Reductions in incarcerated populations during the COVID-19 pandemic have proven to be only temporary, new federal data shows.
Included in the reductions count are COVID deaths, early releases, and fewer new prisoners, the data notes.
The largest reductions were in jail populations, which fell by 25%, followed by state and federal prison populations, which declined by 15% and 13%, respectively.
The Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) reviewed the data, released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The data reveals “what kind of change is possible under pressure,” said the report produced by PPI.
“But the data also show how inadequate, uneven, and unsustained policy changes have been; most have already been reversed,” the analysis noted.
PPI’s report is titled “New data: The changes in prisons, jails, probation, and parole in the first year of the pandemic.”
The report said that the total number of incarcerated people in the nation fell by about 18.5% between 2019 and 2020, but that the decrease was the result of emergency responses to COVID-19, and incarcerated populations have already begun to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Incarcerated population
decline proves temporary
The incarcerated population decline is the product of slowed and delayed admissions to jails and prisons, rather than a result of releases. In fact, there were fewer people released from incarceration in 2020 than in 2019.
Meanwhile, deaths among incarcerated people increased by 46% between 2019 and 2020. In spite of concerns raised by the pandemic about the safety of those
incarcerated, jails continued to hold large populations of people for technical violations of parole and for low-level offenses. The number of unconvicted people held in jails was larger in 2020 than ever before, the study stated.
Some incarcerated populations benefited from pandemic policy changes more than others. The women’s jail population and incarceration rates fell more than those for men.
Jail population and jail incarceration rates of indigenous people dropped by almost 35%. Incarceration of American Indian and Alaskan Natives had nearly doubled between 2000 and 2019.
The number of people under 18 held in adult prisons fell by almost half and the total number of states that now hold no such persons grew to 21.
The number of people on probation fell by more than a quarter of a million, although more than three million remain under probationary control, which PPI described as the “leading form of correctional control.” This decline contributed to most of the 11% decrease in what PPI referred to as the “footprint of correctional control.”
In an assessment of the BJS data, PPI concluded that “overall, the positive trends in 2020 are nothing to get excited about.” The changes seen in 2020 are representative of the momentum that would be required to end mass incarceration. But the changes are not expected to be lasting and are “too little, too late for the thousands of people who got sick or died in a prison or jail ravaged by COVID-19,” said PPI.
“Above all, we should not expect these trends to hold without sustained reforms, as opposed to temporary ‘emergency response’ changes,” concluded the report.
At San Quentin, the incarcerated population declined to about 2,400 by the time the prison reopened in May 2021 from a long pandemic-induced lockdown. The population has since steadily increased to about 3,000, as of mid-April 2022.
