(Co-authored with Jess Zhang for the Vera Institute.)

In the more than four years since the coronavirus pandemic started, the number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and local jails has remained near 1.8 million–an 11 percent reduction from 2019. Nationally, decarceration has stalled: the number of people incarcerated in the United States increased 2 percent between fall 2022 and spring 2024. This increase was especially steep in some states and localites. Still, the number of people incarcerated in the United States was 1.8 million in spring 2024, nearly 250,000 fewer than in 2019.

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