Topic: Featured Jurisdictions

Counties and cities nationwide are taking steps to reduce the number of individuals held in their jails. Inmate populations have grown four-fold since 1970, and there is a growing awareness that many of those held pretrial present little public safety risk and are likely to appear for their court dates. There are many factors that have driven the growth of jail populations—from rising bail amounts to changes in law enforcement practices. When crime rates were higher 30 years ago, there were 51 admissions into jail for every 100 arrests. By 2012, that number had climbed to 95 per 100. And while jail administrators are tasked with responsibility for the constitutional care and custody of a growing population—too often with a budget that does not also rise—there is generally little they can do to reduce the number of people held in their jail, which is driven by the decisions of police, prosecutors, and judges.

In the past, the answer to the problem of increasing jail populations was to expand jail capacity. But today, many are instead asking “what size should the jail be?” Answering this question is challenging, particularly because it is difficult to get basic data on how the jail population and local incarceration rate has changed over time, a first step in understanding what has driven jail growth, and what might change it.

To address this data gap, the Vera Institute of Justice developed the Incarceration Trends data tool (available for free at trends.vera.org), which aggregates the jail population and admissions data that corrections officials have submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics since 1970. This new tool allows anyone to examine county-level trends in the jail incarceration rate, and compare these trends to state and national averages and other specific counties.

A review of this data tells us that there is wide variation in incarceration rates among similar jurisdictions: while in the 1970s, county incarceration rates rarely exceeded 300 per 100,000 residents age 15–64, today the county rate averages more than 300 per 100,000 nationally, and is greater than 1,000 per 100,000 in more than 100 counties. And each county’s jail problem is different. Too many people in the jail is one issue, but not the only one: who those people are is another, for example, as is how long people stay in the jail.

The Incarceration Trends data tool provides a means to explore the answers to five questions that can inform a data-driven conversation on how the county uses its jail.

1. How does the county’s jail incarceration rate today compare to the state and national average? If the county jail incarceration rate exceeds these averages, it suggests there may be an opportunity to reduce the jail population to at least bring it in line with current norms. But it is important to keep in mind that the national average itself has grown substantially and is a high benchmark from a historical perspective. It doesn’t necessarily tell you what the rate for a particular county should be.

2. How does the county’s jail incarceration rate today compare to its historical trend? After four decades of growth, it is sometimes easy to forget that jails were not always the size they are today. If a county’s incarceration rate is now substantially higher than it once was, why is that? Is it justified by the county’s public safety needs? Are defendants incarcerated now who wouldn’t have been in prior years? If so, why? Pretrial detention for defendants accused of low-level offenses has risen dramatically over the past 30 years and many jurisdictions are questioning the value of this practice (and its cost).

3. What factors have driven jail population growth? The size of the jail population is driven by the number of admissions and the average length of stay. Which factors have driven jail growth? A growth in admissions can reflect, for example, changes in law enforcement arrest and booking practices, the prosecutor’s approach to charging, or the jurisdiction’s policy and practice around pretrial release. Growth in length of stay suggests challenges in processing cases; a function, perhaps, of rising numbers but also systemic inefficiencies.

4. Has the incarceration rate for women grown disproportionately? The number of women in jail nationwide has increased by 14 times since 1970—from 8,000 to 110,000—compared to a 4-fold increase for men. Women now comprise 16 percent of all incarcerated individuals and are often held in jail for low-level charges. Can you document a rising number of women in your jail? If so, what might be driving it?

5. Are racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately represented in the jail, and if so, has that disproportionality grown over time? The overuse of the jail is not only measured by the size of the jail population, but also how certain demographic groups are overrepresented. These disparities can be hard to discuss but shed necessary light on policies and practices within the local justice system that may have a disparate impact on different groups.

The wide variation in the use of jail among similar counties demonstrates that the number of people behind bars—and their demographic disparities—is largely the result of policy and practice choices. And while corrections officials cannot decide who lands in the jail, the public looks to jail administrators for leadership when it comes to thinking about the county’s jail needs. With this information we hope that jail administrators nationwide can lead a conversation with their justice-system colleagues on the use of the jail.

This article was originally published in the American Jail Association 2016 Produces & Services Resource Guide.

Crime and punishment are generally perceived to be urban problems, not rural ones. This is not surprising considering that the largest jails — such as New York City’s Rikers Island and the Los Angeles County Jail — get the most nationwide attention. But would it surprise you to find out that small counties are the places where jails have grown the most, and are where nearly half of our nation’s jail inmates are now held?

Last month, the Vera Institute of Justice released In Our Own Backyard: Confronting Growth and Disparities in American Jails. The headline finding of the report is that small counties (those with fewer than 250,000 residents) have contributed the most to the four-fold nationwide growth of the jail population since 1970. The jail populations of small counties have increased by 6.9 times since 1970, far exceeding the pace of growth of 4.1 times in mid-sized counties (those with 250,000 to 1 million residents), and 2.8 times in large counties (those with more than 1 million residents). Smaller counties together now hold 44 percent of the nation’s jail inmates — a significant change since 1970, when they held only 28 percent. If jails in small counties grew at only the rate of mid-sized counties, there would be 120,000 fewer individuals incarcerated in jails today.

The animated image below illustrates that small, mid-sized, and large counties each trended upwards at roughly the same rate until 2000, when the incarceration rate in small counties continued to grow, as it subsided in large and mid-sized counties. The “bubbles” are used to group data for large, mid-sized, and small counties and are scaled to the number of incarcerated individuals.

For more, you can investigate these trends for each state in this data visualization.

Since we released the report, many have asked us the same question: “Why have jails in the smallest counties grown the most?” We have only begun to investigate the possible answers to this question. It could be because larger counties have a wider tax base to draw on to fund health and social service programs to address needs that otherwise would land people in jail, or because the spotlight on the largest jails has helped to suppress their growth. In fact, it is jails in large and mid-sized counties — such as New York City, Bernalillo County, NM, Hampden County, MA, and New Orleans, LA — where jail populations have been most likely to decline in recent years.

But while the cause of this trend isn’t clear, its implications are: Reform is necessary in all counties — not just the largest — to end the misuse of jails in America. This is why the small jurisdictions participating in jail reduction efforts as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge — such as Pennington, South Dakota, and Mesa, Colorado — are just as instrumental to ending our overuse of incarceration as the large ones, like Houston and Chicago. And data is fundamental to reform. Vera’s new report is a publication of our Incarceration Trends Project, the centerpiece of which is a new data tool that collates and analyzes publicly available, but disparately located, jail data dating back to 1970 for every one of the approximately 3,000 U.S. counties. The tool can be used to explore your own county’s data, including jail population, admissions, and length of stay, and how these trends compare to those of similarly situated counties.

No one formula can tell us what size each jail should be. But the wide variation in incarceration rates among counties that are otherwise similar indicates that the number of people behind bars is not inevitable, but largely the result of choices in policy and practice. With new information about our jail trends in hand, communities large and small can begin to make better informed choices.

This post originally appeared on Medium.com. 

For too long, New Orleans has held the title of the most incarcerated city in the world. Under the leadership of Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the New Orleans City Council, as well as local stakeholders and service providers, the tide is turning. Today, New Orleans is becoming a national leader in the effort to end mass incarceration, which many consider to be one of the key civil rights issues of our time. We are working for change that protects public safety without spending scarce public resources on unnecessary incarceration. Our goal is to reform the criminal justice system holistically so that it provides meaningful opportunities to those at risk for justice system involvement and reduces its impact on individuals, families, and communities. We’re working on this together with a wide range of stakeholders, from law enforcement to educators.

The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) is focusing on smarter and more effective policing in its criminal justice reform efforts.  We’re issuing summonses in lieu of arrest for lower level municipal offenses and are policing smarter, focusing our law enforcement and justice resources on the most dangerous in our city.  We’re also doing more to train officers in de-escalation. For example, the department has implemented Crisis Intervention Team training, where officers receive 40 hours of specialized training from mental health experts focused on techniques and best practices for deescalating people in crisis due to mental illness or a behavioral disorder. Studies such as the University of Washington’s analysis of LEAD, Seattle’s police-led diversion program have shown that, compared to jail time, such public health-informed interventions for those at risk of arrest related to substance abuse or mental illness lead to lower recidivism rates.

In April 2012, with a grant from the Department of Justice, the City launched the first pretrial services program in the state in order to reduce and eventually end unnecessary pretrial detention of low-risk defendants. New Orleans Pretrial Services  uses an empirical risk assessment tool to facilitate objective and informed decision making about pretrial release and bail. This program has saved the city millions since its launch.

Amidst criminal justice reform, we continue to develop our crime prevention initiatives. Nearly $2 billion has been invested in new public schools and millions more in new public libraries, community centers, parks and playgrounds to create meaningful opportunities for our kids. We have now tripled our recreation budget; and our NOLA FOR LIFE murder reduction and Economic Opportunity strategies are creating pathways to prosperity for all residents.

But to be a truly safe city, New Orleans must have a jail that respects every citizen’s constitutional rights, and its justice system leaders must commit to making decisions at every step along the way that are evidence-based and prioritize releasing those defendants to the community who pose no risk to the public.

For generations, the Orleans Parish Prison was in a deplorable, unsanitary condition. Violence, suicide, and inmate deaths were all too common, medical and mental health services were inadequate, and Hurricane Katrina left much of the facility devastated.

Since entering into and funding the changes required by a federal consent decree—to ensure a constitutionally-run jail—the City constructed new jail facilities to replace the old, and the jail’s operating budget has more than doubled to $60 million per year. As a consequence, jail conditions are improving.

In early 2015, Mayor Landrieu formed a task force—including the sheriff, the district attorney, the public defender, the police chief, the departments of probation and parole, and judges—to reduce the jail population. The group developed an initial set of 17 strategies to reduce the number of people booked into the jail and the average length of stay. The City and Sheriff Marlin Gusman have continued this important work through the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge. Proposed changes would shift how the City views and uses local incarceration, and would reduce the jail population by 27 percent. Thanks to these efforts and current trends in jail population, the new 1,438-bed jail facility is expected to be sufficient to house all local inmates by 2017.

Rather than spend more money on a larger facility and/or pay for state sentenced inmates in our local jail, we should instead invest that money in community assets like recreation facilities, preventative care, and mental health treatment. Those are far better investments in this city’s future and have the potential to reduce the chances of people becoming involved in the criminal justice system.

The City’s plan for a smaller jail is a better approach to crime and public safety than the historic over-incarceration of the past. We intend to honor our promise to the people of New Orleans—to appropriate funds to simultaneously ensure public safety and the well-being of all residents.

In 2018, New Orleans will celebrate its tricentennial. This will provide an opportunity to remove the blemish of being a national leader in jail incarceration as we continue to be a leader in reform. Our city can take a new mantle as one of peace and prosperity where no one is left behind.

A decade ago, rising prison populations and costs seemed to be an uninterruptable trend. Today, however, many states have seen a decline in the number of individuals under correctional supervision. As states make policy and budgetary changes to move the prison population needle in the other direction, local corrections resources are affected: laws aimed at reducing the prison populations may result in more offenders being supervised in the community and in local jails. As a result, state lawmakers have recently taken steps to help ease the local burden.

Because nearly two-thirds of those in local jails are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime, state pretrial policies can be a valve to safely reduce jail populations. From 2012 to 2014, states enacted 261 laws addressing pretrial policy. An important trend during that time was the adoption of risk-based assessments—tools that help the court identify low-risk defendants that are likely to return to court. Vermont, for example, adopted a law that requires the court to conduct risk assessments on most defendants, including those charged with drug offenses and those unable to post bond after 24 hours. The court must then consider the results when determining conditions of release.

Pretrial diversion programs are often created to filter defendants from the traditional criminal justice process and address specific underlying factors that contribute to criminal behavior. Nearly two-thirds of states since 2012 have made changes to their diversion laws, concentrating on providing options for specialized populations such as people who have been military members, those affected by substance use and addiction disorders, or those with mental health needs.

State-level legislative policies also have significant impact on the convicted population in jails. This population generally includes those serving sentences of less than one year, or for misdemeanors; probation and parole violators; and prison inmates awaiting transfer to a state facility. Last year, when Utah lawmakers lowered many drug possession penalties from felonies to misdemeanors, they also lowered many traffic violations from misdemeanors to non-jailable infractions. The intention was to re-focus jail resources on more serious crime.

Nearly 20 states since 2010 have authorized the use of short jail stays in lieu of returning to prison for people on probation or parole who break the rules of their supervision. Many of these laws limit the amount of time that can be ordered as a jail sanction. To help offset probation and parole supervision costs, at least nine states have put in place “performance incentive funding” mechanisms. These funds reimburse localities for successfully supervising probationers and parolees in the community rather than sending them to prison.

As these examples show, state-level policies that impact the front-end of criminal justice systems can aid national efforts that focus on best practices for use of local jails in a variety of ways.

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is the single bipartisan, national, professional organization that has as its exclusive membership all 7,383 state legislators as well as their staff. NCSL’s unique membership, qualities, and nationwide reputation set it apart as a neutral organizational forum for providing information and training on effective policies and practices. The NCSL Criminal Justice Program has partnered with the Safety and Justice Challenge to involve state lawmakers in national efforts to make local criminal justice systems more effective, cost-effective, fair and risk-based.

In California, people who are arrested and incarcerated in jail often face arbitrary bail amounts that can be very different depending on which county you happen to be arrested in. Instead of functioning as a fair process for release, bail often functions as a preventative detention tool, because most people do not have the resources to pay their bail amounts.

This has led to a dramatic increase in the number of people held in California jails who have not been convicted of a crime. Often these are people of color and poor people. But what alternatives to paying the financial conditions of bail exist, and how would arrestees or the public even know about them?

In 2016, Santa Clara County reviewed the information that was available to people newly arrested, and saw only advertisements for commercial bail and private attorneys posted in the county jail near most of the phones available for use. We believe this led people to assume the only way out of jail was to pay a bail agent or possibly plead guilty in order to be released. Staff in our Office of Pretrial Services (PTS)—as well as the offices of Reentry Services, the Public Defender, and the Sheriff—did not believe this was acceptable. With the help of the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, we sought to change this by instituting our No Cost Release Campaign.

We recognize being arrested and going through the booking procedure is highly stressful and traumatic. We also recognize that most people may believe their quickest release option is through the commercial bail industry. Many detainees have jobs, housing, and dependents counting on them and all of these could be jeopardized by spending time in custody.

This campaign seeks to inform those arrested, their families, and the public that there are free alternatives to commercial bail.  Through posters, brochures, a web page, and looped videos in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, we advertised the free alternatives to commercial bail offered through PTS. The campaign also informs detainees of their right to counsel through the Public Defender’s Office (PDO), and other community-based resources available through the Office of Reentry Services (ORS).

Despite existing since 1969, the options available through PTS were not widely known to the general public. This campaign maximizes access to that information by targeting our local jail system, from the lobbies and booking areas to inmate dormitories. We also dispersed the informational materials to county departments, community partners, stakeholder agencies, and the general public. The video will also be broadcast on local public television channels.

The Sheriff’s Office has further made the materials available for review during the booking process. Clients then become active participants in the release process by completing the voluntary interview with PTS. Eligible defendants can have their case reviewed for potential release on their own recognizance (OR) or supervised own recognizance (SORP) during the pre-arraignment process. These services do not cost the individual, their family, or friends any money. By contrast, paying a commercial bail agent typically involves paying 10 percent of the total bond, which is non-refundable regardless of the disposition of the case or if they show up for all their court appearances.

Pretrial justice reform continues to evolve in Santa Clara County. The Safety and Justice Challenge grant came at an opportune time for rallying support for this campaign following Santa Clara’s published recommendations in the Final Consensus Report on Optimal Pretrial Justice in August of 2016. Stakeholder support has been essential as we have worked toward implementing these recommendations for reform. In recent years, Santa Clara County has initiated many cross-department collaborations creating fertile ground for implementing the No Cost Release Campaign which serves to further these reform efforts.

To measure the campaign’s impact, stakeholders will collect data regarding the use of these jail release alternatives in order to identify gaps in service or opportunities to improve the overall process. We are expecting substantial benefits to individuals, public safety, county resources, and the community. The Sheriff’s Department is collecting data regarding the number of cases released on OR or SORP, on financial bail, and other release types while PTS is reviewing individuals’ awareness of the campaign at the time of booking. For those released on OR/SORP, Pretrial Services will also collect data on the number of individuals showing up for all court appearances and will track the number of individuals not rearrested prior to the completion of their supervision term.

Through this No Cost Release campaign we strive to reduce the number of people in our jails who are simply waiting for their cases to be heard. By informing the public of their rights and options we make our criminal justice system a more just and equitable system for all.