Pandemic-era decarceration has stalled, the Vera Institute of Justice says in a new report. About 1.3 million people are being held in federal and state prisons, up 2.8 percent from 2022.
Forty states increased the number of people in their prisons during this period. The number of people in local jails remained roughly unchanged at around 660,000.
The overall incarceration count remained at 1.8 million, down 12 percent from 2019, but many cities, counties, and states are building expanded, increasingly expensive jails and prisons, Vera said.
The data included people civilly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who were held in local jails, private prisons, and dedicated immigration detention facilities. Vera combined those numbers with with jurisdiction-level jail and prison data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Among the report's findings:
--Rural counties have returned to high incarceration rates. The number of people jailed in rural counties increased by 2.2 percent from the fall of 2022 and the spring of 2024.
--Among federal agencies, a 9 percent decline in the U.S. Marshals Service detained population and 2 percent decline in the federal prison population was counterbalanced by a 21 percent increase in ICE detention.
--In 2022, the number of people 55 years old and higher behind bars was 54 percent higher than the number of people 25 and younger.
--Prison construction is happening in at least 20 percent of states, including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota, which are funding projects both with general funds and pandemic relief money.
--Since 2002, over 1,300 counties have allocated $62.6 billion in public dollars to expand their local jail systems (measured in 2024 dollars). This increases the national capacity to lock people in jails by nearly 40 percent.
--Some states are criminalizing immigration by locking people up. In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began Operation Lone Star (OLS), which deploys state and federal law enforcement to arrest people crossing the border on criminal trespass charges. Texas has used two state prisons, a state jail, and several booking centers to lock people up. Local judges aided this policy through bail-setting practices that ensured people arrested remained incarcerated pending trial. The program is estimated to cost $11 billion.
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