Perspective: Correctional

Filter by Topic

Filter by CES publication year

2018 and newer

This Bureau of Labor Statistics page provides information on correctional officers and jailers. The duties of this job category include guarding inmates in penal or rehabilitative institutions in accordance with established regulations and procedures. Correctional officers and jailers may guard prisoners in transit between jail, courtroom, prison, or other points. It includes deputy sheriffs and police who spend the majority of their time guarding prisoners in correctional institutions.

This Bureau of Labor Statistics page provides information on how police and sheriff's patrol officers maintain order and protect life and property by enforcing local, tribal, state, or federal laws and ordinances. They perform a combination of the following duties: patrol a specific area; direct traffic; issue traffic summonses; investigate accidents; apprehend and arrest suspects, or serve legal processes of courts. This occupation includes police officers working at educational institutions.

This Bureau of Labor Statistics page provides information on how probation officers and correctional treatment specialists provide social services to assist in the rehabilitation of offenders in custody or on probation or parole. They make recommendations for actions involving formulation of a rehabilitation plan and treatment of an offender, including conditional release and education and employment stipulations.

This Bureau of Labor Statistics page provides information on the industry profiles of first-line supervisors of correctional officers who directly supervise and coordinate activities of correctional officers and jailers. Industries with the highest published employment and wages for first-line supervisors of correctional officers are also provided.

The high cost of calling home from prisons and jails gets a lot of attention in the press, but the industry’s practice of tacking on hidden fees is getting an increasing amount of attention from regulators and the savviest correctional facilities. These fees can be called by a variety of different names and can add up to significant costs to the families of people in prison. The problem got so bad that the companies were potentially making more from fees than from selling their product — phone calls.

In this document, the Commission continues to comprehensively reform inmate calling services rates to ensure just and reasonable rates for interstate and international inmate calling services. Specifically, the Commission proposes to lower the current interstate rate caps to $0.14 per minute for debit, prepaid, and collect calls from prisons and $0.16 per minute for debit, prepaid, and collect calls from jails. The Commission also proposes to cap rates for international inmate calling services, which remain uncapped today.

Can it really be true that most people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you might think, because our country’s systems of confinement are so fragmented. The various government agencies involved in the justice system collect a lot of critical data, but it is not designed to help policymakers or the public understand what’s going on.

Local jurisdictions, faced with caseloads of increasing complexity and cost, have adopted alternative approaches to criminal case processing — including the use of new technologies — that have the potential to reduce backlog and improve judicial efficiency. Telepresence technology, which allows an individual or group of individuals to appear in a court proceeding from a remote location, is one example of such a technology.

Many wearable sensor technology (WST) devices on the market enable individuals and organizations to track and monitor personal health metrics in real time. These devices are worn by the user and contain sensors to capture various biomarkers.

This report is the 23rd in a series that began in 1985. It provides statistics on populations supervised by adult correctional systems in the United States, including persons held in prisons or jails and those supervised in the community on probation or parole. It provides statistics on the size of the correctional populations at year-end 2017 and year-end 2018, and changes in populations over time.

Highlights

Vera Institute of Justice researchers collected data on the number of people in local jails and state and federal prisons at both midyear and fall 2020 to provide timely information on how incarceration is changing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers estimated the national jail population using a sample of 1,558 jail jurisdictions and the national prison population based on a sample of 49 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Vera also collected data on people incarcerated and detained by the U.S.

This report is the 32nd in a series that began in 1982. It provides statistics based on BJS's Annual Survey of Jails and Census of Jail Inmates. It describes the number of inmates held in local jails, jail incarceration rates, demographic characteristics of jail inmates, number of admissions to jail, jail capacity, inmate turnover rates, and staff employed in local jails.

Highlights

This report is the 27th in a series that began in 1980. It provides national data on the adult population on probation or parole in 2017 and 2018. It describes trends in the overall community-supervision population and annual changes in probation and parole populations.

Highlights

This report is the 94th in a series that began in 1926. It provides counts of prisoners under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities in 2019 and includes findings on admissions, releases, and imprisonment rates. It describes demographic and offense characteristics of state and federal prisoners.

Highlights

Having a global pandemic steamroll its way through a state’s economy is no one’s good idea of enacting budgetary restraints. But facing reality is not optional. Texas has faced budget tightening in its corrections system before. So, legislators must address this situation in a similar fashion— by once again prioritizing finite resources while, this time, seeking to get a handle on a costly, aging prison population and reducing technical violations that undermine the entire purpose of community supervision in the first place.

The nation’s imprisonment rate is at its lowest level in more than two decades. The greatest decline has come among black Americans, whose imprisonment rate has decreased 34% since 2006.

The federal prison population, which declined for the first time in decades under President Barack Obama, fell further during the administration of President Donald Trump.

The number of federal prisoners sentenced to more than a year behind bars decreased by 5% (or 7,607 inmates) between 2017, Trump’s first year in office, and the end of 2019, the most recent year for which final data is available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This website features all the BOP Coronavirus resources, policies, guidance and statistics.

Prison systems have begun vaccine distribution for incarcerated people. A table of states that publicly report real-time vaccination data is available on our System Report page. For states that are not reporting public numbers, The COVID Prison Project has estimated the amount of incarcerated people and staff that have been vaccinated from media reports. This table is updated on a daily basis.

The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been declared by the World Health Organization to be a global pandemic. As the number of people infected in the United States grows exponentially, we must focus on prevention and containment in the criminal and immigration legal systems. Vera and Community Oriented Correctional Health Services have created a series of fact sheets to guide actors in these systems, who have a unique and critical role to play.

UCLA Law collected data on COVID-19 in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers, as well as pandemic-related prison and jail releases, legal filings and court orders, and grassroots and community organizing efforts. The website reports the data and is updated regularly.

Local jails in the United States experienced a large decline in their inmate populations from June 30, 2019 to June 30, 2020, which can be attributed mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic. The inmate population confined in local jails was 549,100 at the end of June 2020, down from 734,500 at the end of June 2019. The midyear 2020 inmate population was the lowest since 1996, when 518,500 inmates were confined in local jails (not shown in tables).

This report provides criminal justice policymakers and practitioners with a priority agenda to prepare the nation’s criminal justice system for future public health crises. Through its recommendations, the Commission seeks to better balance the roles and responsibilities of the public health and public safety fields.

The site offers analysis and resources to better understand how coronavirus is impacting people who are incarcerated. The COVID Prison Project tracks data from all 50 US states, Puerto Rico, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Check out previous Environmental Scans

The National Institute of Corrections publishes this compilation of resources each year as an overview of what research indicates to be the trends in the corrections industry each year.
Accession Number: (2018) 033176, (2019) 033431, (2020) 033563, (2021) 033670, (2022) 033086, (2023) 033087

Corrections Environmental Scan

Perspective: Correctional

Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2020: Correctional Officers and Jailers

Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2020: Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers

Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2020: Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists

Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2020: First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officer

Since You Asked: Can Correctional Facilities Negotiate Phone Contracts That Prohibit Deposit Fees? (Yes! Many do.)

Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020

Court Appearances in Criminal Proceedings Through Telepresence

Wearable Sensor Technology and Potential Uses Within Law Enforcement

Correctional Populations in the United States, 2017-2018

People in Jail and Prison in 2020

Jail Inmates in 2018

Probation and Parole in the United States, 2017-2018

Prisoners in 2019

Prisons and Penny-Pinching: Finding Budget Savings in the Time of COVID-19

Black Imprisonment Rate In the U.S. Has Fallen By a Third Since 2006

<p>Under Trump, The Federal Prison Population Continued Its Recent Decline

BOP COVID-19 Coronavirus Resources

COVID-19 Vaccine Doses - Media Analysis

COVID-19 Criminal Justice Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic

UCLA Law Covid Behind Bars Data Project

Impact of COVID-19 on the Local Jail Population, January-June 2020

Experience to Action Reshaping Criminal Justice After COVID-19

The COVID Prison Project Tracks Data and Policy Across the Country to Monitor COVID-19 in Prisons

Other NIC Microsites

National Institute of Corrections