Topic: Jail Populations

Cities and counties participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) significantly reduced their jail populations over the past few years – both prior to and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite that progress, racial and ethnic disparities in jails persist.

Today the SJC has selected four jurisdictions to join a new Racial Equity Cohort based on proposals that explicitly focus on racial and ethnic equity in the criminal justice system; center lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color; and emphasize the SJC Community Engagement Pillars of authenticity, accessibility and transparency, respect for diversity, and commitment to ongoing engagement.

The four cities and counties selected to participate in the Racial Equity Cohort are Cook County (IL), New Orleans (LA), Philadelphia (PA), and Pima County (AZ).

The funding will provide training and technical assistance focused on racial equity and authentic community engagement, peer-to-peer support from other cohort members, and qualitative and quantitative data and analytic support. The new funding and support announced is part of that commitment to learning and investing in more intentional and effective strategies to eliminate institutional and systemic racism within the justice system.

In that context, let’s take a deeper look at the data on racial disparities in jails and why there is such a great need for this work.

Jail Populations Can Be Successfully Reduced

Data collected by ISLG show significant declines in overall and pretrial jail populations, and reduced jail populations for people of color across SJC sites. Jail bookings are down, particularly for people charged with misdemeanors.

Since the start of the SJC, participating cities and counties collectively reduced their jail populations by 26% as of November 2021. This equates to almost 19,765 fewer people held in jail in SJC communities since we began collecting data. The decline in the confined pretrial/awaiting action population accounted for 52% of the overall decline in jail populations across SJC cities and counties.

Despite Improved Outcomes, Disparities Persist

Though jail populations are down across racial and ethnic groups, disparities persist in jail populations. While many people admitted to jail are released within hours or days of their booking, many cannot afford to post bail and may remain behind bars for weeks or even months. These and other burdens of jail fall disproportionately on communities of color.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, jail populations declined dramatically across the country and in cities and counties participating in SJC. Though declines in jail populations and bookings were prevalent across racial and ethnic groups, the declines were more pronounced for White people than for Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people. As a result, racial and ethnic disparities persisted or worsened in many SJC communities between February 2020 and October 2020. The disparities were particularly deep for Black and Indigenous people.

More SJC Communities Reduced Jail Populations for White People

Though jail populations have rebounded somewhat since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, jail populations are still below February 2020 levels in many sites.

Still, in most sites the reductions for white people were greater than the reductions for people of color, resulting in persistent disparities.

From when communities joined the SJC through November 2021:

• Jail population declines for Black people equalled or exceeded declines for White people in only 3 of 17 reporting sites.
• White jail populations declined more than Latinx jail populations in all 12 reporting sites.
• Indigenous jail populations out-declined White jail populations in 2 of 4 reporting sites.

Trends in Individual SJC Communities

Data on the four racial equity cohort sites–New Orleans, Cook County, Pima County, and Philadelphia–further illustrate the persistent disparities that exist, even among sites that have made significant progress in reducing overall jail populations.

In New Orleans, Louisiana, the overall jail population declined by more than half since their baseline, but the reduction was more pronounced for white people (60% drop) relative to Black people (51% drop) and Latinx people (25% drop).

In Cook County, Illinois, the trends are similar. The t jail population ticked up slightly following the pandemic but remains significantly lower than baseline (down by 31%).. Still, the reductions in ADP for White people far outpaced reductions for Black and Latinx people.

In Pima County, Arizona, race and ethnicity trends are unclear–local partners will be working on expanding their capacity to track this data as part of their reform work. Overall, however, the jurisdiction’s jail population trends show a 9% decline from their baseline and an upticksince the initial months of the pandemic.

Philadelphia, like Pima, does not yet fully report race population breakdowns, but has seen an overall jail population decline of 39%, up slightly from a pandemic-era low.

Work to Eliminate Disparities Continues

As cities and counties continue to implement strategies to safely reduce jail populations, more work remains to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. The new SJC racial equity cohort in select sites across the country is an opportunity to further reduce harm and implement best practices.

–The SJC has engaged the Institute for State and Local Governance (ISLG) at the City University of New York (CUNY) to track data across participating cities and counties.

The last two years have been turbulent for all our partners in the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), particularly for the cities and counties that have committed to reducing their jail population and eliminating racial and ethnic inequities as part of the SJC Network.

Communities participating in SJC range from the small (Missoula, MT) to the immense (Los Angeles, CA), and they vary demographically, politically, geographically, and in every other way you can imagine. But the COVID-19 pandemic touched all of them. It brought with it death and economic disruption, as it has everywhere. It also brought change and opportunity. By forcing local systems to adopt emergency measures to save lives—including suspending or discarding the routines, institutional habits, and assumptions that make jail incarceration so common—the pandemic experience has imparted valuable lessons.

The most obvious lesson, and perhaps the most important, is that we can do without incarceration, to a degree that many had not foreseen. All the cities and counties involved in the SJC reduced their jail populations during the pandemic, some quite dramatically. They got average jail populations down to the lowest levels in decades, and quickly, without endangering the public.

They achieved this largely through collaboration and using data in real-time to understand who is arrested and booked into jail. Local criminal justice systems are fragmented, and lots of agencies working independently play a part in filling jails. With strategies to reduce jail populations already underway and key decision-makers already working together, SJC communities were better positioned than most to respond to the crisis. Even before the pandemic, for example, there were more than a dozen multi-agency “jail population review” teams in place across the SJC Network, tasked with routinely looking at jail data and court records to identify people in custody who could be safely released. Adapting structures like this for COVID-19 purposes—using them to identify medically vulnerable people, say, or all people in jail charged with misdemeanors—was relatively easy.

Many cities and counties participating in SJC have also broadened their collaborations in ways that benefited them when the crisis hit. They were already working with public health officials and other agencies outside the criminal justice system; community advocates and representatives; and people who were directly impacted by the criminal justice system—all of whose cooperation, perspectives, and expertise were needed to cope with the pandemic.

In order to get and keep people out of jail facilities, where social distancing was difficult or impossible, and the danger of outbreaks was high, cities and counties participating in SJC used a variety of techniques. Police reduced or eliminated arrests for offenses like drug possession, sometimes issuing citations instead. Courts released individuals being held on low cash bail amounts or discarded cash bail altogether. Pretrial release and community supervision were expanded to include people charged with more serious offenses. Old warrants were quashed, and new ones were not ordered. And many of the people who were released got the support they needed—housing, food, medication, transportation, and service referrals—to remain in their communities.

Technology also helped. Many cities and counties used video conferencing for hearings to clear up cases while minimizing interactions. Probation and parole departments instituted online check-ins, helping to reduce revocations that often lead to jailing. Many of these practices, though intended to be temporary, are still in place, and many SJC communities are discussing ways of making them permanent.

Not all the news is good. Despite the overall reductions in jail populations, the racial disparities that preceded the pandemic have persisted. There are fewer people in jails, reducing the harm caused by incarceration, but among those who are in jails, people of color are still overrepresented. This has occurred even as the SJC has centered racial equity in its approach, committed to authentic community engagement, and focused on identifying and eliminating the drivers of racial and ethnic inequities.

Also left behind, for the most part, are people accused or convicted of violent felonies—a very large proportion of the incarcerated population, and one that cannot be ignored if we really mean to end mass incarceration.

At the same time, there are broad threats to the sustainability of the progress our partners have made, as well as the stability of the coalitions that achieved them. One of them is the perception that criminal justice reform generally, and pretrial detention reform specifically, have led to increases in crime, including the disturbing spikes in homicides many U.S. cities have witnessed in the past two years. We have good evidence to the contrary—including an analysis showing that no crime increases accompanied substantial jail population reductions in SJC communities during the initiative’s first two years; a more recent study drawing similar conclusions with regard to the even larger jail population cuts during the pandemic; and an assessment focusing on Cook County, which found no increase in criminal activity following bail reform there. Nevertheless, we think it would be a mistake to underestimate the potency of law and order rhetoric equating safety with punishment, which is what brought us mass incarceration in the first place.

All of which is to say, we still have work to do. It is, once again, a reminder that it is not enough to simply adopt best practices to reduce the jail population. Even amid crisis, careful attention must be paid to the racial disparities and working towards true equity. We look forward to what we can accomplish together in the next year.

Criminal Justice grantmaking ›
Criminal Justice strategy ›

A new research paper from the Square One Project at Columbia University offers the first comprehensive review of experimental social policy interventions that can end mass incarceration. The review demonstrates that greater investments in healthcare, education, employment, housing and social services – as well as increased scientific rigor in implementation – are needed to effectively decarcerate.

My colleagues Emily Wang, Laura Hawks, Lisa Puglisi, and I reviewed more than 23,000 research articles to produce the paper, “Towards A New Framework for Achieving Decarceration: A Review of the Research Literature on Social Investments.” We sought to answer the question: Which interventions into social policy (investments in housing, healthcare, employment, education, and social support programs) through community-led organizations have been shown to reduce incident incarceration or recidivism? The lack of research was stark: only 53 total papers fit our research protocol and were included in our findings.

Three intervention types had the most consistent and largest reductions in criminal legal system interaction:

1. Early childhood education programs, particularly those that support parents

Some of the most effective early childhood interventions happen before a child is even born. Effective nurse-family partnerships help families stay healthy during pregnancy. Once the baby arrives, these nurses can help monitor important signifiers of good health and teach new mothers best practices in post-partum healthcare for both mother and child. Research indicates improved life outcomes, including decreased interaction with the criminal legal system, for both the mother and the child immediately following the intervention and decades later.

Likewise, the average layperson might not think great preschool programs are significant, but the research suggests that their impact is huge. The cognitive malleability of a preschool-aged child suggests that active stimulation and meaningful educational experiences at this age can improve well-being down the line, and research has proven this true. The research literature demonstrates that the most effective preschool programs are those that have structured, individualized curricula and provide “wraparound services,” or a direct line of communication between teachers and parents or guardians. This can be as simple as a teacher being able to ask a parent, “I’ve noticed that Sam seemed tired today and wasn’t as engaged with his friends as a consequence. Have you noticed a change of sleeping habits?” Parents and teachers can then work together to make sure the child’s full needs are met, in and out of the classroom. While interactions like these seem small or intangible, they are strong contributors to improving tangible measures of well-being.

2. Community-based job placement specialists that help individuals re-entering society find stable, gainful employment

The research shows that it is not enough to give people just any kind of job as they are transitioning from justice system involvement and back into society. It turns out that gainful employment – jobs that are skilled, long-term, provide benefits like healthcare or retirement funds, and offer opportunities for promotion or managerial experience– is the only thing that really reduces criminal legal system interaction. Temporary, non-skilled work at low wages does not help in any significant way.

The most effective transitional employment programs for people reentering society from carceral settings are those that offer case management; in these situations, a case worker will partner with the reentering person to strategize, create resumes, practice interviewing, and even call potential employers to vouch for their suitability. Active collaboration between the reentering person and their case worker empowers people who are reentering to pursue jobs that feel meaningful and well-suited to their interests, skills, and lifestyle.

Likewise, there is heavy emphasis during reentry programming on obtainment of a high school diploma or certificate of General Educational Development (GED). But these do not significantly reduce recidivism – they do not provide many opportunities for meaningful employment. We found that existing research shows that people need an Associate’s or Bachelor’s-level degree to effectively overcome the stigmas they experience on reentering civilian life.

3. Social services care coordination and Multisystemic Therapy

Multisystemic therapy (MST) has been studied in multiple samples of justice-involved youth people, with significant reductions in criminal legal system involvement demonstrated. During MST, young people participate in group or individualized therapy accompanied by psychosomatic medication if needed – essentially traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition, their entire family is involved in their rehabilitation. This means extra sessions with a young person’s family, teachers, or other community members, or at least active communication between the parties and therapist. Because of this broader engagement, MST gives a fuller picture of a child’s socio-emotional context (e.g., “is this child acting out because of family hardship?”), and helps a therapist actively involve adults in the young person’s life in comprehensive care coordination.

What does this mean for the SJC Network?

People who are working to reduce jail populations – for example, as part of the Safety and Justice Challenge – are often siloed from people who make broader decisions about community-led investments in social supports. But our review of the research shows how efforts to reduce jail populations fit into a broader picture of how to effectively end mass incarceration. Reducing the number of people in jails and fortifying our social safety net are the twin pillars of decarceration. Cities and counties participating in SJC should continue actively engaging with community-led organizations providing social policy programming, as the work of SJC and its community counterparts is deeply connected.

Probation is the most common sentence in the United States. In 2019, one in 73 adults was on probation, and there were almost 1.5 million more people on probation than in jails and prisons combined. Although the problems of “mass supervision,” particularly the way probation violations contribute to state prison populations, have begun to draw greater critical attention, there is very little information about how probation contributes to local jail populations.

A new report released by the Vera Institute of Justice, with support from the Safety and Justice Challenge, focuses on the ways probation can affect jail populations and what can be done differently.

Research shows people are frequently sentenced to overly long terms of probation and have to comply with an average of 10 to 20 conditions, which are often vague and sometimes conflict with each other. The difficulty of complying with all of these conditions for long periods of time frequently leads to “technical” violations (violations of supervision conditions that are not based on new criminal conduct) and can lead to revocation of probation and imposition of a jail or prison sentence. Nationally, only around 60 percent of people under supervision complete probation successfully.

Probation is also marked by significant racial disparities. Despite being more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison than probation, Black people are still over 2.6 times more likely than white people to be on probation. When they are sentenced to probation, Black people tend to be given more conditions and to be on probation for longer terms than similarly situated white people. They are also more likely to have violations filed against them, to be sanctioned with incarceration, and to have probation revoked and be sentenced to incarceration.

There are multiple ways probation supervision can result in jail incarceration, such as detention of people waiting for court hearings on violations alleged by a probation officer or sentencing of people to jail for probation violations. There is some evidence that increasing numbers of people are choosing to accept a jail sentence up front to avoid probation, as they view probation as too difficult to comply with and likely to result in eventual incarceration anyway.

National data provides almost no details on how probation contributes to jail populations. To begin to remedy this gap, we analyzed jail data from nine jurisdictions participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge. This analysis showed admissions to jail for probation violations vary from a low of 3.9 percent to a high of 23.8 percent. The data also showed that length of stay (LOS) for people with probation violations was much longer than for those held in jail for other reasons. Because of this extended LOS, on any given day, the proportion of people in jail for probation violations greatly exceeded their share of jail admissions. The probation violation ADP ranged from 9.1 percent to just over 50 percent. Our analysis also confirmed significant racial disparities: across the sites for which race data was available, Black and Native American people were held in jail for probation violations at rates far higher than their representation in the general public.

We also highlight strategies in two SJC sites to reduce probation violation populations in jail. For example, St. Louis County placed three full-time probation staff members in their jail to meet right away with people who come in on violations and work on release plans and recommendations that can be delivered directly to judges. This has led to more judges ordering release based on a probation officer’s written recommendations rather than waiting to hold a preliminary hearing.

Allegheny County, meanwhile, adopted multiple strategies to try to prevent people from going to jail on probation detainers and to get those who are jailed released more quickly. A new policy makes probation detainers an option of last resort, as probation officers in most cases must exhaust all other options for keeping people in the community before issuing detainers, while also requiring earlier release planning and regular follow up for people who do get detained. Allegheny County also developed procedures to ensure that probation violations and new charges are resolved at the same hearing, rather than waiting an average of two months between separate hearings. Finally, the County adopted criteria for termination of probation agreed on by the public defender’s and district attorney’s offices, which led to judges ending probation early for more people who were doing well under supervision.

To better understand how probation affects jail populations, probation agencies and local jails should work together to combine data, disaggregated by race and ethnicity, to ensure that they can determine who is in jail for probation violations; whether the violations are all technical or include new charges; whether people are being detained pending a violation hearing, serving a sentence as a direct sanction for a violation, or serving a previously imposed jail sentence after probation has been revoked; and how long people are spending in jail pending hearings and/or after being sentenced for violations.

Because probation can be a significant driver of jail populations, jurisdictions should work to reduce the number of people detained for violations as well as the time they stay in jail for those violations. Sites should consider using alternative non-carceral sentences instead of probation, limiting the length of probation, reducing and tailoring the number of probation conditions, reducing the frequency of reporting and allowing remote reporting, using summonses instead of warrants for violations, eliminating or severely restricting the use of detainers, and using only non-carceral sanctions for technical violations.

Hispanic Heritage month is an important time to reflect on Hispanic Heritage generally, including how far we still have to go to ensure equitable inclusion and access to justice. One aspect of this is to understand the overrepresentation of and disparate outcomes for people of color, including Latino/Latina/Latinx folks involved in the criminal legal system. Accurate data is needed for that.

Yet, remarkably, we do not know how many Hispanic and Latino people are arrested or how many are incarcerated in the United States because we are not collecting the data. Research by the Urban Institute shows 40 states report race in arrest records, but only 15 report ethnicities.

Counting or failing to count Latinos in our crime metrics has impacts far beyond this specific group of people. Failing to count Latinos means they are often captured as White people in the data. In addition to obscuring the impact of policies on Latinos, this failure obscures disparities between White and Black people in the system.

Without accurate representation we are limiting our chances of advancing racial equity, which is increasingly acknowledged as a key part of legitimate and sustainable strategies to reduce incarceration in the United States.

Self-Identification of Ethnicity Matters

Nineteen percent of America’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, but it is important to note that this population is not monolithic. It is a diverse and multiracial group. It encompasses an array of cultures, life circumstances, and regions of the world, including Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South and Central America, and the Dominican Republic. In the criminal justice system and elsewhere, it is important to identify people in the way they self-identify. Recently more people are using the term Latinx, and it is important to use the term for people who self-identify as such. Research by Pew Research Center shows that only about three percent of Hispanics use the term, countrywide. Sixty-one percent prefer the term Hispanic, and about a third prefer Latino.

Excluding Latinos from Criminal Justice Data Perpetuates Bias

Most states do not track race and ethnicity in a systematic way within local justice systems. The research shows that only one state, Alaska, tracks race and ethnicity consistently across all aspects of its prison population including parole and probation. Other states may be tracking this information but are not reporting on it publicly. This leaves Latinos largely invisible in data-driven discussions about reform. Data informs public policy and excluding Latinos from data collection excludes them from criminal justice policy discussions.

Perhaps most shockingly, states with large Latino populations do not necessarily keep better data. Most jurisdictions rely on arresting officers to classify the race or ethnicity of a person when they are arrested. If officers do not ask a person how they self-identify, bias in race and ethnicity can arise. For example, individuals who are light-skinned may be classified as White, and darker-skinned individuals will be classified as Black. Until about 1980, almost every jurisdiction categorized Latino people as White.

There is much room for improvement in how we categorize people. Because we know that front-end decisions impact subsequent decisions, accurately classifying people in the early stages of system involvement is key.

The MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge is working to reduce jail populations across America. It focuses significant attention on people who languish in jail before trial, who have been arrested on low-level crimes who are not a danger to their communities, and who cannot afford the cost of cash bail. As a result, people working together in cities and counties participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge are in a good position to influence change that leads to improved metrics on race and ethnicity. This represents a significant opportunity to further racial equity.

Organizing For Change in a Multiracial Society

I have heard often from people working to change the way Latinos are treated in the justice system that it is particularly difficult for us to organize when we are not accurately counted. Indeed, most people remain surprised when they hear the depth of this inconsistency. System actors often rely on existing, incomplete data infrastructure to collect and monitor data. This includes the limited classification for capturing race and ethnicity. There are still tremendous variations between agencies, states, and systems.

It is encouraging to see some SJC cities and counties be proactive in improving their data infrastructure to reflect the population they serve. In the end, we cannot measure the impact of reforms geared toward reducing disparities and inequalities if we do not have a mechanism that accurately counts people. The tracking of race and ethnicity across justice systems needs to change with the times.