Newly released data from 2020 show the impact of early-pandemic correctional policy choices and what kind of change is possible under pressure. But the data also show how inadequate, uneven, and unsustained policy changes have been: most have already been reversed.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a lot of new data over the past few weeks that help us finally see — both nationally and state-by-state — how policy choices made in the first year of the pandemic impacted correctional populations. Unsurprisingly, the numbers document the tragedy of thousands of lives lost behind bars, and evidence of some of the policy decisions that contributed to the death toll. Drilling down, we also see a (very) few reasons to be hopeful and, for those of us paying close attention, a few notable improvements in what the BJS is able to collect and how they report it. Above all, we see how quickly things can change — for better or for worse — when under pressure, and discuss some of the issues and policy choices these data tell us to watch out for.
A note about the timing of the data
Before we discuss the new data, a brief note about the timing of these data releases: As we approach the third year of the pandemic, it’s frustrating to only now get the official government data from year one — at this point, it’s more useful as documentation of past decisions than as an indicator of current conditions. The lags in BJS data are an ongoing problem made more urgent by the pandemic, and we and other researchers have had to find alternative ways to track what’s been happening to correctional populations, who are at heightened risk of infection and death. Some of the findings we discuss in this briefing will not be not “news” to many of our readers, because we and others were able to find other data sources faster than the BJS could collect, analyze, and publish its data. We include some of our findings from those other sources to lend more context to the numbers reported by BJS, which only cover up to the end of 2020.
Nevertheless, the BJS data updates are a welcome addition to the data we and others have been collecting for the past two years: The agency standardizes and aggregates data from the many disparate and decentralized “justice systems” across 50 states, the federal government, and thousands of counties and cities, year after year, which allows us to identify clear trends over time and key differences across geographies.
Key findings from the BJS reports Prisoners in 2020, Jail Inmates in 2020, and Probation and Parole in the United States, 2020:
Prison, jail, and probation populations dropped dramatically from 2019-2020, but these drops were due to mainly to emergency responses to COVID-19, and correctional populations have already started rebounding toward pre-pandemic levels.Chart showing deaths of imprisoned people increased by 46% in 2020
Nationwide, states and the federal government actually released fewer people from prison in 2020 than in 2019. The decrease in the incarcerated population was not related to releases, but rather the 40% drop in prison admissions and 16% drop in jail admissions.
Deaths increased 46% in prisons from 2019 to 2020, 32% among people on parole, and 6% among people on probation. Jail deaths in 2020 have not yet been reported.
Even under the pressure of the pandemic, local jails held a larger share of unconvicted people than ever, and continued to hold far too many people for low-level offenses and technical violations.
State and federal policy responses to the threat of COVID-19 to incarcerated people varied widely, with a few states appearing to basically ignore the pandemic altogether.