Mass Incarceration The Whole Pie 2024 Prison Policy Initiative

3/19/24, 9:42 AM Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024 | Prison Policy Initiative
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024

By Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner
March 14, 2024
Press release
Can it really be true that most people in jail are Sections

legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration The big picture
is a result of the war on drugs, or the profit motives
of private prisons? Have popular reforms really 10 Myths
triggered a crime wave? These essential questions
are harder to answer than you might expect. The High costs of low-level offenses
various government agencies involved in the
criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very Youth, immigration &
little is designed to help policymakers or the public involuntary commitment
understand what’s going on. The uncertainty that
Beyond the Pie: Community
results muddies the waters around our society’s use supervision, poverty, age, race,
of incarceration, giving lawmakers and lobbyists and gender
the opportunity to advance harmful policies that do
not make us safe. As criminal legal system reforms Necessary reforms
become increasingly central to political debate —
and are even scapegoated to resurrect old, Sources
ineffective “tough on crime” policies — it’s more
important than ever that we get the facts straight
and understand the big picture.
Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have one criminal legal system;
instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems. Together, these
systems hold over 1.9 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local
jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 142 immigration detention facilities, and 80
Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state
psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories — at a system-wide cost of at least
$182 billion each year. 1 2
This report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the data about this
country’s disparate systems of confinement. It provides a detailed look at where and why
people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some common myths about mass incarceration
to focus attention on overlooked issues that urgently require reform.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html 1/47
This big-picture view is a lens through which the main drivers of mass incarceration come
into focus; 3 it allows us to identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement,
from immigration detention to involuntary commitment and youth confinement. In
particular, local jails often receive short shrift in larger discussions about criminal legal
system reform, but they play a critical role as “incarceration’s front door” and have a far
greater impact than the daily population suggests.
Jails vs. prisons: What’s the difference?
Prisons are facilities under state or federal control where people who have been
convicted (usually of felonies) go to serve their sentences. Jails are city- or county-
run facilities where a majority of people locked up are there awaiting trial (in other
words, still legally innocent), many because they can’t afford to post bail. To make
things a little more complicated, some people do serve their sentences in local jails,
either because their sentences are short or because the jail is renting space to the
state prison system.
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 legal system. In
2022, about 469,000 people entered prison gates, but people went to jail more than 7 million
times. 4 5 Some have just been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many
others are too poor to make bail and remain in jail until their trial. 6 Only a small number
(about 102,700 on any given day) have been convicted, and are generally serving
misdemeanors sentences of under a year. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested
again within the same year — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance
use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.
With a sense of the big picture, the next question is: why are so many people locked up?
How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of private companies
driving incarceration? Or is it really about public safety and keeping dangerous people off
the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Most have a kernel of
truth, but these myths distract us from focusing on the most important drivers of
incarceration.
Ten myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid
prison labor are among the most contentious issues in the criminal legal system today
because they inspire moral outrage. But they do not answer the question of why most people
are incarcerated or how we can dramatically — and safely — reduce our use of confinement.
Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses often derail important
conversations about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong
punishment. False notions of what a “violent crime” conviction means about an individual’s
dangerousness continue to be used in an attempt to justify long sentences — even though
incarceration does not deter crime and more incarceration is not what victims want. At the
same time, misguided beliefs about the “services” provided by jails are used to rationalize
the construction of massive new “mental health jails.” Finally, simplistic solutions to
reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to community
supervision, ignore the fact that “alternatives” to incarceration often lead to incarceration
anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that can end mass incarceration, and not just put a
dent in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.
Offense categories might not mean what you think
To understand the main drivers of incarceration, the public needs to see how many
people are incarcerated for different offense types. But the reported offense data
oversimplifies how people interact with the criminal legal system in two important
ways: it reports only one offense category per person, and it reflects the outcome 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. 7 So, for example, there are people in prison for violent offenses who
were also convicted of drug offenses, but they are included only in the “violent”
category in the data. This makes it hard to grasp the complexity of criminal events,
such as the role drugs may have played in violent or property offenses. We must
also consider that almost all convictions are the result of plea bargains, where
defendants plead guilty to a lesser offense, possibly in a different category or one
that they did not actually commit, in exchange for a more lenient sentence.
Secondly, many of these categories group together people convicted of a wide

range of offenses. For violent offenses especially, these labels can distort
perceptions of individual “violent offenders” and exaggerate the scale of
dangerous, violent crime. Even the seemingly clear-cut offense of “murder” is
applied to a variety of situations and individuals: it lumps together the small
number of serial killers with people who participated in acts that are unlikely to
ever happen again, either due to circumstance or age. “Murder” also includes acts
that the average 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 can be as guilty of murder as the person who directly caused the
death. Many may be surprised that a person who was acting as a lookout during a
break-in where someone was accidentally killed can be convicted of murder. 8
We discuss this problem in more detail in The fourth myth: By definition, “violent
crimes” involve physical harm, below.
The first myth: Private prisons are the corrupt heart of mass incarceration
In fact, just 8% of all incarcerated people are held in private prisons; the vast majority are in
publicly-owned prisons and jails. 9 Some states have 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 system — not the
root of it.
Nevertheless, a range of private industries and even some public agencies continue to profit
from mass incarceration. Many city and county jails rent space to other agencies, including
state prison systems, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs
10
Enforcement (ICE). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison
food and health services (often so bad they result in major lawsuits), and prison and jail
telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. By
privatizing services like phone calls, medical care, and commissary, prisons and jails are
offloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming
their budgets at an unconscionable social cost.
Private prisons and jails hold just 8% of all incarcerated people, making them a relatively small part of a
mostly publicly-run correctional system.
The second myth: Prisons are “factories behind fences” that exist to
provide companies with a huge slave labor force
Simply put, private companies using prison labor are not what stands in the way of ending
mass incarceration, nor are they the source of most prison jobs. Only about 6,000 people in
prison — less than 1% — are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP
program, which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger
portion work for state-owned “correctional industries,” which pay much less, but this still
only represents about 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.) 11
But prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry, and other
operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 study
found that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the
most common prison jobs. 12 In at least five states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover,
work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers
have few rights and protections. If they refuse to work, incarcerated people face disciplinary
action. For those who do work, the paltry wages they receive often go right back to the
prison, which charges them for basic 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 third myth: Releasing “nonviolent drug offenders” would end mass
incarceration
It’s true that police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing
more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 360,000
people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. And
until the pandemic hit (and the official crime data became less reliable), police were still
making over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, 13 many of which lead 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 any future offenses.
Nevertheless, 4 out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a
drug offense — either a more serious offense or an even less serious one. To end mass
incarceration, we will have to change how our society and our criminal legal system respond
to crimes more serious than drug possession. We must also stop incarcerating people for
behaviors that are even more benign.
The fourth myth: By definition, “violent crime” involves physical harm

The distinction between “violent” and “nonviolent” crime means less than you might think;
in fact, these terms are so widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy
context. In the public discourse about crime, people typically use “violent” and “nonviolent”
as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse,
these terms are also used as coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as
inherently dangerous versus non-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, purse-
snatching, manufacturing methamphetamines, and stealing drugs are considered violent
crimes. Burglary is generally considered a property crime, but an array of state and federal
laws classify burglary as a violent crime in certain situations, such as when it occurs at night,
in a residence, or with a weapon present. So even if the building was unoccupied, someone
convicted of burglary could be punished for a violent crime and end up with a long prison
sentence and a “violent” record.
The common misunderstanding of what “violent crime” really refers to — a legal distinction
that often has little to do with actual or intended harm — is one of the main barriers to
meaningful criminal legal system reform. Reactionary responses to the idea of violent crime
often lead policymakers to categorically exclude from reforms people convicted of legally
“violent” crimes. But almost half (47%) of people in prison and jail are there for offenses
classified as “violent,” so these carveouts end up gutting the impact of otherwise well-
crafted policies. As we and many others have explained before, cutting incarceration rates to
anything near international norms will be impossible without changing how we respond to
violent crime. To start, we have to be clearer about what that loaded term really means.
The fifth myth: People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are too
dangerous to be released
Of course, many people convicted of violent offenses have caused serious harm to others.
But how does the criminal legal system determine the risk that they pose to their
communities? Again, the answer is too often “we judge them by their offense type,” rather
than “we evaluate their individual circumstances.” This reflects the particularly harmful
myth that people who commit violent or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and
thus warrant many decades or even a lifetime of punishment.
As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that past policies have led to unnecessary
incarceration, it’s time to consider policy changes that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of
“non-non-nons” — people convicted of non-violent, 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 crime.
Recidivism: A slippery statistic
As long as we are considering recidivism rates as a measure of public safety risk,

we should also consider how recidivism is defined and measured. While this may
sound esoteric, this is an issue that affects an important policy question: at what
point — and with what measure — do we consider someone’s reentry a success or
failure?
The term “recidivism” suggests a relapse in behavior, a return to criminal

offending. But what is a valid sign of criminal offending: self-reported behavior,
arrest, conviction, or incarceration? Defining recidivism as rearrest casts the widest
net and results in the highest rates, but arrest does not suggest conviction, nor
actual guilt. More useful measures than rearrest include conviction for a new crime,
re-incarceration, or a new sentence of imprisonment; the latter may be most
relevant, since it measures offenses serious enough to warrant a prison sentence.
Importantly, people convicted of violent offenses have the lowest recidivism rates
by each of these measures. However, the recidivism rate for violent offenses is a
whopping 48 percentage points higher when rearrest, rather than imprisonment, is
used to define recidivism.
The cutoff point at which recidivism is measured also matters: If someone is

arrested for the first time 5, 10, or 20 years after they leave prison, that’s very
different from someone arrested within months of release. The most recent
government study of recidivism reported that 82% of people incarcerated in state
prison were arrested at some point in the 10 years following their release. However,
the vast majority of people in this group were arrested within the first three years,
and more than half within the first year. The longer the time period, the higher the
reported recidivism rate — but the lower the actual threat to public safety.
A related question is whether the particular post-release offense matters. For

example, 69% of people imprisoned for a violent offense are rearrested within five
years of release, but only 44% are rearrested for another violent offense; they are
much more likely to be rearrested for a public order offense. If someone convicted
of robbery is arrested years later for a liquor law violation, it makes no sense to
view this very different, much less serious, offense the same way we would another
arrest for robbery. Moreover, public order offenses often include “technical”
violations, so in many states, recidivism statistics are inflated by these non-criminal
infractions.
A final note about recidivism: While policymakers frequently cite reducing

recidivism as a priority, few states collect the data that would allow them to
monitor and improve their own performance in real time. For example, the Council
of State Governments asked correctional systems what kind of recidivism data they
collect and publish for people leaving prison and people starting probation. What
they found is that states typically track just one measure of post-release recidivism,
and few states track recidivism while on probation at all:
If state-level advocates and political leaders want to know if their state is even
trying to reduce recidivism, we suggest one easy litmus test: Do they collect and
publish basic data about the number and causes of people’s interactions with the
justice system while on probation, or after release from prison?
Recidivism data 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 likely to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or
sexual assault have rearrest rates 20% lower than all other offense categories combined. One
reason for the lower rates of recidivism among people convicted of violent offenses: age is
one of the main predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early
adulthood and then declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long after their risk has
declined. 14
The sixth myth: Reforming the criminal legal system leads to more crime
The specter of “rising crime” has re-emerged as a central issue among elected officials,
political candidates, and in media commentary. Their explanations and exaggerations of
recent crime trends don’t add up, but these lies have serious consequences. After ticking up
slightly in 2020, the violent crime rate appears to have fallen dramatically in 2023. In
general, violent crime has remained remarkably steady over the last 15 years; property crime
has trended steeply downward and remains near historic lows (with the exception of auto
theft). Overall, the crime rate appears to be the lowest it’s been since 1963: 15
Jail and prison populations have continued to rebound toward their pre-pandemic levels —
not because of rising crime, but because pandemic-related delays in the system have
subsided. 16 Politics present another important explanation: many in law enforcement and on
the right (and some Democrats, too) have rushed to blame recent reforms for minor shifts in
crime trends in an effort to resurrect the same “tough on crime” policies that failed in the
1980s and 90s. The combination of restored court capacity and the return to 90s-era crime
policies crime policies — not COVID-era releases, 17 bail reform, changes to police
budgets, “progressive” prosecutors, or other popular reforms — best explain why more
people are behind bars this year than last. In reality, a number of studies have shown:
No evidence that progressive prosecutors were to blame for the increase in homicides
during the pandemic or in the five years before it. 18
Murder rates were an average of 40% higher in “red” states compared to “blue”
states in 2020; more broadly, murder rates over the years 2000-2020 were 23%
higher on average in “red” states.

Releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety. Moreover, the increases in
certain types of crime were seen in cities across the country, most of which have not
enacted bail reforms.
Far from being “defunded,” police budgets have increased in the vast majority of
cities and counties. And again, cities that increased funding, enacted no bail reforms,
and did not elect “progressive” prosecutors also saw increases in homicides in 2020
and 2021.
While crime rates remain near historic lows, what has actually changed most is the public’s
perception of crime, which is driven less by first-hand experience than by the false claims of
reform opponents. These false claims are deliberately stoked to undo the hard-won, evidence
supported, common sense reforms that have only begun to put a dent in mass incarceration.
The seventh myth: Harsh punishments deter crime, making us safer

Many people mistakenly believe that long sentences, paired with austere and even brutal
prison conditions, will have a deterrent effect on crime. But research has consistently found
that harsher sentences do not serve as effective “examples” that would prevent new people
from committing serious crimes. In 2016, the National Institute of Justice summarized the
research on deterrence, finding that prison sentences, and especially long sentences, do little
to deter future crime. 19 Another study concluded that, compared to punishments that don’t
involve prison or jail time, incarceration has either no effect or — worse — even a “mildly
criminogenic impact” on future lawbreaking. In other words, incarceration is
counterproductive: While a prison sentence can incapacitate people in the short term, it
actually increases the risk that someone will commit a crime after their release.
People face extremely poor living conditions in practically every jail and prison, which
negatively impacts their odds of success upon release, their families, and public health at
large. Routine failure to provide for the medical needs of incarcerated people is harmful
(even deadly) for those inside, and strains family resources and healthcare infrastructure
after they’re released — and nearly everyone will eventually be released. Poor nutrition
compounds health problems, as does contaminated water, pests, and exposure to extreme
heat and cold. The physical and psychological effects of incarceration, including the PTSD-
like Post-Incarceration Syndrome, make it harder to maintain employment and housing,
trapping people in cycles of incarceration. Put simply, when people are released from prison,
their health and wellbeing are intertwined with that of the community, so the harms visited
upon them inside impact everyone.
The eighth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Policymakers, judges, and prosecutors often invoke the name of victims to justify long
sentences for violent offenses. But contrary to the popular narrative, most victims of
violence want violence prevention, not incarceration. Again, harsh sentences don’t deter
violent crime, and many victims understand that incarceration can make people more of a
public safety risk. National survey data show that most victims support violence prevention,
social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that address the root causes of crime, not
more investment in carceral systems that cause more harm. 20 This suggests that they care
more about the health and safety of their communities than they do about retribution.
Victims and survivors of crime prefer investments in crime prevention rather than long prison sentences.
Moreover, people convicted of crimes are often victims themselves, complicating the moral
argument for harsh punishments as “justice.” While conversations about justice tend to treat
perpetrators and victims of crime as two 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.” 21 As victims of crime know, breaking this cycle of harm will
require greater investments in communities, not the carceral system.
The ninth myth: Some people need to go to jail to get treatment and
services
It’s absolutely true that people ensnared in the criminal legal system have a lot of unmet
needs. But jails and prisons are no place to recover from a mental health crisis or substance
use disorder — they are designed for punishment, not care. Local jails, especially, are filled
with people who need medical care and social services, but jails have repeatedly failed to
provide these services. For example, while two-thirds of people in local jails have substance
use disorders, only 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 treatment, jails more often interrupt drug treatment by cutting patients off from their
medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while
in jail increased by almost 400%; typically, these individuals died within just one day of
admission. 22
Similarly, jails often put people with

mental health problems in solitary
confinement, provide limited access to
counseling, and leave them unmonitored
due to constant staffing shortages. The
result: suicide is the leading cause of death
in local jails, with death rates far
exceeding those found in the general U.S.
population. Given this track record, the
trend of proposing new “mental health
jails” to respond to decades of
disinvestment in community-based
services is particularly alarming. Jails are
not safe detox facilities, nor are they
capable of providing the therapeutic
environment people require for long-term
recovery and healing. Even when other
options for providing mental health and substance use treatment are scarce, decisionmakers
should not rely on correctional settings to do so.
The tenth 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 ideal “alternative” to incarceration. But while
remaining in the community is generally preferable to being locked up, the conditions 23
imposed on those under supervision are often so restrictive that they set people up to fail. 24
The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant
surveillance result in frequent “failures,” often for minor infractions like breaking curfew or
failing to pay unaffordable supervision fees.
At last count, at least 128,000 people were incarcerated for such non-criminal “technical
violations” of probation or parole. 25 These supervision violations accounted for 27% of all
admissions to state and federal prisons. In fact, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that
almost a quarter (24%) of people in state prisons were on probation at the time of their
arrest, underscoring how this “alternative to incarceration” often simply delays incarceration.
Newer methods of community supervision don’t simply delay incarceration; they replicate
the experience so closely through the use of technology that they amount to “e-carceration”
or “electronic prisons.” 26 The use of electronic monitoring, in particular — whether via
ankle shackle, phone app, or other technology — has exploded in recent years, especially in
the contexts of pretrial supervision and immigration enforcement. 27 Proponents argue the
technology improves court compliance and public safety, but a recent study found the
practice accomplishes neither of these goals. The technology is unreliable, frequently leading
to security breaches and false alarms, and it has created yet another path to incarceration via
technical violations. 28 Like probation before it, electronic monitoring is touted as an
“alternative” to incarceration, but in reality it is expanding the scope of correctional control,

not reducing the number of people behind bars.
The high costs of low-level offenses

Most people in the U.S. criminal legal system are not accused of serious crimes; more often,
they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses,
like technical violations of probation and parole, can lead to incarceration and other serious
consequences. Rather than investing in community-driven safety initiatives, cities and
counties are still pouring vast amounts of public resources into the processing and
punishment of these minor offenses.
Probation & parole violations and “holds” lead to unnecessary

incarceration
Often overlooked in discussions about mass incarceration are the various “holds” that keep
people behind bars for administrative reasons. A common example is when people on
probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new 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 “hold”), rendering that person
ineligible for release on bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives after conviction or
incarceration, returning to jail for a minor infraction can be profoundly destabilizing. The
most recent data show that nationally, almost 1 in 5 (19%) people in jail are there for a
violation of probation or parole, though in some places these violations or detainers account
for over one-third of the jail population. This problem is not limited to local jails, either; in
2019, the Council of State Governments found that nearly 1 in 4 people in state prisons are
incarcerated as a result of supervision violations.
A particularly disturbing type of “hold” is becoming increasingly common: people held in

jails while awaiting transfer to psychiatric facilities. One recent study reports that “thousands
of [people] with serious mental illness languish in jail for months, or even years, waiting for
a state hospital bed to open.” 29 Typically, these vulnerable adults are in need of evaluation
or restoration of their competency to stand trial. But being held in jails puts them at
heightened risk of victimization, self-harm, and even additional criminal charges for
behaviors that are actually symptoms of their illness. The result of disinvestment in mental
health infrastructure and the criminalization of mental illness, these “holds” are not only
unnecessary, but unconscionable.
Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

The “massive misdemeanor system” in the U.S. is another important but overlooked
contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as benign as
jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated 13 million misdemeanor charges sweep
droves of Americans into the criminal legal system each year (and that’s excluding civil
violations and speeding). These low-level offenses, along with other non-felony offenses,
typically account for about 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more in
some states and counties. The rampant criminalization of homelessness and aggressive
enforcement of these laws — almost all misdemeanors — also contributes to harmful and
costly cycles of homelessness and incarceration.
Misdemeanor charges may sound trivial, but they carry serious financial, personal, and
social costs, especially for defendants but also for broader society, which finances the
processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with
them. And then there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are often not
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 then burdened with
the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal record, as well as the heightened
risk of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system that pressures
innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.
“Low-level fugitives” live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates

and unpaid fines
Defendants can end up 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 judge can issue a
“bench warrant” for their arrest, directing law enforcement to jail them in order to bring
them to court. While there is currently no national estimate of the number of active bench
warrants, their use is widespread and, in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe
County, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an active bench warrant at any time,
more than 3 times the number of people in the county jails.
But bench warrants are often unnecessary. Most people who miss court are not trying to
avoid the law; more often, they forget, are confused by the court process, or have a schedule
conflict. Once 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
(even 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
about the 35,500 youth in confinement in the United States: too many are there for a “most
serious offense” that is not even a crime. For example, there are 2,700 youth behind bars for
non-criminal violations of their probation rather than for a new offense. An additional 700
youth are locked up for “status” offenses, which are “behaviors that are not law violations
for adults such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility.” 30 About 1 in 11 youth held for
a criminal or delinquent offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and most of the others are
held in juvenile facilities that look and operate a lot like prisons and jails.
We also know that for many children, legal system involvement overlaps with other kinds of
“systems” involvement, such as the foster care system: almost half of youth in foster care
have an encounter with the criminal legal system by age 17. The criminalization of youth is
apparent in the adult prison population: more than one-third (38%) of people in state prisons
were first arrested before they turned 16.The early criminalization of youth is apparent in the
adult prison population: more than one-third (38%) of people in state prisons were first
arrested before they turned 16.
Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for immigration-related
reasons, we find that over 6,000 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of
immigration offenses, and 12,400 more are held pretrial or presentence by the U.S. Marshals
Service. The vast majority of people incarcerated for criminal immigration offenses are
accused of illegal entry or illegal reentry — in other words, for no more serious offense than
crossing the border without permission. 31
Another 38,000 people are

civilly detained by U.S.
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) not for any
crime, but simply because they
are facing deportation. 32
People detained by ICE are
physically confined in
federally-run or privately-run
immigration detention
facilities, or in local jails under
contract with ICE. While this
number is below what it was
pre-pandemic, it’s actually
climbed back up from a record
low of 13,500 people in ICE
detention in early 2021. In fact, ICE is very rapidly expanding its overall surveillance and
33
control over the non-criminal migrant population by growing its electronic monitoring-based
“alternatives to detention” program. 34
An additional 8,000 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Office of
Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family members, or friends.
Their number has more than doubled since January of 2020. While these children are not
held for any criminal or delinquent offense, most are held in shelters or even juvenile
placement facilities under detention-like conditions. 35
Adding to the universe of people who are confined because of criminal legal system
involvement, 25,000 people are involuntarily committed in state psychiatric hospitals and
civil commitment centers. 36 37 Many of these people are not even convicted, and some are
held indefinitely. These “forensic patients” include people being evaluated or treated for
incompetency to stand trial, as well as those found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty
but mentally ill, who may remain hospitalized for decades or for life. 38 Roughly 6,000 are
people convicted of sex-related crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained after
their prison sentences are complete. While the facilities they are held in aren’t typically run
by departments of correction, they are in reality much like prisons. Meanwhile, at least 38
states allow involuntary commitment for substance use disorder treatment, and in many
cases, people are sent to actual prisons and jails, which are inappropriate places for
treatment. 39
Beyond the “Whole Pie”: Community supervision, poverty, age, and race and
gender disparities
Once we have wrapped our minds around the “whole pie” of mass incarceration, we should
zoom out and note that people who are incarcerated are only a fraction of those impacted by
the criminal legal system. There are another 800,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.9
million people on probation. Many millions more have completed their sentences but are still
living with a criminal record, a stigmatizing label that comes with collateral consequences
such as barriers to employment and housing.
Far more people are impacted by mass incarceration than the 1.9 million currently confined. An estimated 19
million people are burdened with the collateral consequences of a felony conviction (this includes those
currently and formerly incarcerated), and an estimated 79 million have a criminal record of some kind; even
this is likely an underestimate, leaving out many people who have been arrested for misdemeanors. Finally,
FWD.us reports that 113 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 legal system, 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 and jail are
disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.S. population. 40 The criminal legal
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 low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial
detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is also frequently the outcome,
as a criminal record and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, initiates or
perpetuates cycles of homelessness, and decimates job opportunities. 41
It’s no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are
dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails. These racial disparities are
particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 35% of the prison and jail populations
but only 14% of all U.S residents. 42 The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates
have for decades risen faster than men’s, and who are often behind bars because of financial
obstacles such as an inability to pay bail. As policymakers continue to push for reforms that
reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened
with juvenile confinement and with women in state prisons.
Finally, while states have made progress in reducing youth confinement — due to
developments in adolescent brain research, mounting evidence that confinement leads to
worse outcomes, and dogged advocacy to protect youth — the elder population in prison has
only grown. Many are stuck serving excessively long sentences, despite the evidence that
their incarceration is both extremely costly and unnecessary to ensure public safety.
Equipped with the full picture of how many people are locked up in the United States,
where, and why, we all have a better foundation for moving the conversation about criminal
legal system reform forward. For example, the data make it clear that ending the war on
drugs will not alone 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 up conversations about
where it makes sense to focus our energies at the local, state, and national levels. For
example:
How can we effectively invest in communities to make it less likely that someone
comes into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place? And what
measures can help aid successful reentry and end the vicious cycle of re-incarceration
that so many individuals and families experience?
Can we persuade government officials and prosecutors to revisit the reflexive,
simplistic policymaking that has served to increase incarceration for “violent”
offenses? How can we eliminate policy “carveouts” that exclude broad categories of
people from reforms and end up gutting the impact of reforms?
What will it take to embolden policymakers and the public to do what it takes to
shrink the second largest slice of the pie — the thousands of local jails? And what
will it take to redirect public spending to smarter investments like community-based
drug treatment and job training?
While the federal prison system is a small slice of the total pie, how can improved
federal policies and financial incentives be used to advance state and county-level
reforms? And for their part, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges —
who all control larger shares of the correctional pie — slow the flow of people into
the criminal legal system?
Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are not
private prison operators, but service providers that contract with public facilities, how
can governments end contracts that squeeze money from those behind bars and their
families?
What reforms can we implement to both reduce the number of people incarcerated in
the U.S. and the well-known racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal legal
system?
What lessons can we learn from the pandemic? Are federal, state, and local
governments prepared to respond to future pandemics, epidemics, natural disasters,
and other emergencies, including with plans to decarcerate? And how can states and
the federal government better utilize compassionate release and clemency powers
moving forward?
The United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate of
virtually any democratic nation on earth. Looking at the big picture of the 1.9 million people
locked up in the United States on any given day, we can see that something needs to
change. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each
individual slice of the carceral “pie” and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by
putting each group behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and
fiscal costs.
Even narrow policy changes, such as ending incarceration for “technical” violations, can
meaningfully reduce our society’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
simply transfer people from one slice of the correctional “pie” to another or needlessly
exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we hope to
develop strategies that actually shrink the “whole pie.”
Data sources & methodology
This section covers a lot of ground, from why we attempt to piece together the data ourselves
in the first place to where we source the data and how we adjust it to make the various pieces
fit together. Read on to learn:
Why we — and not the government — compile the data ⤵

Which data sources we relied on for state and federal prisons and local jail
populations ⤵
Which data sources we used for the smaller slices of the “pie”: youth, immigration,
involuntary commitments, U.S. territories, Indian Country jails, and the military ⤵
How we calculated the broader “pie” of correctional control, including probation and
parole systems ⤵
How we determined the number of private facilities ⤵

How we adjusted the data to make sure people were only counted once ⤵
What data we used to make our racial disparities graph — and why ⤵
People new to criminal legal issues might reasonably expect that a big picture analysis like
this would be produced not by advocates, but by the criminal legal system itself. The
unfortunate reality is that there isn’t one centralized system to do such an analysis. Instead,
even thinking just about adult corrections, we have a federal system, 50 state systems,
3,000+ county systems, 25,000+ municipal systems, and so on. Each of these systems
collects data for its own purposes that may or may not be compatible with data from other
systems and that might duplicate or omit people counted by other systems
This isn’t to discount the work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which, despite limited
resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the data on
correctional facilities. And it’s not to say that the FBI doesn’t work hard to aggregate and
standardize police arrest and crime report data. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal
agencies that carry out the work of the criminal legal system — and are the sources of BJS
and FBI data — weren’t set up to answer many of the simple-sounding questions about the
“system.”
Similarly, there are systems of confinement that might not consider themselves part of the
criminal legal system, but should be included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile
justice, immigration detention, civil commitment of people with sex-related convictions, and
involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals for criminal legal system involvement 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 available for each part of these systems,
and, where necessary, adjusted the data to ensure that each person was only counted once,
only once, and in the right place. ⤴
Data sources
This report uses the most recent data available on the number of people in various types of
facilities and the most significant charge or conviction. Because the various systems of
confinement collect and report data on different schedules, this report reflects population
data collected between 2019 and 2024. Furthermore, because not all types of data are
updated each year, we sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, we applied the
percentage distribution of offense types from the previous year to the current year’s total
count data. For this reason, we chose to round most labels in the graphics to the nearest
thousand, except where rounding to the nearest ten, nearest one hundred, or the nearest 500
was more informative given the context. This rounding process may also result in some parts
not adding up precisely to the total.
Our data sources were:
State prisons: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables

Table 1 provides the total population as of December 31, 2022, and Table 16 provides
data (as of December 31, 2021) that we use to calculate the ratio of different offense
types.
Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2022 — Statistical Tables Table 1
and Table 5, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2021,
and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002. 43
Federal:
Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics,

reporting data as of January 18, 2024 (total population of 156,845), and
Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables Table 19, reporting data as of September
30, 2022 (we applied the percentage distribution of offense types from that table
to the 2024 BOP population).
U.S. Marshals Service provided its most recent estimated population count
(60,439) in a February 2023 response to our FOIA request, reporting the
projected average daily population for fiscal year 2023.
The same response also provided a more detailed breakdown of this population
by facility and offense type. The numbers of people held in federal detention
centers (9,445), in directly-contracted private facilities (6,731), in non-paid
facilities (17), and in all state, local, and indirectly-contracted (“pass thru”)
facilities with Intergovernmental Service Agreements (IGAs) combined (44,246)
came from the FOIA response. To determine how many people held in facilities
with IGAs were held in local jails specifically (33,900, which includes an
unknown portion of indirectly-contracted “pass thru” jails), we turned to Table 8
Jail Inmates in 2021 — Statistical Tables Table 8, reporting data as of June 30,
2021. The remainder of those in IGAs (10,346) were held in state facilities and
other indirectly-contracted (“pass thru”) facilities (most of which are private),
but the available data make it impossible to disaggregate those two groups.
We created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of

reported offense types (excluding the vague “other new offense” and “writs,
holds & transfers” categories”) to the total average daily population in 2023.
(For those interested in the raw data including those categories, see page 9 of the
2023 FOIA response.) ⤴
Youth: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Access to the
Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population
and facility data for October 27, 2021. Our data on youth incarcerated in adult prisons
comes from Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables Table 15, reporting data for
December 31, 2022, and youth in adult jails from Jail Inmates in 2022 — Statistical
Tables Table 2, reporting data for the last weekday in June 2022. The number of youth
reported in Indian Country facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report
Jails in Indian Country, 2022 Table 6, also reporting data for the last weekday in June,
2022. For more information on the geography of the juvenile system, see the No Kids
in Prison campaign.
Immigration detention: The average daily population of 38,182 in Immigration and

Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention comes from ICE’s FY 2024 ICE Statistics
spreadsheet as of January 12, 2024. The count of 8,042 youth in Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC)
Program Fact Sheet, reporting the population as of January 19, 2024. Our estimates of
how many ICE detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come from
our analysis of the same ICE FY 2024 ICE Statistics Spreadsheet. Ten percent were in
federal ICE/BOP facilities (which we defined as Service Processing Centers, Staging
facilities, and BOP detention centers); 78% in private contract facilities (including
Contract Detention Facilities for ICE and U.S. Marshals Service and Dedicated
Intergovernmental Service Agreements); and 11% in city and county-operated jails
(including Intergovernmental Service Agreements for ICE and U.S. Marshals Service).
Criminal legal system-related involuntary commitment:
State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by

courts after being found “not guilty by reason of insanity” (NGRI) or, in some
states, “guilty but mentally ill” (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or
for treatment as “incompetent to stand trial” (IST)): The total number (18,948)
is from the Treatment Advocacy Center’s 2024 report Prevention over
Punishment, reporting findings from their 2023 survey. In past years, we used an
older source that offered a breakdown by the status of these “forensic” patients;
the TAC report does not provide such a breakdown. Also, it’s important to note
that this is not a complete view of all involuntary commitments, many of which
have nothing to do with underlying criminal charges or convictions.
Civil detention and commitment: (At least 20 states and the federal
government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of
sex-related crimes after their sentences are complete. These facilities and the
confinement there are technically civil, but in reality are quite like prisons.
People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time
they start serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their
confinement in the civil facility.) The civil commitment counts come from an
annual survey conducted by the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs
Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for most states are
from the 2023 survey, but for states that did not participate in 2023, we included
the most recent figures available: California’s count is as of 2022; Nebraska’s is
from 2018; South Carolina’s is from 2021; and the federal Bureau of Prisons’
count is from 2017.
Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa,

Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Commonwealths of the Northern Mariana
Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables Table 25, reporting
data for December 31, 2022.
Indian country jails (correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the U.S.
Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2022
Table 1, reporting the population as of the last weekday in June, 2022.
Military: Prisoners in 2021 — Statistical Tables Tables 23 (for total population) and
24 (for offense types) reporting data as of December 31, 2021. ⤴
Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole
are based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Correctional Populations in the
United States, 2021 — Statistical Tables Table 1, reporting data for December 31,
2021. We adjusted these totals to ensure that people with multiple statuses (e.g., people
on probation who were also held in jails) were counted only once in their most
restrictive category, using published data on people with dual statuses in Table 11 of
the same report. Because the incarcerated population grew significantly between 2021
and 2022, and we know of no reason that the probation and parole populations
wouldn’t have grown at similar rates, we then calculated updated estimates for these
categories based on their proportions to one another in 2021 (34% incarcerated, 52%
on probation, and 14% on parole). We applied those percentages to our updated total
number incarcerated to estimate roughly 2,991,000 on probation and 798,000 on
parole in 2022. For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole
and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control,
there were 803,200 people on parole and 2,963,000 people on probation as of
December 31, 2021. (A 2022 update of these numbers is anticipated from the Bureau
of Justice Statistics in the first quarter of 2024, but this was not published as of this
report’s publication date.) ⤴
Private facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explain in the “Adjustments to
avoid double counting” section below), our identification of the number of people held
in private facilities was as follows:
For state prisons, the number of people in private prisons came from Table 14 in
Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables.
For the Federal Bureau of Prisons, we calculated the percentage of the total BOP
population (9%) that were held in Residential Reentry Centers (halfway houses)
or in home confinement as of January 18, 2024, according to the Bureau of
Prisons “Population Statistics.” We then applied that percentage to our total
convicted BOP population (removing the 9,445 people held in 12 BOP detention
centers being held for the U.S. Marshals Service) to estimate the number of
people serving a sentence in a privately-operated setting for the BOP. We chose
this method instead of using the number published in Table 14 of Prisoners in
2022 — Statistical Tables because as of 2023, the BOP no longer places
sentenced people in private prisons. The inclusion of Residential Reentry
Centers and home confinement in our definition of “private” facilities is
consistent with the definition used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Table 14
of Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables.
For the U.S. Marshals Service, we used the 2023 FOIA response reporting the
projected average daily population for fiscal year 2023 as of February 12, 2023,
including only those held in “private” (directly contracted) facilities. However,
we note that an unknown portion of the 14,752 people held in indirectly-
contracted (“pass thru”) facilities with Intergovernmental Service Agreements
(IGAs) are also held in private facilities; the available data make it impossible to
disaggregate these “pass thru” facilities according to status as private or public.
For youth, we used the 2021 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 used the Facility Information provided in ICE’s

FY 2024 ICE Statistics spreadsheet to calculate the number of people detained
in facilities categorized as “CDF” (Contract Detention Facilities), “USMS CDF”
(Contract Detention Facilities contracted by the U.S. Marshals Service), and
“DIGSA” (privately owned and/or operated facilities contracted through
Dedicated Intergovernmental Service Agreements for ICE use). ⤴
Adjustments to avoid double counting

To avoid counting anyone twice, we performed the following adjustments:
To avoid anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, we removed the 11%
(4,383) of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained population that
is held in local jails under Intergovernmental Service Agreement contracts (IGSAs)
from the total jail population. We removed 23.2% of these ICE detainees from the jail
convicted population and the balance from the unconvicted population. We based
these percentages on the breakdown by criminal status of the ICE “currently detained”
population as of January 12, 2024 in the ICE Detention Statistics spreadsheet,
counting “convicted criminal” as convicted and “pending criminal charges” and “other
immigration violator” as unconvicted.
To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison authorities from
being counted twice, we removed the 65,573 people — reported in Table 14 of
Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables — confined in local jails on behalf of federal or
state prison systems from the total jail population and from the numbers we calculated
for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those being held by the U.S.
Marshals Service from being counted twice, we removed from the jail total 32,300
Marshals detainees reported as held in local jails in Jail Inmates in 2022 — Statistical
Tables Table 8. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals
Service from the jail convicted population, and the balance from the unconvicted jail
population. We based these percentages on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates,
2002. We are not aware of any more recent source breaking down the U.S. Marshals
Service detained population by conviction status.
Because we removed ICE detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and
state authorities from the jail population, we had to recalculate the offense distribution
reported in Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were “convicted” or “not convicted,”
excluding the people who reported that they were being held on behalf of state
authorities, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, or U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 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 offense,” “To await
arraignment,” or “To await hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community
release.”
For our analysis of people held in private jails for local authorities, we applied the
percentage 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 (550,244) in 2022, after making the adjustments described
in this section. ⤴
Our graph of the racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities (as shown in
Slideshow 6) uses the only data source that has data for all types of adult correctional
facilities: the U.S. Census. We used the American Community Survey 2022 1-Year
Estimates table S2603 and represented the four named racial and ethnic groups that
account for at least 2%, nationally, of the population in adult correctional facilities.
Not included on the graphic are Asian people, who make up 0.9% of the correctional
population, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, who make up 0.3%, people
reporting “Some other race,” who account for 7%, and those of “Two or more races,”
who make up 12.4% of the total national correctional population.
Note that because Latinos may be of any race and because of how the Census Bureau
published race and ethnicity data in the relevant table, we used the Census data for
“White alone, Not Hispanic or Latino” for white people, but the Census Bureau’s data
for “Black or African American” and “American Indian and Alaska Native” people
may include people who identify as both that race and Latino.⤴
How to link to specific images and sections
To help readers link to specific images in this report, we created these special urls:
How many people are locked up in the United States?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#slideshows/slideshow1/1
1 in 3 people behind bars is in a jail. Most have yet to be tried in court.
Despite reforms, drug offenses are still a defining characteristic of the federal
system
Beyond “federal prison,” multiple agencies and thousands of local facilities confine
people for the federal government
Pretrial Detention
Pretrial policies drive jail growth
Why are so many people detained in jails before trial? They’re not wealthy enough
to afford money bail.
1 in 3 people behind bars is in a jail. Most have yet to be tried in court
Only 8% of confined people are held in private prisons
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#private_facilities
1 in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense
Police make over a million drug possession arrests each year
Some states have largely ended the War on Drugs. Other states, not so much.
Most states track and publish just one measure of post-release recidivism
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#releaserecidivism
Very few states track and publish any recidivism data for people on probation
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#probationrecidivism
Contrary to myth, people incarcerated for violent offenses and released are least
likely to be arrested again
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#rearrests
U.S. crime rates continue to fall, and preliminary data indicate crime likely hit a
60-year low in 2023
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#crimerates
What do victims of violent crimes really want?
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#victimswant
In jails, the most effective treatment options are the least accessible for people with
opioid use disorder
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#jailtreatment
Non-criminal (or “technical”) violations are the main reason for incarceration of
people on probation and parole
The growth of electronic monitoring for the criminal legal and immigration
systems, 2015-2022
Electronic monitoring doesn't reduce jail populations
Most confined youth are held for non-person offenses, and 1 in 3 is held for an act
that is not a “crimes” at all
More than 1 in 3 people in state prison were first arrested before their 16th
birthday
Almost 65,000 people are confined for immigration reasons
Psychiatric facilities confine 25,000 people every day for criminal legal system
involvement
Most people in Indian Country jails are locked up for property, drug, and public
order charges
The rapid expansion of ICE’s electronic monitoring program
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#iceexpansion
Mass incarceration directly impacts millions of people: But just how many, and in
what ways?
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#impacted
Incarceration is just one piece of the much larger system of correctional control
Racial and ethnic disparities in correctional facilities
How many women are locked up in the United States?
Most people in prison are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color
Many people in state prisons grew up facing serious family, housing, economic,
and educational challenges
The youngest and oldest people in prison
To help readers link to specific report sections or paragraphs, we created these special urls:
Jails vs. prisons: What’s the difference?

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#jailsvprisons
Nine myths about mass incarceration
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#myths
Offense categories might not mean what you think
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#offensecategories
The first myth: Private prisons are the corrupt heart of mass incarceration
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#firstmyth
The second myth: Prisons are “factories behind fences” that exist to provide
companies with a huge slave labor force
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#secondmyth
The third myth: Releasing “nonviolent drug offenders” would end mass
incarceration
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#thirdmyth
The fourth myth: By definition, “violent crime” involves physical harm
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#fourthmyth
The fifth myth: People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are too dangerous to
be released
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#fifthmyth
Recidivism: A slippery statistic
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#recidivism_measures
The sixth myth: Reforming the criminal legal system leads to more crime
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#sixthmyth
The seventh myth: Harsh punishments deter crime, making us safer
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#seventhmyth
The eighth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#eighthmyth
The ninth myth: Some people need to go to jail to get treatment and services
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#ninthmyth
The tenth myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to reduce
incarceration
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#tenthmyth
The high costs of low-level offenses
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#lowlevel
Probation & parole violations and “holds” lead to unnecessary incarceration
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#holds
Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences
/reports/pie2024.html#misdemeanors
“Low-level fugitives” live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates and
unpaid fines
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#benchwarrants
Lessons from the smaller “slices”: Youth, immigration, and involuntary
commitment
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#smallerslices
Beyond the “Whole Pie”: Community supervision, poverty, age, and race and
gender disparities
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#community
Each paragraph is also numbered, so you can use urls in this format:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html#paragraph1
etc…
Acknowledgments
All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, but this report builds on the
successful collaborations of the several versions of this report we have produced since 2014.
For this year’s report, the authors are particularly indebted to Shan Jumper for sharing
updated civil detention and commitment data, Brian Nam-Sonenstein and Emily Widra for
research and editing support, and Ed Epping for help with one of the visuals. However, any
errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to
produce a data visualization like this, are the sole responsibility of the authors.
We thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge
for their support of our research into the use and misuse of jails in this country. We also
thank Public Welfare Foundation for their support of our reports that fill key data and
messaging gaps. Finally, we’d like to thank each of our individual donors — your
commitment to ending mass incarceration makes our work possible.
About the authors
Wendy Sawyer is the Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. Along with directing
the organization’s research priorities, Wendy is the author (or co-author) of several major
reports, including Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, Beyond the Count: A deep
dive into state prison populations, All Profit, No Risk: How the bail industry exploits the
justice system and Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to
social problems. Wendy also frequently publishes briefings on recent data releases, academic
research, women’s incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.
Peter Wagner is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. He
co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national discussion about
mass incarceration.
About the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison 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 like this that help the public more fully engage in criminal legal
system 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 gerrymandering) and has
helped to protect the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison and jail
telephone industry and the video visitation industry.
Footnotes
National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which
1. The number of state facilities is from the Census of State includes questions about whether respondents have been
and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities, 2019 (the booked into jail; from this source, we estimated that of
private adult facilities are also included in this number); the 10.6 million jail admissions in 2017, at least 4.9
the number of federal facilities is from the list of prison million were unique individuals. ↩
locations on the Bureau of Prisons website (as of January
11, 2024); the number of youth facilities is from the 5. Prison and jail admissions were dramatically impacted
Juvenile Residential Facility Census Databook (2020); by the COVID-19 pandemic. State and federal prison
the number of jails from Census of Jails 2005-2019 admissions dropped 40% in the first year of the
(counting facilities, not jurisdictions); the number of pandemic (2020), and by June 2021, jail admissions
immigration detention facilities from Immigration and were down 33% compared to the 12 months ending in
Customs Enforcement’s Dedicated and Non Dedicated June 2019. Before 2020, the number of annual jail
Facility List (as of January 2, 2024); and the number of admissions was consistently 10 million or more. Because
Indian Country jails from Jails in Indian Country, 2022. these declines were not generally due to permanent
In addition to these larger systems of confinement, policy changes, we expect that the number of prison and
people are incarcerated in 41 prisons in U.S. territories, jail admissions will return to pre-pandemic levels as
according to the World Prison Brief (accessed January cases that were delayed for pandemic-related reasons
24, 2024), and in 36 military prisons, according to a work their way through the court system. ↩
December 2022 GAO report to Congressional
Committees (page 5). We aren’t currently aware of a 6. The local jail population in the main pie chart (550,244)
good source of data on the number of facilities that hold reflects only the population under local jurisdiction; it
people involuntarily committed to civil commitment excludes the people being held in jails for other state and
centers or psychiatric facilities due to underlying federal agencies. The population under local jurisdiction
criminal charges or convictions. ↩ is smaller than the population (652,500) physically
located in jails on an average day in 2022, often called
2. This is undoubtedly a low estimate, as it does not capture the custody population. (For this distinction, see the
the costs of all facilities included in this “whole pie,” and second image in the first slideshow above.) ↩
there are several significant types of expenses for which
we could not create reliable national estimates, such as 7. The federal government defines the hierarchy of offenses
fines and fees. Moreover, many costs, such as those with felonies higher than misdemeanors. And “[w]ithin
related to correctional health care, have also increased these levels, … the hierarchy from most to least serious
since we published the report. For more information is as follows: homicide, rape/other sexual assault,
including our methodology for calculating the $182 robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/motor
billion figure, see our 2017 report Following the Money vehicle theft, fraud, drug trafficking, drug possession,
of Mass Incarceration. ↩ weapons offense, driving under the influence, other
public-order, and other.” See page 13 of Recidivism of
3. This is not the only lens through which we should think Prisoners Released in 1994. ↩
about mass incarceration, of course. For instance, while
this view of the data shows clearly which government 8. The felony murder rule has also been applied when the
agencies are most central to mass incarceration and person who died was a participant in the crime. For
which criminalized behaviors (or “offenses”) result in example, in some jurisdictions, if one of the bank
the most incarceration on a given day, at least some of robbers is killed by the police during a chase, the
the same data could instead be presented to emphasize surviving bank robbers can be convicted of felony
the well-documented racial and economic disparities murder of their colleague. For example, see People v.
that characterize mass incarceration. It would be Hudson, 222 Ill. 2d 392 (Ill. 2006) and People v.
impossible to present all possible “views” of mass Klebanowski, 221 Ill. 2d 538 (Ill. 2006). According to a
incarceration in one report, but we encourage readers to New York Times article, the U.S. is currently the only
take inspiration from our approach here to create further country still using the felony murder rule; other British
“big picture” analyses that can help people better common law countries abolished it years ago. A small
understand mass incarceration, its harms, and how to end but growing number of states have abolished it at the
it. ↩ state level. ↩
4. The number of annual jail admissions includes multiple 9. For an explanation of how we calculated this, see
admissions of some individuals; it does not mean 7 “private facilities” in the Methodology. For those
million unique individuals cycling through jails in a year. interested in how many facilities are privately operated,
In a presentation, The Importance of Successful Reentry in 2019 (the most recent year for which we have data)
to Jail Population Growth [PowerPoint] given at The Jail only 445 (9%) of the 4,793 prisons and jails in the U.S.
Reentry Roundtable, Bureau of Justice Statistics were privately operated. ↩
statistician Allen Beck estimated that of the 12-12.6
million jail admissions in 2004-2005, 9 million were 10. At yearend 2022, five states held more than 20% of
unique individuals. More recently, we analyzed the 2017 those incarcerated under the state prison system’s
jurisdiction in local jail facilities: Louisiana (53%), prison growth nationwide. Local jail populations grew at
Kentucky (47%), Mississippi (33%), Utah (26%), and an even faster pace than prisons in 2022; jails held 4%
Tennessee (20%). For more on how renting jail space to more people at the end of June 2022 than at the end of
other agencies skews priorities and fuels jail expansion, June 2021. In both cases, these increases were driven by
see the second part of our report Era of Mass Expansion. changes in admissions more than anything else. ↩
↩
17. Prison populations were the lowest they’d been in
11. According to the most recent National Correctional decades during the first years of the pandemic, but not
Industries Association survey that is publicly available, because officials released more people (in fact, they
an average of 6% of all people incarcerated in state released fewer than before the pandemic). In reality,
prisons work in state-owned prison industries. However, prison admissions fell sharply: there were 40% fewer
the portion of incarcerated people working in these jobs admissions in 2020 and 27% fewer in 2021 than in 2019
ranges from 1% (in Connecticut) to 18% (in Minnesota). due to declines in most types of crime, court delays, and
For a description of other kinds of prison work temporary suspensions of transfers from local jails.
assignments, see our 2017 analysis. ↩ Releases were the rare exception, not the rule. Even
parole boards failed to use their existing authority to
12. In 2022, a report by the ACLU and the University of release more parole-eligible people. ↩
Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic found
that very little has changed since then: Using a similar 18. The linked 2022 study found that a smaller portion of
methodology, they found that prisons paid incarcerated cities with “progressive” prosecutors saw increases in
workers a minimum average hourly wage of 13 cents homicides compared to cities with “traditional”
and a maximum of 52 cents. ↩ prosecutors (56% versus 68%) between 2015 and 2019,
and the relative increase in homicides was lower in
13. In 2020, there were 1,155,610 drug arrests in the U.S., places with “progressive” prosecutors than those with
the vast majority of which (86.7%) were for drug “traditional” prosecutors (43% versus 55%). Another
possession or use rather than for sale or manufacturing. study by the Thurgood Marshall Institute at the Legal
See Crime in the United States Annual Reports, 2020, Defense Fund found no significant difference in
“Persons Arrested” Table 29 and the Arrests for Drug pandemic-era increases in homicides between cities with
Abuse Violations table (available for download here). In “progressive” versus “traditional” prosecutors. ↩
2021, the FBI (which aggregates these data from local
law enforcement agencies) began requiring all agencies 19. Although they’ve failed to deter crime, long sentences
to report data using the NIBRS system, and no longer have accomplished a barbaric rise in the incarceration of
accepted reporting through the Unified Crime Reporting elderly people. Older people make up five times as much
program. While this switch was planned years in of the prison population as they did three decades ago:
advance, this resulted in “a massive gap in information,” from 3% of the prison population in 1991 to 15% in
as almost 40% of agencies submitted no data in 2021, 2021. This growth is seen even more acutely when
including those in large cities like New York and Los looking at people serving life sentences: by 2020, 30%
Angeles. Therefore, crime and arrest data from 2021 are of people serving life sentences were at least 55 years
less reliable than past years. For that reason, we caution old, with more than 61,400 older adults sentenced to die
against relying on the national arrest data from 2021. In in prison. ↩
2022, the FBI accepted data through both the old and
new systems, so 2022 data cover more jurisdictions than 20. In its Defining Violence report, the Justice Policy
2021; still, in 10 states (including large states like Institute cites earlier surveys that found similar
Florida, Illinois, and Georgia) less than 60% of law preferences. These include the 1997 Iowa Crime
enforcement agencies submitted data. ↩ Victimization Survey, in which burglary victims “voiced
stronger support for approaches that rely less on
14. Despite this evidence, people convicted of violent incarceration, such as community service (75.7%),
offenses often face decades of incarceration, and those regular probation (68.6%), treatment and rehabilitation
convicted of sexual offenses can be committed to (53.5%), and intensive probation (43.7%)” and the 2013
indefinite confinement or stigmatized by sex offender first-ever Survey of California Crime Victims and
registries long after completing their sentences. ↩ Survivors, in which “seven in 10 victims supported
directing resources to crime prevention versus towards
15. Using the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, we estimated incarceration (a five-to-one margin).” In a 2019 update
2023 data based on the reported percent change in crime to that survey, 75% of victims “support reducing prison
rates between the first nine months of 2022 and the first terms by 20% for people in prison that are a low risk to
nine months of 2023 and found significant decreases in public safety and do not have life sentences” and using
violent crime (8.2%), property crime (6.3%) and all the savings to fund crime prevention and rehabilitation.
Index crime (6.6%). However, 2023 data should be ↩
considered preliminary until annual crime data are
reported later this year. ↩ 21. Many people convicted of violent offenses have been
chronically exposed to neighborhood and interpersonal
16. In 14 states, the prison population grew by 5% or more violence or trauma as children and into adulthood. As the
in 2022, with just nine states (mostly in the South) and Square One Project explains, “Rather than violence
the federal Bureau of Prisons accounting for 91% of all being a behavioral tendency among a guilty few who
harm the innocent, people convicted of violent crimes offenses, overdose, and even death. Families and,
have lived in social contexts in which violence is likely. overwhelmingly, Black and Brown communities endure
Often growing up in poor communities in which rates of these harms alongside the people on electronic
street crime are high, and in chaotic homes which can be monitoring, as the practice impedes participation in
risky settings for children, justice-involved people can childcare, key family events such as child birth or
be swept into violence as victims and witnesses. From funerals. Some have also noted the technology has been
this perspective, the violent offender may have caused deployed to undermine participation in social justice
serious harm, but is likely to have suffered serious harm movements. ↩
as well.” Our report Reforms Without Results
summarizes research findings that bear this out. ↩ 27. While some of this expansion has taken place in reaction
to the pandemic, the Vera Institute of Justice also notes
22. Prisons are also entirely failing to provide people with that evolving technology is driving increasing electronic
adequate treatment. 43% of people in state prisons have monitoring usage. Their report points out that the use of
a diagnosed mental disorder, yet at any given time, only GPS devices increased thirty-fold between 2005 and
an estimated 6% of people in state prisons are receiving 2021. Advancing technology has also increased the use
professional help. And while half of people in state of programs like cell phone apps designed to track and
prisons had a substance use disorder in the year before monitor people under supervision, which has allowed for
their admission to prison, only 10% report having rapid expansion of electronic monitoring and raised new
received any clinical treatment while incarcerated. ↩ areas of concern, such as the potential for highly
personal data to be shared and compromised. ↩
23. Even the most common parole and probation conditions
are often stifling for those reentering society. In many 28. For example, in Los Angeles County between 2015 and
states, for example, “association restrictions” prohibit 2021, 94% of people on EM who did not successfully
interactions between people on supervision and large complete electronic monitoring were sent back to jail for
swaths of the population, such as those with felony technical violations rather than for a new arrest. ↩
convictions or others on probation or parole. As a result,
people must steer clear of certain places altogether, 29. A medical journal article also includes in this group
producing a complex web of prohibited activities and people with developmental disabilities, dementia, and
relationships that make it even harder to find housing other forms of cognitive impairment. ↩
and work, arrange for transportation, participate in
treatment programs, or otherwise succeed in reentry. ↩ 30. In 2021, more than half (58%) of juvenile status offense
cases were for truancy. Twelve percent were for running
24. A Community Spring program known as Just Income, away, 9% were for being “ungovernable,” 11% were for
which is led by formerly incarcerated people, offers a underage liquor law violations, and 4% were for
new way to understand these experiences through a breaking curfew (the remaining 7% were petitioned for
simulator they designed called “ReEntry: A Look at the “miscellaneous” offenses). ↩
Journey Back to Life.” ↩
31. As of 2016, nearly 9 out of 10 people incarcerated for
25. According to the most recent data available — Appendix immigration offenses by the Federal Bureau of Prisons
Table 7 in the Bureau of Justice Statistics report were there for illegal entry and reentry. We know of no
Probation and Parole in the United States, 2021 — newer source of detailed information about these
73,310 adults exited probation to incarceration under offenses. ↩
their current sentence; Appendix Table 11 shows 54,572
adults were returned to incarceration from parole with a 32. People detained by ICE because they are facing
revocation. The number of people incarcerated for non- “removal proceedings” and “removal” include longtime
criminal violations may be much higher, however, since permanent residents, authorized foreign workers, and
almost 35,000 people exiting probation and parole to students, as well as those who have crossed U.S. borders.
incarceration did so for “other/unknown” reasons. ↩ ↩
26. Electronic monitoring restricts people’s ability to leave 33. It’s worth noting that the significant drop in immigration
their homes, subjecting them to extremely long and detention during the first two years of the COVID-19
complicated approval processes for job interviews and pandemic was not the result of reforms; it had more to
denying them the flexibility required to work in food do with litigation and court orders that forced some
service, waste management, construction, and other releases, the use of public health law Title 42 to shut
industries. They are frequently denied permission to go asylum seekers out at the border, and pandemic-related
to the doctor or the pharmacy to fill prescriptions. A staffing issues at both ICE and Customs and Border
survey of people subjected to monitoring by ICE found Patrol. ↩
that an astonishing 90% of people on electronic
monitoring experienced harm to their physical health, 34. This program imposes electronic monitoring — whether
including open sores and even electrical shocks. Many through GPS ankle monitor, a mobile phone-based app,
people report depressive and even suicidal thoughts from or other new technologies — on individuals with little or
the stigma and isolation of wearing a monitor. To make no criminal history, and has expanded from 23,000
matters worse, the technology can trigger relapse for people under active surveillance in 2014 to more than
those managing addiction, potentially leading to new 293,000 people in February of 2023. The Transactional
Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) provides remain in the hospital years longer than they would have
frequently-updated data and analysis on this program, been held in prison for the same crime if they did not
and many other aspects of immigration detention. ↩ have a mental illness. … [I]n our survey, Tennessee and
Wisconsin said explicitly that NGRI patients often stay
35. Most children in ORR custody are held in shelters. A in the state hospitals for life.” ↩
small number are in secure juvenile facilities or in short-
term or long-term foster care. With the exception of 39. While we have yet to find a national estimate of how
those in foster homes, these children are not free to come many people are civilly committed in prisons, jails, or
and go, and they do not participate in community life other facilities for involuntary drug treatment on a given
(e.g. they do not attend community schools). Their day, and therefore cannot include them in our “whole
behaviors and interactions are monitored and recorded; pie” snapshot of confined populations, Massachusetts
any information gathered about them in ORR custody reportedly commits over 6,000 people each year under
can be used against them later in immigration its provision, Section 35. According to Prisoners’ Legal
proceedings. And while the majority of these children Services of Massachusetts, “Due to insufficient capacity
came to the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian, at treatment facilities, 3 out of 4 Section 35 beds are in
those who were separated from parents at the border are, correctional facilities.” ↩
like ICE detainees, confined only because the U.S. has
criminalized unauthorized immigration, even by persons 40. Our report on the pre-incarceration incomes of those
lawfully seeking asylum. ↩ imprisoned in state prisons, Prisons of Poverty:
Uncovering the pre-incarceration incomes of the
36. People committed to state psychiatric facilities in the imprisoned, found that, in 2014 dollars, incarcerated
course of criminal legal proceedings are typically called people had a median annual income that is 41% less than
“forensic” patients. Forensic patients are just one portion non-incarcerated people of similar ages. Our analysis of
of the total number of people civilly committed or similar jail data in Detaining the Poor: How money bail
detained in psychiatric facilities on a given day; perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time
according to a recent Treatment Advocacy Center report, found that people in jail have even lower incomes, with a
forensic patients occupied more than half (52%) of median annual income that is 54% less than non-
available state psychiatric beds nationwide in 2023. incarcerated people of similar ages. ↩
Government agencies do not publish accessible,
transparent data on the fuller picture of civil 41. Even outside of prisons and jails, the elaborate system of
commitments (i.e., outside of those charged or convicted criminal legal system fines and fees feeds a cycle of
of criminal offenses), as the authors of this 2020 report poverty and punishment for many poor Americans. ↩
helpfully detail. ↩
42. The data we collected in 12 state-specific reports
37. “Civil commitment” has a specific, somewhat emphasized what we already know: Communities
euphemistic, meaning in the criminal legal context, but missing the most residents to incarceration are often
is used much more broadly outside of that context. Here, disproportionately low-income, communities of color,
“civil commitment” refers to the involuntary under-resourced and overpoliced. For example, in Los
commitment of people convicted of sex-related crimes Angeles, the 14 neighborhoods with the highest
after completing their prison sentences. While this is not imprisonment rates are all clustered in South Central Los
part of their sentences (and therefore “civil”), these Angeles — a predominately Black and Latino region of
individuals are unquestionably there because of their the city with a median income far below the city
criminal convictions. For more information, see our average. ↩
2023 briefing What is civil commitment? ↩
43. This is the most recent data available until the Bureau of
38. The Treatment Advocacy Center reports that “[Not Justice Statistics begins administering the next Survey of
Guilty by Reason of Insanity] patients also sometimes Inmates in Local Jails, last scheduled for 2024 (the status
of this survey is uncertain as of this publication date). ↩

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3/19/24, 9:42 AM Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024 | Prison Policy Initiative

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024

Can it really be true that most people in jail are Sections

Jails vs. prisons: What’s the difference?

Ten myths about mass incarceration

Offense categories might not mean what you think

Secondly, many of these categories group together people convicted of a wide

The fourth myth: By definition, “violent crime” involves physical harm

Recidivism: A slippery statistic

As long as we are considering recidivism rates as a measure of public safety risk,

The term “recidivism” suggests a relapse in behavior, a return to criminal

The cutoff point at which recidivism is measured also matters: If someone is

A related question is whether the particular post-release offense matters. For

A final note about recidivism: While policymakers frequently cite reducing

higher on average in “red” states.

The seventh myth: Harsh punishments deter crime, making us safer

The eighth myth: Crime victims support long prison sentences

Similarly, jails often put people with

The tenth myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to

“alternative” to incarceration, but in reality it is expanding the scope of correctional control,

The high costs of low-level offenses

Probation & parole violations and “holds” lead to unnecessary

A particularly disturbing type of “hold” is becoming increasingly common: people held in

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

“Low-level fugitives” live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates

Lessons from the smaller “slices”: Youth, immigration, and involuntary

Another 38,000 people are

Data sources & methodology

Why we — and not the government — compile the data ⤵

How we determined the number of private facilities ⤵

Our data sources were:

State prisons: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2022 — Statistical Tables

Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics,

We created our own estimated offense breakdown by applying the ratios of

Immigration detention: The average daily population of 38,182 in Immigration and

Criminal legal system-related involuntary commitment:

State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by

Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa,

For youth, we used the 2021 Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement,

For immigration detention, we used the Facility Information provided in ICE’s

Adjustments to avoid double counting

How to link to specific images and sections

How many people are locked up in the United States?

Jails vs. prisons: What’s the difference?

About the authors

About the Prison Policy Initiative

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