NORTHAMPTON, MA – Although there are millions of people arrested and put into the jail system yearly, there is little data available that offers information on the people who are jailed, according to a Prison Policy Initiative report published in late November.
But, through a collaboration with the Jail Data Initiative, new data has surfaced in order to help answer questions regarding the information of jailed individuals, reported PPI.
“In 2023, there were 7.6 million jail admissions; but 1 in 4 of these admissions was someone returning to jail for at least the second time that year. Based on the Jail Data Initiative data, we estimate that over 5.6 million unique individuals are booked into jail annually and about 1.2 million are jailed multiple times in a given year,” wrote PPI.
After further analysis was conducted, patterns of booking across the country were revealed, said PPI, showing, “The jail experience disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous people, and law enforcement continues to use jailing as a response to poverty and low-level ‘public order’ offenses,” according to PPI.
In PPI’s report in 2019, questions regarding repeat jail bookings were looked into, as seen in their article, “Arrest, Release Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems.” According to PPI, this analysis found repeated arrests are connected to race and poverty, along with mental illness and substance use disorder.
The report noted that while unique jail admissions account for 3/4ths of jail bookings, more than 22 percent of people booked into jail are booked again within 12 months. People jailed multiple times per year face exacerbated consequences of incarceration.
“There is no ‘safe’ way to jail a person, nor is there an amount of time a person can be detained without escalating short- and long-term risks to themselves, their families, and their communities, including rearrest, legal debt, missed work, lost jobs, and health risks,” wrote PPI.
PPI reported that Black individuals are overrepresented in all parts of the criminal legal system, and this new data reveals that Black people are jailed at high rates and done so over and over again.
Although they make up only 14 percent of the U.S. population, Black individuals are oversaturated in unique jail admissions (in this sample, 32 percent) and people booked multiple times per year (29 percent), while white people are underrepresented in both populations, said PPI.
The report notes this stays consistent with what is known regarding the over-incarceration of Black individuals in the U.S., but the added layer of rebookings further enforces the speculation that law enforcement targets the Black community.
While Indigenous people only make up one percent of the U.S. population, three percent of the incarcerated population consists of this community, revealing incarceration rates two to four times higher than that of white people, reported PPI.
As found in the Jail Data Initiative data, Indigenous people are more likely to be booked into jail multiple times, write PPI, noting, “33 percent of Indigenous bookings were people who had been booked at least once in the past 12 months, compared to 18-22 percent among other racial and ethnic groups.”
According to PPI, from 2021 to 2022 the number of women in jail increased by nine percent, while the number of men increased by three percent, adding the jailing of women has had a “ripple effect” on families—at least 80 percent of women incarcerated are mothers, including over 55,000 women who are pregnant when admitted.
These women faced aggravation of mental health problems, greater suicide risk, and a higher likelihood of becoming homeless or deprived of essential support and benefits, reported PPI.
And, while women may account for only a small percentage of jailed individuals, those admitted face serious and long-lasting repercussions for the women, their families, and the communities they belong to, according to PPI.
Although the Bureau of Justice Statistics only began publishing the age ranges of people in jails recently, from 2021 to 2022, said PPI, the jail incarceration rate of people 55 and older increased by eight percent, compared to a three percent increase in jail incarceration rates across all other age groups.
Taking into consideration that older adults are mostly arrested for low-level, non-violent offenses such as trespassing, driving offenses, and disorderly conduct, it is likely older adults admitted to jail need other support systems outside of the criminal legal system, including substance use treatment, accessible medical care and behavioral health services, said PPI.
According to PPI, people in the U.S. who are struggling financially are the primary target for policing, particularly those forced to live on the streets.
“In a 2022 analysis of Atlanta city jail bookings, we found that one in eight admissions involved people experiencing homelessness, a proportion more than 30 times greater than the city’s total unhoused population,” PPI’s report said.
Unhoused individuals were the most likely to be jailed multiple times across all the demographic categories we have covered, wrote PPI.
“Over 40 percent of unhoused people booked into jail were booked more than once in a twelve month period,” said PPI. This adds to the existing evidence of the ineffective but disproportionate and deliberate targeting of people experiencing homelessness by law enforcement.
The Jail Data Initiative offers an alternative informational source regarding jail admissions and people who are repeatedly jailed, according to PPI, stating that “people who are arrested and booked more than once per year often have other vulnerabilities, including homelessness, in addition to the serious medical and mental health needs of this population that we discussed in our 2019 analysis based on public health data.”
This data fills gaps in our knowledge about the demographics and charges of people who are booked into jails, given that comparable data has not been collected or published from the Bureau of Justice Statistics in over 20 years, reported PPI.
