When Jail Populations Decline, Crime Rates Remain Stable
Encouraging Findings about Decarceration and Public Safety from the Safety and Justice Challenge
By Stephanie Rosoff, Associate Research Director
The primary purpose of a jail is to detain those who are waiting for court proceedings and are considered a flight risk or public safety threat. However, many people admitted to jail are there because they cannot afford to post bail. As a result, they may remain behind bars for weeks, awaiting trial or a case resolution. This overreliance on jails has negative consequences not only for those who are incarcerated, but also for their families and their communities, particularly communities of color. Black Americans, for example, are jailed at five times the rate of white Americans; their numbers in the nation’s jail population are three times their representation in the general population.
Reducing Jail Populations Safely
In 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a multi-year initiative to reduce populations and racial disparities in American jails. Collectively, the 51 SJC sites account for about 16 percent of the total confined jail population in the United States. The MacArthur Foundation asked ISLG to track the progress of reforms across the SJC jurisdictions.
The goal of the SJC is not only to reduce jail populations, but to do so safely—and this has been a pillar of the initiative since its inception. Previous briefs have highlighted how SJC sites have substantially reduced their jail populations. Our latest report examines the impact of these decarceration strategies on public safety in 23 SJC sites. The report explores how both crime rates and returns to jail custody among people released from jail changed after decarceration strategies were implemented across SJC sites through 2019.
This analysis is a first step toward assessing how the Safety and Justice Challenge has affected public safety. The intention is to provide a general understanding of two high-level measures of public safety: crime rates and returns to custody. It’s important to note that the definition of public safety used in this analysis is limited, given our reliance on administrative data from criminal justice agencies. The metrics used in this report do not necessarily align with more nuanced views of safety as defined by the communities most impacted by the criminal justice system, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other people of color who are often underserved and overpoliced.
Decarceration Does Not Compromise Public Safety
Findings suggest that decarceration strategies can be crafted and implemented responsibly, without compromising public safety. In fact, public safety outcomes across SJC sites and in most individual sites remained relatively constant before and after the implementation of decarceration reforms.
Crime Rates Remained Stable Following Jail Population Declines
After local efforts to reduce jail populations, crime rates decreased or stayed the same in most SJC sites, which mirrored the national decline in crime. Most sites started implementing strategies to reduce jail populations after 2016. Between 2017 and 2019, the overall crime rate across SJC sites declined by 7 percent, which was close to the 10 percent decline in the US overall (see figure below).
Total Index Crime Rate: Across SJC Sites and the U.S.
Note: East Baton Rouge Parish and Multnomah County were excluded due to incomplete data.
Sources: FBI’s 2019 Crime in the United States report; Jacob Kaplan’s Concatenated Files: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program Data; CDC Vital Statistics.
The violent crime rate (a subset of the overall crime rate) fell more steeply across SJC sites than nationally after SJC sites began implementing their decarceration strategies in 2016 (see figure below): Before the implementation period, the violent crime rate in SJC sites and nationally increased (+9% and +7%, respectively); after implementation, the rates fell.
Violent Crime Rate: Across SJC Sites and the U.S.
Note: East Baton Rouge Parish and Multnomah County were excluded due to incomplete data.
Sources: FBI’s 2019 Crime in the United States report; Jacob Kaplan’s Concatenated Files: Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program Data; CDC Vital Statistics.
Crime rates for individual SJC sites are available in the report’s Appendix.
Rates of Return to Jail Custody Remained the Same Following Decarceration
In addition to exploring crime rates, ISLG’s report examined if the rate of return to custody changed after the Safety and Justice Challenge began. Given that people can be returned to jail custody for reasons unrelated to new criminal charges, such as lack of housing, it’s important to note that this initial analysis focused on specific subsets of returns to custody that were associated with specific types of charges such as misdemeanor, felony, property, or violent. Future analyses will address the impacts of other various systemic, non-criminal factors on the rate of return to jail custody, but our analysis here is a starting point for understanding these issues and providing a broad look at whether SJC decarceration reforms are associated with any changes in public-safety-related activities.
Return to Custody Rate Definition: The number of people in a cohort who were returned to jail custody within 12 months of their pretrial release, expressed as a percentage of all released individuals in the cohort.
Most people released from jail pretrial were not returned to custody within a year. Prior to the implementation of SJC jail population reduction strategies, 38 percent of people released on a pretrial status were returned to custody within 12 months. This remained true in the years following SJC implementation: Among the people released pretrial during SJC’s second year of implementation, 39 percent were returned to custody within a year.
Return-to-Custody Rate Among Pretrial Releases: Across Sites
Note: Returns to custody do not necessarily imply new law violations; returns could be due to underlying cases (such as a failure to appear in court, to serve a sentence, for a violation, etc.).
Importantly, returns to jail custody due to violent crime charges were rare, both before and after the SJC implementation. Only about 3 percent of people released pretrial from jail returned because of a violent crime—this was true before the SJC began and in the two years after the SJC implementation.
Return-to-Custody Rate By the Unified Crime Reporting Program’s Crime Type in Booking: Across Sites
Note: Returns to custody do not necessarily imply new law violations; returns could be due to underlying cases (such as a failure to appear in court, to serve a sentence, for a violation, etc.).
A Fair Justice System and Community Safety Are Compatible
When we consider public safety in terms of changes in crime rates and the number of people who return to jail, the findings highlighted here and in our report suggest that decarceration efforts in SJC sites do not endanger public safety. We do not need to choose between keeping communities safe and creating local justice systems that are fair. Future investigations will explore a more nuanced approach to public safety and will cover the COVID-19 pandemic period.