APRIL 1, 2023

The Prison Policy Initiative has released “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023,” described as a “comprehensive view” of how many people are incarcerated in the U.S., why they are incarcerated, and the kinds of facilities in which they’re housed.

The Prison Policy Initiative is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization studying mass incarceration.

The report used recent national data from local jails, state and federal prisons, and other systems of confinement. It found that roughly 1.9 million people are incarcerated in the United States, 803,000 are on parole and 2.9 million are on probation.

Although the report says prison populations are lower than they’ve been in decades, they’re starting to increase because of “pandemic-related slowdowns” in the criminal legal system. Officials are also releasing fewer people from prison now than from before the pandemic.

The report said that some in law enforcement and on the political right have sought to blame changes to the criminal legal system—such as bail reform, altered police budgets and “progressive” prosecutors— for increases in crime rates since the start of the pandemic.

However, according to the report, murder rates were on average 40% higher in “red” states compared to “blue” states in 2020, and places that did not implement any of these reforms also saw increases in crime rates.

“The pandemic presented government leaders with the chance to turn the page on the era of mass incarceration, but the emerging data show that they largely squandered this opportunity,” said Wendy Sawyer, research director for the Prison Policy Initiative and co-author of the report.

“While incarceration rates dropped quickly at the start of the pandemic, this was the result of pandemic-related slowdowns rather than any deliberate or decisive action by elected leaders. It is disappointing but not surprising that prison populations are already beginning to creep up again.”

Black people make up about 38% of the prison and jail population and only 12% of U.S. residents. At least 113 million adults in the U.S., which would be about 45%, have a family member who has been incarcerated, and 79 million people have some form of a criminal record.

“The size of ‘The Whole Pie’ should serve as a wakeup call for both the government and the public that if we don’t take meaningful action to disrupt the real drivers of mass incarceration—poverty, criminalization, low levels of investment in services that meet people’s needs, draconian policies that fuel the systems’ expansion—then the U.S. will retain the dubious distinction as the top incarcerator in the world,” Sawyer said.

—Xain Ballenger