Little change in the federal prison population after first 100 days of Trump Adminstration

I have not been able to find today any new press pieces or other analyses looking closely at what the Trump Administration has done with respect to traditionally criminal justice enforcement and sentencing over its first 100 days.  (Excitingly, the Federal Sentencing Reporter has in the works a special issue focused on an array of criminal justice topics relating to the recent change in federal adminstrations, but that issue will not be published for a number of months.)  Perhaps there has been too many dynamics developments --- including mass and on-going clemencies, a broad death penalty executive order, a new charging, plea, sentencing guidelines issued by the new Attorney General, anda new Director for the Bureau of Prisons --- to effectively summarize what has happened and all the past, present and likley future impacts.  Or perhaps all sorts of other topics are always destined to garner more attention in the media and elsewhere. 

And yet, at the 100 day mark when there seems to be so much turmoil in criminal justice spaces and elsewhere, the federal prison population has proven notable stable.  Specifically, I flagged in this post 100 days ago, that the BOP official total federal prison population was reported to be "155,399 Total Federal Inmates" as of January 16, 2025 (the count gets updated weekly on Thursdays). Today, at this BOP webpage, the Bureau reports "155,751 Total Federal Inmates" as of April 24, 2025.  The increase of 352 federal inmates, roughly 0.2%, is not that far removed from what I see as regular variation in the reported federal population from week to week.  In other words, I think it fair to state that , over the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, the federal prison population appears essentially unchanged.

As I have noted in prior posts, significant changes in federal prison population has been the norm for most of the last four decades.  This chart with BOP historical data shows the federal prison population increasing (often a lot) every year from 1980 to 2013 and then decreasing (often a lot) every year from 2014 to 2020.  Most recently, the federal prison population increased by 17,000 persons during Prez Obama's first term (roughly 8%), and then it declined nearly 20,000 persons during Prez Obama's second term (roughly 9%).  And then the federal prison population decreased by nearly 38,000 persons(!) during Prez Trump's first term (nearly 20%), partially (though not entirely) due to some COVID realities. 

The Biden Administration years produced a fairly modest growth of the federal prison population (less than 2.5%), which really marked a notable new period of relative stability compared to prior recent presidential terms.  So far, this recent pattern of federal prison population stability appears to be persisting into the early months of Prez Trump's second term in office.  But I would not make any certain predictions as to whether this stability will continue in the months and years ahead.  

UPDATE: Intriguingly, the weekly update of the prison population, at this BOP webpage, indictaes a quite notable weekly jump with the the Bureau reporting "156,254 Total Federal Inmates" as of may 1, 2025.  I am not sure why this past week brought such a jump, but it makes me even more inclined to keep a close eye on this metric.