Working in “a meat grinder”: A research roundup showing prison and jail jobs aren’t all that states promise they will be

No wonder prisons and jails face constant understaffing and that communities increasingly resist new facilities: Decades of research show that the physical and mental health problems associated with correctional officers' jobs are inherent to the work, and that new prisons and jails fail to deliver on promises of economic development.

by Prison Policy Initiative, May 9, 2022

As we well know, people incarcerated in jails and prisons experience constant trauma, and are surrounded by brutality and violence that are impossible to escape. This experience has only grown worse in recent months. As we are frequently reminded in media coverage, prison and jail security staff (known as correctional officers or “COs”) have been quitting their jobs and failing to show up for work. This turnover and absenteeism leaves incarcerated people locked down in cells, experiencing minimal freedom of movement and social interaction, lost recreation time, difficulties accessing physical and mental health care, worse and less reliable food and mail services, and fewer programming and education opportunities.

But why are departments of corrections throughout the country complaining that they are unable to hire and retain enough staff?

The simplest and most obvious answer is there are way too many people locked up. States could dramatically reduce the need for additional staff by arresting and booking fewer people and releasing more. In European countries (which incarcerate far fewer people), the ratios of incarcerated people to staff are significantly lower than in the United States. As noted in a 2013 press release from the union representing federal workers, the number of federal correctional workers increased 19% from 2000 to 2013, while the federal prison population grew 41%.

But there is another reason prison and jail jobs sit vacant — a problem exacerbated by the pandemic but long predating it. Any way you look at it, working in a prison or jail is traumatic and harmful to mental health. As a result, people have always quit these jobs at high rates. Nearly 40 years ago, in 1983, a paper warned that “officer stress and burn-out has led to soaring organizational costs due to high rates of absenteeism and turnover.” In 2000, the average national turnover rate among COs was 16% (meaning the number of people quitting was 16% of the average CO headcount that year), a rate one author called “alarmingly high.” And a 2010 report found that the average CO turnover rate was 17% in 2006 and 2007, and 16% in 2008.

Today, as prisons and jails have become vectors of COVID-19, turnover rates have grown higher than ever.¹ But as this briefing shows, long before COVID, corrections work meant being surrounded by trauma and suffering, while working stressful jobs that are both monotonous and require constant vigilance.

Of course, much of the violence behind bars is perpetrated by COs themselves; we know that staff often assault and abuse incarcerated people; encourage, bribe and threaten incarcerated people to abuse others; and watch without intervening when violence breaks out. In fact, Micol Seigel proposes in her book that prison workers — along with police, members of the military, and others employed in security or detention — can collectively be considered “violence workers,” as their roles are designed to exercise the state’s power to use violence for enforcement. Violence in correctional facilities is further exacerbated by stressful, miserable living conditions. But while this violence harms incarcerated people the most, it has life-altering consequences for workers as well. As a result, COs face negative mental and physical health outcomes, including extremely high rates of depression and PTSD. Worst of all, for many COs, the job fundamentally changes the way they relate to others, requiring them to dehumanize the people they supervise and cultivate a brutal authority that is hard to shake even at home.

This creates a vicious cycle. Correctional jobs are stressful and traumatic, leading to high rates of burnout, absenteeism, and staff turnover. But when people quit or don’t show up for work, this makes the job even worse for their colleagues, who are often left working overtime shifts² alongside new, inexperienced coworkers.³

While the trauma and stress faced by incarcerated people dwarfs the experiences of correctional officers, it is important to study the frequently overlooked ways that prisons and jails harm everyone associated with them.

This is particularly crucial because, for years, state and local governments have used the promise of these “good state jobs” to garner support for newer, bigger prisons. For decades, rural towns looked to prisons as a saving grace that would bring economic development, boost local populations, and most of all, replace disappearing jobs. As that prison-building boom cools, now we are seeing pressure to build new, expanded county and city jails. But when officials promote prisons and jails as job creators, it is important to keep in mind what these jobs actually look like, and the effects they have on workers and the community.

To be clear, the problems outlined throughout this article are fundamental to the nature and environment of working in a prison or jail. These problems cannot be solved by increasing budgets, doubling down on hiring efforts, providing additional training, or increasing pay and benefits.

Exposure to trauma is inescapable on the job

Although incidents of violence behind bars are poorly tracked and reported, every count we do have shows that those who spend time in prisons and jails (staff and incarcerated people alike) are surrounded by traumatizing violence:

A 2021 paper analyzing the experiences of 156 correctional supervisors in a northeastern U.S. state revealed that large percentages witnessed or experienced the following traumatic events in a typical month:

• 55% – a suicide attempt by an incarcerated person
• 93% – violence inflicted by one incarcerated person on another

And in a typical year, many reported witnessing or experiencing:

• 61% – suicide of an incarcerated person
• 65% – non-suicide death of an incarcerated person
• 45% – a coworker suicide

Similarly, a team of researchers have published a series of papers based on surveys of Canadian workers in high-stress occupations. They found that institutional corrections workers report high rates of exposure to various traumatic events. For example:

• 45% had witnessed a death in line of duty
• 78% experienced or witnessed serious injuries in the line of duty
• 69% experienced or witnessed incidents that seriously threatened their life or the life of a colleague
• 65% witnessed or learned about the suicide of a close colleague or superior

A correctional officer from Oregon described this on-the-job trauma in a 2015 article in the Guardian: “You’re doing tier count and you’re watching a human being die in front of your eyes because he’s coughing up lungs and screaming with his eyes for help and there’s nothing you can do.” The man’s son, also a CO, recalled that on his first day of work, he witnessed the mutilated body of a man who had been beaten to death.

Correctional officers have high rates of depression, PTSD, and suicide

It is not surprising that many COs struggle with the mental and emotional toll of regular exposure to trauma. A 2021 analysis of thousands of anonymous surveys filled out by COs in California prisons revealed that, among those who answered specific questions about the prior month:

• 48% had felt anxious, nervous, or on edge
• 80% felt tired or fatigued, even right after sleeping
• 28% consumed six or more drinks on at least one occasion
• 28% felt down, depressed, or hopeless
• 4% experienced repeated, disturbing memories
• 11% had suicidal thoughts or had attempted suicide

A 2018 survey of corrections employees in Washington State estimated a PTSD rate of 19%, which is similar to rates among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and higher than that of police officers.

Several studies put the rate of PTSD even higher. A 2013 study of nearly 3,600 corrections professionals from all over the country estimated that 34% of correctional staff in security roles have PTSD and 31% have depression. A 2016 paper studying correctional officers in Michigan estimated that 34% of participants had PTSD, 36% had depression, and 25% had both. Rates of both — as well as the risk of suicide — were higher among people working in high-security units, and among those who had worked in corrections for 10 years or more, indicating that these problems do not get easier with time or experience. And a 2017 Canadian study (again, using the pool of high-stress workers mentioned above) found that more than 54% of correctional workers screened positive for mental disorders including PTSD (29%) and major depressive disorder (31%), compared to a baseline diagnosis rate of 10% of the Canadian population.

Although there are not many studies on correctional officer suicides, one analysis found that COs in New Jersey had more than double the suicide rate of 25-to-64 year old men in the state from 2003 to 2007. A 2016 article tracking CO suicides in Massachusetts found the suicide rate to be about six times that of the general state population. An earlier study from 1997 found that COs have a 39% higher rate of suicide than the rest of the working age population. And the survey of Canadian correctional workers revealed that 35% had experienced suicidal ideation in their lifetimes (including 11% in the prior year), and 8% had previously attempted suicide.

This relentless stress inevitably leads to burnout, which is often associated with workers in healthcare, human services, and education, and is characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a sense of a lack of personal accomplishments. Burnout can lead to depression, and can cause someone to withdraw emotionally, psychologically, and socially from their job. A 2020 Swiss study found that — although violence is infrequent in Swiss prisons — COs who did witness or directly experience violence had more exhaustion and a decreased sense of security, which in turn, led to higher levels of burnout. The paper concluded that “not only serious major incidents, but also the daily grind have an effect.”

A 2013 literature review, which provides a collection of research on the topic, concluded that the implications of stress and burnout are far-reaching:

Workplace stress and burnout among COs can lead to unsafe correctional facilities, high turnover rates, high absenteeism, lower productivity and decreased effectiveness in the workplace as well as negative personal and social outcomes like decreased life satisfaction and work-family conflict.

In fact, a 2014 paper for the National Institute of Corrections proposed a diagnostic category called “corrections fatigue,” which can have implications including “negative personality changes, socially dysfunctional thinking/ideology, and forms of declined health and functioning.” Those researchers further estimated that 20% of correctional officers experience corrections fatigue.

These consistent findings of rampant PTSD and depression among COs are remarkably similar to studies of incarcerated people. Research among incarcerated populations have found rates of PTSD at 48%. And much like corrections fatigue, researchers have identified “post-incarceration syndrome,” a subset of PTSD. In-depth interviews with 25 people who were incarcerated an average of 19 years revealed a “specific cluster of mental health symptoms,” including institutionalized personality traits, social-sensory disorientation, and alienation. These high rates among both prison staff and incarcerated individuals indicate that prisons themselves are unhealthy, dangerous spaces that contribute to serious and lasting mental health problems.

COs experience chronic pain and hypertension, and are exposed to illness and violence

Corrections work can take a physical toll as well. Nearly half (45%) of the surveyed correctional workers in Canada reported experiencing chronic pain, with lower back pain the most common complaint. Correctional officers are also disproportionately exposed to infectious diseases: The Covid Prison Project has tracked 277 deaths of correctional staff due to COVID-19, as of March 2022. (Of course, prison staff have contributed greatly to the spread of COVID behind bars: Throughout the country, staff vaccination rates lag far behind vaccination rates of incarcerated people, and many states failed to require staff to wear masks at the height of the pandemic.)

The stressful nature of the job brings other physical drawbacks. A 1983 study found that correctional officers had higher rates of hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart disease than the general population, both of which are linked to stress. And a 2015 study found extremely high baseline levels of hypertension and pre-hypertension among correctional officers. While hypertension usually shows up later in life, the study revealed high rates among COs ages 20 to 34 and 35 to 44.⁴

While estimates vary regarding the percentage of COs who are victims of violence on the job, it is clear that working in a prison comes with an increased risk of violence. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), for example, found that from 2005 to 2009, 33 out of every 1,000 COs reported experiencing workplace violence (defined as rape/sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated and simple assault).⁵ Compared to other professions in the study, this rate is lower only than bartenders, police officers, and security guards.⁶

Of course, when considering data on this type of violence, it is important to remember that it is self-reported by correctional officers, making it impossible to know what role they or their colleagues might have played in the reported incidents. COs are incentivized to report every possible incident as an assault, as a way of justifying budget and salary increases.

And it is clear that the constant fear of violence further adds to stress and negative mental health outcomes, and can contribute to job performance and turnover rates.⁷ In this way, too, COs’ risk of violence mirrors the experiences of incarcerated people.⁸

Prisons — no matter how modern — are depressing work environments

Back in 1982, a review of the stresses of prison work stated the obvious:

Any organization or social structure which consists of one group of people kept inside who do not want to be there and the other group who are there to make sure they stay in will be an organization under stress.

Investigative reporter Shane Bauer described corrections work in a similar way. In 2016, Bauer (who was previously incarcerated for two years in an Iranian prison), spent four months undercover as a CO in Winn Correctional Center, a private state prison in Louisiana. He later said of corrections officers, in his experience:

Most of them, when they go in, they want to treat prisoners well. But then you have to face the fact that you’re doing something that is not really within your normal realm of what it means to be a decent human being.

Multiple papers have noted that certain stressors are built into the corrections model, and are sometimes called “occupational” or “work-related.” As the author of an expansive 2013 literature review on wellness and safety among COs explains, much of the job of a correctional officer is boring and repetitive, yet the constant risk of violence and other incidents requires “hyper-vigilance, boundary setting and self-control. The constant state of alertness can be taxing both physically and psychologically.”

“We put on our armour. When you walk through the first gate, it clicks. And so does your back,” another former correctional officer from Oregon told the Guardian. He compared the job to being in a pressure cooker.

On top of the inherently stressful work environment, corrections jobs do not tend to open the door to desirable work in other industries. While former COs may go on to work in law enforcement or private security, these career paths are two of just three identified by the BJS as having higher exposure to workplace violence than corrections. Low wages are also often cited as a drawback of the job.

According to one Canadian corrections officer, who responded to a survey’s open-ended question about the job:

Corrections are a very mentally and physically demanding career that is very difficult to understand. Being keepers of people has demands that should not be misunderstood. This career is a meat grinder.

And in a white paper on correctional wellness titled “I Am Not Okay,” published by One Voice, the authors (who are correctional officers) described the reasons people go into corrections:

During childhood, kids regularly invent games where they imagine what they will be when they grow up. Many pretend to be police officers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, firefighters, or teachers. How many kids in the neighborhood grew up locking their friends in the basement because they wanted to be a correctional officer? How many seniors in the high school yearbook listed “correctional officer” as a career aspiration? Almost no one does that. No one wants to go to prison, even if they have the keys…

Some choose this path because they see it as an opportunity to help people “correct” their wrongdoings and come out better, but those for whom this was their motivation quickly find out that it’s not really an option, because the current system was not designed with this in mind.

But the correctional work environment is worse than it has to be

While some stressors of the job are inherent to the nature of locking people up, others stem from the way prisons are run in the United States. Sometimes called “organizational” or “institution-related” stressors, they contribute to stress and burnout, and can include:

• Low autonomy/ no input into decision making
• Unpredictable shift work
• Overtime demands
• Lack of support from or trust in supervisory staff
• Inadequate benefits and resources
• Inadequate training

Other significant “institution-related” stressors are role conflict and role ambiguity. Role conflict reflects fluctuating expectations over whether prisons are for punishment or rehabilitation. Role ambiguity is the uncertainty created when supervisors instruct COs to go “by the book,” even though it is clear to everyone that the role requires flexibility — and that the culture surrounding prison work encourages staff to carry out violent, informal sanctions that aren’t in any rulebook. As one paper described role ambiguity:

While officers work in a paramilitary organization marked by explicit lines of authority and a host of formal regulations, their task of managing inmates demands flexibility, the judicious application of discretionary justice, and the ability to secure inmate compliance through informal exchanges which deviate from written rules… Ambiguous and conflicting expectations are a likely result and a potential source of stress.

What’s more, negative experiences in prison may be exacerbated by the machismo culture in corrections. The 2013 literature review notes that, “like police officers, COs have subcultural taboos regarding the acknowledgement of a need for medical or psychological assistance, as such admissions are perceived as a sign of weakness.”

Bringing the problems home

Many correctional officers struggle to leave the job behind at the end of a shift, which is described by psychologists as “dual role conflict.” People often bring home the violence, hypervigilance, and command culture they experience all day, importing violence into their homes and communities. As the 2013 literature review explains:

It can be difficult for a CO to override innate and acquired characteristics that are considered functional and professional in the workplace, but are not effective at home or in their personal lives… For example, conflict can occur at home when excessive job stress causes a CO to displace frustration onto spouses and children, ordering family members in the same way he or she issues commands to inmates.

The review further notes that family conflict can be exacerbated by other features of the job, such as “cynicism, pessimism, sarcasm, flattened drama/stress response, and exposure to trauma and other disturbing behaviors.” All of this can lead to withdrawal and isolation at home.

A 2021 study of 156 correctional supervisors found correlations between exposure to traumatic incidents on the job and work-family conflict. And a 2013 paper included first-person accounts from Canadian correctional officers describing the effects the job has on them. As one CO explained it:

Prison staff learn to apply a thin layer of ‘Machismo’ as a result of each incident they respond to. It’s like a Band-Aid… It covers and seals in your emotions and your feelings; otherwise you’re weak, a punk, or a sissy… The only problem is the Band-Aids don’t come off after work. They stay on. So you live your life and miss all the beauty and the real experiences because you are a heartless, emotionally numb, and desensitized a__. You see an awful car accident with injuries, big deal. You have a friend that gets hurt really bad, big deal. Your family member dies in his fifties and you truly love the man, big deal. An inmate gets stabbed 47 times, big deal. You get mad because your kid wrecks his bike and cries because he skinned up his knees, big deal. Tell him to man-up and quit being a baby and walk away.

Shane Bauer, the undercover journalist, described how his personality changed as he worked in a prison:

It is getting in my blood… When I drive home, I wonder who I am becoming. I feel ashamed of my lack of self-control, my growing thirst for punishment and vengeance. I’m getting afraid of the expanding distance between the person I am at home and the one behind the wire. My glass of wine with dinner regularly becomes three. I hear the sounds of Ash unit as I fall asleep. I dream of monsters and men behind bars.

This can lead to dire outcomes. A 2011 study found that work-family conflict can contribute to depression among COs. And in a 2012 survey of 710 correctional officers in Florida, 33% reported they had heard of at least one correctional officer who committed unreported domestic violence.

Nurses, teachers, and other corrections workers face similar challenges

Although there is little research into the experiences of correctional nurses, teachers, and case managers, the little we know suggests that COs are not the only ones experiencing stress and trauma.

A 2019 exploratory study from the United Kingdom found that 57% of participating correctional mental health nurses had listened to people express thoughts of suicide and self-harm more than 30 times. Most had witnessed self-harm or attempted suicide.

Repeated exposure to this type of trauma can build up, just as it can for COs. “Vicarious” or “secondary” trauma can occur in people who are exposed to disturbing images and stories second-hand, and can have similar symptoms to PTSD. A 2019 study from Australia found that 87% of participating health staff at correctional centers experience high or moderate levels of vicarious trauma. Similarly, a 2011 study of educators in youth facilities found that 81% met at least one, 55% met two, and 39% met all three core diagnostic criteria for PTSD.

A 2006 study of workers in two unnamed midwestern prisons found even higher rates of burnout among case workers than correctional officers. And while little research exists on the physical health impact of this work, a study of correctional nurses found that 56% had short sleep duration and 32% had poor sleep quality.

Communities and counties should not seek new prisons and jails as job boosters

The overwhelming evidence shows that correctional work is stressful and traumatic. But for decades, rural communities throughout the country were persuaded to compete for prison contracts, and are now stuck with these jobs.

Not only are individual prison jobs difficult, but prisons as a whole have failed to revitalize the towns where they are built. In a 2002 report, Tracy Huling concluded that “increasing evidence suggests that by many measures prisons do not produce economic growth for local economies and can, over the long term, have detrimental effects on the social fabric and environment of rural communities.”

First, Huling noted that prisons often don’t hire locals. She cited Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s Golden Gulag, which includes a study of prison towns in California that showed that, on average, less than 20% of jobs in new state prisons went to current residents of the local town. Looking specifically at Corcoran, Calif., which housed two prisons, Gilmore further found that just 40% of the people working at those prisons lived within a 75 mile radius of the town. This happens in part because prison systems tend to promote from within.

Prisons can have other negative effects on a town’s economy. Citing work by economist Thomas Johnson, Huling noted that they generate few “linkages to the economy.” Unlike an auto plant, which might lead to the creation of new delivery companies, radio assemblers, and electronic harness makers, prisons do not attract new, related industries to the area. What’s more, prisons tend to attract chain stores, creating a “replacement” effect where locally-owned businesses lose out to the incoming McDonalds and Walmarts. Prison labor carried out by incarcerated people for the municipality or for private industry — which is already exploitative — can also displace local workers.

Too late, communities may find that, with all the small businesses gone, they have become dependent on their prisons — meaning that when states occasionally shutter prisons today, the news can be met with disappointment and fear.

Since Huling’s report, the literature continues to back her up. A 2008 literature review concluded:

“The 1990’s location of prisons in rural areas was based on a high dose of economic development hype and the hopes and expectations of local elected representatives, business and community leaders who believed state prisons were a ‘gold plated’ solution to their economic problems… Once more comprehensive and rigorous impact studies did emerge, they demonstrated that many of the apparent benefits of rural prison location for local communities were invalid.”

A 2010 study lead authored by Gregory Hooks similarly found that prison construction “impedes economic growth in rural counties.” Three Kentucky counties remain among the poorest in the nation after becoming home to federal prisons. And in 2016, an analysis of 25 years of prison building in Appalachia found “little evidence to support the claim that prisons are engines of growth,” and warned: “policymakers would be well served using great caution before pursuing this development pathway.”

Today, the prison-building boom has slowed, and county jails have become the new frontier of carceral expansion. From 2013 to 2019, jail populations grew 27% in rural areas and 7% in small-to-midsize cities, prompting many counties to build newer and bigger jails. In some states, this growth is accelerated by policies in which the state departments of corrections pay counties a per diem to house people serving state sentences. In Kentucky, for example, “at the same time that coal revenues dried up, the state’s criminal justice policies subsidized and incentivized the expansion of carceral capacity at the county level,” explain Jack Norton and Judah Schept. But, like the prison boom jobs before them, jobs in these new, expanded jails should not be desirable to individual workers or communities.

Prisons bring trauma into communities — for the people locked up in them, of course, but for those employed there as well. There are other ways to create better, safer jobs for people in rural communities. In particular, states have the power to create different kinds of jobs — such as jobs in mental health services, youth programming, or health care — that simultaneously help others stay out of jail and prison in the first place.

Prisons and jails will separate millions of mothers from their children in 2022

58% of all women in U.S. prisons are mothers, and other important facts to know this Mother’s Day.

by Wendy Sawyer and Wanda Bertram, May 4, 2022

This Mother’s Day — as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to put people behind bars at risk — nearly 150,000 incarcerated mothers will spend the day apart from their children.¹ Over half (58%) of all women in U.S. prisons are mothers, as are 80% of women in jails, including many who are incarcerated awaiting trial simply because they can’t afford bail.

Most of these women are incarcerated for drug and property offenses, often stemming from poverty and/or substance use disorders. Most are also the primary caretakers of their children, meaning that punishing them with incarceration tears their children away from a vital source of support. And these numbers don’t cover the many women preparing to become mothers while locked up this year: An estimated 58,000 people every year are pregnant when they enter local jails or prisons.²

150,000 mothers separated from their children this Mother’s Day is atrocious in and of itself – but that’s just one day. How many people in the U.S. have experienced separation from their mothers due to incarceration over the years? Unfortunately, these specific data are not collected, but we calculated some rough estimates based on other research to attempt to answer this question:³

• Roughly 570,000 women living in the U.S. had ever been separated from their minor children by a period of imprisonment as of 2010.
• An estimated 1.3 million people living in the U.S. had been separated from their mothers before their 18th birthdays due to their mothers’ imprisonment, also as of 2010.⁴

The scale of maternal incarceration – and its related harms – is monumental. But to be clear, these are estimates of how many children there were among the roughly 1 million women alive in 2010 who had ever been to prison, and only includes children who were minors when their mothers were in prison. These estimates are therefore very conservative, as they do not include the many, many more women who have ever been booked into a local jail.

Most incarcerated mothers are locked up in local jails

Women incarcerated in the U.S. are disproportionately in jails rather than prisons. As we’ve written before, even a short jail stay can be devastating, especially when it separates a mother from children who depend on her.

Estimates have been rounded for this graphic. Sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime Data Explorer (2019 table “Female Arrests by Age”) and Vera Institute of Justice, Overlooked: Women in Jails in an Era of Reform.

80% of the women who will go to jail this year are mothers — including 55,000 women who are pregnant when they are admitted. Beyond having to leave their children in someone else’s care, these women will be impacted by the brutal side effects of going to jail: Aggravation of mental health problems, a greater risk of suicide, and a much higher likelihood of ending up homeless or deprived of essential financial benefits.

How incarceration — and life after incarceration — hurts mothers and their children

Women who are pregnant when they are locked up have to contend with a healthcare system that frequently neglects and abuses patients. In a 50-state survey of state prison systems’ healthcare policies, we found that many states fail to meet even basic standards of care for expectant mothers, like providing screening and treatment for high-risk pregnancies. In local jails, where tens of thousands of pregnant women will spend time this year, healthcare is often even worse (across the board) than in state or federal prisons.

More challenges await incarcerated mothers and pregnant women when they are released from jail or prison. Formerly incarcerated women experience extremely high rates of food insecurity, according to a 2019 study. And as we previously reported, the 1.9 million women released from prisons and jails every year have high rates of poverty, unemployment, and homelessness, confirming what many advocates already knew: that there is a shortage of agencies and organizations able and willing to help formerly incarcerated women restart their lives.

It’s time we recognized that when we put women in jail, we inflict potentially irreparable damage to their families. Most women who are incarcerated would be better served though alternatives in their communities.

So would their kids. Keeping parents out of jail and prison is critical to protect children from the known harms of parental incarceration, including:

• Traumatic loss marked with feelings of social stigma and shame and trauma-related stress
• More mental health problems and elevated levels of anxiety, fear, loneliness, anger, and depression
• Less stability and greater likelihood of living with grandparents, family friends, or in foster care
• Difficulty meeting basic needs for families with a member in prison or jail
• Lower educational achievement, impaired teacher-student relationships, and more problems with behavior, attention deficits, speech and language, and learning disabilities
• Problems getting enough sleep and maintaining a healthy diet
• More mental and physical health problems later in life

Incarceration punishes more than just individuals; entire families suffer the effects long after a sentence ends. Mother’s Day reminds us again that people behind bars are not nameless “offenders,” but beloved family members and friends whose presence — and absence — matters.

Insufficient funds: How prison and jail “release cards” perpetuate the cycle of poverty

We examined release card companies’ fee structures to learn how this industry has evolved, and what government leaders can do to stop its worst practices.

by Stephen Raher, May 3, 2022

Every year, roughly 5 million people are released from jail and another half million leave prison. But just because they are released from physical custody doesn’t mean that they are free of the financial exploitation resulting from that experience.

When a person leaves a correctional facility, they often receive their funds — wages earned while behind bars, support from family members, or money the person had in their possession when arrested — on fee-laden prepaid debit cards. As we explain below, there are several ways (six, to be precise) to get money off of a release card, but they are expensive, difficult, or both.

We first put a spotlight on these “release cards” in 2015, when they came on the scene as one of the newer ventures from companies that have traditionally profited by charging incarcerated people and their families exorbitant rates for phone calls, money transfers, or other technological services. While release cards were novel in 2015, they are now ubiquitous. Since then, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has reined in some of the industry’s worst practices and cracked down on one of the biggest players in the industry, but these companies continue to line their pockets at the expense of low-income individuals who are trying to navigate the reentry process. As the CFPB’s director recently noted, some release-card companies have made a practice of “siphoning off…people’s own hard-earned money” through abusive practices that sometimes violate federal law.

To better understand how these companies continue to unfairly extract money from consumers — and more importantly, what can be done to stop them — we analyzed the most recent fee disclosures that release-card companies filed with the CFPB. The data (which are summarized in the appendix¹) paint a picture of a complex obstacle course, riddled with pitfalls that deprive formerly incarcerated people of the modest amount of money they have when they are released.

The six ways release-card companies grab people’s money

When someone is given a release card on their way out of a prison or jail, they have up to six ways to use its value, but each option entails different challenges, and most involve fees.

Option #1: Opt out (but the clock starts ticking at the moment of release)

The first way someone can get their money off of a release card is by exercising their right to “opt out” and get a refund.

While this may sound easy, it will come as no surprise that release-card companies make it difficult (or nearly impossible) for recently released people to exercise their opt-out rights. Cardholders face four primary hurdles:

1. First, the cardholder must act quickly. They have to notify the company they want a refund within an arbitrary “grace period” to avoid being hit with maintenance fees. These grace periods are generally between two and thirty days, creating an unnecessary obstacle at a time when the cardholder is trying to secure housing and employment, and (if on parole) comply with terms of supervised release.²
2. Second, opting out generally requires that the cardholder call customer service or make a web-based request to close the account. The problem here is that people recently released from custody frequently lack reliable phone or internet service.
3. Third, the cardholder cannot use the card for even a single transaction, effectively freezing their money at a time when they need it most.
4. Finally, refunds are generally sent via a mailed check, even though recently released people are likely to need time to establish a mailing address and are unlikely to be able to wait for the time required under the U.S. Postal Service’s degraded delivery standards.

A full breakdown of fees charged by each card type is available in the appendix.

If someone receives a release card that charges a periodic maintenance fee and they do not close their account within the grace period, then the maintenance fees will be deducted from their card balance every week or month. Almost three-quarters of the release-cards we reviewed charge “account maintenance” fees.

Option #2: Close the account after the opt-out period has expired

After the grace period has expired, a cardholder can request that the account be closed and receive a refund via mailed check. Seventeen release cards (all managed by Numi Financial) charge a steep $9.95 fee for this service, meaning anyone with a balance of less than $10 can’t take advantage of this option. Someone with a $50 balance can use this option, but effectively has to pay a fee of 20% for a very simple transaction.

Option #3: Transfer the money to a bank account (if you have one)

Some cardholders can transfer their balance to a bank account. Two of the three dominant release card brands (Access Corrections and Numi) appear to allow cardholders to transfer their funds to a bank account without paying a fee.³ However, the companies do not provide much detail about how to do this, beyond referring consumers to the program manager’s website. While this may be useful for cardholders with bank accounts, most people being released from long terms of incarceration don’t have bank accounts, effectively eliminating this option for them.

Option #4: Use the card to make purchases

Holders of release cards can use their balances to make in-store or online purchases. This only works if the business in question accepts Mastercard. While many retailers do, some important businesses (like landlords) do not.

But even if a cardholder wants to use the card at a Mastercard-accepting business, simply using the card for purchases can subject them to a whole new series of fees. Some cards charge users for each purchase (seven cards levy such fees, averaging 71¢ per transaction). These fees are hard to justify because card companies are already compensated for the cost of processing transactions through interchange fees paid by merchants.⁴

Half of the cards we examined charge fees for declined transactions, with an average fee of 62¢. These fees are even more difficult to justify because it doesn’t appear that card issuers incur any expense when a purchase request is declined. These fees seem to be nothing more than corporate enrichment at the expense of consumers who are least able to absorb these costs.

Finally, don’t forget that for cards with periodic maintenance fees, the longer it takes the consumer to spend down their balance, the more they will pay in weekly or monthly maintenance fees.

Option #5: Get cash at an ATM

Getting cash from an ATM also presents its own challenges and fees.

Some card companies offer a network of ATMs where customers can withdraw their money for free, or a relatively low fee. However, if the cardholder uses an ATM outside of this network, they’re likely to be hit with fees by both the card issuer and the bank that operates the ATM. Twenty-nine release cards (60% of our data set) impose fees for ATM withdrawals — with an average fee of $2.58 per transaction. Sometimes these fees apply only to out-of-network ATMs, but some cards charge the fee for all ATM transactions.

Finally, twenty-four cards impose a fee for declined ATM transactions (with an average fee of 62¢). To avoid a declined-ATM-withdraw fee, a cardholder may want to check their available balance, but doing that at an ATM carries a fee — ranging from 50¢ to $1.50 — on thirty-seven release cards (77% of the data set).

A full breakdown of fees charged by each card type is available in the appendix.

Option #6: Withdraw cash at a bank

Over-the-counter withdrawals appear to often be fee-free, but figuring out how to use this option can be nearly impossible. For example, the cardholder agreement for Axiom Bank’s release cards (branded as Access Corrections cards) states that cardholders must perform over-the-counter withdrawals at a “MasterCard principal financial institution,” but neither Axiom or Mastercard itself provides information on how to determine which bank branches fall within this category. Similarly, Central Bank of Kansas City (a partner with Numi Financial) also fails to inform customers where they can make over-the-counter withdrawals, but cardholder materials do warn that banks offering this service may impose their own fees.

Making release cards work for recently released people

All too often, correctional facilities use release cards without giving any thought to the experience of the person being released from custody. For a short stint in jail — a few days or hours — simply returning a person’s cash to them upon release is almost always the best option. If someone spends a longer time in custody, though, and accumulates a balance in their “trust account,” a prepaid debit card may be a convenient way to give someone their money, especially if there are few (or no) fees and cardholders have free and easy-to-use options to transfer the balance or turn it into cash.

The real problem here isn’t release cards themselves; it’s the abusive fees and practices that are common in the industry today.

Correctional agencies can take steps to end some of the most outrageous release-card practices. For example, we identified one release card in the CFPB database that stands out in a good way: the Comerica Bank card used by the North Dakota Department of Corrections. This card has relatively few fees compared to other companies: just an inactivity fee of $2/month that kicks in if the card hasn’t been used for twelve consecutive months, a $10 fee for expedited replacement of a lost card via overnight mail (a replacement card via first-class mail is free), and a few ATM fees.⁵ It’s also the only card we reviewed that doesn’t include a mandatory arbitration provision. How did such a small prison system get such a good deal? Because the North Dakota Department of Corrections joined with other state agencies that use prepaid debit cards (for payments like unemployment benefits) to negotiate a group contract with decent consumer protections. It’s a practice more states can and should adopt.

State legislatures can also crack down on bad release-card deals. We’ve drafted simple model legislation that prevents most of the worst practices in the industry.

Search contractsSee what companies are profiting off of release cards

Finally, the federal government has a role to play in making these cards work better for consumers. The CFPB is currently looking at “junk fees” charged in connection with consumer financial products. These are fees that don’t serve any real purpose other than to pad the bottom lines of the companies that charge them. We filed comments asking the CFPB to finish the work it started when it fined JPay last year. We encouraged the agency to crack down on some of the worst practices across the release card industry, in addition to addressing the equally abusive fees charged for money transfers to incarcerated people.

Release cards shouldn’t be a tool for taking money from those who can least afford it. Prison and jail officials, along with state and federal leaders, have a responsibility to ensure the little bit of money that recently released people have is not quickly drained by hidden or inescapable fees. States and counties should follow the lead of North Dakota by leveraging their power to negotiate a contract that minimizes fees; state legislatures should prohibit the industry’s worst practices; and the CFPB should continue to police companies in this sector.

What the Survey of Prison Inmates tells us about trans people in state prison

We look at the experiences of 29 incarcerated transgender people before and during their incarceration.

by Tiana Herring and Emily Widra, March 31, 2022

Nearly 5,000 transgender people are incarcerated in state prisons, but we know very little about their lives before prison or their experiences during incarceration. To add to this limited body of research, we’ve analyzed the Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016 data, released in late 2020, which provides a glimpse into this overrepresented but understudied population. The small number of trans respondents to the Survey of Prison Inmates — only 29 trans people — limits our ability to generalize the data; however, the results from this study are worth exploring given the lack of information about trans people in prisons. Our findings help give greater visibility and understanding about the respondents’ lives, experiences, and challenges before and during their incarceration.

Because of the small sample of 29 trans respondents, we elected to avoid presenting percentages that could lead to misleading generalizations and instead focused on the raw data we could access from the Survey of Prison Inmates.

Here’s a glimpse into what we were able to learn from these 29 individuals:

• Most of the trans people surveyed were people of color, lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB), and relatively young.
• The trans people surveyed reported experiencing a variety of adverse experiences before turning 18, such as homelessness, foster care placements, arrest, and incarceration in juvenile facilities.
• Many of the trans people surveyed participated in job training and educational programming, likely to make up for missed opportunities before incarceration (such as educational exclusion and higher risk for unemployment).

We know trans people in prison exist at the intersection of a number of oppressed identities. But beyond that, before this data was released, what we knew about the trans population in prison was limited to the reports published by the National Center for Transgender Equality.¹ The Survey of Prison Inmates data adds to this previous work to provide a clearer picture of the actual lived experiences of incarcerated trans people, giving us a window in which to observe — and subsequently address — what trans people face behind bars and what factors may contribute to the likelihood trans people will come into contact with the criminal legal system.

Demographics of the 29 incarcerated trans people surveyed

The LGBTQ+ population is overrepresented at every stage of the criminal legal system. To look more specifically at the transgender population — which is often not distinguished from the LGB population in available data — we need to look at the demographics and see just how the trans population compares to the general prison population. From what we can tell from this small sample, the trans people surveyed tend to be more diverse in terms of their race/ethnicity and sexual orientation, and skewed younger in age.

Race and ethnicity. The vast majority (23) of the trans people surveyed were people of color. Eight were Hispanic, eight were Black, and seven identified with two or more races. Meanwhile, the overall prison population is about 32% white, 34% Black, 21% Hispanic, and 11% two or more races. This is generally in line with other studies which have found that trans people of color have especially high lifetime rates of incarceration.

Sexual orientation. Additionally, more than half (17) of the incarcerated trans respondents identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or something else other than straight. By contrast, 96% of the entire state prison population identifies as straight, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ analysis of the same data.

Age. Most (15) of the incarcerated trans people surveyed were under the age of 34, younger than the average age of 39 of all people held in state prisons nationwide. Evidence suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans youth — and especially trans youth of color — are at especially high risk for contact with the criminal legal system compared to the general U.S. population.

Even before incarceration, these trans people were at a disadvantage

In general, people in prison have experienced multiple hardships, such as repeated arrests and low educational attainment, and this remains particularly true for the 29 trans respondents.

Housing and poverty. About a quarter (8) of the trans respondents reported homelessness before age 18 and 13 trans respondents lived in foster care or an institution (like a group home) before age 18. Additionally, 12 of these trans people’s families received welfare/public assistance before they were 18, adding another layer of disadvantage, as children who grow up in poverty are at greater risk for behavioral problems, chronic health issues, and poor academic achievement.

Arrests and juvenile facilities. Most (16) trans people surveyed reported being arrested for the first time when they were 18 or younger, and many (12) spent time in a juvenile facility. Involvement in the criminal legal system at a young age is a fairly common experience for LGBTQ+ youth who are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system. Juvenile detention can be especially dangerous for trans youth who overwhelmingly report feeling unsafe in these facilities, and can be subject to solitary confinement ”for their protection.”

Education. The majority (19) of the trans people surveyed did not finish high school. Other studies have shown that outside of prison, trans students are more likely to report that they may not complete high school. Over 84% of trans students surveyed in 2019 reported feeling unsafe in school because of their gender, and a similar portion of trans students said they had been victimized in school because of their gender and gender expression. Interestingly, three of the trans people who responded to the Survey of Prison Inmates reported graduating from college. While we advise against generalizing this finding too broadly, this is a notable share of the trans respondents (12%). In comparison, only 4% of the entire surveyed state prison population reported earning a college degree.

Employment. Given that so many of the trans respondents were excluded from educational opportunities, it’s unsurprising that they also report low rates of pre-prison employment:² less than half (13) of the trans people surveyed were employed in the month before their arrest.

Past criminal justice history. When asked about past involvement with the criminal legal system, the vast majority of trans people surveyed (23) reported having been on probation before, and over a third (11) had served time in jail at least twice before. Even short stays in jail can have detrimental effects on an individual’s employment, housing, financial stability, and family wellbeing. And previous research has shown that trans people are at an elevated risk of unemployment, unstable housing, and being disconnected from their families even without the added layer of criminal justice involvement.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that many of the trans people surveyed reported prior interactions with the criminal legal system given that trans people are criminalized and discriminated against for simply being trans. For example, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, found that trans people — especially trans people of color — are disproportionately harassed by police and experience high rates of unequal treatment and harassment interacting with government agencies/officials, judges or courts, and legal services clinics.

Experiences while in prison

Trans people outside of prison are less likely to have access to necessary health care and services, and more likely to have negative interactions with police and experience unemployment. The trans respondents to the Survey of Prison Inmates suggest these experiences happen behind bars, too.

Substance use treatment. Previous studies of incarcerated trans people have found that trans people were frequently denied routine healthcare in prison. Data from the Survey of Prison Inmates suggests this may also be true of drug treatment. While there was no direct question about a substance use disorder diagnosis in the survey, a possible proxy measure is whether someone had ever received drug treatment in their lifetime.³ Of the trans people surveyed, about one-third (9) reported ever receiving such treatment. But of those individuals, only 2 had received treatment since admission to prison.

Discipline. Many of the trans people surveyed had received a rule violation in the previous 12 months (12), and half of those individuals (6) had received multiple rule violations over the same time period.⁴ Of those who reported receiving disciplinary action, five reported being confined to their cell, and three were sent to solitary confinement.

Unfortunately, the survey does not ask the important questions about being violated or harassed in prisons. This is of particular concern for trans incarcerated people, given that 35% percent of previously incarcerated trans people surveyed by the National Center for Transgender Equality reported harassment by other incarcerated people and 37% reported being harassed by correctional officers or staff.

Work assignments. Unemployment outside of prison among trans people is a serious concern. Given the reality that trans people are frequently discriminated against by employers, it’s important that they have equal access to employment opportunities when they are incarcerated. At the time of the survey, 18 trans respondents had work assignments. Three trans people surveyed reported that they worked in goods production/correctional industries which tend to pay more than jobs supporting the prison itself (though all prison wages are exceptionally low). Other common jobs for trans people in prisons were hospital/medical duties, working in libraries, barber and beauty shops, and food service, which may be preferred jobs in prisons because of their relevance to post-release job prospects.

Programming. Nearly half of the trans survey respondents reported participating in job training or educational programming opportunities since admission. Given that trans people are often excluded from or pushed out of educational and job opportunities before incarceration, they may be trying to make up for lost opportunities while confined. Incarceration shouldn’t be trans people’s only opportunity to access job training and education, though; they would be better served by having more support at earlier intervention points, and through the rest of their lives.

Transgender people in prisons have multiple, intersecting marginalized identities that make them more vulnerable to traumatic experiences throughout their lives. Although this survey included only 29 trans people, it provides some valuable insights about their needs and will hopefully be the foundation of more in-depth research by government agencies, scholars, and advocacy groups. But the existing research makes it clear that there is an urgent need for trans people to be provided with more support during incarceration, more support after incarceration, and more help avoiding contact with the criminal legal system in the first place.

What does successful bail reform look like? To start, look to Harris County, Texas.

New data supports what advocates have been saying all along: there’s no need to detain so many people pretrial.

by Emily Widra, March 28, 2022

New data is out that supports bail reform efforts to end reliance on cash bail, minimize the number of people charged with misdemeanors and detained pretrial, and improve misdemeanor bail hearings. The recently published findings come from researchers charged with monitoring misdemeanor pretrial reform as it is implemented in Harris County (Houston), Texas.

In the most recent report on Harris County’s pretrial reform, the monitoring team reviewed the results of the changes implemented so far, and generally found that the reforms are successfully addressing some of the most pressing issues with misdemeanor pretrial detention. We highlight some of the most significant results they report about Harris County’s misdemeanor bail reform so far:

This graph is based on data from the Monitoring Pretrial Reform in Harris County, Fourth Report of the Court-Appointed Monitor on March 3, 2022.

Fewer people charged with misdemeanors and detained pretrial

Most people in city and county jails across the country are detained pretrial, meaning they are legally innocent and have not been convicted of the crime they are held for: too often, they are jailed because they cannot afford the cash bail set by the court. In Harris County, the percent of misdemeanor defendants detained pretrial dropped from 47% in 2015 to 22% in 2021. Unfortunately, a number of people are still detained despite the Consent Decree and subsequent reforms, for felony cases or because of “holds” for other agencies such as probation, parole, or immigration. (See report, Figure 12, p. 37)

Fewer misdemeanor convictions

Pretrial detention increases the odds of misdemeanor conviction, largely because detention pressures people to take plea deals when otherwise their case would likely be dismissed or they would be acquitted. By reducing the pretrial detention rate, the percentage of misdemeanor cases resulting in conviction dropped 54% from 2015 to 2020 in Harris County. Conversely, the percentage of misdemeanor cases resulting in dismissal or acquittal increased from 31% to 68% between 2015 and 2020. (See report, Figure 16, p. 43)

Shorter periods of being locked in jails

Because pretrial detention can have disastrous consequences for employment, housing security, and families, reducing the amount of time defendants spend behind bars is crucial. From 2015 to 2021, the percent of misdemeanor defendants detained pretrial in Harris County for 2-7 days dropped 14% and those detained for more than 7 days dropped 12%. Shorter stays became more common, with the share of defendants released within 2 days increasing by 27%. (See report, Table 3, p. 35)

Fewer “failures to appear” and no increase in pretrial arrests for new offenses

Two of the most commonly cited goals of pretrial detention and cash bail are to guarantee court appearances and reduce the likelihood of re-arrest before trial. But in Harris County, reducing the number of people detained pretrial actually decreased the rate at which people either missed their court date or had their bond revoked for some other reason (such as re-arrest) by 5%. Additionally, the share of misdemeanor arrestees with a new case filed within 90 days, 180 days, and 365 days remained unchanged following the reforms, suggesting that pretrial detention does not increase court appearances or reduce the chances of pretrial re-arrest. (See report, Table 6, p. 46 & Figure 14, p. 40)

Millions of dollars saved by the county and defendants

Conservative financial estimates suggest that Harris County saved $6.6 million per year from these changes and that individuals arrested for misdemeanors saved $314 million as a group over the past seven years. (See report, p. 51)

No increase in racial disparities

Unlike some other pretrial reform efforts, there is no evidence that racial disparities widened following the Harris County bail reforms. From 2015 to 2021, 58-59% of misdemeanor defendants in Harris County were Black. The reforms have not yet reduced disparities, either: The share of Black people arrested for misdemeanors in Harris County is still substantially higher than for misdemeanor arrests nationally (26%) and significantly higher than the share of Black residents of Harris County (20%). (See report, Figure 4, p. 26)

These new findings clearly support the bail reform efforts taken so far in Harris County, and should serve to embolden policymakers to take similar action in their own jurisdictions. Unfortunately, Texas officials themselves seem to be ignoring the evidence that bail reform can safely reduce unnecessary jailing. Just before these findings were published, Texas Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 6 into law, eliminating the possibility for release on personal bond for “violent” crimes (or for those who are charged with any felony, misdemeanor assault, deadly conduct, or gun charges while out on bail for a “violent” offense).¹

While the Harris County reforms focused on misdemeanors and this new law is concerned with felonies, previous research offers a plethora of evidence supporting bail reform at both the misdemeanor and felony levels. In fact, 2017 research from Harris County suggests that pretrial detention can actually increase the odds of future offending and reviews of pretrial reform across the country reveal that increased pretrial release does not result in increased crime. On an individual level, pretrial detention often has detrimental effects on an individual’s employment, housing, financial stability, and family wellbeing. The evidence from Harris County and from other states that have implemented more robust pretrial reforms — like Kentucky and New Jersey — demonstrates that these reforms are common-sense changes that save money, protect individuals and families, and uphold justice and community safety alike.

Updated March 29, 2022 with a graphic that more clearly shows the changes in outcomes for misdemeanor defendants, and with text changes that reflect the relative (percent) change in rates rather than the net change in rates for these outcomes.

Untangling why prison & jail populations dropped early in the pandemic

Reductions in prison and jail populations were due to COVID-related slowdowns in the gears of the criminal legal system. Without intentional action, these reductions will be erased.

by Wendy Sawyer, March 24, 2022

Sections

Crime and arrests

Jail bookings & pretrial detention

Court slowdowns

Prison admissions

Keeping admssions low

Last week, we released the latest edition of our Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie report, in which we showed about 1.9 million people locked up by various U.S. systems of confinement, according to the most recent data available. Out of context, that number would be cause for celebration among those of us fighting to end mass incarceration: it’s almost 400,000 fewer people than were locked up before the pandemic. Unfortunately, this reduction in the incarcerated population is unlikely to last very long without more lasting policy change. In fact, fear-mongering about upticks in certain specific crimes may make this work even harder and lead to policy changes that make mass incarceration even more intractable.

It’s important, therefore, to understand what changes — intentional or not — led to the prison and jail population drops in 2020 and 2021. This briefing offers the context needed to temper expectations about sustaining those population drops and to maintain focus on the policy changes needed to permanently reduce the use of confinement. Without those needed changes, we can expect prison and jail populations to return to pre-pandemic “normal” (extreme by any other measure) as the criminal legal system returns to “business as usual.”

The reduction in prison admissions, which explains most of the drop in incarceration in the early pandemic, was the effect of temporary changes in arrest and jail practices, court slowdowns, and the refusal of some prisons to accept transfers from jails. However, the data do not allow us to distinguish how much of the drop in admissions was due to a given type of change, such as transfer refusals versus slowdowns.

The changes that have had the most impact on incarceration since the start of the pandemic include:

• 24% fewer arrests in 2020 compared to 2019, largely due to changes in everyday behaviors under widespread “stay at home orders,” as well as short-term guidance issued by some police departments to limit unnecessary contact and jail bookings;
• 21% fewer criminal cases filed in state courts in 2020 compared to 2019 — the result of fewer arrests and changes in some prosecutorial practices;
• 36% fewer criminal cases resolved in state courts from 2019 to 2020, attributable to court closures, operational changes, and delays in case processing;
• A 17 percentage point net drop in criminal case clearance rates in state courts, indicating a growing backlog of pending cases;
• 40% fewer admissions to state and federal prisons in 2020 compared to 2019, largely the result of court slowdowns but also partly due to the refusal of some prisons to accept transfers from local jails to prevent the spread of the virus.

Critically, the one thing that we and other advocates demanded from the very start of the pandemic – intentional, large-scale releases to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the tight quarters of prisons and jails – did not happen. In the first year of the pandemic, prisons actually released 10% fewer people than they did the year before, and among the twelve states that regularly publish more recent data, that trend held throughout 2021 as well. Only three states (New Jersey, California, and North Carolina) released a significant number of incarcerated people from prisons. Parole boards also approved fewer releases in the first year of the pandemic than the year before.

Changes in crime and arrests

Two major factors contributed to the 24% drop in arrests in 2020: widespread changes in behavior and more limited changes in police practices. The shift away from in-person activities towards remote work, learning, commerce, and social contact represented a major change in our usual behaviors. This explains some changes in crime trends: for example, with more people home during work hours and on weekends, there were fewer low-risk targets for home break-ins. And in 2020, there were 18% fewer home burglaries reported than in 2019, and consequently 13% fewer arrests for burglary. With fewer people out, there were also fewer opportunities for thefts that require close contact: reports of pickpocketing dropped 37% and purse-snatching 25%, and arrests for these types of crimes (larceny/theft) dropped 23%. The 24% drop in arrests for driving under the influence (DUI) also makes sense in this context: there were fewer people on the roads, and for a long time, few bars or restaurants open for people to consume alcohol.

Policing changed too, to a lesser degree. Police officers got sick, reducing their capacity to arrest, and some officials directed police to avoid unnecessary contact with the public and to issue more citations in lieu of arrest. This likely explains the dramatic reductions in arrests for “nuisance” crimes like vagrancy and drunkenness.

Some of these changes were extremely short-lived: Philadelphia police suspended “non-violent” arrests in mid-March 2020, but just two weeks later, the police force announced it would resume arrests for property crimes, effectively reversing the earlier policy. Police in Maui, Hawai’i set up a call center early in the pandemic to handle calls that didn’t require in-person responses; it was shut down within just three months, when the Police Chief declared “things are settling down.”

Given that almost all of these changes were in direct response to the pandemic, as opposed to long-term policy changes, we should anticipate a return to pre-pandemic arrest rates as work, school, business, and social life return to “normal.”

Jail bookings and pretrial detention decisions

Jail admissions generally mirror arrest trends, so fewer arrests mean fewer people booked into jail. The drop in arrests in 2020 therefore accounts for most of the 16% drop in jail admissions over the course of the year. But there were also some notable, temporary, pandemic-response policies that contributed to the reduced jail populations we saw in 2020, namely:

• The promises of many prosecutors to decline to prosecute certain low-level offenses or to dismiss pending charges against people arrested for such offenses,
• The suspension of arrests for non-criminal (or “technical”) violations of probation and parole,
• Temporary changes in probation and parole conditions that made it easier for people under community supervision to comply, such as videoconferencing instead of face-to-face check-ins and the waiving of monthly fees, and
• The temporary suspension of arrests on outstanding “bench warrants” for things like missed court dates.

Some courts and prosecutors also made impactful, though temporary, changes to pretrial processes. On any given day, at least two-thirds of the nation’s jails are filled with people who have not been convicted and are legally innocent, many because they cannot afford money bail. But early in the pandemic, we saw changes like the “$0 bail” emergency rule ordered for California’s courts, which eliminated unaffordable bail as a barrier to pretrial release for people accused of misdemeanors and lower-level felonies. In another example, the State’s Attorney in Vermont’s largest county directed her office to stop requesting bail for defendants facing low-level charges.

Together, these changes reduced the use of jails for things other than serious public safety concerns. Most of these temporary policies have long since expired, so, except for those places that have enacted policies to permanently reduce incarceration for these non-dangerous and/or non-criminal violations, we should expect to see more people jailed for these reasons again as the pandemic wanes.

Court slowdowns

Most courts had to dramatically change their operations during the pandemic in ways that led to long delays in case processing. According to the National Center for State Courts, the most common court responses to the pandemic included restricting or ending jury trials, suspending in-person proceedings, restricting entry to courthouses, extended filing deadlines, and encouraging video conferences in place of hearings.

In 2020, 21% fewer criminal cases were filed in state courts than in 2019, which in turn meant fewer people were convicted and sentenced to jail or prison. The most recent data available indicates that the number of criminal case filings were still much lower than pre-pandemic levels as of June 2021. Some of this drop in new cases is explained by changing crime and arrest trends, but prosecutorial decisions also played a key role. For example, the Maricopa County (Arizona) Attorney’s Office began delaying the filing of – but not dismissing – “thousands of charges” in an effort to keep down the number of people in courtrooms and jails (and potentially to avoid problems complying with speedy trial laws). And Seattle’s District Attorney decided early on to briefly stop filing charges except for “priority in-custody violent crimes.”

But the changes in court operations have made an even bigger dent in case dispositions than case filings: in 2020, state courts closed 36% fewer criminal cases than in 2019. Unable to keep pace with incoming cases, the clearance rate for criminal cases across over 30 state court systems dropped from 105% in 2019 (when courts were able to close more cases annually than were added to the docket) to 88% in 2020. Some of this slowdown, too, was the result of attorneys requesting postponements; some was simply due to court closures.

Pandemic caseload data from the Court Statistics Project show that criminal court slowdowns were at their worst between July 2020 and January 2021, but even with fewer new cases coming in, “pending” cases have piled up and will take time to clear. As they do, and as arrests and prosecution return to pre-pandemic norms, we can expect the rate of people convicted and sentenced to incarceration to climb back up.

Prison admissions

The cumulative effect of fewer arrests, temporary changes in probation and parole practices, and pandemic-related delays in trials and sentencing was a dramatic 40% reduction in the number of people who entered prisons in 2020. The number of new court commitments (that is, people admitted to prison to serve a new sentence) dropped almost 43% from 2019 to 2020. And, for the same reasons jail admissions fell for non-criminal violations of probation and parole, the number of people admitted to prisons for these violations fell 35%. The massive decrease in admissions was driven by steep drops in large states like California (down 66%), Florida (down 53%), and New York (down 60%).

Some of the change in admissions to prison, however, was simply because people were left in jails longer before being transferred to prisons. In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between facilities (a very valid concern), some state prison systems, such as Illinois’, refused to admit people held in local jails who were sentenced to prison. While this may have helped slow the spread into prisons, staff were still bringing the virus into facilities from their home communities. Meanwhile, these delays left thousands of people stuck in local jails, which have fewer programs and far more population turnover than prisons – a miserable situation at any time, but particularly during a pandemic.

Again, because the changes that resulted in fewer admissions in 2020 were temporary responses to the pandemic, we should expect prison populations to rebound to pre-pandemic levels as courts catch up with their backlog of pending cases and probation and parole agencies return to more stringent conditions and harsher punishments for non-criminal violations.

Prison and jail admissions are at historic lows. We can keep it that way.

The changes to the criminal legal system during the pandemic were, for the most part, temporary responses to the immediate public health emergency, not deliberate policy choices to reduce incarcerated populations over the long term. There is little reason to think that incarceration rates will remain at their pandemic-era lows without more intentional changes, particularly since jail and prison populations have already started to rebound. Furthermore, the piecemeal actions that federal, state, and local authorities did take were not nearly enough to protect people in prisons and jails, nor the communities that surround them. To date, almost 600,000 incarcerated people have been infected and more than 3,000 have died behind bars because of COVID-19. And of course, the pandemic isn’t over; still, authorities continue to ignore public health guidance that specifically calls for decarceration.

The fact that many early-pandemic policy changes were so short-lived is particularly frustrating since we know they helped rapidly reduce populations without compromising public safety. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey show that the number of violent crimes (excluding homicide, which the survey does not cover) fell from about 2 million in 2019 to 1.6 million in 2020; accordingly, the rate of violent victimization fell by 22%. The household property crime victimization rate fell by about 7%. And, as discussed above, arrests and crimes reported by police fell, too.

Government authorities’ willful disregard of the evidence that further, sustained policy changes are both urgently needed and safe is part of a larger problem, of course. The perception (not a reality) that criminal justice reforms have led to upticks in crime over the past few years has fueled pushback against smart policy changes. That perception is powerful, and history shows that reactionary policies can follow: In the 1980s and 1990s, the last time prison and jail populations were as low as they were in 2020, the knee-jerk reaction to (much bigger) increases in crime was to lock more people up, and for longer. Particularly in the context of the ongoing pandemic, we can’t afford to let that happen again.

Prison Policy Initiative General Counsel Explains the Cycle of Exploitation that Incarcerated People and their Loved Ones are Subjected to

We worked with the National Consumer Law Center to explain how, at every state of incarceration, governments and private corporations are draining money from those who can least afford it.

by Mike Wessler, March 23, 2022

In a new piece in Inquest, our general counsel Stephen Raher and Ariel Nelson of the National Consumer Law Center expose the cycle of exploitation that saps money from incarcerated people and their loved ones. The piece provides a big-picture overview of how government agencies and private corporations are profiting off of this system. It explains there are three stages in the cycle:

1. First, companies and governments take a cut of money coming into prisons. Even in prison, a person needs money to survive, and because prison wages are so low, many incarcerated people rely on money transfers from loved ones to survive. At a time when people in the free world can instantly send money through their smartphones for free, prison money transfers still come with a whopping 20% average fee.
2. Next, while in prison, incarcerated people are subjected to outlandish rates and prices for essentials — like communications services, food, and hygiene products — and burdened with mandatory fees for things like medical care and the general cost of confinement.
3. Finally, when a person is released, they often receive a release card, a prepaid debit card that contains money they had when entering prison, money they earned while locked up, and money they had in their trust account. These cards are rife with fees — many of them unavoidable — that quickly drain the money on the card and line the pockets of the companies that administer these programs.

People increasingly recognize this cycle of exploitation is morally problematic and makes poverty — one of the main drivers of criminalized behavior — worse. That’s why some government agencies are increasingly cracking down on this behavior, and through our research and advocacy, we’re pressuring more states to join them.

We encourage you to check out the piece to understand better how the cycle of exploitation works. If you’re looking for more details and state-specific data, check out our work exposing exploitation in the criminal legal system.

The prison context itself undermines public health and vaccination efforts

A new report from the Correctional Association of New York reveals why some people in prison are reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine and a lot of it has to do with distrust in the correctional system.

by Emily Widra, March 9, 2022

Over 3,000 incarcerated and detained people in the United States have died of COVID-19 in the past two years, with over 588,000 cumulative cases behind bars. With little sign of COVID-19 quietly fading away, public health officials have been clear, consistent, and accurate that vaccinations are our strongest defense against existing and future variants of COVID-19. But despite widespread vaccine availability across the country, many people continue to be hesitant about the COVID-19 vaccination.¹

While the vaccine refusal rates are not generally worse in prisons than in the general population, vaccination is even more critical in prisons. Incarcerated people can’t employ other strategies to avoid getting COVID-19, they have higher rates of medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to severe illness and death, and if they do fall ill, they don’t have the same access to prompt, effective medical care as people outside of prison do. Behind bars, the risks of non-vaccination can be even more deadly, with a COVID-19 death rate of more than double that of the general U.S. population.²

An insightful new report from the Correctional Association of New York offers the only survey data we know of that explains why incarcerated people are hesitant to accept the COVID-19 vaccination. ³ A report focusing on New York is particularly valuable nationally because New York State was one of the least successful states (by our data ⁴) at vaccinating incarcerated people.⁵ The report finds that vaccine hesitancy in prison is rooted in general distrust and suspicion of healthcare in prison, and that the solutions to overcome vaccine hesitancy behind bars are more complicated than in non-carceral settings.

Researchers have determined that the best practice for addressing vaccine hesitancy – in general and in the context of COVID-19 – is to promote transparency, equity, and trust between individuals, communities, and healthcare providers.⁶ In addition, we know that community engagement,⁷ messaging and education,⁸ and timely and accurate information about vaccines are critical for responses to vaccine hesitancy.

The reality is that the prison context inherently undermines almost all of the best practices for responding to vaccine hesitancy.

The erosion of trust in prison healthcare undermines vaccination efforts

The major finding of the Correctional Association report is that the primary reason people behind bars are hesitant to get the vaccine is a lack of trust in the prison medical system.
Before COVID-19, incarcerated people were suspicious and critical of prison healthcare: they reported poor quality of care, difficulty accessing medical care, and a distrust of prison medical care. Some incarcerated people in New York cited the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan as reasons to be suspicious of state public health initiatives, stating, “My greatest fear is to be a lab rat for the state” and “Communities of color have always been experimented on; why are state officials going to stop now?”

But the distrust is particularly poignant in the context of COVID-19 vaccinations. A slight majority of incarcerated people surveyed by the Correctional Association reported that they generally “trust vaccines” (52%). A similar number (49%) of respondents reported that they generally trust doctors and healthcare providers to make medically correct judgements, but only 9% of respondents trust doctors or healthcare providers in a prison to make medically correct judgments.

Figure 1: Responses regarding trust of healthcare providers to the Correctional Association of New York survey of incarcerated people in New York state. This graph, published by the Correctional Association in their annual report, shows that incarcerated people are much more likely to distrust prison healthcare providers than non-prison-affiliated healthcare providers.

Given that general distrust of prison medical providers, it’s unsurprising that a significant portion of survey respondents were less likely to accept the COVID-19 vaccination if offered by the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision’s (DOCCS) medical staff.

Figure 2: Responses regarding likelihood of accepting the COVID-19 vaccine if administered by correctional staff and correctional health care providers to the Correctional Association of New York survey of incarcerated people in New York state. This graph, published by the Correctional Association in their annual report, shows that 42.7% of respondents are less likely to accept the vaccine if it is administered by correctional staff, again emphasizing the inherent lack of trust between incarcerated individuals and the correctional healthcare system.

“What works” to overcome vaccine hesitancy hasn’t worked in prisons

Public health experts have established best practices for addressing vaccine hesitancy, but the persistence of this distrust among incarcerated people underscores how the prison setting itself undermines these practices:

• Trusted communicators are crucial to expanding vaccine acceptance. Most recommendations for addressing vaccine hesitancy emphasize the need for “trusted communicators,” but with limited visitation and suspended programming and volunteers, who are the trusted communicators in prisons? The reality is that most information about the vaccines in prisons comes from prison administrators and correctional staff. In May 2021, a month after vaccines were available to people in congregate living situations (like prisons), John J. Lennon (incarcerated in New York) recommended in a New York Times op-ed that the DOCCS “tap influential prisoners to disseminate accurate vaccine information” and even suggested utilizing the preexisting inmate liaison committees established after the Attica uprising. According to the recent Correctional Association report, the New York DOCCS instead “developed a video featuring Tyler Perry and incarcerated people attesting to the benefits of the vaccine.” The reality is that trust, transparency, and equity have long been eroded by the criminal legal and prison systems, which this video had little hope of repairing.
• Community engagement is often limited in prisons, where interactions between incarcerated people are regularly restricted. During COVID-19, community engagement behind bars all but disappeared. Programming – including education courses, work-release, treatment programs, and group activities – were suspended in every state prison system (as far as we’ve been able to tell) at some point during COVID-19. Many prisons stopped programming and in-person visits entirely for the better part of the past two years. Additionally, incarcerated people have experienced unnecessary use of solitary confinement during the pandemic. Correctional institutions in the United States have long been distanced from “mainstream” society and community, and in many ways, the pandemic has only furthered that isolation. So while having community members and volunteers who aren’t part of the prison system come in to informally discuss vaccination concerns might have helped improve vaccine acceptance, incarcerated people saw even fewer people from the outside during the pandemic.
• Disseminating timely and accurate information has proven difficult in correctional facilities. Contact with those outside prison walls has been limited throughout the pandemic, with suspended or limited visitation, increasing restrictions on mail, expensive phone calls, and interrupted programming. But relying on information from only within the prison comes with a high cost for vaccine acceptance: misinformation and distrust of the vaccine can run rampant and unchecked. John J. Lennon reported for the New York Times that corrections officers where he is incarcerated told him that the vaccine was “not tested enough” and that COVID-19 was just “the flu.” A sergeant in the Florida Department of Corrections told The Marshall Project, “If I’m wearing a mask, gloves, washing my hands and being careful — I’d still feel better working like that than putting the vaccine in my body.” Other correctional officials in Florida told The Marshall Project that some of their colleagues believe the vaccine could give them the virus or that the vaccine contains some kind of tracking device.⁹

The responses to the Correctional Association survey point to a lack of trust in prison medical care providers based on the quality and inaccessibility of care, limited access to information about their healthcare, and the tension between healthcare professionals meeting their duty to their patients while enforcing and complying with directives of the prison administration (sometimes referred to as “dual loyalty“). The DOCCS’ mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent traumatic experiences during COVID-19 in prison, only served to erode incarcerated people’s trust further.

In many ways, the pandemic has served to highlight just how opaque the prison healthcare system is and just how wary incarcerated people are of prison medical care. Moving forward, prison systems must do better, not only by providing better, more accessible, more transparent health care, but also by recognizing their inherent limits when it comes to responding to public health concerns, and adopting better strategies.

Specifically, when faced with the current and future health emergencies, prison systems should:

1. Release more people from prisons. Nationwide, states and the federal government actually released 10% fewer people from prison in 2020 than in 2019, despite the consensus among public health officials and advocates that decarceration is crucial to protecting public health and limiting the spread of COVID-19. To reverse this trend, departments of corrections, state governments, and courts need to work together to release people from prison using any tools they have at their disposal, including large-scale releases like we saw in New Jersey, California, and North Carolina. The Correctional Association report recommends increasing the use of pretrial release, alternative sentencing, early release, medical parole, parole board release, and commutation to rapidly reduce prison populations.
2. Address issues of transparency and equity in correctional health care. To address these issues in the context of COVID-19, the Correctional Association report recommends expanding the provision of adequate and timely information about COVID-19 and the vaccine, and alleviating gaps in the quality of medical services by expanding preventative care (routine screenings, education, and outreach). To improve general correctional healthcare, the Correctional Association report recommends that the state designate an independent correctional ombuds to investigate and resolve complaints related to incarcerated peoples’ health, safety, welfare, and rights, as well shift oversight of correctional healthcare to the state department of health.
3. Ensure that corrections officials are dedicated to reducing our reliance on incarceration and improving the health and welfare of those under their care. Corrections officials and decision makers need to take COVID-19 – and the subsequent deaths of over 3,000 incarcerated people – seriously. Incarcerated people’s connection to up-to-date news is tenuous at best, and during COVID-19 (with limited visits and changes in phone call and mail policies), they’ve been even more reliant on information directly from corrections departments. Mixed messages about the realities of COVID-19 from corrections departments (we’ve heard at least one report of a PA system announcement in a Pennsylvania prison facility stating that the pandemic is “over”) and corrections officers’ own vaccine hesitancy and misinformation leave incarcerated people in the dark to the detriment of everyone.

While COVID-19 vaccinations and booster doses are some of our strongest defenses in the face of the continued pandemic and new variants, it’s increasingly clear that prison systems need to prioritize decarceration. No amount of public health education and vaccine messaging will, on their own, dismantle decades of distrust and suspicion of prison health care. Prisons are no place for a public health crisis and government officials should be prioritizing releases and decarceration as both a first response and an ongoing response to emergencies like COVID-19.

A new toolkit for advocates working to end mass incarceration

In the toolkit, we share tips and lessons we’ve learned over two decades of using data, visuals, and narratives to expose the harms of mass incarceration.

by Mike Wessler, March 2, 2022

Today, we’re launching our new Advocacy Toolkit, a collection of guides and training materials that advocates can use to strengthen their campaigns to end mass incarceration. The toolkit builds on lessons we’ve learned from our two decades of work to improve our criminal legal system. It provides skills-based guides on accessing public records, securing and organizing data, crafting persuasive narratives, and creating impactful visuals. It also includes issue-based guides on protecting in-person visits in prisons and jails, opposing jail expansion, and ending prison gerrymandering. We plan to add additional resources in the future.

Our new advocacy department created this toolkit as part of our expanded effort to support the people and groups on the ground doing the hard work to end mass incarceration.

While most advocacy departments organize campaigns, mobilize volunteers, and pressure decision-makers for change, ours is a bit different. We’re not looking to replicate the amazing work that thousands of people and hundreds of organizations are already doing to reform the criminal legal system. Instead, as a research organization known for using data visualizations and easy-to-understand narratives, our advocacy work aims to help these organizations leverage our expertise to strengthen their campaigns. That’s why our advocacy department will focus on:

• connecting state and local movement partners and decision-makers to data that can fuel their campaigns for criminal justice reform;
• identifying and filling gaps where new research would support reform efforts;
• producing training materials, like the Advocacy Toolkit, for use by criminal justice reform advocates; and
• providing technical assistance, including identifying reform opportunities (such as our annual list of winnable state criminal justice reforms), giving messaging support, offering expert review of documents and legislation, and connecting partners working in similar spaces.

We hope these new resources will help to strengthen the movement to end mass incarceration. If you use the Toolkit in your work, tell us about it. Let us know what worked, what didn’t, and what other resources we can provide. And, if you’re an organization seeking assistance from our new advocacy department, drop us a line to let us know how we can help.

State prisons and local jails appear indifferent to COVID outbreaks, refuse to depopulate dangerous facilities

While some prison systems and local jails have maintained historically low populations, others have returned to pre-pandemic levels, despite the ongoing dangers of COVID-19 and new, more transmissible variants.

by Emily Widra, February 10, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, particularly inside prisons and jails. The death rate from COVID-19 in prisons is more than double that of the general U.S. population.¹ As cases and hospitalizations climb outside prison walls, there is no doubt that cases are spiking in jails and prisons across the country. In state and federal prisons, over 2,900 people have died of COVID-19, almost 476,000 people have been infected, and thousands of additional cases are linked to individual county jails. Even now, when more than 75% of people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of the vaccine, correctional staff are hesitant to get vaccinated or receive boosters, and prison systems are slow to roll out boosters to incarcerated people.² As the more contagious Omicron variant ravages parts of the nation and renders hospitals completely overrun, nearly three quarters of prisons³ are experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks; public health officials continue to recommend reducing prison populations as a primary method of risk reduction. In fact, in October 2021, the American Public Health Association⁴ adopted a policy in support of decarceration as a public health matter and new research shows the detrimental effect of COVID-19 on all-cause mortality in state prisons. Despite the clear need for smaller confined populations, the data show that with just a few exceptions, state and local authorities are allowing their prison and jail populations to return to dangerous, pre-pandemic levels.

The federal Bureau of Prisons, state governments and departments of corrections, and local justice system officials have a responsibility to protect the health and lives of those who are incarcerated. After almost two years of outbreak after outbreak in prisons and jails, correctional authorities must be held accountable for their repeated failure to reduce populations enough to prevent the illness and death of those who are incarcerated and in surrounding communities.

Prisons

Even in states where prison populations have dropped, there are still too many people behind bars to accommodate social distancing, effective isolation and quarantine, and the increased health care needs of incarcerated people. For example, although California has reduced the state prison population by about 18% since the start of the pandemic, it has not been enough to prevent large COVID-19 outbreaks in the state’s prisons, and the prison system has witnessed a 300% increase in infections among incarcerated people over the past few weeks and a 212% increase in cases among staff. In fact, as of December 15th, 2021, California’s prisons were still holding more people than they were designed for, at 113% of their design capacity (and up from 103% in January 2021). Considering the continued overcrowding in the California prison system, it’s not surprising that the state is responsible for eight out of the ten largest COVID-19 prison clusters.

Figure 1. Prison population data for 50 state prison systems as reported directly from the state Departments of Correction and the Marshall Project and federal data as published weekly by the federal Bureau of Prisons. For the available population data for these 50 states and the Bureau of Prisons, see Appendix A.

Many states’ prison populations are the lowest they’ve been in decades, but this is not because more people are being released from prisons; in fact, fewer people are. Data from 2020, recently released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, shows that prisons nationwide released 10% fewer people in 2020 than in 2019. Instead, data suggest most of the population drops we’ve seen over the past 20 months are due to reduced prison admissions, not increasing releases. In the states for which we have recent data, both admissions and releases have decreased in recent years, making clear that prisons are not using all available tools at their disposal to stop the spread of the virus in their facilities. The significant drop in admissions to prisons was largely an unintended consequence of court delays and suspension of transfers from local jails early in the pandemic, rather than any dedicated decarceration efforts. Finding ways to continue reducing the number of people admitted to correctional facilities is critical to lowering the number of people behind bars, but to quickly decarcerate, states should release far more people, too.

Figure 2. These twelve states publish monthly release and admission data for 2018, 2019, 2020, and most of 2021. These data show us a pattern of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: reducing prison admissions, while releasing fewer people from prison.

Despite evidence that large-scale releases — which have been used periodically in states across the U.S. — do not inherently endanger public safety, most states have elected to release people from prison on a mostly case-by-case basis, which an October 2020 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine charitably described as “procedurally slow and not well suited to crisis situations.” In short, this choice ignores the crisis of COVID-19.

Thankfully, some states have recognized the inefficiency of case-by-case releases and the necessity of larger-scale releases. For example, in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy signed bill S2519 in October 2020, which allowed for the early release of people with less than a year left on their sentences. A few weeks after the bill was signed, more than 2,000 people were released from New Jersey state prisons on November 4th, 2020.⁵ In February 2021, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced a legal settlement had been reached to release 3,500 people in state custody (with 1,500 of those releases to take place within 90 days). The releases were the result of a NAACP lawsuit challenging prison conditions in North Carolina during COVID-19. The state said it would release people using discretionary sentence credits (similar to “good time credits”), home confinement, and post-release supervision. But these instances of larger-scale release efforts taking place in state prison systems are the exception, not the rule.

Jails

Jail populations, like prison populations, are lower now than they were pre-pandemic. Initially, many local officials — including sheriffs, prosecutors, and judges — responded quickly to COVID-19 and reduced their jail populations. In a national sample of 415 county jails of varying sizes, almost all (98%) decreased their populations from March to May of 2020, resulting in an average change of a 33% population decrease across all 415 jails at the start of COVID-19. These population reductions came as the result of various policy changes, including police issuing citations in lieu of arrests, prosecutors declining to charge people for “low-level offenses,” courts reducing cash bail amounts, and jail administrators releasing people detained pretrial or those serving short sentences for “nonviolent” offenses.

But those early-pandemic, common-sense policy changes didn’t last long. Between May 2020 and February 2021, the populations of 83% of the jails in our sample increased, reversing course from the earlier months of the pandemic. As of December 2021, 28% of the jails in our sample have higher populations now than they did in March 2020.⁶ Overall, the average population change across these 415 jails from March 2020 to December 2021 has diminished to only a 10% decrease, while the average population change from July 2021 to December 2021 has dropped to 0%, suggesting that the early reforms instituted to mitigate COVID-19 have largely been abandoned.

For example, by mid-April 2020, the Philadelphia city jail population reportedly dropped by more than 17% after city police suspended low-level arrests and judges released “certain nonviolent detainees” jailed for “low-level charges.” But just two weeks later — as the pandemic raged on — the Philadelphia police force announced that they would resume arrests for property crimes, effectively reversing the earlier reduction efforts. Similarly, on July 10th, 2020, the sheriff of Jefferson County (Birmingham), Alabama, announced that the jail would limit admissions to only “violent felons that cannot make bond.” That effort was quickly abandoned when the jail resumed normal admission operations just one week later. The increasing jail populations across the country suggest that after the first wave of responses to COVID-19, many local officials have allowed jail admissions to return to business as usual.

Figure 3. Jails across the country initially responded to COVID-19 by reducing the number of people detained, but that trend reversed direction in May 2020, only two months after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since May 2020, the data show a trend of jail populations slowly increasing. This graph contains aggregated data collected and provided by NYU’s Public Safety Lab and updates a graph in our October 2021 analysis. It includes all jails where the Lab was able to report data on March 10th and for at least 75% of the days in our research period, which ended December 31, 2021. (Data are not available for all facilities for all days, and the Lab interpolated missing data to fill those gaps.) This graph presents the data as 7-day rolling averages, which smooths out most of the variations caused by individual facilities not reporting population data on particular days. To see county level data for all 415 jails included in this analysis, see Appendix B.

In New York City, the jail population sharply declined after the pandemic was declared. Importantly, NYC jails – particularly Rikers Island – were some of the first jails in the country to witness a COVID-19 outbreak. And yet, across different demographics, NYC jail populations have slowly leveled out, suggesting that the policies responsible for the necessary decarceration are no longer in practice. In addition to suffering the effects of COVID-19, Rikers Island is also facing an unprecedented crisis following a history of over-incarceration and, according to a federal monitor, “decades of mismanagement.” At a time when jail populations should be at an all-time low, Rikers Island’s confined population surpassed the pre-COVID-19 population in July 2021. The population only dropped back down below the pre-pandemic level at the end of September 2021, when Gov. Hochul signed the Less is More Act, which reduced the number jailed for technical violations of supervision.

Figure 4. Graph showing the daily count of the NYC jail population by 5 key metrics. By all metrics, the NYC jail population dropped quickly at the start of the pandemic, but then started to rise again. On July 29, 2021 the total NYC jail population was higher than before the pandemic. Critically, the number of people detained pretrial has actually grown — from 4,284 on January 1, 2020 to 4,881 people on December 31, 2021 (with a peak of 5,768 in early July 2021) — likely because of the rollback of significant bail reform efforts last year. The population drops in September 2021 are encouraging but are largely the consequence of Governor Hochul signing the Less is More Act, releasing people on technical violations from jail, and therefore represent a helpful policy change that will reduce the population. However, the steep slope of the decline in September 2021 is unlikely to continue at that rate on its own without additional policy changes. Even with these reforms, the October 1st NYC jail population was only 7% below its pre-pandemic levels.
(Dotted lines connect periods with missing data, so the start of each dotted line and their bends represent specific historical data points.)

Even before COVID-19, prisons and jails were a threat to public health and considered notoriously dangerous places during any sort of viral outbreak. As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized years before the pandemic, by taking away a person’s ability to care for their own medical needs, carceral facilities must make sure that those who are incarcerated receive proper medical care–failure to do so can constitute a violation of of the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment and necessitate a reduction in the carceral population. And yet, correctional facilities continue to be the source of a large number of infections in the U.S. The COVID-19 death rate in prisons is almost three times higher than among the general U.S. population, even when adjusted for age and sex (as the prison population is disproportionately young and male). Since the early days of the pandemic, public health professionals, corrections officials, and criminal justice reform advocates have agreed that decarceration is necessary to protect incarcerated people and the community at large from COVID-19. Decarceration efforts must include releasing more people from prisons and jails. Despite this knowledge, state, federal, and local authorities have failed to release people from prisons and jails on a scale sufficient to protect incarcerated people’s lives – and by extension, the lives of everyone in the communities where incarcerated people eventually return, and where correctional staff live and work.

Prison populations for the federal Bureau of Prisons and all 50 state prison systems from January 2020 through December 2021. When available, we used prison populations as reported by Departments of Correction to The Marshall Project. If that data point was not available, we then used either the monthly average daily population (ADP) or point-in-time population counts. For the federal system, we used the first weekly population each week as reported by the Bureau of Prisons.

This table shows the jail populations for 415 county jails where data was available where data was available for March 10th, 2020 (the day before the pandemic was declared) and for 75% of the days between March 10th, 2020 and December, 2021. (This table is a subset of the population data available for over 1,000 local jails from the NYU Public Safety Lab Jail Data Initiative.)