Prison Policy Initiative releases "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023"

Though not all pies taste the same on March 14, so-called "Pi Day," sentencing fans and criminal justice data fans should find today especially delicious because the amazing folks at the Prison Policy Initiative have now posted the latest, greatest version of PPI's amazing incarceration "pie" graphic and associated report.  The latest report "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023" provides a spectacular accounting of the particulars of who and how people are incarcerated in the United States.  As I have said in the past, the extraordinary "pies" produced by PPI impart more information in a couple of effective image than just about any other single resource I know about (and this PPI press release has the main visual and other highlights).  Here is part of this latest pie report's introductory text and the concluding discussion:

Can it really be true that most people in jail are legally innocent? How much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs, or the profit motives of private prisons? How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed decisions about how people are punished when they break the law? These essential questions are harder to answer than you might expect. The various government agencies involved in the criminal legal system collect a lot of data, but very little is designed to help policymakers or the public understand what’s going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build — and as the pandemic raises the stakes higher — it’s more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture.

Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have one “criminal justice system;” instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems. Together, these systems hold almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 181 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.

This report offers some much-needed clarity by piecing together the data about this country’s disparate systems of confinement. It provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration and overlooked issues that call for reform....

The United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.  Looking at the big picture of the 1.9 million people locked up in the United States on any given day, we can see that something needs to change.  Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each individual slice of the carceral “pie” and ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to bail, can meaningfully reduce our society’s use of incarceration. At the same time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising but will have only minimal effect, because they simply transfer people from one slice of the correctional “pie” to another or needlessly exclude broad swaths of people. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the “whole pie.”