(Co-authored with Stephen Jones, Joyce Tagal, and Jess Zhang for the Vera Institute.)

In the first years of the coronavirus pandemic, federal, state, and local governments reduced the number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and local jails from 2.1 million in 2019 to 1.8 million at midyear 2020. By 2021, however, this decarceration trend appeared to have stalled, as further drops in prison populations were countered by large increases in jail numbers. From mid-2021 to fall 2022, incarceration rose slightly, up by 4 percent. Nonetheless, the number of people incarcerated is still near its 2020 level of 1.8 million.

The national increase seen during 2022 is the result of a patchwork of different state and local trends. Between mid-2021 and fall 2022, a total of 34 states increased the number of people in prison, and some saw substantial growth: Mississippi and Montana both increased the number of people incarcerated in their prisons by about 9 percent. Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, and North Dakota saw prison population increases of 8 percent.

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