The average daily population in jails identified as pilot sites for reducing inmate numbers declined by 18 percent in the first three years of the program, according to a report released Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.
The new report, titled Reducing the Misuse and Overuse of Jails in Safety and Justice Challenge Sites was conducted in collaboration with the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance and featured data from 2016 to 2019 in jurisdictions across 14 states.
The U.S. averages almost 11 million yearly jail admissions, said the report.
According to the report, that’s nearly 18 times the number of people admitted into a state or federal prison, a number that’s four times what it was in the 1980s, said the Prison Policy Initiative.
Overcrowding in local jails has emerged as special problem since the pandemic. Medical experts acknowledge that COVID-19 spreads more easily among individuals in congregate settings—and jails and prisons have been identified as “superspreader” locations.
Studies have shown that the decrease in jail population due to coronavirus restrictions has not led to an increase in crime. , overpopulation remains an issue in America’s criminal justice system.
Jails are often used as a holding place for low-level offenders awaiting trial. In fact according to the report, 75 percent of offenders in local jails are there for nonviolent offenses or are awaiting trial and 60 percent of them are likely to be found innocent.
Bail, which is often posted for low level or nonviolent offenders, isn’t always affordable. Defendants who can’t afford to post bail or pay a bail bondsman could be stuck in the facility, even though they could be found not guilty.
According to the report, even a short period of time in jail while a defendant awaits trial can have a negative impact, increasing “the likelihood of a sentence of incarceration, make such a sentence harsher, and promote future criminal behavior—making jail a gateway to deeper involvement with the criminal justice system,” said the report.
“Our over-reliance on jails has negative consequences for people who are incarcerated, their families, and communities,” said the report. “Serious mental illness affects one-in-six men and one-in-three women in jail, and a significant number struggle with substance use disorders.”
This means that jails play a significant role in America’s mass incarceration problem, with defendants stuck in jails for a crime they may have not even committed.
“While jail population trends are a critical indicator of incarceration levels, they should be considered in the context of increases or decreases in the total population, which can affect the volume of criminal justice activity in a jurisdiction,” said the report.
In addition to the 18 percent decrease in average daily jail population (ADP), the report also found that there was a 19 percent decrease in jail incarceration rates, citing that 11 out of the 14 pilot sites experienced a decrease.
The decline of average daily jail population is due to two factors: jail bookings and the average amount of time offenders spent in jail.
Although slight, there was a six percent decrease in jail bookings combined across the 14 sites, meaning that jails were letting less people in—specifically those who were guilty of misdemeanor crimes. According to the report, a decrease in booking was more expected for those sentenced rather than those being held in jail awaiting trial.
Although there was a decrease in bookings, the report found that more of the sites studied were increasing the average amount of time offenders had to spend in jail instead of decreasing it, reflecting the fact that the drop was more likely due to the decrease in bookings for sentenced offenders.
Four of the states saw large decreases in their average length of stay for offenders in local jails, contributing to the overall eight percent decrease combined across the 14 sites. According to the report, the eight percent decline was largely due to the four states that saw major decreases, the rest of the sites researched showing little declines or none at all.
Research from the report found that incarceration rates for minorities declined in 13 states and booking rates declined by 11 percent in 14 sites; however African Americans and Latinx still experienced disparate rates of treatment.
The decrease in booking rates was likely due to a drop in charged misdemeanor offenses: some 11 sites in the study saw a decrease; seven sites saw a decrease in felony bookings.
However the report noted that the decline for white offenders was much greater, pointing to a disproportionality in the way that people of color are treated in local jails.
“People of color continued to be overrepresented in the jail population, and disparities remained largely unchanged or, in some cases, worsened,” said the report, pointing to the unchanged disproportionality rate for People of Color in jails.
For example one of the featured sites, a jail in Lucas County, Ohio, had two times the number of people of color than their county’s population, said the report.
According to the report, the 14 jurisdictions that were subject to the report received financial support from the Foundation “to implement comprehensive, systemwide criminal justice reforms toward reducing the use of jail incarceration and its disproportionate impacts on Communities of Color.”
The full report can be read here.
Read more: Some Prisons, Local Jails Close Amidst COVID-19 Spread
Emily Riley is a TCR justice reporting intern
3 Comments
I also believe that mass incarceration is not the solution to crime. I believe that mass incarceration only blocks up our prison system to where safe people are locked up while we have harmful people out on the streets.This would work because our prisons are full with people who have been locked up for a long time who are not threats anymore and have learned their lesson. If we could let them free, we could free up some space for the young criminals who pose more of a threat because they have not learned any lessons yet.
Emily Riley asserts that the current prison system is not encouraging reform and should be reinvented to reduce “the use of jail incarceration and its disproportionate impacts on Communities of Color”. While we agree that the current jail system needs to be reassessed, we believe it is not as simple as reducing the number of individuals in jail. Pilot sites may be a viable solution to increase mental health of inmates and decrease the number of individuals who are held for petty crimes. This may also reduce current concerns surrounding Corona Virus and prisons being a ‘super spreader’ of disease. Although jails have become overpopulated and may be overused in our Criminal Justice system, without punishment in society, many individuals’ actions will go unpunished, and people will continue with petty crimes such as stealing from gas stations. We do agree that there needs to be some reform, but maybe not initially to the extent that Riley presents in her argument. Society should begin at a small level and build up from there, seeing how different individuals react to a change in the Criminal Justice System.
The author’s claim is that prisons are overcrowded and that there is a disproportionality in the way that people of color are treated in local jails. While we don’t completely agree with the author’s claim, we do agree that prisons are overcrowded as many people are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. Prison systems could do more to help current prisoners because there are obviously many issues with jail populations and providing current inmates with rehabilitation that could put them back on their feet. The article points out that there has been an 18% increase in the number of incarcerated people since the 1980s. Clearly, we are doing something differently. Prisoners won’t have a chance at getting out of prison without the proper resources to change. We know this has been an issue for a long time and without change we will continue to go down the same path we are on now.