From Urban Institute:
The United States has approximately 3,300 jails that, on average, hold more than
700,000 people on a given day and admit nearly 11 million people a year—a number that has nearly doubled since 1978 (Zeng 2020).1 Moreover, jail incarceration rates are higher for communities of color: in 2018, Black people were held in jail at a rate of 592 per 100,000 US residents and American Indian/Alaska Native people at a rate of 401 per 100,000 US residents, whereas white people were held in jail at a rate of 187 per 100,000 US residents (Zeng 2020). In addition, roughly 75 percent of the nation’s jail population is awaiting trial at a given time, a population commonly referred to as the pretrial population.2
Along with longer pretrial jail stays, increased rates of pretrial detention have driven overall growth in the jail population nationwide and carry significant individual and systemic impacts for people of color, who are disproportionately affected by pretrial policies. Being detained for just three days can jeopardize a person’s employment and housing and stress their familial relationships, among other negative impacts.3 Research also indicates that pretrial detention is costly in other ways: it is associated with low-risk defendants being less likely to appear in court and more likely to commit new crimes (Heaton, Mayson, and Stevenson 2017; Lowenkamp, Van Nostrand, and Holsinger 2013); it is also
fiscally expensive to hold people in jail even for a few days.4 As such, jurisdictions across the country are working to reduce their jail populations (particularly their pretrial populations) and address racial disparities by issuing court reminders, pursuing bail reform, reducing unnecessary arrests and bookings into jail, and applying pretrial risk assessments (among other alternatives).
Read the full study here
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