Data Source: Compiled from the Bureau of Justice Statistics series Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear and Correctional Populations in the United States. Missing data for 1994 extrapolated from 1993 and 1995 values. (Graph: Peter Wagner, 2015)

This graph originally appeared in Jails matter. But who is listening?.

Virtually all of the growth in the jail population has been in the number of legally innocent people who are detained in jails.