What causes the rises and falls in the number of people in the city’s jails
A. A short history of jail and crime in New York City
Chart 1: Between 1991 and 2023, the size of the jail population reduced by 72% — and major crime fell by 71% during roughly the same period.
B. Who is in jail?
Jail is different from prison. Prisons are run by the state (or the federal government, for those convicted of federal crimes) and hold people sentenced to a term of incarceration of more than one year. Jails are run by localities and are primarily designed to hold people awaiting trial. In much smaller numbers, the jails also hold people convicted of crimes who have been sentenced to terms of incarceration of one year or less (in New York City, 7% of the population) and people accused of having violated the terms of their probation or parole conditions (5% of the population).
How many people are in jail is a function of how many go in and how long they stay. The number of people who enter jail can be affected by a combination of the rises and falls in serious crime, higher or lower levels of arrests and policies and laws that can limit or increase the population.
Between 2014 and 2019, the city engaged in a concerted effort to safely reduce the number of people in custody, resulting in a 33% drop in population. Falling crime, increasing alternatives to detention and other efforts resulted in particularly steep reductions among those charged with nonviolent felonies, misdemeanors and technical parole violations, as well as among those sentenced to short terms.
In 2020, as COVID shut down the city and large portions of the criminal justice system, decision-makers — judges, prosecutors, defenders, the Department of Correction and others — met regularly to scrutinize each person held in the jails to determine whether the detention was necessary. Within six weeks, the population dropped by a third, reaching a low of 3,809 in April 2020.
Legislation that virtually eliminated the pretrial detention of people charged with misdemeanors, and limited the jailing of those charged with some nonviolent felonies, took effect on Jan 1, 2020, and kept the numbers low. Subsequently, the state legislature passed a law that kept the reductions in the number of people charged with a technical parole violation (that is, a violation of a parole agency rule such as keeping a required appointment with a parole officer, abstaining from drug use) at the low number reached in April 2020.
Chart 2: The proportion of the jail population charged with committing a violent felony has increased 72% since 2016, as the proportion charged with misdemeanors and non violent felonies dropped by 29%.
1. The health and demographics of people incarcerated
The proportion of people with a mental health diagnosis has increased significantly over time, rising from a third of the average daily population in FY 09 to half or more starting in FY 21, a trend that has continued. While the kinds of conditions encompassed in the city’s definition of a mental health diagnosis can range from ADHD and depression to schizophrenia, the City also tracks as a separate category “serious mental illness.” The number of people suffering from this condition doubled between FY 13, when the City began reporting it, and FY 23.
Chart 3: More than half the people jailed in New York City suffer from a mental health condition and 19% suffer from a serious mental illness.
Many people in jail have complicated needs. In addition to mental health concerns, some also suffer from drug and alcohol use disorders, chronic health conditions and housing instability or homelessness. The vast majority of the population is low-income, with 83% anticipated to be eligible for Medicaid upon release.
Chart 4: The jail population struggles with many problems.
Chart 5: These problems include a range of serious health conditions.
Chart 6: The population of the city jails is overwhelmingly male, Black and Hispanic, tipping toward an older and unemployed population.
Chart 7: The Bronx has the highest jail incarceration rates out of the five New York City boroughs.
C. How many people enter jail?
Historically in New York City, and mirroring trends in the standing jail population, pretrial detainees have comprised roughly 70% to 80% of admissions, with those receiving short sentences accounting for 10% to 20% of admissions, although the latter has dropped in more recent years.
Chart 8: The total number of people entering jail has fallen 82% since 1995, with pretrial detainees comprising a record 86% of the population as of 2021.
Those held pretrial are typically incarcerated either because they have not paid bail, because a judge has ordered the person be held without any bail (remanded) until the resolution of the case or there is another kind of hold, for example, a parole or other warrant.
Chart 9: Today 80% of the population is admitted on a felony charge and 16% on a misdemeanor or violation, compared to 1995, when 53% were admitted on a felony and 33% on a misdemeanor or violation (violations account for just 1-4% of the population).
D. How long people stay in jail
Admissions are not the only factor determining the size of the jail population. It is also determined by how long people stay locked up. How long a person stays in jail is affected by how efficiently (or not) a case moves to disposition: Is the person transported from jail to court in time for the court appearance; is the person’s case heard by the judge on the designated day; is the motion schedule extensive; do the lawyers ask for adjournments; does the judge set a timely trial date? All of these points of potential inefficiency have meant that extended stays in jail have been a perennial problem in the New York City justice system. When COVID-19 hit New York City in March 2020, the courts almost immediately “closed,” that is, they handled only the most pressing cases, worsening significantly the lengths of stay. While that trend that has recently begun to dissipate, lengths of stay are still approximately double those in the late 1990s to the mid-2010s.
Chart 10: The average length of stay has more than doubled since the 1990s.
Average length of stay varies by both the nature of the charge (for example, a violent felony or misdemeanor charge) and reason why the person is being held (for example, pretrial detention or a city sentence): People charged with more serious offenses and people who were on parole at the time of their arrest stayed in jail longer than those charged with less serious offenses and/or not held on parole warrants. Part of what is driving the longer lengths of stay today is that a larger portion of the people in jail are charged with serious offenses. Length of stay is particularly long for people charged with violent felonies who were on parole at the time–three and a half times longer than for people charged with violent felonies who are not on parole.
Chart 11: Average length of stay for people on parole charged with violent felonies has reached almost a year.
While overall lengths of stay have increased, there remains a high percentage of people admitted to jail who stay for less than two weeks–almost half of people discharged from jail in 2023. It is not clear what purpose such short periods of incarceration serve from a public safety standpoint, yet they are incredibly disruptive to the lives of the people detained. Even among those held less than a month, stays are generally short, yet they averaged almost eight months for those held 30 days or longer in 2023.
Chart 12: Almost half of the jail population is held for less than two weeks and could likely be released with no impact on public safety.
The length of time spent in jail among those incarcerated for a month or longer–and even among those incarcerated for more than 14 days–has skyrocketed in recent years, while there has been little change among those incarcerated for shorter periods of time. People detained more than 30 days were held for 73 days longer on average in 2023 than they were in 2014; length of stay increased by 72 days on average among people held more than 14 days.
Chart 13: Short-stayers continue to cycle in and out rapidly; long-stayers are staying longer and longer.
Chart 14: Between 2016 and 2023, the number of people held more than two years increased 61%, while the number held more than three years increased 86%.
This increase in the length of stay is a major contributor to the recent rise in the jail population. Today’s population size could be reduced by as much as 40%, were the system to move at the same pace it did in 2013 — a year not particularly known for efficiency or speed in case processing.
Chart 15: If average length of stay were reduced to previous levels, the jail population would fall significantly.