Vera Institute of Justice reports on "People in Prison 2017"

Via this web page and this document, the Vera institute of Justice has now providing a valuable new "up-to-date view of the number of people in state and federal prisons." Here is the summary of their efforts from the print document:

Effective advocacy and policy making require up-to-date information. Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) researchers collected data on the number of people in state and federal prisons on December 31, 2017 to provide timely information on how prison incarceration is changing in the United States.  This report fills a gap until the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) releases its next annual report — likely in late 2018 or early 2019 — which will include additional data, such as population breakdowns by race and sex.

At the end of 2017, there were an estimated 1,489,600 people in state and federal prisons, down 15,800 from yearend 2016 (1 percent decline).

There were 1,306,300 people under state prison jurisdiction, 9,900 fewer than in 2016 (0.7 percent decline); and 183,300 in the federal prison system, 5,900 fewer than in 2016 (3.1 percent decline).  The prison incarceration rate in the United States was 457 people in prison per 100,000 residents, down from 465 per 100,000 in the previous year, representing a 1.8 percent drop. (See Figure 1.)  This brings the rate of prison incarceration down 14 percent since its peak in 2007.

The overall decline in the national prison incarceration rate was driven by the large decrease in the number of people in federal prisons, as well as greater than 5 percent declines in several states with large prison populations, such as Illinois, Louisiana, and Maryland.  However, the declines were not universal.  Mass incarceration is still on the rise in some states, such as Kentucky and Tennessee.  (See Table 1 for a summary of the jurisdictions with the highest and lowest prison population counts, rates, and percent changes from 2016.)

In addition to this summery, this document has a bunch of clear and informative charts with total prison populations and rates and changes for every state and region from 2007 to 2017.