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Fewer Americans Were in Prison, Jail or on Probation in 2018
The number of U.S. adults in prison, in jail or on probation or parole fell 2.1% from 2017 to 2018, mostly because fewer people were on community supervision.
Written by Brandon Sample · Updated · Filed under Prison and BOP
The number of people under correctional control in the United States is going down. A 2020 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found that the total fell 2.1% from 2017 to 2018. Mass incarceration is still a serious problem, but the trend is moving in the right direction.
"Correctional control" includes everyone in prison or jail, plus everyone on probation or parole. Probation and parole are called community supervision. As of 2018, about 6.4 million adults were under correctional control.
The report is part of a yearly BJS series. The original version of this article reported that the series began in 1958. Its main use is to count how many people are under correctional supervision. This edition covers only one year, 2017 to 2018, but the results are encouraging.
A real drop
In 2007, more than 7.3 million adults were under correctional control. By 2018, that number was about 900,000 lower. The numbers are still extremely high, but the original article noted that 2018 marked a 19-year low in the total correctional population.
By the end of 2018, 2,510 of every 100,000 adults were under correctional control. That is down 21% from 3,160 in 2008. The share of adults under correctional control was the lowest since 1992.
Where the drop came from
- Community supervision. The number of people on probation or parole fell 2.4%. This was the biggest driver of the overall drop. At the end of 2017, more than 4.5 million people were on probation or parole. By December 31, 2018, that number had dropped by about 100,000. The parole population went up slightly, but the total under community supervision was the lowest since 1998.
- Prisons and jails. The number of people locked up fell 1.4%, from about 2,153,600 to 2,123,100. The incarceration rate has gone down every year since 2008. In 2018 it was the lowest since 1996. The drop reached federal prisons, state prisons and local jails. The original version of this article reported that local jails saw a 5.2% drop in population nationwide.
What it means
The drop came mostly from fewer people on probation and parole, not from emptier prisons.
The original article also pointed out that the adult population as a whole keeps growing. A larger population of adults who are not under correctional control can make the rate go down even when the number of people locked up stays high.
We expected the trend to continue in 2020, as COVID-19 led more people in prison to seek compassionate release. Compassionate release is a court order that shortens a federal sentence for extraordinary and compelling reasons.
Read more about COVID-19 in federal prisons.
Facing a federal sentence? Book a consultation to talk it through with Brandon Sample.