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Intriguing new data on jail admissions from Prison Policy Initiative and Jail Data Initiative

By Douglas Berman

Via email I received work of this this new briefing from the Prison Policy Initiative, completed in collaboration with the Jail Data Initiative, which offers broad data on jail admissions and populations. The full title of this briefing provides a basic overview: “Who is jailed, how often, and why: Our Jail Data Initiative collaboration offers a fresh look at the misuse of local jails. Using a novel data source, we examine the flow of individuals booked into a nationally-representative sample of jails along lines of race, ethnicity, sex, age, housing status, and type of criminal charge.” Lots of the data is interesting, with some suprising and others not-so-suprising. Here are a few excerpts from the start and heart of the work:

Millions of people are arrested and booked into jail every year, but existing national data offer very little information about who these people are, how frequently they are jailed, and why they are jailed. Fortunately, we now have new data through a collaboration with the Jail Data Initiative to help answer these questions: In 2023, there were 7.6 million jail admissionsreturning to jail for at least the second time that year. Based on the Jail Data Initiative data, we estimate that over 5.6 million unique individuals are booked into jail annually and about 1.2 million are jailed multiple times in a given year.  Further analysis reveals patterns of bookings — and repeat bookings in particular — across the country: The jail experience disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous people, and law enforcement continues to use jailing as a response to poverty and low-level “public order” offenses….

The Bureau of Justice Statistics last collected charge data for jail populations in their 2002 Survey of Inmates in Local Jails. Given that the most recent jail offense data is over 20 years old, the Jail Data Initiative dataset offers a rare opportunity to analyze the top charges that people are booked under nationwide. Of course, the difference in data sources makes a fully apples-to-apples comparison of the 2002 data and the more recent Jail Data Initiative data impossible.  The data provided in the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey reflects self-reported information from people detained in a sample of local jails on a single day in June 2002, while the Jail Data Initiative data is based on jail bookings across a two-year time period and relies on administrative data.  Nevertheless, the overall trends since 2002 offer some valuable insights into the reasons people are detained in jails today:

  • Drug charges appear to play a smaller role now than they did two decades ago, when the “war on drugs” was in full effect. In 2002, a quarter of people in jail were held for drug charges, compared to 14% of people admitted to jail in our 2021-2023 sample.
  • Property charges also appear to represent a smaller portion of the jail population now than they did in 2002: Property charges are the top charge for 19% of jail admissions, compared to 24% of the jail population in 2002.
  • In 2002, public order charges were the top charge for 25% of people in jail, but now, 31% of people admitted to jail are booked for a most serious charge related to public order, such as disorderly conduct, loitering, and public intoxication.
  • We see very little change in the proportion of people in jail for violent charges: in 2002, 25% of people were in jail for a violent charge and in our analysis of more recent jail bookings, about 26% of jail bookings were for violent charges.