Number of People In Jails In The US

"At midyear 2022, local jails held 663,100 persons in custody, 4% more than the year before (table 1). The number of persons in jail custody saw a 25% decline from 2019 to 2020 as local authorities reduced admissions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The jail population has increased since, returning to 90% of its prepandemic (midyear 2019) size by midyear 2022. Jails reported 7.3 million admissions from July 2021 to June 2022. While this represented a 6.6% increase from the 6.9 million admissions the year before, annual admissions remained 29% lower than the last full year before the pandemic (10.3 million from July 2018 to June 2019) and 37% lower than 10 years ago (11.6 million).

"From July 2021 to June 2022, people admitted to local jails spent an average of 32 days in custody before release (figure 1). Males were incarcerated 36 days and females 19 days on average during that time. This was similar to the year ending June 2021 but up from the year ending June 2020, when the average jail time was 31 days for males and 18 days for females."