10 Years into the Safety and Justice Challenge, Data Continues to Show No Link between Jail Population Reductions and Violent Crime
By Erin Sheena, Research Analyst, and Sana Khan, Senior Research Associate
For the past four years, CUNY ISLG has used a mix of individual-level jail data and county-level crime trends to assess the relationship between pretrial release and crime in Safety + Justice Challenge jurisdictions across the country. This year’s analysis affirms past findings: violent crime and the rate that people returned to jail after release have remained the same before and after reforms were implemented.
Across the United States, over 450,000 individuals are held in jails pretrial every year. This means they are jailed while awaiting trial and are presumed innocent. This has immeasurable financial and social costs to not only the people behind bars, but their families and the larger communities to which they belong.
Cities, counties, and states of all political stripes have sought to safely reduce pretrial jail populations to avoid these implications. To do so, many have partnered with the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a national effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to use data-informed strategies to reduce jail populations, as well as work towards eliminating the racial and ethnic disparities within them. Since the initiative’s inception in 2015, communities have used numerous tailored, data-driven strategies to safely reduce jail populations, with a focus on implementing or expanding pretrial release programs for individuals with low-level charges.
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.
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.
As the SJC’s primary data and analytic partner, CUNY ISLG has tracked the initiative’s progress, both as a whole and within individual cities and counties. CUNY ISLG works with jurisdictions to collect, manage, and assess their criminal legal system data. Jail trends can be found on the Measuring Progress dashboard; we’ve also used these and other data to annually examine jail population reduction efforts and their effects on community safety, particularly focusing on the peak and post-peak years of the COVID-19 pandemic when use of pretrial release programs increased.
Last year’s analysis of data through 2023 showed that there continues to be no apparent correlation between changes in incarceration and violent crime two years out from COVID-19’s peak and that rebooking rates remained consistent since 2015. Now, our most recent analysis looks at case-level data from 14 SJC cities and counties through April 2024.
Note: When tracking people who were released on pretrial status, we measured whether they were or were not booked into jail within six months of their initial release.
Figure 1 shows that of the individuals released from jail on pretrial status between March 1, 2023 and October 31, 2023, 76 percent were not rebooked within six months. Of those who were released pretrial, 7 percent were rebooked for administrative reasons, rather than a new alleged criminal charge. When considering rebookings for new charges, 2 percent were rebooked on a violent crime—consistent with rates before reforms. Altogether, rebooking rates in 2023 have remained consistent over time, including in 2015 before the SJC, indicating that jail population reduction efforts did not increase rebooking rates or new violent crime charges.
Note: When tracking people who were released on pretrial status, CUNY ISLG measured whether they were or were not booked into jail within six months of their initial release. The return rates for misdemeanor and felony charges are not mutually exclusive and may overlap. Additionally, people may be rebooked for other reasons that don’t classify as a felony or misdemeanor.
In Figure 2, we see that of people released on pretrial across 14 SJC cities and counties, 11 percent of individuals were rebooked on an alleged new felony charge within 6 months, while 9 percent were rebooked on an alleged misdemeanor charge. This rate has remained fairly consistent since 2015, prior to SJC reforms. Furthermore, although 17 percent of individuals released on pretrial were rebooked on a new charge (as noted in Figure 1), 2 percent of individuals released in 2023 were rebooked on a violent crime charge within six months after they were released—in line with previous rebooking rates observed before the SJC in 2015, up to the most recent 2023 data. Affirming past analyses, the data emphasizes there is not a decline in public safety when comparing felony and violent crime rebookings and SJC pretrial release efforts.
Note: CUNY ISLG used publicly available crime data from state and local websites. Incarceration rates are derived from jail data submitted to CUNY ISLG by SJC cities and counties. Population data to calculate rates were from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) population estimates.
In a separate analysis that looks at a larger subset of 20 SJC cities and counties, CUNY ISLG further examined changes in incarceration rates and violent crime since the peak of COVID-19 by comparing changes in violent crime and incarceration rates between 2021 and 2023. Figure 3 shows that most SJC cities and counties saw increases in incarceration rates, likely due to rebounding from the pandemic-era drop in bookings in 2020. Even though most jurisdictions had increases in jail population, there was a mix of change in violent crime: nine saw decreases, seven saw no change (within a 5 percent increase or decrease), and four saw increases. On average across these 20 SJC cities and counties, there was no meaningful change in violent crime between 2021 and 2023 (-2 percent).
These findings are consistent with other data sources and publications. The latest report from the FBI shows that violent crime fell by an estimated 3 percent between 2022 and 2023 nationally, in line with SJC cities and counties. Other reports note that violent crimes are on the decline, at or below crime levels seen in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the data captured from the 20 SJC cities and counties, there is no consistent relationship between crime and incarceration. There were increases in incarceration rates in almost all SJC cities and counties since 2021, which was expected because individuals were less likely to be booked in 2021 due to COVID-19.
There continues to be no apparent correlation between changes in incarceration and violent crime.
Looking at similar analyses from 2023 and 2024, the most recent data reinforces these past findings: there continues to be no apparent correlation between changes in incarceration and violent crime. This consistency across a variety of years and metrics highlights that rebooking rates have remained stable amidst amongst a variety of economic, public health, and political conditions in the United States over time, including when jail population reduction strategies are implemented.
For additional site level information, view Measuring Progress.
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 aekachai on Adobe Stock.
Note: Data through 2024 are currently unavailable for Cook County and New Orleans Parish. These counties are not included in the rebooking analysis.