Why US Jails Are So Overcrowded

MAYOR de Blasio’s promise to close the notorious Rikers Island jail made national news last month, but less-famous policymakers all over the country struggle with jail overcrowding on a regular basis.

If jails are for criminals, why are there still so many people behind bars after decades of declining crime? According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of US jail inmates rose from 621,000 in 2000 to 744,600 in 2014. Worse: The same numbers suggest jails are now overflowing with people awaiting trial.

These individuals, who may be innocent of the crimes they’re charged with, account for 95 percent of the growth in the jail population over the past 15 years.

Adjusting for growth in the overall US population, the incarceration rate per 100,000 for jailed convicts dropped 11 percent from 2000 to 2014, but the rate for those in jail who haven’t been convicted of a crime rose 17 percent over that period. That keeps jails crowded with inmates in an era of diminished crime.

Why are jails clogged with so many awaiting trial? A study by the Vera Institute for Justice noted that judges are less willing today than in previous eras to release individuals charged with crimes on their own recognizance. Instead, judges more commonly set cash bail amounts that many defendants can’t pay.

These individuals (who again, may be guilty of nothing), languish in jail. In the worst cases, the wait can be shamefully long — for example, the three traumatic years served by former Rikers inmate Kalief Browder, who took his own life after his release.

Now some states are rethinking bail. New Jersey has virtually eliminated cash bail, and California’s state legislature is considering a similar step.

Obviously, some people charged with crimes are dangerous or pose a serious flight risk, and therefore need to be held in jail until their trials. But simply returning the ratio of unconvicted people to convicted people who are in jail back to what it was in 2000 (1.29:1) would still allow violent defendants to remain incarcerated while simultaneously releasing 100,000 nonviolent defendants on their own recognizance until trial.

Not incidentally, that’s 10 times the number of inmates on Rikers Island. Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. Special to The Washington Post