Notable (pandemic-impacted) justice data in "Federal Justice Statistics, 2020"

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has this new publication full of notable federal statistics under the title ""Federal Justice Statistics, 2020."  Here is how the 30-page document is briefly introduced:

Federal arrests declined 42% from fiscal year (FY) 2019 to FY 2020, reaching their lowest level since FY 2001. Of the 346,681 persons under federal correctional control at fiscal year-end 2020, about 56% were in secure confinement and 44% were on community supervision. This was a decline from fiscal year-end 2010, when 401,198 persons were under federal correctional control.

This report describes cases processed by the federal criminal justice system. Data are from the Federal Justice Statistics Program, which collects, standardizes, and reports on administrative data received from six federal justice agencies: the U.S. Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and U.S. Sentencing Commission.

There is way too much data in this document to summarize, though the impact of the pandemic is clear in a lot of the 2020 data points. Here are some sentencing/prison passages of note concerning fiscal year 2020 data:

Convicted males (69%) were sentenced to prison more often than convicted females (58%). Twenty-one percent of convicted females received a probation-only sentence, compared to 6% of convicted males. Convicted black defendants (85%) were the most likely to receive a prison sentence, followed by convicted American Indian or Alaska Native (79%); white (76%); Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander (67%); and Hispanic (60%) defendants.  Among those sentenced to prison, white and black defendants were both sentenced to a median of 60 months....

In FY 2020, a total of 36,914 federally sentenced persons were admitted to federal prison. Of these, 28,747 persons entered federal prison on U.S. district court commitments.  Another 8,167 persons were returned to federal prison for violating conditions of probation, parole, or supervised release or were admitted to federal prison for any reason other than a U.S. district court commitment.  Thirty-seven percent (21,972) fewer admissions occurred in FY 2020 than in FY 2019. (See Federal Justice Statistics, 2019 (NCJ 301158, BJS, October 2021).)  In FY 2020, a total of 13,619 persons entered federal prison for a drug offense, most of whom (10,415 or 76%) had been sentenced to more than 1 year.

A total of 59,044 persons were released from federal prison in FY 2020.  Most (45,694) were being released for the first time since their U.S. district court commitment.  Ten percent (6,537) fewer releases occurred in 2020 than in 2019. (See Federal Justice Statistics, 2019 (NCJ 301158, BJS, October 2021).)  There were 22,130 fewer persons in federal prison at the end of FY 2020 (September 30, 2020) than at the start of FY 2020 (October 1, 2019), a much larger drop than in previous years due in part to the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.  The last time the year-end federal prison population was this low (132,291) was in 2000 (129,329).  From the start to the end of FY 2020, 8,039 fewer persons were in prison for a drug offense and 5,492 fewer were in prison for an immigration offense.