Latest Jail Booking Info Is Based on New Data Source
The U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has long collected and published statistics on local jails nationwide, including the number of such facilities and how many people are booked into them each year. Who are these people and why are they jailed? On November 17, 2024, the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), a data-driven criminal justice reform organization, released a report that addressed those questions.
To delve beyond the raw numbers of jail admissions, PPI collaborated with the Jail Data Initiative (JDI) for more detailed demographic information. They found that an estimated 7.6 million people were booked into jails in 2023; however, only around 5.6 million were unique admissions. The rest were people jailed multiple times that year, which puts the total number of bookings into better perspective.
In regard to racial data, PPI reported that “Black people are overrepresented in every part of the criminal legal system, including jails, and this new data reveals that not only are Black people jailed at alarmingly high rates, but they are jailed again and again.” According to data compiled by JDI directly from online jail records, 32% of unique admissions and 29% of repeat admissions were of Black people—far above their 14% share of the total U. S. population.
Other minorities are likewise disproportionately impacted. Native Americans and Indigenous people are incarcerated at rates two to four times higher than whites and had the highest rate of multiple jail bookings among all racial groups—33% of Indigenous people admitted to jail were booked twice or more during the year.
With respect to gender, about 25% of jail admissions are women, and from 2021 to 2022 the percentage increase in women who were jailed (9%) was three times the percentage increase for men (3%). PPI reported that “at least 80% of women booked into jail were mothers, including over 55,000 women who are pregnant when they are admitted.” Due to a dearth of reported data, no statistics were provided for trans and non-binary people among jail admissions.
While there was scanty information about people who were unhoused prior to their arrest, the available data indicated 42% of homeless people jailed had been admitted two or more times during the year. That is, they were especially subject to arrest and detention. “This finding adds to the existing evidence of law enforcement’s ineffective but disproportionate and deliberate targeting of people experiencing homelessness,” PPI wrote.
Why are these millions of people being jailed? The DOJ has not reported charging data for jail admissions for more than two decades. The statistics collected by JDI from 2021 to 2023 reveal that 14% of bookings, based on the most serious charge, were for drug-related offenses; 19% were for property crimes; 31% were for public order charges such as disorderly conduct and public intoxication; and 10% were for DUI or traffic violations. Violent crimes accounted for 26% of people who were jailed.
“In many ways,” PPI concluded, “our findings from this analysis support what we already knew: people who are arrested and booked more than once per year often have other vulnerabilities, including homelessness.” Further, “people who are arrested and jailed are often among the most socially and economically marginalized in society.” The JDI data used in the report were extrapolated from records obtained from 648 jails nationwide.
Source: Prison Policy Initiative