Covid? Believe it or not, NO jail

US jails lost a quarter of their population from 2019 to 2020, per a new report from USAFacts using data from the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics.

📝 First things first: Jail and prison are two different things. Generally, jail is used for people who are awaiting trial (~70% of its population), those being held by federal law enforcement agencies (~20%), or people who’ve been convicted and given a sentence of less than a year (~10%).

• Otherwise, convicts serve their sentences in prison.

📉 Driving the drop… The Covid pandemic. From March through June of 2020, about 28% of the jail population across America received expedited release as part of a program to reduce the spread of Covid in jails, per BJS data.

• In addition, overall arrests in the US fell by 25% in 2020 as many states implemented lockdowns due to the pandemic, per the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report.
• Misdemeanor charges – which often see defendants end up in jail, rather than prison – experienced the largest year-on-year decrease in 2020, falling 45%.

📸 Big picture: Nearly two million adults were incarcerated across the US at the time of the 2020 Census, a 13% drop compared with the 2010 Census (nearly 300,000 fewer people).