Overview

The Marshall Project, the nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, has partnered with The Associated Press to compile data on the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in prisons across the country. The Associated Press is sharing this data as the most comprehensive current national source of COVID-19 outbreaks in state and federal prisons.

Lawyers, criminal justice reform advocates and families of the incarcerated have worried about what was happening in prisons across the nation as coronavirus began to take hold in the communities outside. Data collected by The Marshall Project and AP shows that hundreds of thousands of prisoners, workers, correctional officers and staff have caught the illness as prisons became the center of some of the country’s largest outbreaks. And thousands of people — most of them incarcerated — have died.

In December, as COVID-19 cases spiked across the U.S., the news organizations also shared cumulative rates of infection among prison populations, to better gauge the total effects of the pandemic on prison populations. The analysis found that by mid-December, one in five state and federal prisoners in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus -- a rate more than four times higher than the general population.

This data, which is updated weekly, is an effort to track how those people have been affected and where the crisis has hit the hardest.

Methodology and Caveats

The data tracks the number of COVID-19 tests administered to people incarcerated in all state and federal prisons, as well as the staff in those facilities. It is collected on a weekly basis by Marshall Project and AP reporters who contact each prison agency directly and verify published figures with officials.

Each week, the reporters ask every prison agency for the total number of coronavirus tests administered to its staff members and prisoners, the cumulative number who tested positive among staff and prisoners, and the numbers of deaths for each group.

The time series data is aggregated to the system level; there is one record for each prison agency on each date of collection. Not all departments could provide data for the exact date requested, and the data indicates the date for the figures.

To estimate the rate of infection among prisoners, we collected population data for each prison system before the pandemic, roughly in mid-March, in April, June, July, August, September and October. Beginning the week of July 28, we updated all prisoner population numbers, reflecting the number of incarcerated adults in state or federal prisons. Prior to that, population figures may have included additional populations, such as prisoners housed in other facilities, which were not captured in our COVID-19 data. In states with unified prison and jail systems, we include both detainees awaiting trial and sentenced prisoners.

To estimate the rate of infection among prison employees, we collected staffing numbers for each system. Where current data was not publicly available, we acquired other numbers through our reporting, including calling agencies or from state budget documents. In six states, we were unable to find recent staffing figures: Alaska, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Utah.

To calculate the cumulative COVID-19 impact on prisoner and prison worker populations, we aggregated prisoner and staff COVID case and death data up through Dec. 15. Because population snapshots do not account for movement in and out of prisons since March, and because many systems have significantly slowed the number of new people being sent to prison, it’s difficult to estimate the total number of people who have been held in a state system since March. To be conservative, we calculated our rates of infection using the largest prisoner population snapshots we had during this time period.

As with all COVID-19 data, our understanding of the spread and impact of the virus is limited by the availability of testing. Epidemiology and public health experts say that aside from a few states that have recently begun aggressively testing in prisons, it is likely that there are more cases of COVID-19 circulating undetected in facilities. Sixteen prison systems, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, would not release information about how many prisoners they are testing.

Corrections departments in Indiana, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin report coronavirus testing and case data for juvenile facilities; West Virginia reports figures for juvenile facilities and jails. For consistency of comparison with other state prison systems, we removed those facilities from our data that had been included prior to July 28. For these states we have also removed staff data. Similarly, Pennsylvania’s coronavirus data includes testing and cases for those who have been released on parole. We removed these tests and cases for prisoners from the data prior to July 28. The staff cases remain.

About the Data

There are four tables in this data:

• covid_prison_cases.csv contains weekly time series data on tests, infections and deaths in prisons. The first dates in the table are on March 26. Any questions that a prison agency could not or would not answer are left blank.

• prison_populations.csv contains snapshots of the population of people incarcerated in each of these prison systems for whom data on COVID testing and cases are available. This varies by state and may not always be the entire number of people incarcerated in each system. In some states, it may include other populations, such as those on parole or held in state-run jails. This data is primarily for use in calculating rates of testing and infection, and we would not recommend using these numbers to compare the change in how many people are being held in each prison system.

• staff_populations.csv contains a one-time, recent snapshot of the headcount of workers for each prison agency, collected as close to April 15 as possible.

• covid_prison_rates.csv contains the rates of cases and deaths for prisoners. There is one row for every state and federal prison system and an additional row with the National totals.

Queries

The Associated Press and The Marshall Project have created several queries to help you use this data:

Get your state's prison COVID data: Provides each week's data from just your state and calculates a cases-per-100000-prisoners rate, a deaths-per-100000-prisoners rate, a cases-per-100000-workers rate and a deaths-per-100000-workers rate here

Rank all systems' most recent data by cases per 100,000 prisoners here

Find what percentage of your state's total cases and deaths -- as reported by Johns Hopkins University -- occurred within the prison system here

Attribution

In stories, attribute this data to: “According to an analysis of state prison cases by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, and The Associated Press.”

Contributors

Many reporters and editors at The Marshall Project and The Associated Press contributed to this data, including: Katie Park, Tom Meagher, Weihua Li, Gabe Isman, Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger, Jake Bleiberg, Andrew R. Calderón, Maurice Chammah, Andrew DeMillo, Eli Hager, Jamiles Lartey, Claudia Lauer, Nicole Lewis, Humera Lodhi, Colleen Long, Joseph Neff, Michelle Pitcher, Alysia Santo, Beth Schwartzapfel, Damini Sharma, Colleen Slevin, Christie Thompson, Abbie VanSickle, Adria Watson, Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

Questions

If you have questions about the data, please email The Marshall Project at info+covidtracker@themarshallproject.org or file a Github issue.

To learn more about AP's data journalism capabilities for publishers, corporations and financial institutions, go here or email kromano@ap.org.

This measure reports the percentage of offenders who are currently serving terms in Iowa correctional institutions who have less than a HS diploma or equivalent. It includes offenders where the highest level of education completed is First through Twelfth, No Diploma/No Certificate, Now Attending, or Unknown.

This measure reports the percentage of offenders who are currently serving terms in Iowa correctional institutions who have or are working towards a post-secondary education degree. It includes offenders where the highest level of education completed is one of the following: In College, Freshman level college, Sophomore level college, Junior level college, Vocational/Technical Student, Technical Training Completion, Vocational Program/Technical Certificate, Associate's Degree, Bachelor's Degree, Master's Degree, or Doctorate.

The dataset contains outcome variables, control variables, and policy variables. The outcome variables pertain to the change and growth in state-level incarceration rates between 1975 and 2002. Control variables include violent crime rate, property crime rate, percent population between ages of 18-24, percent population between ages of 25-34, percent population African American, percent population of Hispanic origin, percent population living in urban areas, percent adherents to "fundamentalist" religion, income per capita, unemployment rate, percent population below poverty level, GINI income distribution coefficient, state revenues per 100,000 residents, public welfare per 100,000 residents, police officers per 100,000 residents, drug arrest rate, corrections expenditures per 100,000 residents, citizen political ideology, government political ideology, governor's party affiliation, and region. Policy variables capture information regarding sentencing structure, drug policy, time served requirements, habitual offender laws (HOL), and mandatory sentences. Specifically, sentencing structure variables include information on determinate sentencing, structured sentencing, presumptive sentencing guidelines, voluntary sentencing guidelines, and presumptive sentencing. Drug policy variables include sentencing enhancement score (cocaine, heroin, and marijuana), severity levels for possession and sale (cocaine, heroin, and marijuana), minimum sentence for 28 grams of cocaine (sale), maximum sentence for the lowest quantity of cocaine (possession), minimum sentence for 28 grams of heroin (sale), maximum sentence for the lowest quantity of heroin (possession), minimum sentence for 500 grams of marijuana (sale), and minimum sentence for the lowest quantity of marijuana (possession). Variables regarding time served requirements include both time served (all offenses) and time served (violent offenses). The habitual offender laws variables capture information regarding the two-strikes law, three-strikes law, HOL targeted for violent offenses, and HOL targeted for drug offenses. Lastly, variables pertaining to mandatory sentences include number of mandatory minimums for weapons use, number of mandatory minimums for violent offenses, number of mandatory minimums for offenses against protected individuals, number of mandatory minimums for offenses committed while in state custody, and mandatory score. The study consisted of two phases completed between November 2002 and March 2004. The first phase of the research involved building a framework for understanding the types of state-level sentencing and corrections policies in use between 1975 and 2002. To do this, researchers reviewed prior analyses of policies to construct an initial outline of policies or general areas and their characteristics. Next, members of the Vera Institute of Justice's National Associates Program on State Sentencing and Corrections (SSC) reviewed the outline, suggested minor changes in the characteristics detailed, and constructed an initial data collection instrument (DCI). This initial DCI microdatabase was pilot-tested by collecting data on three states, refined, and then a finalized version of the DCI was developed for use in the second stage of the study. Phase two of the project consisted of state-level data collection for all 50 states for all study years, 1975 to 2002. The year 1975 was chosen as the cut-off year since, according to most criminologists and practitioners, most of the dramatic changes in state-level sentencing and corrections policies have occurred post-1975. The principal investigators and six research assistants began by analyzing microfiche versions of state codes as amended in 1975. Microfiche versions of superseded state codes (including supplements) and state sessions laws were then used to collect data on changes to each state's code for each year between 1975 and 2002. Data collection generally involved reading the entire criminal law and criminal procedure sections of each state's 1975 code, locating the relevant policy, and recording information about the provisions of the policy into the DCI. Annual code supplements were then analyzed to note changes to each state's code. When a revised version of the entire code was published, data collection then involved reviewing the entire criminal law and criminal procedure sections of each state's code again. Where changes to policies were unclear from annual supplements, microfiche versions of state sessions laws were consulted, which provided the actual legislation altering the code. This process continued until data collection reached 2002, and analysis turned to the bound versions of state codes as amended in 2002. In order to assess the impacts of state-level sentencing and corrections policies in the United States implemented between 1975 and 2002 on state incarceration rates during that same time period, researchers conducted a two-phase study between November 2002 a...

Description: These datasets, drawn from the 2018 statistical abstract of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, provide a count of prisoners nationally and per district; gender and age; prison occupancy and capacity rates per district; prison rehabilitation and education; and the number of prisoners per district. The data also provides a count of the number of babies staying with female prisoners, the incarceration rate and the annual percentage change in the number of prisoners. Most recent changes: The dataset was last updated in 2017. Languages: EN Source: Uganda Prisons Service https://www.prisons.go.ug/ and Bureau of Statistics 2018 Statistical Abstract https://ubos.org

Adult correctional services, custodial and community supervision, average counts of adults in provincial and territorial programs, five years of data.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics The National Jail Census was conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Excluded from the census were federal- or state-administered facilities, including the combined jail-prison systems in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Data include jail population by reason being held, age (juvenile or adult) and sex, maximum sentence that can be served in the facility, available services, type of security available, facility capacity, age, construction and renovation of the facility, employment, and operating expenditures.Years Produced: Every 5 years

Adult correctional services, custodial and community supervision, average counts of offenders in federal programs, Canada and regions, five years of data.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics The National Jail Census was conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Excluded from the census were federal- or state-administered facilities, including the combined jail-prison systems in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Data include jail population by reason being held, age (juvenile or adult) and sex, maximum sentence that can be served in the facility, available services, type of security available, facility capacity, age, construction and renovation of the facility, employment, and operating expenditures.Years Produced: Every 5 years

This census provides information on county and municipal jails facilities in the United States and their administration. For all jails, the data include number of prisoners and their reason for being held, age and sex of prisoners, maximum sentence that could be served in the facility, facility capacity and age, types of security available, and operating expenditures. For jails in counties and municipalities with populations of 25,000 or more, data are supplied on quarterly jail population, age of cells, and availability of service facilities and programs for inmates.

The United Nations International Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch began the Surveys of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (formerly known as the World Crime Surveys) in 1978. The goal of the data collection effort was to conduct a more focused inquiry into the incidence of crime worldwide. To date, there have been five quinquennial surveys, covering the years 1970-1975, 1975-1980, 1980-1986, 1986-1990, and 1990-1994, respectively. Starting with the 1980 data, the waves overlap by one year to allow for reliability and validity checks of the data. For this data collection, the original United Nations data were restructured into a standard contemporary file structure, with each file consisting of all data for one year. Naming conventions were standardized, and each country and each variable was given a unique identifying number. Crime variables include counts of recorded crime for homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, fraud, embezzlement, drug trafficking, drug possession, bribery, and corruption. There are also counts of suspects, persons prosecuted, persons convicted, and prison admissions by crime, gender, and adult or juvenile status. Other variables include the population of the country and largest city, budgets and salaries for police, courts, and prisons, and types of sanctions, including imprisonment, corporal punishment, deprivation of liberty, control of freedom, warning, fine, and community sentence. The countries participating in the survey and the variables available vary by year.

The Ministry of the Solicitor General annually releases data on the segregation, restrictive confinement, and deaths in custody of inmates in Ontario’s adult correctional system. Data Source: Offender Tracking Information System (OTIS) Segregation is defined in Ontario Regulation 778 as any type of custody where an inmate is in highly restricted conditions for 22 to 24 hours or does not receive a minimum of two hours of meaningful social interaction each day, excluding circumstances of an unscheduled lockdown. A record is created each time an inmate meets the conditions of segregation and closed when the inmate no longer meets those conditions. A break in a segregation placement is defined as occurring when an individual is out of segregation conditions for 24 or more continuous hours. The Ministry of the Solicitor General defines restrictive confinement as any type of confinement that is more restrictive than the general population but less restrictive than segregation. As a result, the ministry is reporting on any case within the fiscal year reporting period where an individual was held in a unit regularly scheduled to be locked down for 17 hours or more per day. This timeframe is considered more restrictive than that of the general population based on an assessment of provincewide lockdown times. Regularly scheduled lockdowns are daily routine times where movement out of a cell is restricted, such as during meal times and overnight. The Ministry of the Solicitor General is committed to providing greater transparency by releasing data on all custodial-related deaths that occurred within the calendar year reporting period. The datasets in this category include information on gender, race, age, religion or spiritual affiliation, and alerts for mental health concerns and suicide risk. To simplify the provision of data, several data tables include information on both individuals in segregation conditions and individuals in restrictive confinement. Due to the differences in the way that the data on segregation conditions and restrictive confinement have been collected, and the differences in the definitions of these concepts, these numbers should not be compared to each other. Some individuals may have both placements in restrictive confinement and segregation conditions, within the reporting period. Therefore, these numbers should not be added together when calculating proportions out of the total. Please refer to https://www.ontario.ca/page/jahn-settlement-data-inmates-ontario for additional information on the data release, including written overviews of the data and disclosure on data collection methods.

Adult correctional services, operating expenditures for provincial, territorial and federal programs, provinces, territories and federal jurisdiction, five years of data.

Canadians are generally supportive of community-based sentencing; many feel that these sentences could have a number of positive impacts from reducing crime and increasing safety to greater efficiency in the criminal justice system. What we also found: After reviewing statistics on incarceration rates and who is incarcerated in Canada, over half of Canadians (55%) agreed that too many people were incarcerated (17% disagreed and 18% neither agreed nor disagreed) Support for community-based sentences was much stronger for non-violent crimes.

Abstract (en): RECIDIVISM OF PRISONERS RELEASED IN 1994 is a database containing information on each of 38,624 sampled prisoners released from prisons in 15 states in 1994 and tracked for three years following their release. The majority of the database consists of information on each released prisoner's entire officially recorded criminal history (before and after the 1994 release). Sources for criminal history information are state and FBI automated RAP ("Records of Arrests and Prosecutions") sheets, which contain records of arrests, adjudications, and sentences. The study is the second major recidivism study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The first study, RECIDIVISM AMONG RELEASED PRISONERS, 1983: UNITED STATES, tracked over 16,000 prisoners released in 11 states in 1983 for three years. These two studies are the closest approximation to "national" recidivism studies in the United States. They are distinguished by their large sample size (over 16,000 released prisoners in the first study, 38,624 in the second), geographic breadth of coverage (11 states in the first study, 15 in the second), length of prospective tracking (three years from date of release in both studies), ability to track the movement of released prisoners across state boundaries (both studies), and multiple measures of recidivism (both studies). Demographic data include race, ethnicity, sex, and date of birth. ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Standardized missing values.; Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.. Prisoners released during 1994 in the 15 states that the study covered. The 15 states account for about two-thirds of releases in the United States in a given year. Smallest Geographic Unit: state The following 15 state Departments of Corrections participated in the study: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. These departments supplied Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) with information on each person released from prison in the state in 1994 (Note: Illinois releases are for fiscal year 1994 rather than calendar year 1994). These 15 states were chosen as a purposive sample, based on willingness to participate, the state's relative contribution to the overall national prison population, and the state's inclusion in the earlier study of recidivism conducted by BJS in 1983 (see ICPSR 8875). The 15 states supplied BJS with release records on 302,309 prisoners released in 1994, approximately two-thirds of all prisoners released in the nation. Using these records, the researchers drew a representative sample from each state, totaling 38,624 out of the 302,309 released prisoners, stratified by most serious conviction offense. More detailed information regarding sampling procedures can be found in the codebook that accompanies this data collection. 2014-12-05 A minor change is made to the codebook.2012-01-12 For variable POTST, values for the state of New York were adjusted per the principal investigator.2011-03-08 All parts are being moved to restricted access and will be available only using the restricted access procedures.2009-02-09 Missing value codes were edited to correct for rounding and data entry errors.2007-03-02 The principal investigator revised the data so that there are 4,834 cases instead of 4,824 for values that are less than or equal to 90 for variable DCDV.2006-12-01 The principal investigator revised the description for variables RPRSD and RPRSITV in the codebook.2003-08-27 The principal investigator recoded some values in variables DCDV, RPRSD, RPRSITV, and RELTYP.2002-10-04 The principal investigator recoded some values (child victim age) in variable DCDV for 89 releases in the state of Virginia. Funding insitution(s): United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The data contain records of defendants in criminal cases filed in United States District Court before or during fiscal year 2001 and still pending as of year-end. The data were constructed from the Administrative Office of the United States District Courts' (AOUSC) criminal file. Defendants in criminal cases may be either individuals or corporations. There is one record for each defendant in each case filed. Included in the records are data from court proceedings and offense codes for up to five offenses charged at the time the case was filed. (The most serious charge at termination may differ from the most serious charge at case filing, due to plea bargaining or action of the judge or jury.) In a case with multiple charges against the defendant, a "most serious" offense charge is determined by a hierarchy of offenses based on statutory maximum penalties associated with the charges. The data file contains variables from the original AOUSC files as well as additional analysis variables, or "SAF" variables, that denote subsets of the data. These SAF variables are related to statistics reported in the Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, Tables 4.1-4.5 and 5.1-5.6. Variables containing identifying information (e.g., name, Social Security number) were replaced with blanks, and the day portions of date fields were also sanitized in order to protect the identities of individuals. These data are part of a series designed by the Urban Institute (Washington, DC) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Data and documentation were prepared by the Urban Institute.

Average counts of young persons in provincial and territorial correctional services, five years of data.

The data contain records of defendants in criminal cases terminated in United States District Court during fiscal year 2017. The data were constructed from the Administrative Office of the United States District Courts' (AOUSC) criminal file. Defendants in criminal cases may be either individuals or corporations. There is one record for each defendant in each case filed. Included in the records are data from court proceedings and offense codes for up to five offenses charged at the time the case was filed. (The most serious charge at termination may differ from the most serious charge at case filing, due to plea bargaining or action of the judge or jury.) In a case with multiple charges against the defendant, a "most serious" offense charge is determined by a hierarchy of offenses based on statutory maximum penalties associated with the charges. The data file contains variables from the original AOUSC files as well as additional analysis variables. Variables containing identifying information (e.g., name, Social Security number) were either removed, coarsened, or blanked in order to protect the identities of individuals. These data are part of a series designed by Abt and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Data and documentation were prepared by Abt.

IntroductionFemales are the fastest growing justice involved population in the United States, yet there is relatively little empirical research on the collateral consequences of juvenile justice involvement specifically for females. A growing body of empirical research underscores linkages between juvenile justice involvement and negative health and psychosocial outcomes, both in the short and long term.MethodThe current study describes the long-term collateral consequences of juvenile justice involvement for females previously involved in the juvenile justice system, drawing from a longitudinal dataset of 166 women who were initially recruited in adolescence due to chronic and severe justice system involvement. Participants were 15 years-old on average at study enrollment and 35 years-old on average at the current assessment. This paper describes the adolescent and adult experiences of the sample, therefore depicting the developmental trajectories of risk and protective factors for females involved with juvenile justice.ResultsAs adults, 73% of the sample experienced arrest and 36% experienced incarceration. High rates of mental and physical health problems were reported, including that 50% of the sample met diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder. Over 400 children were born to the sample, with high rates of documented intergenerational child welfare involvement.DiscussionStudy findings are discussed in the context of best practices for supporting adolescent girls involved with the juvenile justice system.