Issue: Jail Growth

Jail incarceration and jail admissions have grown dramatically since the 1970s. In many parts of the country, the growth continues unabated.

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Report

COVID Data Analysis Jail Populations June 22, 2021

The Impact of COVID-19 on Crime, Arrests, and Jail Populations

The JFA Institute

Beginning in March 2020, local and state criminal agencies took several actions to mitigate the rising number of people being infected with the COVID-19 virus. To address these concerns, a variety of policies were enacted to reduce the number of persons held in jails. These polices were designed to 1) mitigate the number of people being arrested and booked into local jails and 2) reduce the length of stay (LOS) for those admitted to jail. Concurrently, public safety concerns were raised that by lowering the jail populations, crime in the community would increase. To address these concerns, the JFA Institute (JFA), through resources provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) program, began tracking and analyzing cities and counties participating in SJC and their jail and crime data in real time to monitor the impact of these mitigation activities. Among the key findings, analysis revealed jail populations declined, yet crime and arrests declined as well, giving indication that declining jail populations did not compromise public safety.

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Jail Costs Jail Populations Pretrial and Bail May 13, 2021

Removing Barriers To Pretrial Appearance

Evelyn F. McCoy, Azhar Gulaid, Nkechi Erondu, and Janeen Buck Willison at The Urban Institute

This case study, part of a series highlighting work supported by the Safety and Justice Challenge Innovation Fund, examines the experiences of Tulsa County, Oklahoma, and Hennepin County, Minnesota, which implemented strategies to reduce rates of failure to appear (FTA) in court and to reduce their respective jails’ pretrial populations. The Tulsa County Public Defender’s Office partnered with Uptrust, a California-based technology firm that builds software to help people navigate and successfully exit the criminal justice system, to implement a two-way text messaging app that reminds clients of upcoming court dates and reduces barriers to court appearance by connecting clients to an embedded social services case manager who helps them access services and assistance with basic needs such as transportation. The Minneapolis City Attorney’s Office, the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office, and the Hennepin County Criminal Justice Coordinating Committee (CJCC) partnered with Hitch Health, a local health care technology company that connects patients with ride services to medical appointments, to implement Court Ride, which provides free rides to court and court-related appointments to defendants who lack reliable access to transportation.

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Data Analysis Jail Costs Jail Populations November 19, 2019

Broken Ground: Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead

Vera Institute of Justice

Jail construction has vastly expanded America’s capacity to incarcerate people. In 1970, there were 243,000 jail beds in the United States, but by 2017, there were 915,100. This report explores the persistence of jail expansion by examining a convenience sample of 77 counties in 31 states that considered or pursued jail expansion between 2000 and 2019. From this sample, Vera researchers identified three major arguments county officials make to support construction: health and safety concerns due to overcrowding or aging facilities; the need to provide specialized services, including mental health and drug treatment; and the opportunity for revenue from renting beds to other authorities. The report also outlines negative or unanticipated consequences counties experienced from the decision to build or expand and provides examples of places that have pursued better alternatives to new jails.

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Issue Brief

Data Analysis Disability Justice Human Toll of Jail November 15, 2019

Access to Justice: A Cross-Disability Perspective on Reducing Jail Incarceration

Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago

Access Living believes that through focusing on the voices of impacted community members, providing robust cross-disability support and guidance to policymakers, and investing in non-incarcerative community supports, it is possible to further reduce the unnecessary incarceration of people with disabilities.

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Implementation Guide

Data Analysis Interagency Collaboration Jail Costs May 6, 2019

Does our county really need a bigger jail?

Prison Policy Initiative

As jail populations have skyrocketed over the past three decades, jails around the country have become dangerously overcrowded. The reflexive response is often to start the long, expensive process of building a larger jail. However, this report provides a roadmap to easier, quicker, cheaper, and more just solutions to jail overcrowding. It is organized around a series of questions that local decisionmakers should be asking advocates of jail expansion, and then lays out a detailed briefing on best practices for reducing jail overcrowding.