, incarcerated people confront disciplinary activeness. For those who exercise piece of work, the paltry wages they receive ofttimes become right back to the prison, which charges them for basic necessities like 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 true price of running prisons from most Americans.

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

It'due south true that police force, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for zip more than than drug possession. Drug offenses even so account for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over 1 meg drug possession arrests each year,^xiv many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests go on to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.

Even so, four out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious offense or an fifty-fifty less serious one. To end mass incarceration, nosotros will take to change how our social club and our criminal legal organization responds to crimes more serious than drug possession. We must also terminate incarcerating people for behaviors that are fifty-fifty more benign.

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

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

The stardom betwixt "violent" and "nonviolent" crime means less than you might recollect; in fact, these terms are so widely misused that they are mostly unhelpful in a policy context. In the public soapbox about crime, people typically use "violent" and "nonviolent" as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That solitary is a fallacy, merely worse, these terms are also used as coded (oftentimes racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-unsafe.

In reality, state and federal laws apply the term "trigger-happy" to a surprisingly broad range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve whatever concrete harm. In some states, purse-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered violent crimes. Burglary is by and large considered a holding crime, but an array of state and federal laws classify burglary as a trigger-happy crime in certain situations, such as when it occurs at night, in a residence, or with a weapon present. And so even if the building was unoccupied, someone convicted of break-in could be punished for a fierce crime and end up with a long prison sentence and "vehement" record.

The mutual misunderstanding of what "violent crime" really refers to — a legal distinction that often has trivial to do with actual or intended harm — is ane of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the thought of violent criminal offence oft lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people bedevilled of legally "tearing" crimes. But over 40% of people in prison and jail are at that place for offenses classified as "violent," so these carveouts cease up gutting the touch on of otherwise well-crafted policies. Every bit we and many others have explained before, cut incarceration rates to anything near international norms will be incommunicable without changing how we respond to vehement crime. To start, we have to be clearer most what that loaded term actually ways.

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

Of course, many people bedevilled of violent offenses accept caused serious harm to others. But how does the criminal legal system determine the adventure that they pose to their communities? Again, the answer is likewise often "we guess them by their offense type," rather than "nosotros evaluate their individual circumstances." This reflects the especially harmful myth that people who commit vehement or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or even a lifetime of punishment.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that by policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it'south time to consider policy changes that get beyond the low-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" — people convicted of non-vehement, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if we are serious nearly ending mass incarceration, we will have to alter our responses to more than serious and tearing crime.

Recidivism data exercise not back up the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to exist locked abroad for decades for the sake of public rubber. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are really amid the least likely to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates twenty% lower than all other criminal offence categories combined. One reason for the lower rates of recidivism amid people bedevilled of trigger-happy offenses: historic period is one of the primary predictors of violence. The take chances for violence peaks in boyhood or early adulthood and and then declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long afterward their risk has declined.¹⁵

Sadly, nearly land officials ignored this evidence even as the pandemic made obvious the demand 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 trigger-happy or sexual offenses, dramatically reducing the number of people eligible for earlier release.¹⁶

The 6th myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors often invoke the name of victims to justify long sentences for violent offenses. But contrary to the popular narrative, most victims of violence want violence prevention, not incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter violent crime, and many victims believe that incarceration can brand people more likely to engage in offense. National survey information evidence that about victims support violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that accost the root causes of crime, non more investment in carceral systems that cause more harm.¹⁷ This suggests that they care more well-nigh the wellness and safety of their communities than they do about retribution.

Victims and survivors of crime adopt 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 as "justice." While conversations virtually justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of crime equally ii entirely split groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, too — a fact behind the aphorism that "hurt people hurt people."^eighteen Every bit victims of offense know, breaking this cycle of harm will require greater investments in communities, not the carceral arrangement.

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

It'southward admittedly true that people ensnared in the criminal legal system have a lot of unmet needs. Simply we shouldn't distort the "services" offered in jails and prisons as reasons to lock people upward. Local jails, especially, are filled with people who need medical care and social services, merely jails have repeatedly failed to provide these services. Many people terminate upwardly cycling in and out of jail without ever receiving the assistance they need. People with mental health problems are often put in solitary solitude, accept express admission to counseling, and are left unmonitored due to constant staffing shortages. The upshot: suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Given this runway tape, edifice 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 have substance utilize disorders, jails consistently fail to provide acceptable treatment. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder—the gilded standard for care. That means that rather than providing drug treatment, jails more oftentimes interrupt drug handling past cutting patients off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased past almost 400%; typically, these individuals died within just one day of admission. Jails are not condom detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic surroundings people require for long-term recovery and healing.

The 8th myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to reduce incarceration

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is frequently seen equally a "lenient" punishment or equally an ideal "culling" to incarceration. Simply while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked up, the conditions imposed on those under supervision are frequently so restrictive that they set people up to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and crushing requirements, and constant surveillance (especially with electronic monitoring) result in frequent "failures," often for small 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, ofttimes called "technical violations."^{19 20} Probation, in particular, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to support and reward success rather than observe 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 non accused of serious crimes; more often, they are charged with misdemeanors or not-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, tin 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 resource into the processing and penalty of these small-scale offenses.

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

Often overlooked in discussions about mass incarceration are the various "holds" that go along 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 crime or a non-criminal (or "technical") violation. If a parole or probation officeholder suspects that someone has violated supervision atmospheric condition, they tin file a "detainer" (or "hold"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives after confidence or incarceration, returning to jail for a small-scale infraction can be profoundly destabilizing. The nigh contempo information prove that nationally, almost 1 in five (eighteen%) 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 1-third of the jail population. This problem is non limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments found that about i in 4 people in country prisons are incarcerated as a issue of supervision violations. During the first year of the pandemic, that number dropped only slightly, to i in 5 people in state prisons.

Misdemeanors: Small-scale offenses with major consequences

The "massive misdemeanor organization" in the U.Southward. is another important but disregarded contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as benign as 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 account for about 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may sound piffling, but they carry serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants only likewise for broader society, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And so in that location 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 avert jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are and then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal record, as well as the heightened gamble of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

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

Defendants can terminate up in jail even if their criminal offence is not punishable with jail fourth dimension. Why? Because if a defendant fails to announced in court or to pay fines and fees, the judge can event a "bench warrant" for their abort, directing law enforcement to jail them in order to bring them to court. While there is currently no national estimate of the number of agile bench warrants, their apply is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe County, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an agile bench warrant at any time, more than three times the number of people in the county jails.

Only bench warrants are often unnecessary. Nearly people who miss court are not trying to avoid the constabulary; more often, they forget, are dislocated by the court process, or have a schedule disharmonize. In one case a bench warrant is issued, however, defendants frequently end upward living as "low-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, condign transient, and/or fugitive public life (fifty-fifty hospitals) to avoid having to go to jail.

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

Looking more closely at incarceration by law-breaking type also exposes some disturbing facts nearly the 49,000 youth in confinement in the U.s.: too many are in that location for a "most serious offense" that is not fifty-fifty a crime. For example, in that location are over 5,000 youth backside bars for non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An additional 1,400 youth are locked up for "condition" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not constabulary violations for adults such every bit running abroad, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ Most 1 in fourteen youth held for a criminal or delinquent criminal offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and nigh 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 most 6,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of immigration offenses, and 16,000 more are held pretrial by the U.S. Marshals. The vast majority of people incarcerated for criminal immigration offenses are accused of illegal entry or illegal reentry — in other words, for no more serious offense than crossing the border without permission.²²

Slideshow 5. Swipe for more particular nearly youth confinement, immigrant confinement, and psychiatric solitude.

Some other 22,000 people are civilly detained past U.Due south. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) not for whatsoever criminal offense, simply simply because they are facing displacement.²³ ICE detainees are physically bars in federally-run or privately-run immigration detention facilities, or in local jails nether contract with Ice. This number is most half what it was pre-pandemic, but information technology's actually climbing dorsum up from a record depression of 13,500 people in Water ice detention in early on 2021. As in the criminal legal system, these pandemic-era trends should not be interpreted as evidence of reforms.²⁴ In fact, Ice is rapidly expanding its overall surveillance and 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 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 crime, most are held in shelters or even juvenile placement facilities under detention-like conditions.²⁶

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

In one case we have wrapped our minds around the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, nosotros should zoom out and note that people who are incarcerated are but a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. At that place are another 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.9 million people on probation. Many millions more have completed their sentences just 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 1.9 million currently bars. 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 meg have a criminal record of some kind; fifty-fifty this is likely an underestimate, leaving out many people who have been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally, FWD.us reports that 113 1000000 adults (45%) have had an immediate family fellow member incarcerated for at least one night.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted past the criminal justice system, we should also focus on who is almost impacted and who is left behind past 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 organization punishes poverty, beginning with the loftier price of coin bail: The median felony bail bond amount ($x,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained defendant. As a result, people with depression incomes are more probable to face up the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; information technology is also frequently the outcome, as 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'southward prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make upward 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing just 12% of U.S residents. The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men's, and who are frequently behind bars considering of financial obstacles such every bit an inability to pay bail. Every bit policymakers continue to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile solitude and with women in state prisons.

Slideshow 6. Swipe for more particular about race, gender, and income disparities.

Equipped with the full picture of how many people are locked upwards in the United States, where, and why, we all take a better foundation for moving the conversation nigh criminal justice reform forward. For case, the information makes it articulate that catastrophe the war on drugs will not solitary end mass incarceration, though the federal regime and some states accept taken an of import step by reducing the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Looking at the "whole pie" of mass incarceration opens up conversations near where information technology makes sense to focus our energies at the local, state, and national levels. For example:

• How tin can we finer invest in communities to go far less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal arrangement in the first place? And what measures tin assistance assistance successful reentry and end the brutal cycle of re-incarceration that so many individuals and families experience?
• Can we persuade government officials and prosecutors to revisit the reflexive, simplistic policymaking that has served to increase incarceration for "violent" offenses? How can nosotros eliminate policy "carveouts" that exclude broad categories of people from reforms and end upwards gutting the bear on of reforms?
• What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to do what it takes to shrink the 2d largest slice of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what will it take to redirect public spending to smarter investments like community-based drug treatment and chore training?
• While the federal prison system is a small slice of the total pie, how can improved federal policies and financial incentives be used to accelerate state and county level reforms? And for their function, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges — who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — slow the catamenia of people into the criminal justice system?
• Given that the companies with the greatest touch on on incarcerated people are not private prison operators, but service providers that contract with public facilities, how tin 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 arrangement?
• What lessons can we larn from the pandemic? Are federal, land, and local governments prepared to answer to futurity pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and the federal government amend use compassionate release and clemency powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the time to come?

The The states has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration charge per unit in the earth. Looking at the big picture of the ane.ix million people locked up in the Usa on any given twenty-four hours, we can meet that something needs to change. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibleness to carefully consider each individual slice of the carceral pie and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bond, tin can meaningfully reduce our society's use of incarceration. At the same time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising just will accept simply minimal effect, because they simply transfer people from ane slice of the correctional "pie" to another or needlessly exclude wide swaths of people. Keeping the big film in mind is critical if we promise to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice issues might reasonably expect that a big pic analysis like this would exist produced not by reform advocates, but by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't ane centralized criminal justice system to do such an analysis. Instead, even thinking just well-nigh adult corrections, we have a federal organization, l state systems, 3,000+ canton systems, 25,000+ municipal systems, and so on. Each of these systems collects information for its own purposes that may or may not exist 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 Agency of Justice Statistics, which, despite limited resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the data on correctional facilities. And it'south not to say that the FBI doesn't work hard to aggregate and standardize police arrest and crime report data. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal agencies that comport out the work of the criminal justice system — and are the sources of BJS and FBI data — weren't ready to respond many of the simple-sounding questions about the "system."

Similarly, there are systems involved in the confinement 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, immigration detention, and delivery to psychiatric hospitals for criminal justice involvement are examples of this broader universe of confinement that is oft ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates information from these systems to provide the virtually comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

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

Finally, readers who rely on this study year afterward year may be pleased to learn that since the last version was published in 2020, the delays in government data reports that fabricated tracking trends so difficult nether the previous administration take shortened, with publications nearly returning to their previous cycles. Nevertheless, having entered the third year of the pandemic, it's frustrating that nosotros still only have national data from year ane for well-nigh systems of confinement.

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

Data sources

This briefing uses the most recent information available on the number of people in diverse types of facilities and the virtually significant charge or conviction. Because the various systems of confinement collect and written report data on unlike schedules, this report reflects population data nerveless between 2019 and 2022 (and some of the data for people in psychiatric facilities dates back to 2014). Furthermore, considering not all types of data are updated each twelvemonth, nosotros sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, nosotros applied the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous year to the current year'due south full count data. For this reason, we chose to round almost labels in the graphics to the nearest m, except where rounding to the nearest ten, nearest one hundred, or (in two cases in the jails item slide) the nearest 500 was more informative in that context. This rounding process may also upshot in some parts not adding up precisely to the full.

Our data sources were:

• Land prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison house in Wintertime 2021-22 Table two provides the total yearend 2021 population. This report does not include offense data, notwithstanding, and so we applied the ratio of crime types calculated from the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics written report on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Table 14 (as of Dec 31, 2019) to the 2021 total state prison house population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 1 and Tabular array v, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2020, and our assay of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002^thirty for offense types. See below and Who is in jail? Deep swoop for why nosotros used our own analysis rather than the otherwise excellent Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of the same dataset, Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.
• Federal:
  • Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics, reporting data equally of Feb 17, 2022 (total population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Table eighteen, reporting data every bit of September thirty, 2020 (we applied the pct distribution of offense types from that table to the 2022 convicted population).
  • U.S. Marshals Service published its well-nigh contempo population count in its 2022 Fact Canvass, reporting the average daily population in fiscal year 2021. It besides provided a more detailed breakdown of its "Prisoner Operations" population as of September 2019 by facility type (country and local, private contracted, federal, and non-paid facilities) in response to our public records asking. The number held in federal detention centers (viii,376) came from the Fact Sail; the number held in local jails (31,500) came from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 8, and the number in private, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2019 breakdown. To judge the number held in state prisons for the Marshals Service (two,323), we calculated the difference between the full boilerplate daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and private facilities. We created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported criminal offence types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "non reported" categories") to the total average daily population in 2021. It is worth noting that the U.S. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and individual contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this report, equally they are not included in most of the Agency of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data 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 October 23, 2019. Our data on youth incarcerated in developed prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Table 13, reporting data for Dec 31, 2020, and youth in developed jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 2, reporting data for the final weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian Land facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Affect of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 8, also reporting data for the concluding weekday in June, 2020. For more than information on the geography of the juvenile system, see the No Kids in Prison entrada.
• Immigration detention: The boilerplate daily population of 22,041³¹ in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention comes from Water ice's FY 2022 ICE Statistics spreadsheet every bit of February 17, 2022. The count of 9,781 youth in Part of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Programme Fact Sheet, reporting the population as of February 16, 2022. Our estimates of how many ICE detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come up from our analysis of a comprehensive ICE detention facility list from Nov 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center. 7% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in private contract facilities, and 27% in urban center and canton-operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary commitment:
  • State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by courts after being found "not guilty past reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty but mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for treatment equally "incompetent to stand up trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI study, 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, nosotros chose to combine pretrial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, because in near cases, these indicate people who have not however been convicted or sentenced. This is not a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, merely nosotros believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Civil detention and commitment: (At least xx states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people bedevilled of sexual crimes after their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement there are technically ceremonious, simply in reality are quite like prisons. People nether civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they get-go serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their solitude in the civil facility.) The ceremonious commitment counts come from an annual survey conducted by the Sex activity Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for most states are from the 2021 survey, but for states that did non participate in 2021, we included the most recent figures available: Nebraska's counts and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP'due south detained population count is from 2017.
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.South. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.South. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2020 Tabular array 23, reporting data for December 31, 2020.
• Indian Country jails (correctional facilities operated by tribal regime or the U.S. Department of the Interior'due south Agency of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 1, reporting information for the last weekday in June, 2020.
• Military: Prisoners in 2020 Tables 21 (for full population) and 22 (for offense types) reporting data as of December 31, 2020.
• Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Agency of Justice Statistics report Probation and Parole in the United states of america, 2020 Table 1, reporting data for December 31, 2020, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted but one time in their about 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 vii. Our information on the number of people on probation or parole who were also in state or federal prisons is every bit of Dec 31, 2019 from Correctional Populations in the Us, 2019, Table v. Our data on the number of people on probation who are too on parole is as of December 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Table nine.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control, in that location are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation every bit of December 31, 2020.
• Private facilities: Except for local jails (which we volition explain in the "Adjustments to avert double counting" section below), our identification of the number of people held in private facilities was straightforward:
  • For country prisons, the number of people in individual prisons came from Table 12 in Prisoners in 2020.
  • For the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we included the half-dozen,085 people in "privately managed facilities, the 6,561 in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses), and the 5,462 in domicile confinement equally of February 17, 2022, co-ordinate to the Bureau of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consequent with the ane used past the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020, but uses more recent data.
  • For the U.S. Marshals Service, nosotros used the FOIA response reporting the average daily population as of September 2019, including both "private, in-direct" and "private, direct contract" facilities.
  • For youth, nosotros used the 2019 Demography of Juveniles in Residential Placement, which provides a breakdown of the number of youth held in publicly and privately operated facilities.
  • For immigration detention, we relied on the work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Center, applying the percent held in private facilities as of November 2017 to the February 2022 Ice population.

Adjustments to avert double counting

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

• To avoid anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, nosotros removed the 27% (5,951) of the Clearing and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. We removed 34.1% of these ICE detainees from the jail convicted population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our analysis of the Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002, every bit detailed in our report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why Country Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of land or federal prison authorities from beingness counted twice, we removed the 73,321 people — cited in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020 — bars 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 by the U.S. Marshals Service from being counted twice, nosotros removed from the jail total 31,500 Marshals detainees reported as held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2020 Tabular array 8. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail convicted population, and the residual from the unconvicted jail population. (Again, we based these percentages on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Considering nosotros removed Water ice detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and country authorities from the jail population, we had to recalculate the offense distribution reported in Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "bedevilled" or "not bedevilled" without the people who reported that they were being held on behalf of country authorities, the Federal Agency of Prisons, the U.Southward. Marshals Service, or U.Due south. Clearing 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 expect sentencing for an criminal offence," or "To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else." Our definition of not convicted was "To stand trial for an offense," "To await arraignment," or "To await a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."
• For our assay of people held in individual jails for local government, we applied the percentage of the full custody population held in private facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Tabular array xx of Census of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local authorities (547,328) in 2020, after making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities (as shown in Slideshow 6) uses the only information source that has data for all types of adult correctional facilities: the U.S. Census. Considering the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Demography have not been published yet, we used the 2019 American Customs Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the four named racial and ethnic groups that account for at least 2%, nationally, of the population in correctional facilities. Not included on the graphic are Asian people, who make up 1% of the correctional population, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, who brand up 0.3%, people identifying every bit "Some other race," who business relationship for 6.three%, and those of "Two or more races," who make up four% of the total national correctional population.

Note that because Latinos may exist of any race and because of how the Demography Bureau published race and ethnicity data in the relevant table, nosotros used the Demography data for "White solitary, Not Hispanic or Latino" for white people, just the Demography Bureau's information for "Black or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify as both that race and Latino. Because this particular tabular array is not appropriate for state-level analyses, just the Prison house Policy Initiative will explore using the 2020 Demographic and Housing Characteristics file when it is published past 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 data was particularly useful in states where the system — peculiarly jails — did non publish race and ethnicity data or did not publish data with more precision than just "white, Black and other."

Read the entire methodology

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

How many people are locked upward in the Us?

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

ane in iii people behind bars is in a jail. Most have yet to be tried in courtroom.

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

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

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

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

https://world wide web.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 back to normal

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

Pretrial Detention

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

Pretrial policies drive jail growth

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

Local Jails: The real scandal is the churn

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

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

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

But eight% of confined people are held in private prisons

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

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

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

Law make over a million drug possession arrests each yr

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/slideshow3/3

Almost states track and publish just ane mensurate of post-release recidivism

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

Very few states runway and publish any recidivism data for people on probation

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

What exercise victims of violent crimes really want?

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

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

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

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

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

Most 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

Nearly 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 mean solar day

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

Most people in Indian Land jails are locked up for property, drug, and public society charges

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

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

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

Incarceration is simply one slice of the much larger organization of correctional control

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

Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities

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

Women'southward incarceration patterns are very different than men's

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

Women's prison populations accept grown faster than men'south (and before the pandemic, women'south 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 five incarcerated people in the globe is incarcerated in the U.Due south.

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

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

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

https://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 near mass incarceration

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

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

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

Offense categories might non mean what you think

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

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

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

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

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

The fourth myth: By definition, "violent criminal offence" involves concrete harm

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

The fifth myth: People in prison house for trigger-happy or sexual crimes are too unsafe to be released

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

Recidivism: A slippery statistic

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

The sixth myth: 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 handling and services

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

The 8th myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to reduce incarceration

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

The high costs of depression-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: Minor offenses with major consequences

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

"Low-level fugitives" alive in fearfulness 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": Community supervision, poverty, and race and gender disparities

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

Each paragraph is as well numbered, then you tin 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…

Learn how to link to specific images and sections

Acknowledgments

All Prison house Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, merely this report builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 versions. For this year'due south study, the authors are particularly indebted to Lena Graber of the Immigrant Legal Resource Centre and Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center for their feedback and aid putting the changes to immigration detention into context, Jacob Kang-Dark-brown of the Vera Institute of Justice for sharing state prison data, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and delivery information, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for research support, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for aid with one of the visuals, and Jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow technology. However, any errors or omissions, and final responsibleness 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 inquiry into the use and misuse of jails in this state. Nosotros also thank Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that make full key data and messaging gaps. Finally, we'd similar to give thanks each of our private donors — your commitment to catastrophe mass incarceration makes our work possible.

About the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Research Managing director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the writer of Youth Solitude: The Whole Pie, The Gender Carve up: Tracking women'due south country prison growth, and the 2016 report Punishing Poverty: The loftier cost of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Abort, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to answer to social bug with Alexi Jones. In addition to these reports, Wendy frequently contributes briefings on recent data releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.

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

Almost the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-turn a profit, not-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader damage of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. Alongside reports similar this that assistance the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the system leads the nation'south fight to go along the prison organisation from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading function in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison house and jail telephone industry and the video visitation manufacture. The organization also sounded the alarm in 2020 on the danger of COVID-nineteen outbreaks in prisons and jails, and throughout the pandemic has provided frequent updates on releases, vaccines, and other prison house policies critical to saving lives behind bars.

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

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