Who Pays the True Cost of Incarceration on Families

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020 Tweet this

By Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner
March 24, 2020
Printing release

Tin it really be truthful that nigh people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you lot might think, because our state'due south systems of confinement are so fragmented. The diverse regime agencies involved in the justice organisation collect a lot of critical information, but it is not designed to assistance policymakers or the public understand what'south going on. As public back up for criminal justice reform continues to build, yet, information technology'southward more important than ever that nosotros get the facts straight and sympathize the big picture.

This written report offers some much needed clarity past piecing together this land'south disparate systems of confinement. The American criminal justice arrangement holds almost ii.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, one,772 juvenile correctional facilities, three,134 local jails, 218 clearing detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails too equally in military prisons, civil commitment centers, land psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.Due south. territories.ⁱ This report provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.South., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the existent drivers of mass incarceration, including exceedingly punitive responses to even the virtually pocket-sized offenses.

Slideshow 1. Swipe for more detailed views.

This large-picture view allows united states to focus on the almost of import drivers of mass incarceration and identify important, but often ignored, systems of solitude. The detailed views bring these disregarded systems to light, from immigration detention to civil commitment and youth confinement. In particular, local jails oftentimes receive short shrift in larger discussions nigh criminal justice, but they play a critical office as "incarceration's front door" and have a far greater touch than the daily population suggests.

While this pie chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional system, the graphic does not capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities, nor the far larger universe of people whose lives are affected by the criminal justice system. Every yr, over 600,000 people enter prison house gates, but people go to jail 10.half-dozen million times each twelvemonth.² Jail churn is specially loftier because most people in jails take non been convicted.ⁱⁱⁱ Some have merely been arrested and volition brand bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain backside bars until their trial. But a small number (virtually 160,000 on any given twenty-four hours) accept been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a yr. At least 1 in 4 people who get to jail will be arrested again within the same twelvemonth — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance utilize disorders, whose bug only worsen with incarceration.

Slideshow two. Swipe for more than detail on pre-trial detention.

With a sense of the big picture, the adjacent question is: why are so many people locked up? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of individual companies driving incarceration? Or is it actually most public rubber and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths nearly incarceration. Nigh take a kernel of truth, just these myths distract us from focusing on the about important drivers of incarceration.

V myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the utilize of private prisons, and depression-paid or unpaid prison house labor are amidst the nigh contentious issues in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. But they exercise not answer the question of why most people are incarcerated, or how we tin dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of confinement. Also, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses ofttimes derail of import conversations about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong penalization. Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to community supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration often lead to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that tin can stop mass incarceration, and not just put a dent in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

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

Information technology's truthful that law, prosecutors, and judges keep to punish people harshly for nothing more than drug possession. Drug offenses notwithstanding account for the incarceration of almost one-half a meg people,⁴ and nonviolent drug convictions remain a defining characteristic of the federal prison house system. Constabulary notwithstanding brand over i meg drug possession arrests each twelvemonth,^five many of which atomic number 82 to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for whatsoever time to come offenses.

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

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

The 2nd myth: Private prisons are the corrupt eye of mass incarceration

In fact, less than nine% of all incarcerated people are held in individual prisons; the vast bulk are in publicly-owned prisons and jails.⁶ Some states take more people in private prisons than others, of course, and the industry has lobbied to maintain high levels of incarceration, but private prisons are essentially a parasite on the massive publicly-owned organization — not the root of it.

Nevertheless, a range of private industries and even some public agencies continue to profit from mass incarceration. Many urban center and canton jails hire infinite to other agencies, including land prison systems,⁷ the U.Southward. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Private companies are ofttimes granted contracts to operate prison house food and health services (ofttimes and so bad they result in major lawsuits), and prison house and jail telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar individual industries. By privatizing services like phone calls, medical care and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social cost.

Private prisons and jails hold less than nine percentage of all incarcerated people, making them a relatively small-scale part of a mostly publicly-run correctional organization.

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

Just 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. But about 5,000 people in prison — less than i% — are employed by individual 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, merely this all the same only represents nigh vi% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)⁸

But prisons practice 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 establish that on boilerplate, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per 24-hour interval for the virtually common prison house jobs. In at least v states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with piddling regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. Forcing people to piece of work for low or no pay and no benefits allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people — hiding the truthful cost of running prisons from most Americans.

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

Peculiarly harmful is the myth that people who commit fierce or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or even a lifetime of punishment. Every bit lawmakers and the public increasingly hold that past policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of "not-non-nons" — people convicted of non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. If we are serious about catastrophe mass incarceration, we will have to modify our responses to more serious and violent law-breaking.

Backsliding data practise not back up the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to be locked away for decades for the sake of public safety. People convicted of tearing and sexual offenses are actually among the least likely to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates xx% lower than all other offense categories combined. More broadly, people convicted of any vehement offense are less likely to exist rearrested in the years afterward release than those bedevilled of holding, drug, or public order offenses. One reason: age is one of the primary predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early adulthood and so declines with historic period, yet we incarcerate people long after their risk has declined.

Despite this evidence, people bedevilled of fierce offenses frequently face decades of incarceration, and those convicted of sexual offenses can be committed to indefinite solitude or stigmatized by sex offender registries long after completing their sentences. And while some of the justice system'due south response has more to practise with retribution than public safety, more incarceration is not what most victims of crime want. National survey data show that most victims want violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that accost the root causes of crime, not more investment in carceral systems that cause more than harm.

The 5th myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to reduce incarceration

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is often seen as a "lenient" punishment, or as an platonic "alternative" to incarceration. But while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to existence locked upwardly, the conditions imposed on those under supervision are often so restrictive that they set people up to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant surveillance (particularly with electronic monitoring) result in frequent "failures," ofttimes for minor infractions like breaking curfew or failing to pay unaffordable supervision fees.

In 2016, at to the lowest degree 168,000 people were incarcerated for such "technical violations" of probation or parole — that is, non for any new crime.⁹ Probation, in detail, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to support and reward success rather than discover mistakes, it is not a reliable "alternative."

Slideshow iv. Swipe for more detail about what the data on recividism actually shows.

The high costs of depression-level offenses

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

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

Often overlooked in discussions well-nigh mass incarceration are the various "holds" that keep people backside confined for administrative reasons. A mutual example is when people on probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new crime or a "technical violation." If a parole or probation officeholder suspects that someone has violated supervision weather, they can file a "detainer" (or "concord"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives after conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a pocket-size infraction tin exist greatly destabilizing. The national information do not exist to say exactly how many people are in jail because of probation or parole violations or detainers, simply initial evidence shows that these account for over 1-third of some jail populations. This problem is not limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Quango of State Governments plant that 1 in 4 people in land prisons are incarcerated every bit a consequence of supervision violations.

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 every bit jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated thirteen million misdemeanor charges sweep droves of Americans into the criminal justice system each year (and that's excluding civil violations and speeding). These low-level offenses account for over 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may audio like small potatoes, only they carry serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants merely too for broader society, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. So there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are oft non appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and have a probation sentence to avoid jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty, and are and so burdened with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal tape, as well as the heightened risk of hereafter incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system 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 can end upwards in jail even if their offense is not punishable with jail time. Why? Because if a defendant fails to appear in court or to pay fines and fees, the guess tin can outcome a "bench warrant" for their arrest, directing police enforcement to jail them in club to bring them to court. While there is currently no national judge of the number of active bench warrants, their utilize is widespread and in some places, incredibly mutual. In Monroe County, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an active demote warrant at whatsoever time, more than 3 times the number of people in the canton jails.

But bench warrants are ofttimes unnecessary. Most people who miss court are non trying to avoid the police; more than often, they forget, are confused by the court procedure, or have a schedule conflict. One time a bench warrant is issued, however, defendants frequently end up living as "low-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, becoming transient, and/or avoiding public life (fifty-fifty hospitals) to avoid having to go to jail.

Offense categories might non mean what you retrieve

To empathise the main drivers of incarceration, the public needs to encounter how many people are incarcerated for unlike criminal offense types. Simply the reported crime data oversimplifies how people collaborate with the criminal justice system in ii of import ways: it reports merely 1 offense category per person, and it reflects the event of the legal process, obscuring important details of actual events.

First, when a person is in prison for multiple offenses, only the most serious offense is reported.^ten And so, for example, in that location are people in prison for fierce offenses who were as well convicted of drug offenses, but they are included but in the "violent" category in the data. This makes it hard to grasp the complexity of criminal events, such equally the part drugs may take played in violent or holding offenses. We must besides consider that almost all convictions are the event of plea bargains, where defendants plead guilty to a bottom offense, possibly in a unlike category, or one that they did not actually commit.

Secondly, many of these categories group together people bedevilled of a wide range of offenses. For vehement offenses peculiarly, these labels can misconstrue perceptions of individual "violent offenders" and exaggerate the scale of dangerous tearing law-breaking. For example, "murder" is an extremely serious offense, but that category groups together the pocket-size number of serial killers with people who committed acts that are unlikely, for reasons of circumstance or advanced age, to ever happen once again. It as well includes offenses that the boilerplate person may not consider to be murder at all. In particular, the felony murder rule says that if someone dies during the commission of a felony, everyone involved tin be equally guilty of murder equally the person who pulled the trigger. Acting as lookout during a break-in where someone was accidentally killed is indeed a serious offense, but many may be surprised that this can be considered murder in the U.South.¹¹

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

Looking more closely at incarceration by offense type likewise exposes some disturbing facts about the 52,000 youth in confinement in the Usa: too many are there for a "most serious offense" that is not fifty-fifty a crime. For case, there are over 6,600 youth backside bars for technical violations of their probation, rather than for a new offense. An boosted 1,700 youth are locked upward for "condition" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not law violations for adults, such equally running abroad, truancy, and incorrigibility."¹² Near one in ten youth held for a criminal or delinquent criminal offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and most of the others are held in juvenile facilities that wait and operate a lot similar prisons and jails.

Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for immigration-related reasons, nosotros find that 11,100 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of clearing offenses, and thirteen,600 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 re-entry — in other words, for no more serious offense than crossing the edge without permission.¹³

Slideshow 5. Swipe for more than item about youth solitude, immigrant confinement and psychiatric solitude.

Another 39,000 people are civilly detained by U.S. Immigration and Community Enforcement (ICE) not for any crime, but simply for their undocumented immigrant status. Water ice detainees are physically confined in federally-run or privately-run immigration detention facilities, or in local jails under contract with ICE. An additional 3,600 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Part of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family members, or friends. While these children are not held for any criminal or delinquent offense, near are held in shelters or even juvenile placement facilities under detention-like conditions.^fourteen

Adding to the universe of people who are confined because of justice system involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to state psychiatric hospitals and civil commitment centers. Many of these people are not fifty-fifty convicted, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are being evaluated pre-trial or treated for incompetency to stand up trial; vi,000 have been constitute not guilty past reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill; some other 6,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained later on their prison house sentences are consummate. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much like prisons.

One time we accept wrapped our minds around the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, we should zoom out and notation that people who are incarcerated are but a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. There are another 840,000 people on parole and a staggering 3.vi million people on probation. Many millions more accept completed their sentences merely are still living with a criminal record, a stigmatizing label that comes with collateral consequences such as barriers to employment and housing.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice organisation, we should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind by policy change. Poverty, for example, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison house and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.South. population.¹⁵ The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bail: The median felony bail bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained defendant. As a result, people with depression incomes are more than likely to confront the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is likewise ofttimes the outcome, as a criminal record and time spent in prison house destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.¹⁶

It'southward no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation's prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who brand upward 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S residents. The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men'south, and who are oft backside bars because of financial obstacles such as an inability to pay bail. As policymakers go on to button for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avert changes that will widen disparities, every bit has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in country prisons.

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

Equipped with the total motion-picture show of how many people are locked up in the United states, where, and why, our nation has a better foundation for the long overdue conversation about criminal justice reform. For example, the information makes information technology clear that ending the state of war on drugs will non solitary terminate mass incarceration, though the federal government and some states have taken an of import step by reducing the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Looking at the "whole pie" also opens up other conversations about where nosotros should focus our energies:

• Are country officials and prosecutors willing to rethink not but long sentences for drug offenses, just the reflexive, simplistic policymaking that has served to increase incarceration for violent offenses besides?
• Exercise policymakers and the public take the stamina to face the second largest slice of the pie: the thousands of locally administered jails? Volition state, county, and metropolis governments be brave enough to terminate coin bail without imposing unnecessary conditions in lodge to bring down pretrial detention rates? Will local leaders be brave plenty to redirect public spending to smarter investments like community-based drug handling and job training?
• What is the role of the federal government in ending mass incarceration? The federal prison system is just a small slice of the full pie, only the federal government can certainly utilize its financial and ideological power to incentivize and illuminate better paths forward. At the same time, how tin can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges — who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — slow the flow of people into the criminal justice arrangement?
• 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, will states respond to public pressure to end contracts that clasp coin from people backside bars?
• Can we implement reforms that both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.South. and the well-known racial and indigenous disparities in the criminal justice system?

Now that nosotros tin can encounter the big picture of how many people are locked up in the U.s.a. in the various types of facilities, we can see that something needs to change. Looking at the big picture requires us to ask if it really makes sense to lock up 2.3 million people on any given day, giving this nation the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each individual piece in turn to ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each grouping behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and financial costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to coin bond, tin meaningfully reduce our lodge'south use of incarceration. At the aforementioned time, we should exist wary of proposed reforms that seem promising just volition have but minimal effect, because they simply transfer people from i slice of the correctional "pie" to another. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice issues might reasonably wait that a big picture analysis like this would be produced non by reform advocates, but by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't 1 centralized criminal justice organization to exercise such an analysis. Instead, even thinking just almost adult corrections, nosotros have a federal arrangement, 50 state systems, 3,000+ canton systems and 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 data from other systems, and that might duplicate or omit people counted by other systems.

This isn't to disbelieve the work of the Agency of Justice Statistics, which, despite express resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the data on correctional facilities. And it's not to say that the FBI doesn't work difficult to amass and standardize police arrest and criminal offense report information. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal agencies that carry out the work of the criminal justice arrangement - and are the sources of BJS and FBI data - weren't gear up to respond many of the simple-sounding questions near the "system."

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

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

Finally, readers who rely on this report year later year may notice that some of the information have non changed since the last version was published in 2019, including the number of people in jails in Indian country, on probation, and on parole. This is because, since 2017, government data releases have been delayed by many months - even years - compared to by publication schedules, and the information nerveless over two years ago have notwithstanding to exist made public.

These delays are non limited to the regular information publications that this report relies on, but too special data collections that provide richly detailed, self-reported data most incarcerated people and their experiences in prison and jail, namely the Survey of Prison house Inmates (conducted in 2016 for the first fourth dimension since 2004) and the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (last conducted in 2002 and at present slated for 2021 — which would make a 2022 report about fifteen years off-schedule).

While we eagerly await these future releases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, we anticipate that without significant investments in funding, staffing, and leadership, its data releases will continue at their current pace. For this reason, the side by side updates to our "Whole Pie" reports will likely besides follow a slower schedule.

Not straight comparable with past pie reports

Before explaining the data sources, we want to explain two methodology changes that make this study not direct comparable with by reports. Dissimilar by years, in this report:

• We included all youth in residential placement for justice organisation involvement that were "detained" (as opposed to "committed") in our pretrial detention detail slide. Until last year (2019), we included only youth who were detained considering they were awaiting a hearing or arbitrament. Our electric current methodology also includes youth whose status was "detained" while they were awaiting disposition or placement, because the court had non yet committed them to the facility where they were held.
• We included children held in the custody of the Role of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in our clearing detention count in the principal graphic, and in several detail slides. While these children are non held past ORR considering of any criminal or delinquent charges, they are typically held in detention-like weather; therefore, they fit into our holistic view of confinement in the U.Due south.

Data sources

This briefing uses the most contempo data available on the number of people in various types of facilities and the nigh significant charge or conviction. This year, as discussed higher up, several planned government reports were not published on their predictable schedule, delayed in office by the government shutdown of December 2018 and January 2019. Nosotros sought out alternative data sources where possible, only some data but has all the same to be updated. Furthermore, because not all types of data are collected each year, we sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, nosotros applied the pct distribution of offense types from the previous twelvemonth to the electric current year'southward total count information. For this reason, we chose to round about 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 result in some parts not adding up precisely to the total.

Our data sources were:

• Land prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison 2018 Table ii provides the total yearend 2018 population. This written report does not include criminal offence data, however, so we practical the ratio of law-breaking types calculated from the most recent Agency of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2017 Table thirteen (equally of December 31, 2016) to the 2018 full state prison population.
• Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2017 Tabular array i and Table three, reporting average daily population and bedevilled status for midyear 2017, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002¹⁷ for offense types. See below and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why we used our own assay rather than the otherwise excellent Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of the aforementioned dataset, Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.
• Federal:
  • Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics, reporting data equally of Feb twenty, 2020 (total population of 174,923), and Prisoners in 2017 Table 15, reporting data as of September 30, 2017 (we practical the percentage distribution of offense types from that table to the 2020 convicted population).
  • U.S. Marshals Service provided a breakup of its "Prisoner Operations" population as of Oct 2018 by facility type (country and local, private contracted, federal, and not-paid facilities) in a response to our public records request. The number held in local jails came from our analysis of the Almanac Survey of Jails 2017 data fix, which showed that 23,552 people were held for the Marshals Service. To estimate the number held in state facilities, we subtracted the 23,552 held in jails from the combined "state and local facilities" population reported in the FOIA response. Because the criminal offence totals reported in the FOIA response do not add upwards to the reported population total, we created our own estimated offense breakdown, by applying the ratio of reported law-breaking types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "not reported" categories") to the full October 2018 population. 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 written report, as they are not included in most of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.
• Youth: Role of Juvenile Justice and Malversation Prevention, Easy Admission to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility information for October 25, 2017. Our data on youth incarcerated in developed prisons comes from Prisoners in 2017 Table 11, reporting information for December 31, 2017, and youth in adult jails from Jail Inmates in 2017 Tabular array 3, reporting data for the terminal weekday in June, 2017. The number of youth reported in Indian Country facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics written report Jails in Indian State, 2016 Appendix Table 4, reporting information for June 30, 2016. For more information on the geography of the juvenile organization, see the Youth First Initiative.
• Immigration detention: The February 22, 2020 count of 39,000 in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice) detention comes from ICE's Currently Detained Population spreadsheet.¹⁸ The count of three,600 youth in Function of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program Fact Sail, reporting the population as of January 30, 2020. Our estimates of how many Water ice detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come up from our analysis of a comprehensive Water ice detention facility list from November 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center. vii% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in private contract facilities, and 27% in urban center and county operated jails.
• Justice-related involuntary commitment:
  • Country psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals past courts after being institute "not guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty simply mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pre-trial evaluation or for treatment every bit "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI study, Forensic Patients in Land Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting data from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data ready, and for pre-trial, we chose to combine pre-trial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, because in most cases, these point people who have not nevertheless been convicted or sentenced. This is not a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, merely we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.
  • Ceremonious detention and delivery: (At least 20 states and the federal authorities operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of sexual crimes afterwards their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement there are technically ceremonious, but in reality are quite like prisons. People nether civil delivery are held in custody continuously from the time they kickoff serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their confinement in the civil facility.) The civil commitment counts come up from an almanac survey conducted by the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for most states are from the 2019 survey, only for states that did not participate in 2019, we included the almost recent figures available: Nebraska, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania's counts are from 2018, the BOP'south count is from 2017, and North Dakota'southward is from 2016. .
• Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.Southward. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Commonwealths of Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2017 Table twenty, reporting data for December 31, 2017.
• Indian Country (correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the U.Southward. Department of the Interior's Agency of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Land, 2016 Table 1, reporting data for June xxx, 2016.
• Armed forces: Prisoners in 2017 Tables xviii (for total population) and xix (for offense types) reporting information as of December 31, 2017.
• Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Correctional Populations in the The states, 2016 Table 1, Table 5 and Appendix Table 1, reporting information for December 31, 2016, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only once in their most restrictive category. (At the time of publication, newer data collected in 2016 was expected but not nonetheless available.) For readers interested in knowing the full number of people on parole and probation, ignoring whatsoever double-counting with other forms of correctional command, there are 874,800 people on parole and 3,673,100 people on probation.
• Individual facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explicate in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" department beneath) our identification of the number of people held in individual facilities was straightforward:
  • For both state prisons and the federal Bureau of Prisons, we relied on the counts of the number of people in "privately operated facilities" and "customs corrections centers" in Appendix Tabular array 3 in Correctional Populations in the United States, 2016 .
  • For the U.Southward. Marshals Service we used the FOIA response reporting the 1-day Oct 2018 population.
  • For youth, nosotros used the 2017 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

Adjustments to avoid double counting

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

• To avert anyone in clearing detention being counted twice, we removed the 27% (10,439) of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (Water ice) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. We removed 34.1% of these Water ice detainees from the jail bedevilled population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for Ice on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, as detailed in our report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)
• To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison authorities from being counted twice, nosotros removed the 80,917 people — cited in Table 17 of Prisoners in 2017 — confined in local jails on behalf of federal or state prison systems from the full jail population and from the numbers we calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avert those being held by the U.Southward. Marshals Service from being counted twice, we removed 23,552 Marshals detainees from the jail total that we found through our own analysis of the 2017 Annual Survey of Jails dataset. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail bedevilled population, and the balance from the jail unconvicted population. (Again, nosotros based these percentages on our analysis of the Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002.)
• Because we removed Water ice detainees and people nether the jurisdiction of federal and land authorities from the jail population, we had to recalculate the offense distribution reported in Contour of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "convicted" or "not convicted" without the people who reported that they were being held on behalf of state authorities, the Federal Agency of Prisons, the U.Due south. Marshals Service, or U.Due south. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.Due south. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Water ice).¹⁹ Our definition of "convicted" was those who reported that they were "To serve a sentence in this jail," "To await sentencing for an offense," or "To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else." Our definition of not convicted was "To stand trial for an criminal offense," "To look arraignment," or "To await a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."
• For our analysis of people held in private jails for local authorities, nosotros needed to employ a measure out that avoided double counting people who were held in private jails for other agencies (described in "private facilities," above). This is a trouble because of many private facilities that concur people for local jails too concord people for other agencies. (In fact, the bulk of people confined in private jails are held for federal and land authorities.) We therefore used the Demography of Jails 2013 (private facilities have "8" as the third digit of the FACID variable) and we removed the number of people held for the Marshals Service, Immigration and Community Enforcement, Bureau of Indian Affairs, other federal authorities, land prison systems, and those under tribal hold. After these adjustments, we adamant that there were 6,048 people held by individual facilities for local government.

Read the entire methodology

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

How many people are locked upward in the United States?

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow1/1

76% of people held by jails are not bedevilled of any crime

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow1/two

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow1/iii

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow1/4

Pretrial Detention

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow2/i

Pretrial policies drive jail growth

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow2/2

Local Jails: The real scandal is the churn

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow2/iii

Why are so many people detained in jails earlier trial? They're not wealthy enough to beget money bail.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow2/4

76% of people held by jails are not convicted of whatsoever crime

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow2/5

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow3/1

There are over one one thousand thousand drug possession arrests each year

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow3/2

Some states accept largely concluded the War on Drugs. Other states, no so much.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow3/3

Private prisons are a pocket-size piece of the pie

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#privateimage

Technical violations are the main reason for incarceration of people on probation and parole

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow4/1

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow4/2

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#recidivism_measures

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#recidivism_measures

Nearly bars youth are held for irenic offenses, or no crime at all.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow5/1

Near seventy,000 people are confined for immigration reasons

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow5/two

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow5/3

Mass incarceration directly impacts millions of people

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#directlyimpacted

Incarceration is just one piece of the much larger system of correctional control

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow6/1

Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow6/2

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow6/3

Women's state prison house populations have grown faster than men's

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow6/4

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow6/5

ane out of five incarcerated people in the world is incarcerated in the U.S.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#slideshows/slideshow6/half-dozen

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

Offense categories might not mean what y'all call back

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#offensecategories

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#smallerslices

5 myths about mass incarceration

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#myths

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

https://world wide web.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#firstmyth

The 2nd myth: Private prisons are the decadent heart of mass incarceration

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#secondmyth

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#thirdmyth

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#fourthmyth

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#fifthmyth

The high costs of low-level offenses

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#lowlevel

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#holds

Misdemeanors: Modest offenses with major consequences

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#misdemeanors

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#benchwarrants

Crime categories might not mean what y'all retrieve

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#offensecategories

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

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#community

Recidivism: A glace statistic

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#recidivism_measures

Each paragraph is also numbered, so y'all can utilise urls in this format:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#paragraph1
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#paragraph2
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html#paragraph3
etc…

Learn how to link to specific images and sections

Acknowledgments

All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, but this report builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, 2018, and 2019 versions. For this twelvemonth's report, the authors are especially indebted to Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center for feedback and research pointers on clearing detention, Emily Widra and Roxanne Daniel for research support, Wanda Bertram and Alexi Jones for their helpful edits, and Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and delivery data. Any errors or omissions, and terminal responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a data visualization like this, however, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Nosotros thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge for their back up of our research into the employ and misuse of jails in this country. We also give thanks Public Welfare Foundation and each of our private donors who give us the resources and the flexibility to speedily turn our insights into new motility resource.

Nigh the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Research Manager at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the writer of Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Split: Tracking women's state prison growth, and the 2016 report Punishing Poverty: The high toll of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Arrest, Release, Echo: How police and jails are misused to respond to social bug with Alexi Jones. In addition to these reports, Wendy often contributes briefings on recent data releases, academic inquiry, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more than.

Peter Wagner is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Prison house Policy Initiative. He co-founded the Prison house Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national word about the negative side effects of mass incarceration. He is a co-writer of a landmark report on the dysfunction in the prison house and jail phone market, Please Deposit All of Your Money. Some of his most recent work includes Post-obit the Money of Mass Incarceration and putting each state'south overuse of incarceration into the international context in States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018.

He is @PWPolicy on Twitter.

Near 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 help the public more than fully engage in criminal justice reform, the system leads the nation's fight to go on the prison house system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading role in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison and jail phone industry and the video visitation industry.

bridgessayinten.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

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