Press Releases archives

The U.S. keeps millions of people on probation and parole every day. Rather than serving as an alternative to incarceration, supervision is often a tripwire to harsher punishments.

April 7, 2026

In many states, the number of people on probation or other forms of “community supervision” far outstrips the number of people behind bars. In a new report, Punishment Beyond Prisons 2026: Incarceration and supervision by state, the Prison Policy Initiative offers a state-by-state look at the correctional population that goes beyond prison and jail walls — while illuminating how probation and parole supervision often lead to incarceration.

graphic from Punishment Beyond Prisons 2026 showing the breakdown of correctional populations in all 50 states

From notorious “tough on crime” states like Georgia to “progressive” states like Minnesota and Rhode Island, the report shows how supervision — mainly, probation — has elevated correctional control from rare to commonplace:

  • If the number of people on probation and parole nationwide were its own state, it would be roughly the size of Connecticut, more populous than 21 states and D.C.
  • In 20 states, over two-thirds of people under correctional control are on probation or parole, rather than behind bars.
  • There are nearly as many people on parole — supervision after release from prison — as there are in the nation’s 3,000-plus local jails.

“Looking only at incarceration obscures the fact that millions more people are under the thumb of the correctional system, forced to comply with a litany of rules every day or face reincarceration,” said report author Leah Wang. “As lawmakers ponder how to reduce prison populations, they should look at these supervision systems, which are often a tripwire to harsher punishments.”

Punishment Beyond Prisons 2026 also includes:

  • An overview of incarceration and supervision populations over time, with a warning that despite pandemic-fueled downturns, many states are actually at or near peak probation populations.
  • A sidebar highlighting another punished population: the over 800,000 people required to be listed on public registries for sex offense convictions, despite abundant evidence that these registries do not improve public safety.
  • A section about people on supervision held behind bars for non-criminal rule violations, showing that these violations send more people on probation and parole to prison than do new criminal offenses.

The report highlights how certain states have enacted reforms that reduce supervision for people who do not need it. Virginia and Florida, for example, have passed laws allowing people to earn time off their probation sentences through education, employment and other achievements, while Pennsylvania now uses an individualized approach to setting probation conditions and allows for early termination of supervision.

“Supervision sentences, particularly probation sentences, are too long and keep people under correctional control far past the point where it benefits them,” said Wang. “Just as with this country’s bloated incarceration system, probation and parole can and should be drastically reduced while preserving public safety.”

The full report is at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/correctionalcontrol2026.html.

The increase in the number of people behind bars since last year's report is almost entirely attributable to immigration enforcement.

March 11, 2026

The number of people held in ICE detention on any given day grew 58% between 2025 and 2026, increasing the total number of people behind bars in the U.S., a new report shows. The latest edition of the Prison Policy Initiative’s report Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie — which pieces together the most recent data on different confinement systems to provide the big-picture view of incarceration in this country — shows that the rise in immigration detention has driven up overall incarceration numbers.

Key findings from this year’s report include:

  • Across all federal agencies for which data are available, including the federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (which holds unaccompanied migrant children), the number of people behind bars for immigration reasons increased 32% since last year.
  • The number of people detained by ICE grew by 25,200 (58%) since last year, remaining near record-high levels.
  • In 2024 (the most recent year for which data are available), people held under local jurisdiction in city, county, and regional jails fell by 17,000.
  • Nearly 10,000 fewer people were incarcerated for federal crimes in 2026 compared to 2025, reflecting changes in federal law enforcement priorities and clemency actions under the second Trump administration.

“Even as we see the number of people in prisons and jails hold relatively steady, immigration detention has exploded,” said report co-author Wendy Sawyer. “What’s more, the number of facilities holding people for ICE grew by 65 percent in the last year. President Trump’s cruel and wasteful policies of mass detention are not only driving up the number of incarcerated people; they are expanding the carceral landscape in this country.”

As in every edition of this report, 2026’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie includes sections putting incarceration numbers in important context:

  • A “myth-busting” section addressing ten common misconceptions about mass incarceration and crime, including the impacts of immigration and criminal justice reform on crime and the footprint of the “war on drugs”;
  • Sections taking a closer look at specific sections of the “pie” chart, and explaining how even low-level offenses can spiral into time spent behind bars;
  • A section “zooming out” to show that when systems of community-based punishment — mainly, probation and parole — are included, the total number of people under correctional control grows to over 5 million.
  • Insights about the fiscal costs of mass incarceration, which now total $445 billion per year.

The full report is available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2026.html.

We offer our yearly list of impactful reforms that can - and have - succeeded in state legislatures, including links to research and model bills.

November 19, 2025

With the federal government abandoning proven public safety strategies and doubling down on punishment, the work of state policymakers and advocates to shrink the criminal legal system and make it fairer is even more important. This morning, the Prison Policy Initiative released its 2026 edition of Winnable Criminal Justice Reforms, a report designed to give state and local change-makers the background they need to emulate existing and effective reforms.

For each of the reforms in the report, we provide critical context about the existing problem, explain why change would be impactful, and highlight research, model solutions, and legislation to help advocates and lawmakers get started.

This year’s report includes 34 vital reform strategies, in eight categories:

The list is not intended to be a comprehensive platform. Instead, we’ve curated it to offer straightforward solutions that do not require further investments in the carceral system. We particularly focused on reforms that would reduce the number of people needlessly confined in prisons and jails. Additionally, we selected reforms that have gained momentum in recent years, passing in multiple states.

We recognize that as we publish this guide, many advocates are working tirelessly not just to pass much-needed reforms, but to beat back coordinated attacks against prior victories. For that reason, we’ve also included some talking points to use to fight against these regressive policies that threaten to undo decades of work by advocates.

We sent our report to roughly 650 lawmakers, in all 50 states, from all political parties, who have shown a commitment to reducing the number of people behind bars in their state and making the criminal legal system more just and equitable. As they craft legislation for the upcoming legislative sessions, this list will provide them with actionable solutions to some of the most pressing challenges their states’ criminal legal systems face.

The full report is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/winnable2026.html.

Despite their differences, all discretionary parole systems have serious design flaws and most are steadily releasing fewer people, a new report shows.

October 7, 2025

A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative pulls back the curtain on parole release systems, providing the most accessible and comprehensive source to date for comparing how these essential — and often dysfunctional — release mechanisms are set up in 35 states. The report, Parole in Perspective, reveals that parole releases are on the decline in nearly every state that uses discretionary parole, highlighting elements of the process that contribute to this urgent problem.

A map showing the states that have discretionary parole in the U.S.

Parole in Perspective comprises two parts, each honing in on different elements of parole release. The first explores the makeup of boards and how they conduct hearings. The second dives into new data on hearings and grants, and the factors that boards consider — including their discretion — in determining whether someone will be released.

The report contains four essential data tables showing:

Parole in Perspective coincides with the Prison Policy Initiative and MacArthur Justice Center’s release of their Principles for Parole Reform, a guiding “North Star” document designed to help activists and policymakers identify priorities for reform in their states.

Both the new report and the Principles for Parole Reform identify crucial flaws in parole systems today, including:

  • Relying too heavily on factors outside of applicants’ control — such as “the severity of the offense” or a perception that release would “diminish the seriousness of the crime”;
  • Making irrational parole decisions in favor of keeping applicants locked up, often flying in the face of what risk assessment tools recommend;
  • Stacking boards with law enforcement professionals, while ignoring the perspective of people with experiences of incarceration;
  • Increasingly holding virtual rather than face-to-face hearings, or worse, not affording parole applicants a hearing at all.

“Despite their differences, all discretionary parole systems have serious design flaws that lead to an unfair preparation and hearing process for incarcerated people,” said report author Leah Wang. “By shining a light on boards and their practices, we hope to lay a path toward making these systems real tools for decarceration.”

The full report is available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/parole.html.

The number of imprisoned women globally has grown 60% since 2000. The United States remains a major driver of this population, a new report shows.

September 23, 2025

Every U.S. state incarcerates more women per capita than most independent nations of the world, a new report from the Prison Policy Initiative shows. Collectively, the United States accounts for 4 percent of the world’s women, but holds one-quarter of women who are incarcerated worldwide.

States of Women’s Incarceration: The Global Context 2025 provides a comprehensive women’s incarceration rate for every U.S. state — including prisons and jails, youth confinement facilities, tribal jails, immigrant detention centers, and other types of incarceration — comparing states to each other and to countries of the world. The report offers a crucial lens through which to view the criminalization of women, who are a small minority of all incarcerated people in the U.S., but whose incarceration rates today are at near-historic highs.

The Prison Policy Initiative’s report allows viewers to observe that, for example:

  • South Dakota — with the highest incarceration rate in the U.S. — as well as Montana and Idaho have higher women’s incarceration rates than any country in the world.
  • Women in Kentucky face almost the same incarceration rate as women in El Salvador, a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.
  • New Jersey — which has one of the lowest women’s incarceration rates in the U.S. — is on par with the United Arab Emirates, a nation where nonmarital sex can result in a prison sentence of six months for women.

States of Women’s Incarceration homes in on some of this country’s closest international allies to show just how starkly the U.S. stands out globally. Most states, the report shows, incarcerate women at more than double the rates of these “peer” countries.

Graph showing rates of women's incarceration in the U.S. compared to other founding NATO countries.

“Women’s mass incarceration is a global concern — the number of imprisoned women has grown nearly 60% since the year 2000,” said report author Emily Widra. “With this country’s war on drugs, our treatment of mental illness as a problem for police to deal with, and our criminalization of poverty, it is no wonder that the U.S. continues to drive this problem and to account for a quarter of the world’s incarcerated women.”

The full report is available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/women/2025.html.

New report explains how many system-involved youth are confined, where they are held, under what conditions, and for what offenses.

August 25, 2025

A new Prison Policy Initiative report provides the most up-to-date picture of how many youth are detained and committed in the U.S., highlighting the persistent overincarceration of Black and Indigenous youth in a system that, in recent decades, has made great strides in reducing youth confinement overall. Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2025 explores the conditions facing 31,900 kids today — most of whom are held in youth prisons and jails — and offers data on youth confinement by offense type in all 50 states.

Over the past 25 years, the number of youth in confinement in the U.S. has fallen by more than 70 percent — impressive progress compared to the adult criminal legal system, whose populations have changed very little overall in that same period. Nevertheless, the U.S. still confines youth at a rate more than twice the global average, and its juvenile legal system mirrors the adult system in many alarming ways:

  • Severe racial disparities. 47% of boys and 39% of girls in juvenile facilities are Black — a level of disparity that has actually worsened in recent years. And even excluding youth held in Indian country facilities, Indigenous children make up 3% of girls and 2% of boys in juvenile facilities, despite comprising less than 1% of all youth nationally.
  • Large numbers of youth held pretrial or for minor offenses. Nearly 9,000 youth today are locked up before they’ve had a trial, and thousands are in detention for minor, low-level offenses. Select states — such as Indiana, which accounts for almost one-quarter of kids locked up for running away; and Texas and California, which hold 26% of kids confined for technical violations of parole — contribute heavily to this problem.
  • Prison-like conditions. While the number of kids in large facilities (holding 100 youth or more) has fallen steeply in the last few years, nearly 4 out of every 5 confined kids are held in youth or adult prisons and jails — an increase since 2017, when 65% of confined youth were held in such places.

“States have made astonishing progress in the last 25 years in reducing youth incarceration, but the fact remains that prisons and jails are not places for kids,” said report author Brian Nam-Sonenstein. “Confinement is still a traumatizing experience for youth — most of whom already have histories of trauma — and one that leaves them worse off than before their incarceration.”

Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie 2025 includes a first-of-its-kind, 50-state table showing the number of youth confined for various types of offenses, shining particular light on “status offenses” (behaviors that are not law violations for adults). Other key features of the report include:

  • Sidebars breaking down the different types of youth confinement facilities, and terminology around youth incarceration that differs from the adult system;
  • Infographics “zooming in” on certain slices of the pie, such as youth held for low-level offenses and youth in highly restrictive facilities;
  • A section highlighting some of the reforms that have led to a more than 70% drop in confined youth populations, and noting how these same reforms could be applied to the adult criminal legal system.

“Disturbingly, some states today are threatening to double down on failed policies that created the youth confinement crisis in the first place,” Nam-Sonenstein said. “Seeing the full picture of this system should remove any doubt that it casts far too wide a net, one that disproportionately ensnares Black and brown youth. State policymakers would do well to emulate the reforms that have shrunk this system and apply these lessons to adult prisons and jails.”

The full report is available here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/youth2025.html

The new report explains how the Trump administration is using a longstanding loophole to circumvent sanctuary policies and obscure the full scale of its immigration actions.

July 30, 2025

This morning, the Prison Policy Initiative released Hiding in Plain Sight, a report revealing the crucial role that locally-run jails are playing in President Trump’s program of mass deportation — and why states and counties must do more to end cooperation. Building on the organization’s work explaining how county jails enable state and federal incarceration, this report breaks down the complicated overlap between local criminal justice and immigration, and offers detailed data tables showing the level of involvement in every state and in specific jails.

Key findings include:

pie chart showing that about one-third of detained immigrants do not show up in ICE data
  • The Trump administration is circumventing city and county sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It accomplishes this through a longstanding loophole: ICE and other federal agencies can refer people for federal prosecution on immigration-related “crimes” and thus use local jails’ contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service in sanctuary cities, counties, and states. In doing so, the Trump administration is transforming what are normally civil immigration matters into more serious federal crimes.
  • ICE data doesn’t show the full scale of immigrant detention in the U.S. While ICE detention data recorded 57,200 people on average in June 2025, the true count of people detained shows the overall crimmigration system is 45% larger, at around 83,400 people. That’s because ICE data does not account for people facing criminal immigration charges (as explained above), nor does it account for people held on ICE detainers, in some state detention facilities, or in overnight hold rooms.
  • Jails and police departments play a key role in criminalizing immigration by detaining people until ICE agents can make an arrest. ICE has capitalized on local detention of immigrants — often on minor charges or charges that would not lead to jail time for U.S. citizens (such as driving without a license) — to not only make more arrests, but to enhance the appearance of targeting “criminals.” Arrests in jails comprise 45% of ICE arrests since Trump’s inauguration in January.

“Many cities and states have tried to offer sanctuary for immigrants by refusing to rent jail space to ICE and opting out of the 287(g) program, but it is not enough,” said report author Jacob Kang-Brown. “The Trump administration is leveraging jails at a new scale, using local contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and existing policing practices in order to expand detention.”

For reporters who want to dig deeper into these trends in their own counties and states, the report includes data tables showing:

  • How many people are being held for ICE and the U.S. Marshals in over 600 local jails (and over 150 other facilities), the change in these populations from January to April 2025, and the share of all detained immigrants in every state being held by jails.
  • The rate of ICE arrests happening in jails, compared to other locations, in every state.
  • The number of immigrants arrested by the U.S. Marshals on various charge types over time — showing that a quickly-growing share of these people are being booked on charges related to their immigration status.
  • The per-diem payments by the U.S. Marshals to hundreds of local jails in exchange for housing immigrants and other federal pretrial detainees.

The report concludes by urging counties to end all of their collaborations with federal immigration detention agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, which has contracts with nearly 1,000 jails nationwide. Via their jails, local governments are — intentionally or not — providing the infrastructure for a massive attack on immigrants. But by resisting cooperation with President Trump’s racist deportation machine, counties and states also have the power to contain it.

The full report is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/jails_immigration.html

The newest iteration of the Prison Policy Initiative’s flagship report explains that the incarcerated population grew by about 2% overall, with significant spikes in the incarceration of immigrants and young people.

March 11, 2025

Easthampton, Mass. — Today, the Prison Policy Initiative released the 2025 edition of its flagship report, Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie. The report offers the most comprehensive view of the nearly 2 million people incarcerated in the U.S., showing what types of facilities they are in and why. It also serves as a primer on the size and scope of the criminal legal system and busts 10 of the most persistent myths about mass incarceration and crime.

Main pie chart graphic from Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025.

For the first time ever, the report highlights important changes and trends in the criminal legal system, including:

  • The overall incarcerated population has grown by roughly 2% since our last Whole Pie report, according to the most recent data, although the total confined population is still about 13% smaller than its pre-pandemic size;
  • Recent growth in incarceration is largely driven by a handful of states, with nine states accounting for 77% of all state prison growth over 2022 and 2023. Conversely, 10 states have continued to reduce their prison population since 2021.
  • Courts sent 11% more young people to incarceration in 2022 than in 2021, the first increase in youth confinement in over two decades.

“This data tells the story of states taking two divergent paths,” said Wendy Sawyer, Research Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. “The first path works to reduce the number of people behind bars, recognizing that every person who is locked up represents the failure of overly-punitive policies. The other path doubles down on the misguided policies that created the nation’s mass incarceration crisis by locking more people up, destroying lives, and making communities less safe.”

The report includes 32 visualizations that shine a light on the hidden realities of the criminal legal system in America, including:

  • A pie “slice” showing the 655,000 people in local jails on any given day, including over 450,000 people awaiting trial, and over 100,000 people held by jails for other agencies.
  • A graphic explaining that, contrary to a popular misconception, only 8% of incarcerated people are held in privately-run facilities.
  • Graphics offering details about lesser-known parts of the criminal legal system, including involuntary commitment, civil commitment, and jails on tribal lands.

On Friday, March 14, at 1 p.m. Eastern time, Prison Policy Initiative will host an Instagram Live discussion about the key takeaways from the report and answer questions from viewers. Those interested in joining this event can use their mobile phone to set a reminder and watch here.

The full report is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html

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February 19, 2025

Why are terrible prison and jail healthcare systems so resilient against lawsuits and government oversight? How do healthcare providers cut corners with patient care to keep costs down? When and why did corrections agencies start to swing towards contracting out healthcare to companies?

In a new report, Cut-Rate Care, the Prison Policy Initiative answers these questions and others, providing a sweeping explainer of correctional healthcare. We focus on the incentives behind notoriously bad care found in prisons, and explain the major changes — in particular, a shift away from control of healthcare by departments of corrections — that would be necessary to reorient these systems toward a public health approach to care.

People in prison have unique health needs, suffering disproportionately from illnesses like Hepatitis C, HIV, and substance use disorder. As we’ve shown before, these needs routinely go unmet in prisons. Our new report explains why: Correctional healthcare systems are services for corrections departments, not incarcerated people, and are therefore focused less on patient care and more on avoiding lawsuits.

The explainer covers:

  • The ways prisons protect themselves against legal consequences for poor medical care, from contracts that offload responsibility onto private companies to federal and state laws that stymie legal action.
  • The history of privatization in prison healthcare, including a table showing the three main business models of healthcare contracts in effect in prisons today.
  • The few quality control measures for prison healthcare — government oversight, accreditation, and litigation — and why these have all ultimately failed to meaningfully improve the quality of care.

“With prison healthcare, you regularly see that incarcerated people’s complaints get ignored, their requests for exams get denied, and their care gets slow-walked,” said author Brian Nam-Sonenstein. “That’s because prison healthcare systems are really more like liability management systems, and what’s bad for patient care can actually be good for limiting liability.”

Beyond offering an overview of correctional healthcare, the explainer also includes:

  • Policy recommendations for decision-makers at all levels of government, but particularly for state and federal lawmakers — whom we urge to remove the provision of prison healthcare from departments of corrections and transfer it to public health agencies, breaking down the “wall” that currently exists between correctional healthcare and public health.
  • An appendix with a thumbnail history of the evolution of correctional healthcare, centered around the pivot to privatization since the turn of the millennium.
  • Anecdotes from six incarcerated people (in six different prison systems) whom we asked about their experiences with correctional healthcare.

“Private or public, the goal of prison healthcare providers is to provide the minimum amount of care possible in order to avoid claims of negligence,” said Nam-Sonenstein. “These are medical systems caught up not just culturally, but systemically, with the handing out of punishment. That won’t change until we take correctional healthcare out of the hands of departments of corrections and give it to professionals who are solely focused on public health.”

The full report is available at: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/healthcare.html.

January 28, 2025

The systems meant to maintain order and safety in prisons are ripe for abuse by corrections staff, are frequently used to dole out extreme punishments, and play a key role in keeping people in prison longer, a new report shows. The Prison Policy Initiative’s report Bad Behavior: How prison disciplinary policies manufacture misconduct, released this morning, offers an overview of all 50 state prison systems’ disciplinary policies, and explains how the use of these policies as a tool for mass punishment works against prisons’ stated goal of rehabilitation.

Bad Behavior is the broadest review of disciplinary policies to date, and draws on original research as well as testimony from 47 currently incarcerated people, providing an essential look at how prisons are run in the age of mass incarceration. The report’s findings help explain why over 50% of people in state prisons in a typical year are punished at least once for misconduct:

  • It is nearly impossible to avoid disciplinary infractions behind bars: Prison rules cover a vast range of possible conduct, including vague conduct such as “disrespect” and redundant rules about rulebreaking, and the vast majority of disciplinary cases are for minor violations rather than interpersonal harm.
  • Incarcerated people have no meaningful way to defend themselves when accused of infractions: Accused people are typically not allowed to seek representation, and face significant obstacles to finding and presenting evidence (including witnesses) at disciplinary hearings, meaning that many people are severely punished based solely on the testimony of a corrections officer.
  • Discipline policies are exacerbating America’s mass incarceration crisis: People found guilty of disciplinary violations are frequently put in solitary confinement or have good-time credits revoked, both of which can effectively lengthen their prison sentences.
A chart showing over half of people in state prisons are written up for disciplinary violationa annually, and most are minor violations with harsh punishments.

The report notes that misconduct records impact incarcerated people’s chances of earning early release in other ways as well, such as by preventing them from participating in educational or job training programs, and working against them in hearings before parole boards.

“Whether it’s being stripped of one’s ability to visit with family, getting expelled from programs, or being put in solitary, punishments for rulebreaking always come with a cost to rehabilitation and reentry,” said report author Brian Nam-Sonenstein. “State lawmakers should be paying close attention to how many minor infractions are punished in prisons, and the impact this has on people’s circumstances when they’re released.”

The report issues recommendations to departments of corrections for how to immediately make their disciplinary systems fairer and more constructive, including:

  • Reduce the number of misconduct rules, focusing first on rules that are redundant and that create opportunities for discrimination and abuse.
  • Limit the influence of misconduct records on early release decisions, recognizing that most infractions are minor and that rules are often enforced arbitrarily.
  • End solitary confinement and bans on family contact, and institute non-punitive responses to violations such as drug use behind bars — especially in facilities where treatment is practically nonexistent.
  • Improve fairness and accountability in disciplinary processes, starting with basic measures such as allowing people representation at hearings and the ability to gather and present evidence and witnesses.

“The disciplinary system behind bars is largely a mirror of the criminal legal system on the outside, with one crucial difference — departments of corrections can modify their systems at any time,” Nam-Sonenstein said. “Immediate action can — and should — be taken to stop people in prisons being thrown in solitary or having their release jeopardized because of a system that is so reactive to minor misbehavior, and often manufactures it out of whole cloth.”

The full report is available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/discipline.html. Additionally, the Prison Policy Initiative published a guide for reporters investigating disciplinary systems in their state’s prisons, available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2025/01/28/discipline-pressguide/.

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