HELP US END MASS INCARCERATION The Prison Policy Initiative uses research, advocacy, and organizing to dismantle mass incarceration. We’ve been in this movement for 23 years, thanks to individual donors like you.

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Graph showing the number of people incarcerated in federal prisons and jails by offense type. The War on Drugs is a defining characteristic of the federal prison system. Pretrial detention and public order offenses are the next largest shares.

Data Source: See "Data sources" section of full report. (Graph: Wendy Sawyer & Peter Wagner, 2023)

This graph originally appeared in Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023.

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