Danielle Kaeble, Lauren E. Glaze, Bureau of Justice Statistics

December 29, 2016    NCJ 250374

Presents statistics on persons supervised by adult correctional systems in the United States at yearend 2015, including persons supervised in the community on probation or parole and those incarcerated in state or federal prison or local jail. The report describes the size and change in the total correctional population during 2015. Appendix tables provide statistics on other correctional populations and jurisdiction-level estimates of the total correctional population by correctional status and sex for selected years.

Highlights:

• At yearend 2015, an estimated 6,741,400 persons were supervised by U.S. adult correctional systems, a decrease of about 115,600 persons from yearend 2014.
• About 1 in 37 adults (or 2.7% of adults in the United States) was under some form of correctional supervision at yearend 2015, the lowest rate since 1994.
• The U.S. correctional population declined 1.7% during 2015 due to decreases in both the community supervision (down 1.3%) and incarcerated (down 2.3%) populations.
• By yearend 2015, the community supervision population (4,650,900) fell to the lowest level since 2000 (4,564,900), and the incarcerated population (2,173,800) fell to the lowest level since 2004 (2,136,600).
• All of the decrease in the community supervision population during 2015 resulted from a drop in the probation population (down 2.0%), as the parole population (up 1.5%) increased.
• In 2015, the majority (69%) of the decline in the incarcerated population resulted from the drop in the prison population (down 35,500).

Part of the Correctional Populations in the United States Series

Press Release
Full report (PDF 787K)
ASCII file (43K)
Data tables (Spreadsheet 23K)

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