Todd D. Minton, Zhen Zeng, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics

December 29, 2016    NCJ 250394

Presents information on the change in the number of jail inmates between 2000 and 2015 by sex, race, Hispanic origin, and conviction status. This report also provides estimates of year-to-year changes from 2000 to 2015 in the average daily population, rated capacity of local jails, and percent of capacity occupied. It also includes statistics, by jurisdiction size, on changes in the number of inmates, number of admissions, and weekly turnover rate between 2014 and 2015. Estimates and standard errors were based on BJS's Annual Survey of Jails.

Highlights:

• An estimated 721,300 inmates were confined in county and city jails on an average day in 2015, down from the peak of 776,600 inmates on an average day in 2008.
• In 2015, there were 10.9 million admissions to jails, continuing a steady decline since 2008.
• The number of persons admitted to jail in 2015 was nearly 15 times the size of average daily population in 2015.
• The adult jail incarceration rate declined from a peak of 340 per 100,000 in 2006 through 2008 to about 300 per 100,000 each year since 2013.
• The juvenile population in local jails continued to decline in 2015, to fewer than 4,000—down from a peak of about 7,600 juveniles in 2000 and 2010.

Part of the Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear Series

Press Release
Summary (PDF 163K)
Full report (PDF 582K)
ASCII file (24K)
Comma-delimited format (CSV) (Spreadsheet 22K)

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