Measuring Progress: New Insights on Bookings, Returns to Jail from SJC Communities
By Cecilia Low-Weiner, Senior Research Associate
Since 2015, cities and counties across the country have tapped into data to design jail reduction strategies as part of the Safety + Justice Challenge. Measuring Progress is an interactive tool developed to highlight trends in SJC jail populations; now, four more insights have been added, tracking what people are booked for, how long they’re staying, if they are returning, and more.
The United States has the largest population of incarcerated people in the world, and is in the top 10 of countries with highest incarceration rates per capita. Many of these people are not yet found guilty, awaiting the outcome of their case in local jails run by cities and counties: between July 2022 and 2023, 7.6 million people were booked into jail custody, and over 664,200 in jail each day. To fulfill this demand, local jails consume a substantial proportion of state and local funds: nationally, nearly $25 billion—or 2 of every 5 dollars spent on corrections— is spent on jail incarceration.
There is also significant cost on the personal and community level: incarceration, for even a day, can negatively impact a person’s economic, physical, or emotional wellbeing long into the future, as well as that of their families and larger community. For all of this, there is limited evidence that pretrial incarceration actually has an impact on public safety. Many of the people held in jail could be better served—less expensively to all—in the community without impacting safety.
Faced with these facts, city and county officials across the country have begun to rethink jails, with the goal of safely reducing the over- and misuse of jail incarceration. For those awaiting their case outcome in the community, this could potentially mean receiving services to help them attend court dates and avoid future criminal legal involvement, such mental health or employment supports. But to accomplish this, communities must be able to accurately track and analyze trends in their jail populations to identify and evaluate these solutions.
Since 2015, cities, counties, and states have joined the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) to identify and implement data-driven jail reduction strategies developed alongside stakeholders, experts, and the community. A critical component of this work was building capacity within these SJC sites to collect, store, and analyze data to develop and measure these strategies. In 2022, as part of its role as the lead data and analytic partner, CUNY ISLG launched Measuring Progress, an interactive tool that explores the impact of those strategies by highlighting trends in overall jail populations, bookings, and associated racial and ethnic disparities. Each view in the tool explores a different jail trend and enables users to drill down to individual SJC jurisdictions, helping stakeholders and the public track progress achieved by SJC cities and counties.
Fig 1: SJC Jail Populations
Since the initiative launched in 2016, SJC sites collectively reduced their jail population by 23 percent.
In early January 2025, Measuring Progress expanded to include a new set of insights, highlighting the impact of SJC strategies on the individuals cycling through the jail system, what charges they are coming in on, how long they are staying, and whether they are returning to custody. In all, Measuring Progress provides a look at:
New additions
Returns to the Community: Did returns to jail increase following reform efforts?
Booking Charges: How have booking patterns changed?
Length of Stay: How much time are people spending in jail?
Jail Composition: How have jail profiles changed across the SJC?
Original dashboard
Jail Population Changes: How have jail populations started since the start of the SJC?
Pretrial Populations: How has the pretrial population changed?
National Comparisons: How do SJC sites compare to jail trends national?
COVID-19 Response: What impact did the COVID-19 pandemic have on jail bookings?
Racial Disparities: How has progress varied by race/ethnicity?
Fig 2: booking charges
Since the initiative launched, bookings for low-level charges have significantly decreased in SJC cities and counties.
Each view presents a look at trends across SJC cities and counties, as well as an opportunity to drill down into jurisdiction-specific trends (shown above). This is a living data tool; new views will be added periodically that explore new dimensions of jail populations across the country and highlight analysis preformed by CUNY ISLG to better understand the impact of the initiative and what drives these changes.
As the Safety and Justice Challenge enters its final years, CUNY ISLG looks toward preserving the progress achieved through the initiative. Measuring Progress provides policymakers, system partners, and the public alike with an expansive set of data and a window into the possibilities these data hold. Further, the tool is a testament to how cities and counties across the country have stepped up to the challenge and implemented strategies and policies to reduce the misuse of overuse of jails.
We invite you to explore each of the highlights presented and use it both to inform local and national conversations and generate new questions that can be further explored through data, local context, and conversations on the ground. Data such as these should be a starting point for deeper analysis, driving informed decisions, and shaping future strategies.
about the Safety and Justice Challenge
In 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Foundation) launched the Safety + Justice Challenge (SJC), a multi-year initiative to reduce jail populations and racial and ethnic disparities in jails. To date, the SJC has provided $252 million to help jurisdictions use innovative, collaborative, and evidence-based strategies to create fairer, more effective justice systems.
The sites are in diverse geographic regions and operate jails that range from 140 to 20,000 beds. Jurisdictions receive funding from the Foundation and support from a network of national experts and technical assistance providers to implement comprehensive, system-wide criminal legal reforms toward reducing the use of jail incarceration and its disproportionate impacts on communities of color. To track the progress of reforms in the SJC jurisdictions, the Foundation engaged the Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG) at the City University of New York (CUNY).
Photo by Yan on Adobe Stock.