The National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) data collection began in 1926 in response to a congressional mandate to gather information on persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Originally under the auspices of the U.S. Census Bureau, the collection moved to the Bureau of Prisons in 1950, and then in 1971 to the National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, the precursor to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which was established in 1979. From 1979 to 2013, the Census Bureau was the NPS data collection agent. In 2014, the collection was competitively bid in conjunction with the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP), since many of the respondents for NPS and NCRP are the same. The contract was awarded to Abt Associates, Inc. The NPS is administered to 51 respondents. Before 2001, the District of Columbia was also a respondent, but responsibility for housing the District of Columbia's sentenced prisoners was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and by yearend 2001 the District of Columbia no longer operated a prison system. The NPS provides an enumeration of persons in state and federal prisons and collects data on key characteristics of the nation's prison population. NPS has been adapted over time to keep pace with the changing information needs of the public, researchers, and federal, state, and local governments.

This data collection contains information gathered in a two-part survey that was designed to assess institutional conditions in state and federal prisons and in halfway houses. It was one of a series of data-gathering efforts undertaken during the 1970s to assist policymakers in assessing and overcoming deficiencies in the nation's correctional institutions. This particular survey was conducted in response to a mandate set forth in the Crime Control Act of 1976. Data were gathered via self-enumerated questionnaires that were mailed to the administrators of all 558 federal and state prisons and all 405 community-based prerelease facilities in existence in the United States in 1979. Part 1 contains the results of the survey of state and federal adult correctional systems, and Part 2 contains the results of the survey of community-based prerelease facilities. The two files contain similar variables designed to tap certain key aspects of confinement: (1) inmate (or resident) counts by sex and by security class, (2) age of facility and rated capacity, (3) spatial density, occupancy, and hours confined for each inmate's (or resident's) confinement quarters, (4) composition of inmate (or resident) population according to race, age, and offense type, (5) inmate (or resident) labor and earnings, (6) race, age, and sex characteristics of prison (or half-way house) staff, and (7) court orders by type of order and pending litigation. Other data (contained in both files) include case ID number, state ID number, name of facility, and operator of facility (e.g., federal, state, local, or private).

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.

The purpose of the Survey of Jails in Indian Country is an enumeration of all known adult and juvenile facilities -- jails, confinement facilities, detention centers, and other correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in the United States Department of the Interior. For the purpose of this collection, Indian country includes reservations, pueblos, rancherias, and other Native American and Alaska Native communities throughout the United States. The survey collects data on the number of adults and juveniles held on the last weekday in June 2008, type of offense, average daily population in June, most crowded day in June, admissions and releases in June, number of inmate deaths and suicide attempts, rated capacity, and jail staffing.

The purpose of the Survey of Jails in Indian Country is an enumeration of all known adult and juvenile facilities -- jails, confinement facilities, detention centers, and other correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), United States Department of the Interior. For the purpose of this collection, Indian country includes reservations, pueblos, rancherias, and other Native American and Alaska Native communities throughout the United States. The survey collects data on the number of adults and juveniles held on the last weekday in June 2012, type of offense, average daily population in June, most crowded day in June, admissions and releases in June, number of inmate deaths and suicide attempts, rated capacity, and jail staffing.

--- ### Context This dataset contains the complete detail about the Prison and various characteristics of inmates. This will help to understand better about prison system in India. ### Content 1. Details of Jail wise population of prison inmates 1. Details about the list of jails in India at the end of year 2015. 1. Jail category wise population of inmates. 1. Capacity of jails by inmate population. 1. Age group, nationality and gender wise population of inmates. 1. Religion and gender wise population of inmates. 1. Caste and gender wise population of inmates. 1. Education standards of inmates. 1. Domicile of inmates. 1. Incidence of recidivism. 1. Rehabilitation of prisoners. 1. Distribution of sentence periods of convicts in various jails by sex and age-groups. 1. Details of under trial prisoners by the type of IPC (Indian Penal Code) offences. 1. Details of convicts by the type of IPC (Indian Penal Code) offences. 1. Details of SLL (special & local law) Crime headwise distribution of inmates who convicted 1. Details of SLL (special & local law) Crime head wise distribution of inmates under trial 1. Details of educational facilities provided to prisoners. 1. Details of Jail breaks, group clashes and firing in jail (Tranquility). 1. Details of wages per day to convicts. 1. Details of Prison inmates trained under different vocational training. 1. Details of capital punishment (death sentence) and life imprisonment. 1. Details of prison inmates escaped. 1. Details of prison inmates released. 1. Details of Strength of officials 1. Details of Total Budget and Actual Expenditure during the year 2015-16. 1. Details of Budget 1. Details of Expenditure 1. Details of Expenditure on inmates 1. Details of Inmates suffering from mental ilness 1. Details of Period of detention of undertrials 1. Details of Number of women prisoners with children 1. Details of Details of inmates parole during the year 1. Details of Value of goods produced by inmates 1. Details of Number of vehicles available 1. Details of Training of Jail Officers 1. Details of Movements outside jail premises 1. Details of Details of electronic equipment used in prison ### Inspiration There are many questions about Indian prison with this dataset. Some of the interesting questions are 1. Percentage of jails over crowded. Is there any change in percentage over time? 1. How many percentage of inmates re-arrested? 1. Which state/u.t pay more wages to the inmates? 1. Which state/u.t has more capital punishment/life imprisonment inmates? 1. Inmates gender ratio per state ### Acknowledgements National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Govt of India has shared this [dataset](https://data.gov.in/dataset-group-name/prison-statistics) under [Govt. Open Data License - India](https://data.gov.in/government-open-data-license-india). NCRB has also shared prison data on their [website](http://ncrb.nic.in/StatPublications/PSI/PrevPublications.htm). ---

The objective of the Survey of Jails in Indian Country is to gather data on all adult and juvenile jail facilities and detention centers in Indian country, which is defined for purposes of this collection as reservations, pueblos, rancherias, and other Native American and Alaska Native communities throughout the United States. The survey, a complete enumeration of all 69 confinement facilities operated by tribal authorities or by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), provides data on number of inmates, staffing, and facility characteristics and needs. Variables describe each facility, including who operated it, facility age, facility function, rated capacity, authority to house juveniles, number of juveniles held, number of admission and discharges in last 30 days, number of inmate deaths, peak population during June, number of inmates held by sex and conviction status on June 30, number of facility staff by sex and function, facility crowding, renovation and building plans, types of programs available to inmates, and overview of facility and staffing needs.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics This series was begun in 1998 by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics and was collected as a component of the Annual Survey of Jails (ASJ). The purpose of this data series was to gather data on all adult and juvenile jail facilities and detention centers in Indian reservations, pueblos, rancherias, and other Native American and Alaska Native communities throughout the United States. The survey provides data on the number of inmates, staffing, and facility characteristics and operations of all confinement facilities operated by tribal authorities or the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), United States Department of the Interior.

A snapshot of the incarcerated population sentenced to the Indiana Department of Correction, including race, age, felony type, and most serious offense category. All data reflects December 31st of the selected year. This dataset contains the underlying data for the 'Population' tab of the 'Prison Incarceration' dashboard within the Public Safety domain.

This dataset was created as part of the PrisonLIFE project, funded by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia under Grant No. 7750249.

The dataset includes responses from prisoners across multiple correctional facilities in Serbia, collected using the Serbian version of the Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL) survey. It focuses on two key questions:

Perceptions of how the quality of prison life could be improved (e.g., through recreational activities, family contact, or preparation for release).

Factors perceived as most detrimental to the quality of prison life.

The dataset contains:

Responses aggregated for each prison separately.

Combined responses from all prisons included in the study.

This dataset provides valuable insights into prisoners' perspectives on improving and reducing the quality of prison life, supporting evidence-based recommendations for enhancing prison policies and practices.

The Fortune Society, a private not-for-profit organization located in New York City, provides a variety of services that are intended to support former prisoners in becoming stable and productive members of society. The purpose of this evaluation was to explore the extent to which receiving supportive services at the Fortune Society improved clients' prospects for law abiding behavior. More specifically, this study examined the extent to which receipt of these services reduced recidivism and homelessness following release. The research team adopted a quasi-experimental design that compared recidivism outcomes for persons enrolled at Fortune (clients) to persons released from New York State prisons and returning to New York City and, separately, inmates released from the New York City jails, none of whom went to Fortune (non-clients). All -- clients and non-clients alike -- were released after January 1, 2000, and before November 3, 2005 (for state prisoners), and March 3, 2005 (for city jail prisoners). Information about all prisoners released during these time frames was obtained from the New York State Department of Correctional Services for state prisoners and from the New York City Department of Correction for city prisoners. The research team also obtained records from the Fortune Society for its clients and arrest and conviction information for all released prisoners from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services' criminal history repository. These records were matched and merged, producing a 72,408 case dataset on 57,349 released state prisoners (Part 1) and a 68,614 case dataset on 64,049 city jail prisoners (Part 2). The research team obtained data from the Fortune Society for 15,685 persons formally registered as clients between 1989 and 2006 (Part 3) and data on 416,943 activities provided to clients at the Fortune Society between September 1999 and March 2006 (Part 4). Additionally, the research team obtained 97,665 records from the New York City Department of Homeless Services of all persons who sought shelter or other homeless services during the period from January 2000 to July 2006 (Part 5). Part 6 contains 96,009 cases and catalogs matches between a New York State criminal record identifier and a Fortune Society client identifier. The New York State Prisons Releases Data (Part 1) contain a total of 124 variables on released prison inmate characteristics including demographic information, criminal history variables, indicator variables, geographic variables, and service variables. The New York City Jails Releases Data (Part 2) contain a total of 92 variables on released jail inmate characteristics including demographic information, criminal history variables, indicator variables, and geographic variables. The Fortune Society Client Data (Part 3) contain 44 variables including demographic, criminal history, needs/issues, and other variables. The Fortune Society Client Activity Data (Part 4) contain seven variables including two identifiers, end date, Fortune service unit, duration in hours, activity type, and activity. The Homelessness Events Data (Part 5) contain four variables including two identifiers, change in homeless status, and date of change. The New York State Criminal Record/Fortune Society Client Match Data (Part 6) contain four variables including three identifiers and a variable that indicates the type of match between a New York State criminal record identifier and a Fortune Society client identifier.

This data collection provides information about topics and issues of concern in research and policy within the field of corrections. Chief among these are the characteristics of persons confined to state prisons, their current and past offenses, and the circumstances or conditions of their confinement. Also included is extensive information on inmates' drug and alcohol use, program participation, and the victims of the inmates' most recent offenses. This information, which is not available on a national basis from any other source, is intended to assist the criminal justice community and other researchers in analysis and evaluation of correctional issues.

The purpose of this collection was to measure the extent to which the Prisoner Management Classification (PMC) system in Washington state improved overall operations of prison facilities and reduced safety risks to inmates and staff. Four primary issues were addressed: (1) To what extent the PMC reduces rates of assaults on staff and inmates, (2) To what extent the PMC reduces rates of other serious misconduct, (3) To what extent the PMC increases rates of inmate participation in work or vocational programs, and (4) To what extent the PMC enhances staff job satisfaction, morale, and staff performance. Information is included on outcome variables against which comparisons between the experimental and control groups can be made. For each correctional facility, figures were collected for the number of staff-inmate assaults, number of inmate-inmate assaults, number of suicides and suicide attempts, number of escapes and escape attempts, number of "serious" disciplinary incidents, number of total staff, number of inmates, number of security staff vacancies, rated capacity of the facility, number of staff transfers and reasons, and number of inmates involved in educational, vocational, and work programs. Demographic variables include date of birth, sex, and race. Additional information concerns the family structure of the inmates and conditions surrounding the inmates' lives prior to entering prison.

Number and rate of persons held in prisons from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for Pacific Islands Countries and Territories.

Find more Pacific data on PDH.stat.

The prisoner dataset extracts from the Prison National Offender Management Information System (p-NOMIS) and the Offender Assessment System (OASys), operational databases used in prisons for the management of offenders.

Tables: NOMIS - One record per prisoner per custodial journey (i.e. each separate instance that a person was in prison during the period, but combining connected spells in custody, remand and recalls) providing details around their personal characteristics, main offence, sentence length, and release information.

OASys - One record per prisoner per assessment (prisoners may have more than one assessment per custodial journey). The OASys data only includes OASys records that have been linked to an offender in the NOMIS dataset.

Safety in Custody - One record per prisoner per incident

The U.S. government does not release jail by jail mortality data, keeping the public and policy makers in the dark about facilities with high rates of death. In a first-of-its-kind accounting, Reuters obtained and is releasing that data to the public.

What if the jail in your community had an outsized death rate, but no one knew? For decades, communities across the country have faced that quandary. The Justice Department collects jail death data, but locks the information away, leaving policymakers, investigators and activists unaware of problem facilities.

Reuters journalists filed more than 1,500 public records requests to gain death data from 2008 to 2019 in the nation’s biggest jails. Today, jail by jail and state by state, it is making that information available to the public. Reuters examined every large jail in the United States, those with 750 or more inmates. And, to ensure it examined deaths across the country, it obtained data for the 10 largest jails in each state. The data covers 523 jails or jail systems.

Original Data

Acknowlegement

Foto von Hasan Almasi auf Unsplash

National routine information on drug use and patterns of use amongst prisoners is rare. Most of the data available in the EU come from ad-hoc studies amongst prisoners, carried out at local level, with samples that vary considerably in size and which are often not representative of the whole prison system. This makes extrapolation to a national figure for the prison system very difficult. Furthermore, the lack of repeated surveys impedes trend analysis in most of the EU countries.

There are over 300 statistical tables in this dataset. Each data table may be viewed as an HTML table or downloaded in spreadsheet (Excel format).

Summary: This is a collection of publicly reported data relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic scraped from state and federal prisons in the United States. Data are collected each night from every state and federal correctional agency’s site that has data available. Data from Massachusetts come directly from the ACLU Massachusetts COVID-19 website (https://data.aclum.org/sjc-12926-tracker/), not the Massachusetts DOC website. Data from a small number of states come from Recidiviz (https://www.recidiviz.org/) whose team manually collects data from these states. Not all dates are available for some states due to websites being down or changes to the website that cause some data to be missed by the scraper.The data primarily cover the number of people incarcerated in these facilities who have tested positive, negative, recovered, and have died from COVID-19. Many - but not all - states also provide this information for staff members. This dataset includes every variable that any state makes available. While there are dozens of variables in the data, most apply to only a small number of states or a single state.The data is primarily at the facility-date unit, meaning that each row represents a single prison facility on a single date. The date is the date we scraped the data (we do so each night between 9pm-3am EST) and not necessarily the date the data was updated. While many states update daily, some do so less frequently. As such, you may see some dates for certain states contain the same values. A small number of states do not provide facility-level data, or do so for only a subset of all the variables they make available. In these cases we have also collected state-level data and made that available separately. Please note: When facility data is available, the state-level file combines the aggregated facility-level data with any state-level data that is available. You should therefore use this file when doing a state-level analysis instead of aggregating the facility-level data, as some states report values only at the state level (these states may still have some data at the facility-level), and some states report cumulative numbers at the state level but do not report them at the facility level. As a result, when we identify this, we typically add the cumulative information to the state level file. The state level file is still undergoing quality checks and will be released soon.These data were scraped from nearly all state and federal prison websites that make their data available each night for several months, and we continue to collect data. Over time some states have changed what variables are available, both adding and removing some variables, as well as the definition of variables. For all states and time periods you are using this data for, please carefully examine the data to detect these kinds of issues. We have spent extensive time doing a careful check of the data to remove any issues we find, primarily ones that could be caused by a scraper not working properly. However, please check all data for issues before using it. Contact us at covidprisondata@gmail.com to let us know if you find any issues, have questions, or if you would like to collaborate on research.

Law Enforcement StructuresThis feature layer, utilizing National Geospatial Data Asset (NGDA) data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), displays police and prison landmarks in the U.S. Per the USGS, "Structures data are designed to be used in general mapping and in the analysis of structure related activities using geographic information system technology. The National Map structures data is commonly combined with other data themes, such as boundaries, elevation, hydrography, and transportation, to produce general reference base maps. The types of structures collected are largely determined by the needs of disaster planning and emergency response, and homeland security organizations."Police Stations and Prison Correctional FacilitiesData currency: This cached Esri federal service is checked weekly for updates from its enterprise federal source (Law Enforcement) and will support mapping, analysis, data exports and OGC API – Feature access.NGDAID: 135 (USGS National Structures Dataset - USGS National Map Downloadable Data Collection)OGC API Features Link: (Law Enforcement Structures - OGC Features) copy this link to embed it in OGC Compliant viewersFor more information, please visit: The National MapFor feedback please contact: Esri_US_Federal_Data@esri.comNGDA Theme CommunityThis data set is part of the NGDA Real Property Theme Community. Per the Federal Geospatial Data Committee (FGDC), Real Property is defined as "the spatial representation (location) of real property entities, typically consisting of one or more of the following: unimproved land, a building, a structure, site improvements and the underlying land. Complex real property entities (that is "facilities") are used for a broad spectrum of functions or missions. This theme focuses on spatial representation of real property assets only and does not seek to describe special purpose functions of real property such as those found in the Cultural Resources, Transportation, or Utilities themes."For other NGDA Content: Esri Federal Datasets

This is a set of data on Palestinian prisoners. The data set is routinely updated.