From Vera Institute of Justice:
In recent years, there has been growing consensus that jail incarceration is harmful and unnecessary because it causes damage to people’s stability and health and does not meaningfully reduce crime and violence. In fact, research shows that pretrial detention in jail can increase a person’s likelihood of harsher prison sentences and future system involvement.1 Calls for new approaches to community safety and justice have risen from a broad range of voices, including from people directly impacted by the criminal legal system, community organizers, lawyers, government leaders, journalists, and more. Places that have heeded demands for change are beginning to see significant reductions in jail populations, showing that decarceration at the local level is possible when criminal legal system stakeholders make different choices.
The impact of jail decarceration efforts can be seen in the national data: After nearly four decades of dramatic jail population growth, the total U.S. jail population gradually dropped from a high of 785,533 in 2008 to 758,420 in 2019.2 This is a positive shift, but jail incarceration still affects many people: in 2018, there were more than 10.7 million bookings into local jails in the United States. 3
But within this national trend are two opposing trends: As urban jail populations declined, many smaller cities and rural places have expanded their carceral footprint.4 Put differently, the progress that big cities have made in decreasing their jail populations has been almost fully offset by the jail population increase in other communities. (Although many jails decreased their populations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the first part of 2020, the numbers began to rise again in late 2020.5 ) This means that national jail incarceration numbers remain stubbornly steady, despite some places’ reform efforts.
Why is jail decarceration playing out so differently in different places? Continue reading >>>
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