How Many Pop Top Cap For Probation Commumity Service

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022

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

Sections: The large moving picture; The impact of COVID; viii Myths; High costs of low-level offenses; Youth, clearing & involuntary delivery; Beyond the Pie: Customs supervision, poverty, race, and gender; Necessary reforms; Sources

Can information technology actually exist true that nearly people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of individual prisons? How has the COVID-xix pandemic changed decisions about how people are punished when they pause the police? These essential questions are harder to respond than you might await. The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal organization collect a lot of data, but very niggling is designed to assist policymakers or the public understand what's going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes college — it'due south more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big pic.

Farther complicating matters is the fact that the U.South. doesn't have one "criminal justice arrangement;" instead, we have thousands of federal, country, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold almost 2 1000000 people in 1,566 land prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, also as in armed services prisons, ceremonious delivery centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. ^one

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

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

This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come up into focus;⁴ information technology allows us to place important, but often ignored, systems of solitude. The detailed views bring these disregarded systems to light, from immigration detention to civil commitment and youth solitude. In particular, local jails oft receive short shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, just they play a critical role as "incarceration'south front end door" and have a far greater impact than the daily population suggests.

While this pie nautical chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional system, the graphic does non capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities, nor the far larger universe of people whose lives are affected by the criminal justice arrangement. In a typical year, about 600,000 people enter prison gates,⁵ but people go to jail over 10 million times each year.⁶ ^seven Jail churn is specially high considering near people in jails take not been convicted.^viii Some have simply been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain behind confined until their trial. Merely a small number (near 103,000 on any given twenty-four hour period) have been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences nether a year. At least ane in 4 people who get to jail will be arrested once more within the aforementioned year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance utilize disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.

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

With a sense of the big picture, the adjacent question is: why are so many people locked upward? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of individual companies driving incarceration? Or is information technology really about public prophylactic and keeping dangerous people off the streets? In that location are a plethora of mod myths about incarceration. Most have a kernel of truth, just these myths distract u.s. from focusing on the most of import drivers of incarceration.

8 myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug utilize, the utilize of individual prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison labor are among the most contentious bug in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. But they do not respond the question of why well-nigh people are incarcerated or how we tin can dramatically — and safely — reduce our utilize of confinement. Too, emotional responses to sexual and fierce offenses often derail of import conversations near the social, economical, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong penalization. False notions of what a "violent crime" conviction ways about an individual'southward dangerousness continue to be used in an try to justify long sentences — fifty-fifty though that's not what victims desire. At the aforementioned 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 equally moving people from jails and prisons to community supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration ofttimes atomic number 82 to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that tin can end mass incarceration, and non merely put a paring in it, requires the public to put these issues 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-owned prisons and jails.¹¹ Some states take more people in individual prisons than others, of course, and the industry has lobbied to maintain high levels of incarceration, but individual prisons are substantially a parasite on the massive publicly-endemic arrangement — not the root of information technology.

Nevertheless, a range of individual industries and fifty-fifty some public agencies continue to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and county jails rent infinite to other agencies, including land prison systems,¹² the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison food and health services (frequently so bad they issue in major lawsuits), and prison and jail telecom and commissary functions take spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. By privatizing services similar phone calls, medical intendance, and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social cost.

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

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

Simply put, individual companies using prison labor are not what stands in the way of ending mass incarceration, nor are they the source of most prison jobs. Simply nigh five,000 people in prison house — less than 1% — are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP programme, 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 still only represents nigh half-dozen% of people incarcerated in land prisons.)¹³

But prisons exercise rely on the labor of incarcerated people for nutrient service, laundry, and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably depression wages: our 2017 study plant that on average, incarcerated people earn betwixt 86 cents and $iii.45 per day for the most common prison house jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay zero at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers take few rights and protections. If they turn down to work, incarcerated people face disciplinary action. For those who practise work, the paltry wages they receive ofttimes go right dorsum to the prison house, which charges them for bones necessities like medical visits and hygiene items. Forcing people to work for low or no pay and no benefits, while charging them for necessities, allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people — hiding the true cost of running prisons from most Americans.

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

It's truthful that police force, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for zippo more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of about 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year,¹⁴ many of which pb to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to requite residents of over-policed communities criminal records, pain their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.

All the same, four out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug criminal offence — either a more serious offense or an even less serious one. To terminate mass incarceration, nosotros will have to alter how our guild 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 beneficial.

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

The quaternary myth: By definition, "violent crime" involves physical damage

The distinction between "trigger-happy" and "nonviolent" crime ways less than yous might retrieve; in fact, these terms are and then widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context. In the public discourse about criminal offense, people typically utilize "tearing" and "nonviolent" as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used every bit coded (often racialized) linguistic communication to characterization individuals as inherently dangerous versus not-dangerous.

In reality, state and federal laws apply the term "violent" to a surprisingly wide range of criminal acts — including many that don't involve any physical harm. In some states, handbag-snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered violent crimes. Burglary is generally considered a property offense, only an array of state and federal laws allocate break-in equally a tearing law-breaking in certain situations, such as when it occurs at night, in a residence, or with a weapon present. So fifty-fifty 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 "violent" record.

The common misunderstanding of what "trigger-happy crime" really refers to — a legal stardom that frequently has lilliputian to exercise with actual or intended impairment — is 1 of the main barriers to meaningful criminal justice reform. Reactionary responses to the thought of tearing law-breaking often lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally "fierce" crimes. But over 40% of people in prison house and jail are at that place for offenses classified as "vehement," so these carveouts end up gutting the impact of otherwise well-crafted policies. As we and many others accept explained before, cutting incarceration rates to anything near international norms will be impossible without changing how we respond to violent crime. To commencement, we have to be clearer nigh what that loaded term actually means.

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

Of course, many people bedevilled of trigger-happy offenses accept caused serious harm to others. Only how does the criminal legal arrangement determine the take a chance that they pose to their communities? Again, the answer is too often "we judge them by their criminal offense type," rather than "we evaluate their private circumstances." This reflects the especially harmful myth that people who commit trigger-happy or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or even a lifetime of penalisation.

As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that past policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that become across the depression-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" — people bedevilled of non-vehement, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. Again, if we are serious about ending mass incarceration, we will have to change our responses to more serious and violent law-breaking.

Recidivism information do not support the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to be locked away for decades for the sake of public safety. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually among the least probable to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates twenty% lower than all other offense categories combined. One reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people bedevilled of vehement offenses: historic period is 1 of the master predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early on adulthood and then declines with age, all the same we incarcerate people long after their hazard has declined.¹⁵

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

The sixth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors oft invoke the name of victims to justify long sentences for fierce offenses. But reverse to the popular narrative, most victims of violence want violence prevention, not incarceration. Harsh sentences don't deter vehement crime, and many victims believe that incarceration can make people more likely to appoint in crime. National survey data prove 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 impairment.¹⁷ This suggests that they care more about the wellness and safety of their communities than they do near retribution.

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

Moreover, people convicted of crimes are oft victims themselves, complicating the moral statement for harsh punishments as "justice." While conversations about justice tend to treat perpetrators and victims of crime as ii entirely separate groups, people who engage in criminal acts are often victims of violence and trauma, too — a fact behind the adage that "hurt people hurt people."^eighteen Equally victims of crime know, breaking this cycle of harm volition require greater investments in communities, non the carceral system.

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

It's admittedly true that people ensnared in the criminal legal organization accept a lot of unmet needs. But we shouldn't misconstrue the "services" offered in jails and prisons every bit reasons to lock people up. Local jails, especially, are filled with people who need medical intendance and social services, just jails have repeatedly failed to provide these services. Many people end upwardly cycling in and out of jail without e'er receiving the help they need. People with mental health issues are often put in solitary confinement, have limited access to counseling, and are left unmonitored due to constant staffing shortages. The result: suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Given this track record, 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 apply disorders, jails consistently fail to provide adequate treatment. A tiny fraction of all jails provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder—the gold standard for care. That means that rather than providing drug handling, jails more oftentimes interrupt drug treatment by cutting patients off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased by nearly 400%; typically, these individuals died within just ane day of admission. Jails are not rubber detox facilities, nor are they capable of providing the therapeutic environment people require for long-term recovery and healing.

The eighth myth: Expanding customs supervision is the all-time style to reduce incarceration

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is oftentimes seen as a "lenient" punishment or as an platonic "alternative" to incarceration. But while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked up, the weather condition imposed on those under supervision are oftentimes so restrictive that they ready people upwardly to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant surveillance (especially with electronic monitoring) effect in frequent "failures," often for pocket-sized 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, ofttimes called "technical violations."^xix ^twenty Probation, in particular, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to support and reward success rather than detect mistakes, it is non a reliable "culling."

Slideshow iv. Swipe for more than details nigh what the information on recidivism actually shows.

The loftier costs of low-level offenses

Nearly justice-involved people in the U.S. are not accused of serious crimes; more often, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Nonetheless fifty-fifty low-level offenses, similar technical violations of probation and parole, can atomic number 82 to incarceration and other serious consequences. Rather than investing in community-driven rubber initiatives, cities and counties are still pouring vast amounts of public resources into the processing and punishment of these modest offenses.

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

Oft overlooked in discussions about mass incarceration are the various "holds" that go on 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 officer suspects that someone has violated supervision conditions, they can file a "detainer" (or "agree"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives after conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a minor infraction can be greatly destabilizing. The almost recent data show that nationally, almost 1 in v (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 trouble is non limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Quango of Country Governments found that nearly 1 in 4 people in state prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations. During the first year of the pandemic, that number dropped only slightly, to one in 5 people in country prisons.

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

The "massive misdemeanor system" in the U.S. is some other important but overlooked contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as beneficial as 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 piddling, but they carry serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants but besides for broader society, which finances the processing of these courtroom cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And and so in that location are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are ofttimes non appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and accept a probation sentence to avoid jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty and are and then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come up with a criminal record, likewise equally the heightened risk of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor organisation that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

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

Defendants tin end up in jail fifty-fifty if their criminal offence is non punishable with jail time. Why? Because if a accused fails to appear in court or to pay fines and fees, the judge tin can result a "bench warrant" for their arrest, directing law enforcement to jail them in order to bring them to courtroom. While there is currently no national estimate of the number of active bench warrants, their utilise is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe County, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an active demote warrant at whatsoever time, more than three times the number of people in the county jails.

Merely bench warrants are often unnecessary. Near people who miss court are not trying to avoid the law; more oftentimes, they forget, are confused by the court process, or have a schedule conflict. Once a bench warrant is issued, all the same, defendants frequently end up living as "depression-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, becoming transient, and/or avoiding 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 offense type also exposes some disturbing facts well-nigh the 49,000 youth in solitude in the Usa: too many are in that location for a "most serious offense" that is not even a crime. For case, there are over 5,000 youth behind bars for non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An boosted ane,400 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not law violations for adults such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility."²¹ About i in 14 youth held for a criminal or delinquent law-breaking is locked in an adult jail or prison, and nigh of the others are held in juvenile facilities that await and operate a lot like prisons and jails.

Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for clearing-related reasons, we find that almost half dozen,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of immigration offenses, and xvi,000 more are held pretrial by the U.S. Marshals. The vast majority of people incarcerated for criminal clearing offenses are accused of illegal entry or illegal reentry — in other words, for no more than serious offense than crossing the border without permission.²²

Slideshow v. Swipe for more than detail about youth solitude, immigrant confinement, and psychiatric solitude.

Another 22,000 people are civilly detained by U.Southward. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) non for whatever crime, but simply considering they are facing displacement.²³ ICE detainees are physically confined in federally-run or privately-run immigration detention facilities, or in local jails under contract with ICE. This number is about half what it was pre-pandemic, just it'south actually climbing back up from a tape low of 13,500 people in ICE detention in early on 2021. Equally in the criminal legal system, these pandemic-era trends should not be interpreted as bear witness of reforms.²⁴ In fact, Water ice is rapidly expanding its overall surveillance and command over the not-criminal migrant population by growing its electronic monitoring-based "alternatives to detention" plan.²⁵

An additional 9,800 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Role of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family members, or friends. Their number has more doubled since Jan of 2020. While these children are not held for any criminal or delinquent law-breaking, well-nigh are held in shelters or even juvenile placement facilities under detention-like weather.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 non fifty-fifty bedevilled, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are beingness evaluated pretrial or treated for incompetency to stand trial; 6,000 have been establish not guilty past reason of insanity or guilty simply mentally ill; another vi,000 are people bedevilled of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained after their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run past departments of correction, they are in reality much like prisons. Meanwhile, at least 38 states allow civil delivery for involuntary handling for substance use, and in many cases, people are sent to actual prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for treatment.²⁷

Once nosotros have wrapped our minds effectually the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, we should zoom out and notation that people who are incarcerated are merely a fraction of those impacted past the criminal justice system. There are some other 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.ix million people on probation. Many millions more than have completed their sentences but are notwithstanding living with a criminal record, a stigmatizing label that comes with collateral consequences such as barriers to employment and housing.

Chart showing how many people in the U.S. are directly impacted by mass incarceration. In addition to the 1.9 million people incarcerated today, 4.9 million are formerly imprisoned, 19 million have been convicted of a felony, 79 million have a criminal record, and 113 million adults have an immediate family member who has ever been to prison or jail. Far more than people are impacted by mass incarceration than the ane.nine million currently confined. An estimated 19 million people are burdened with the collateral consequences of a felony confidence (this includes those currently and formerly incarcerated), and an estimated 79 million take a criminal record of some kind; even this is likely an underestimate, leaving out many people who accept been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally, FWD.us reports that 113 million adults (45%) have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice organisation, we should as well focus on who is near impacted and who is left behind by policy change. Poverty, for example, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are unduly poor compared to the overall U.S. population.²⁸ The criminal justice system punishes poverty, starting time with the high price of money bail: The median felony bail bail amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained defendant. As a consequence, people with low incomes are more likely to confront the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is non just a predictor of incarceration; information technology is as well frequently the issue, as a criminal record and fourth dimension spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates task opportunities.²⁹

It'south no surprise that people of colour — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation'south prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who brand up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of U.Southward residents. The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men'due south, and who are oft behind bars considering of fiscal obstacles such as an inability to pay bail. Every bit policymakers go along to push button for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avert changes that will widen disparities, equally has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in country prisons.

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

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

How tin can we effectively invest in communities to make it less likely that someone comes into contact with the criminal legal system in the starting time place? And what measures can help assist 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 increment incarceration for "vehement" offenses? How tin we eliminate policy "carveouts" that exclude broad categories of people from reforms and stop upwardly gutting the impact of reforms?
What will information technology take to embolden policymakers and the public to practice what it takes to shrink the second largest piece of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what will it take to redirect public spending to smarter investments like community-based drug handling and task training?
While the federal prison organisation is a pocket-size slice of the total pie, how can improved federal policies and fiscal incentives be used to advance state and county level reforms? And for their role, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges — who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — tiresome the menstruation of people into the criminal justice organization?
Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are not private prison operators, simply service providers that contract with public facilities, how can governments end contracts that squeeze money from those backside bars and their families?
What reforms can nosotros implement to both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.Southward. and the well-known racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice arrangement?
What lessons can we learn from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local governments prepared to respond to hereafter pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters, and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and the federal government meliorate utilise compassionate release and clemency powers both during the ongoing pandemic and in the future?

The United States has the dubious stardom of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Looking at the big picture show of the 1.ix million people locked up in the United States on whatever given day, nosotros tin see that something needs to modify. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each individual slice of the carceral pie and inquire whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group behind bars, and whether any benefit actually outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

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

People new to criminal justice problems might reasonably expect that a big moving-picture show analysis like this would be produced not past reform advocates, but by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that at that place isn't 1 centralized criminal justice system to do such an analysis. Instead, even thinking merely nigh adult corrections, nosotros take a federal organization, 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 non 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 Agency of Justice Statistics, which, despite limited resources, undertakes the Herculean job of organizing and standardizing the information on correctional facilities. And information technology'due south non to say that the FBI doesn't work hard to aggregate and standardize constabulary arrest and offense study data. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal agencies that comport out the piece of work of the criminal justice arrangement — and are the sources of BJS and FBI data — weren't gear up to answer many of the simple-sounding questions about the "system."

Similarly, at that place are systems involved in the confinement of justice-involved people that might non consider themselves part of the criminal justice system, but should exist included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile justice, civil detention and commitment, clearing detention, and commitment to psychiatric hospitals for criminal justice involvement are examples of this broader universe of confinement that is oftentimes ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates information from these systems to provide the most comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

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

Finally, readers who rely on this written 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 so difficult nether the previous administration have shortened, with publications almost returning to their previous cycles. Withal, having entered the 3rd twelvemonth of the pandemic, information technology's frustrating that we still just take national data from yr one for most systems of confinement.

Chart showing that Bureau of Justice Statistics data releases were delayed by many months under the Trump administration but have since improved. However, each report generally still takes at least a year to collect, process and report.

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

Data sources

This briefing uses the virtually contempo data available on the number of people in diverse types of facilities and the most significant charge or conviction. Because the various systems of confinement collect and report information on unlike schedules, this report reflects population data nerveless between 2019 and 2022 (and some of the data for people in psychiatric facilities dates dorsum to 2014). Furthermore, because not all types of data are updated each twelvemonth, nosotros sometimes had to summate estimates; for instance, nosotros practical the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous yr to the electric current year'southward full count data. For this reason, nosotros chose to circular most labels in the graphics to the nearest thousand, 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 consequence in some parts not calculation up precisely to the total.

Our data sources were:

Land prisons: Vera Plant of Justice, People in Prison in Winter 2021-22 Table 2 provides the full yearend 2021 population. This study does not include crime data, however, so we practical the ratio of offense types calculated from the about recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2020 Tabular array fourteen (equally of December 31, 2019) to the 2021 total country prison population.
Jails: Agency of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2020 Table 1 and Table 5, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2020, and our assay of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002³⁰ for offense types. Meet below and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why nosotros used our own assay 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 information equally of February 17, 2022 (full population of 153,053), and Prisoners in 2020 Tabular array 18, reporting data as of September xxx, 2020 (nosotros practical the percentage distribution of criminal offence types from that tabular array to the 2022 convicted population).
- U.S. Marshals Service published its most recent population count in its 2022 Fact Sheet, reporting the average daily population in fiscal yr 2021. Information technology also provided a more detailed breakup 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 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 2020 Table 8, and the number in private, contracted facilities (21,480) came from the September 2019 breakup. To estimate the number held in country prisons for the Marshals Service (2,323), we calculated the departure between the total average daily population and the sum of those held in federal detention centers, local jails, and individual facilities. We created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of reported offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "non reported" categories") to the total boilerplate daily population in 2021. It is worth noting that the U.Due south. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and private contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this report, as they are non included in most of the Agency of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.
Youth: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Admission to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for Oct 23, 2019. Our data on youth incarcerated in developed prisons comes from Prisoners in 2020 Table 13, reporting data for December 31, 2020, and youth in developed jails from Jail Inmates in 2020 Table ii, reporting data for the terminal weekday in June 2020. The number of youth reported in Indian State facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Jails in Indian Country, 2019-2020 and the Touch of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 8, also reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2020. For more information on the geography of the juvenile system, run into the No Kids in Prison campaign.
Immigration detention: The boilerplate daily population of 22,041³¹ in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention comes from Water ice'due south FY 2022 Water ice Statistics spreadsheet as of February 17, 2022. The count of 9,781 youth in Function of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Conflicting Children (UAC) Program Fact Sheet, reporting the population as of February sixteen, 2022. Our estimates of how many ICE detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come from our analysis of a comprehensive ICE detention facility list from November 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center. 7% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in private contract facilities, and 27% in metropolis and county-operated jails.
Justice-related involuntary delivery:
- Country psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by courts after being found "non guilty past reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty only mentally sick" (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for treatment as "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI report, Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting data from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data set, and for pretrial, we chose to combine pretrial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, because in nearly cases, these indicate people who have not yet been convicted or sentenced. This is not a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, just we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
- Ceremonious detention and delivery: (At least 20 states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of sexual crimes subsequently their sentences are consummate. These facilities and the confinement at that place are technically ceremonious, only in reality are quite like prisons. People under civil delivery are held in custody continuously from the time they showtime serving their judgement at a correctional facility through their solitude in the civil facility.) The civil delivery counts come up from an almanac survey conducted by the Sex activity Offender Civil Delivery Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for well-nigh states are from the 2021 survey, but for states that did not participate in 2021, we included the most recent figures bachelor: Nebraska's counts and the Federal Bureau of Prisons' (BOP) committed population count are from 2018; the BOP's detained population count is from 2017.
Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.Southward. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.Southward. Virgin Islands, and U.Southward. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2020 Tabular array 23, reporting information for December 31, 2020.
Indian Land jails (correctional facilities operated past tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior'south Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian State, 2019-2020 and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Tribal Jail Population Table 1, reporting information for the concluding weekday in June, 2020.
Armed services: Prisoners in 2020 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, 2020 Tabular array 1, reporting data for Dec 31, 2020, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted just one time in their almost restrictive category. (Our data on the number of people on probation and on parole who were also in jails is equally of mid-twelvemonth 2020 from Jail Inmates in 2020, Tabular array 7. Our data on the number of people on probation or parole who were as well in state or federal prisons is every bit of December 31, 2019 from Correctional Populations in the United States, 2019, Tabular array 5. Our data on the number of people on probation who are also on parole is as of Dec 31, 2020 from Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020, Tabular array 9.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control, at that place are 862,100 people on parole and 3,053,700 people on probation as of December 31, 2020.
Individual facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explain in the "Adjustments to avert double counting" department below), our identification of the number of people held in private facilities was straightforward:
- For country prisons, the number of people in private prisons came from Table 12 in Prisoners in 2020.
- For the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we included the 6,085 people in "privately managed facilities, the half dozen,561 in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses), and the 5,462 in abode confinement every bit of February 17, 2022, according to the Bureau of Prisons "Population Statistics" webpage. This definition is consistent with the one used by the Agency of Justice Statistics in Tabular array 12 of Prisoners in 2020, just uses more recent data.
- For the U.Due south. Marshals Service, we used the FOIA response reporting the average daily population as of September 2019, including both "individual, in-directly" and "private, direct contract" facilities.
- For youth, nosotros used the 2019 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, which provides a breakdown of the number of youth held in publicly and privately operated facilities.
- For immigration detention, we relied on the work of the Tara Tidwell Cullen of the National Immigrant Justice Center, applying the percentage 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 avert anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, nosotros removed the 27% (5,951) of the Clearing and Customs Enforcement (Water ice) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. Nosotros removed 34.1% of these ICE detainees from the jail bedevilled population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (Nosotros based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, equally detailed in our study, Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of country or federal prison authorities from beingness counted twice, we removed the 73,321 people — cited in Table 12 of Prisoners in 2020 — confined in local jails on behalf of federal or land prison systems from the total jail population and from the numbers we calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those being held by the U.S. Marshals Service from beingness counted twice, we removed from the jail total 31,500 Marshals detainees reported every bit held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2020 Table viii. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail convicted population, and the balance from the unconvicted jail population. (Again, nosotros based these percentages on our assay of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
Considering nosotros removed Ice detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and land government from the jail population, we had to recalculate the criminal 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 state regime, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, or U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice).³² Our definition of "convicted" was those who reported that they were "To serve a judgement in this jail," "To wait sentencing for an offense," or "To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else." Our definition of not convicted was "To stand up trial for an offense," "To expect arraignment," or "To wait a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."
For our analysis of people held in private jails for local authorities, nosotros applied the pct of the total custody population held in private facilities in midyear 2019 (calculated from Table 20 of Census of Jails, 2005-2019) to our count of people held in jails for local authorities (547,328) in 2020, afterward making the adjustments described in this section.

Our graph of the racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities (equally shown in Slideshow vi) uses the only data source that has data for all types of adult correctional facilities: the U.South. Demography. Because the relevant tables from the 2020 decennial Census have not been published yet, nosotros used the 2019 American Community Survey tables B02001and DP05 and represented the iv named racial and indigenous groups that account for at to the lowest degree two%, nationally, of the population in correctional facilities. Non included on the graphic are Asian people, who make up 1% of the correctional population, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, who make upward 0.iii%, people identifying as "Some other race," who account for half dozen.3%, and those of "Ii or more races," who make upward 4% of the total national correctional population.

Note that because Latinos may exist of any race and because of how the Demography Agency published race and ethnicity information in the relevant tabular array, nosotros used the Census data for "White lonely, Non Hispanic or Latino" for white people, simply the Demography Bureau's data for "Black or African American" and "American Indian and Alaska Native" people may include people who identify equally both that race and Latino. Because this particular table is not appropriate for state-level analyses, just the Prison house Policy Initiative volition explore using the 2020 Demographic and Housing Characteristics file when information technology is published by the Demography Agency in belatedly 2022 to provide detailed racial and indigenous data for the combined incarcerated population in each country. In past decades, this data was peculiarly useful in states where the system — peculiarly jails — did non publish race and ethnicity data or did not publish data with more precision than but "white, Black and other."

Read the entire methodology

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

How many people are locked upwards in the United states of america?: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/i
1 in three people behind bars is in a jail. Near have nonetheless to exist tried in courtroom.: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/two
Despite reforms, drug offenses are still a defining characteristic of the federal system: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/3
Across "federal prison," multiple agencies and thousands of local facilities confine people for the federal authorities: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow1/four
Prison population drops have leveled off since 2020: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#covid
Jail populations are creeping dorsum to normal: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#covid
Pretrial Detention: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/1
Pretrial policies bulldoze jail growth: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/two
Local Jails: The real scandal is the churn: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/3
Why are so many people detained in jails before trial?: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow2/4
Only viii% of confined people are held in private prisons: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#private_facilities
ane in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug criminal offence: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/1
Police brand over a 1000000 drug possession arrests each year: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/2
Some states have largely ended the State of war on Drugs. Other states, not so much.: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow3/3
Most states runway and publish just one measure of postal service-release recidivism: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#releaserecidivism
Very few states rail and publish whatsoever recidivism data for people on probation: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#probationrecidivism
What practice victims of violent crimes really want?: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#victimswant
Non-criminal (or "technical") violations are the main reason for incarceration of people on probation and parole: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow4/1
Contrary to myth, people incarcerated for trigger-happy offenses and released are to the lowest degree probable to be arrested again: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow4/i
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
Well-nigh 54,000 people are bars for clearing reasons: https://world wide web.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/three
Most people in Indian Country jails are locked upward for holding, drug, and public social club charges: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow5/4
Mass incarceration directly impacts millions of people: Merely just how many, and in what ways?: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#impacted
Incarceration is merely one piece of the much larger system of correctional control: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/i
Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/2
Women's incarceration patterns are very different than men's: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/iii
Women's prison house populations have grown faster than men's (and earlier the pandemic, women'southward populations were declining more than slowly): https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/4
Most people in prison are poor, and the poorest are women and people of colour: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/5
1 out of v incarcerated people in the world is incarcerated in the U.S.: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#slideshows/slideshow6/vi

To help readers link to specific report sections or paragraphs, we 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 divergence?: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#jailsvprisons
Eight myths well-nigh mass incarceration: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#myths
The first myth: Private prisons are the corrupt heart of mass incarceration: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#firstmyth
Offense categories might not mean what you recollect: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#offensecategories
The 2nd myth: Prisons are "factories behind fences" that exist to provide companies with a huge slave labor strength: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#secondmyth
The third myth: Releasing "nonviolent drug offenders" would cease mass incarceration: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#thirdmyth
The quaternary myth: By definition, "violent criminal offense" involves physical harm: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fourthmyth
The fifth myth: People in prison for trigger-happy or sexual crimes are too dangerous to be released: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth
Recidivism: A glace statistic: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#recidivism_measures
The 6th myth: Crime victims support long prison house sentences: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth
The seventh myth: Some people need to go to jail to become treatment and services: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth
The 8th myth: Expanding community supervision is the best manner to reduce incarceration: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#fifthmyth
The high costs of low-level offenses: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#lowlevel
Probation & parole violations and "holds" lead to unnecessary incarceration: https://world wide web.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" live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates and unpaid fines: https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#benchwarrants
Lessons from the smaller "slices": Youth, immigration, and involuntary delivery: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#smallerslices
Beyond the "Whole Pie": Community supervision, poverty, and race and gender disparities: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html#community
Each paragraph is also numbered, and 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…

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Acknowledgments

All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, but this study builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 versions. For this year'south report, the authors are specially indebted to Lena Graber of the Immigrant Legal Resource Centre and Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Centre for their feedback and help putting the changes to immigration detention into context, Jacob Kang-Brown of the Vera Constitute of Justice for sharing land prison data, Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment data, Emily Widra and Leah Wang for research support, Naila Awan and Wanda Bertram for their helpful edits, Ed Epping for aid with one of the visuals, and Jordan Miner for upgrading our slideshow technology. Still, whatever errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a information visualization similar this, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

We give thanks the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge for their support of our research into the employ and misuse of jails in this country. We too thank Public Welfare Foundation for their back up of our reports that fill key data and messaging gaps. Finally, we'd similar to thank each of our individual donors — your commitment to catastrophe mass incarceration makes our piece of work possible.

About the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Research Managing director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the writer of Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Divide: Tracking women's state prison house growth, and the 2016 study Punishing Poverty: The high cost of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Arrest, Release, Repeat: How law and jails are misused to respond to social bug with Alexi Jones. In addition to these reports, Wendy oftentimes contributes briefings on contempo data releases, bookish 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 house Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national discussion nearly mass incarceration.

Most 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 help the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation's fight to keep the prison system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison house gerrymandering) and plays a leading role in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison house and jail telephone manufacture and the video visitation manufacture. The arrangement likewise sounded the warning in 2020 on the danger of COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons and jails, and throughout the pandemic has provided frequent updates on releases, vaccines, and other prison policies critical to saving lives behind bars.