Since 1982, the Bureau of Justice Statistics Corrections Resources has administered a yearly sample of approximately 950 local jails (city, county, regional, and private) nationwide. The Annual Survey of Jails (ASJ) provides national estimates on the number of inmates confined in jails, demographic characteristics and criminal justice status of the jail population, holds for federal and state prison authorities, counts of admissions and releases, number of jail employees, and rated capacity.
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Corrections Resources maintains over 30 corrections-related data collections. Most are annual collections of administrative data from correctional administrators, ranging from basic population counts and offender demographic characteristics to facility capacity, programs, staff, and resources. In addition to collecting administrative data, BJS maintains a number of recurring national surveys of prison and jail inmates. The National Prison Statistics (NPS) Program also collects counts on specific inmate populations from the Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. territories.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) collects administrative data from probation and parole agencies in the United States through the Annual Probation Survey and Annual Parole Survey. Data collected include the total number of adults on state and federal probation and parole on January 1 and December 31 of each year, the number of adults entering and exiting probation and parole supervision each year, and the characteristics of adults under the supervision of probation and parole agencies. Published data include both national- and state-level data. The surveys cover all 50 states, the federal system, and the District of Columbia. They began in 1980 and are conducted annually. Probation data are available from 1977 through BJS's National Probation Reports. Parole data are available from 1975 through BJS's Uniform Parole Reports.
Auditor Compliance Tool - Prisons and Jails is one of the core components of the PREA audit instrument. It is used during each phase of the PREA audit to guide auditors in making compliance determinations for each provision of every standard, including the evidence auditors should collect to assess compliance. The Auditor Compliance Tool walks the auditor step by step through each provision of every Standard, pairing the provision itself with the detailed requirements for compliance and noting how the auditor should verify that the facility meets or does not meet those requirements.
The Body-worn Camera Partnership Program is for law enforcement agencies, including tribal law enforcement, seeking to pilot, establish, or enhance body-worn camera policy and implementation practices. BJA’s Body-worn Camera Policy and Implementation Program (BWCPIP) addresses how to develop and implement these policies and practices for effective program adoption, including the purchase, deployment, and maintenance of camera systems and equipment; data storage and access; and privacy considerations.
The 2019 Census of Jails (COJ) is part of a series that studies local jails and 12 Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) detention facilities functioning as jails. It collected data on local jail populations, including one-day custody counts by sex, race, Hispanic origin, conviction status, offense severity, non-U.S. citizens, juveniles, holds for state and federal authorities, admissions, releases, and average daily population. It also gathered facility information, such as capacity, staffing, and opioid programs. The COJ is the only collection that enumerates local jails and BOP facilities, providing inmate counts at the facility level, and serves as the sampling frame for the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (SILJ) and Annual Survey of Jails.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics Corrections Resources conducted approximately every 5 to 7 years, the Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities (CCF) collects facility-level data on the operations of facilities and the conditions of confinement, including facility capacity and crowding, court orders, safety and security within prisons, security-staff workload, overall facility function, programming, work assignments, and special housing. The CCF furnishes the sampling frame for the nationwide Survey of Prison Inmates.
The CDC's correctional health guidance provides comprehensive resources and recommendations for correctional facility staff, public health professionals, and community organizations. It includes guidelines for testing, vaccination, and treatment of HIV, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis (TB), and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for both incarcerated individuals and staff. The guidance also covers COVID-19 management, worker safety, overdose prevention, and food safety in correctional settings.
The Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program (COSSUP) aims to reduce the impact of opioids, stimulants, and other substances on individuals and communities by supporting comprehensive, collaborative initiatives. COSSUP funding provides necessary resources that allow communities to respond to illicit substance use and misuse to reduce overdose deaths, promote public safety, and support access to treatment and recovery services in the criminal justice system. COSSUP supports units of state, local, and tribal governments to plan, develop, and implement comprehensive efforts that identify, respond to, treat, and support those impacted by illicit opioids, stimulants, and other drugs.
Correctional Officer Wellness Project presents: Building a Comprehensive Mental Health Program. As the criminal justice reform movement is taking shape with bipartisan efforts to effect change, lasting systemic reform can only occur through approaches that address the mental health crisis facing correctional officers today. Comprehensive mental health programs need to address a number of unique challenges facing correctional officers, including privacy concerns, whole-family impacts, and need for sustained mental health care through retirement. Above all, programs must include the flexibility to adapt to new information as more surveys and studies are conducted to determine what’s working and what isn’t—and as more correctional officers come forward seeking help.
The U.S. correctional system is at a breaking point. Every American touched by the system—officers, administrators, the currently incarcerated and their family members—experiences challenges that can, and do, negatively impact their mental health. Among America’s nearly 450,000 correctional officers (COs), PTSD and depression are at near-epidemic proportions, driving extreme rates of psychological and even physical harm. The Correctional Officer Wellness Project presents an infographic focusing on Mental Health.
The crisis of correctional officer (CO) mental health is reaching a breaking point. Correctional Officer Wellness Project: Solutions offers approaches that can help address these challenges. Administrators need to do more than just make these solutions available—they need to work to create a culture where mental health care is encouraged and valued. Long-term, lasting reform cannot be achieved through tactical shifts alone, but requires psychological, cultural, and strategic change as well.
Correctional Officers’ Perceptions of Training and Organizational Values provides facts from a national scan conducted by Improving Institutional Corrections Academy Training, consisting of on-site observations, surveys, and curriculum evaluations. It examines training academies' focus, content, and quality and develop guidance for building and supporting correctional staff to increase public safety by improving outcomes across the corrections community.
The Corrections Analyst Community Forum is a place for corrections analysts to ask questions and get advice from the corrections analyst community.
Coming soon! Corrections analysts will be able to take the Virtual Academy self-guided Online Courses (Learning Management System-LMS), accessible from any computer with an internet connection, to expand existing skill sets across a range of relevant topics. All courses will provide static and interactive components with a range of instructor-guided materials and can be completed at users’ own pace.
The CDC’s food safety webpage focused on correctional health offers guidance on handling food safely within correctional facilities to prevent foodborne illnesses. It outlines the unique challenges faced in these environments, such as the high turnover of staff and inmates, and emphasizes the importance of adhering to safe food handling practices, including proper preparation, storage, and serving of food. The page provides resources and recommendations for training correctional staff on food safety, along with strategies for ensuring safe meals in detention and incarceration settings. Overall, the webpage aims to enhance food safety standards in correctional facilities to protect the health of inmates and staff alike.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance Crime Analyst in Residence (CAR) Program is designed to help law enforcement agencies expand their use of data analysis and analytics to manage their operations and practices. Using a hybrid approach of onsite and virtual technical assistance, the CAR training and technical assistance (TTA) team helps law enforcement agencies integrate tailored crime and data analysis practices, products, tools, and information more fully into their daily operations and crime reduction efforts.
Developing and Implementing a PREA-Compliant Staffing Plan introduces correctional practitioners to a new resource for developing a PREA-compliant staffing plan. This webinar will introduce key concepts from the published white paper entitled Developing and Implementing PREA-Compliant Staffing Plan: A Resource for the Field that addresses a range of considerations when developing a staffing plan in both adult and juvenile correctional settings.
FTP Resources for Auditors offers a compilation of auditor resources used by the Field Training Program (FTP). The resources were developed by the FTP team to aid in obtaining and collecting audit documentation and comprehensive facility data.
The Guide for Hiring Corrections Analysts offers leaders in corrections guidance on building teams that can provide data and analytics support to their agencies. The tool also provides tiers of basic skills, knowledge, and experiences that corrections analysts should possess at different levels.
Improving Institutional Corrections Training Academies: Guiding Principles Agency Assessment evaluates each agency's adherence to the guiding principles.
Training is an integral component of every correctional agency, influenced by factors such as agency mission, organizational priorities, and budget considerations. Improving Institutional Corrections Training Academies: Guiding Principles is intended to provide a tool to organize priorities for a contemporary correctional training academy and a framework for best practices in the field to ensure staff receive the highest caliber training available.
The Collaborative Crisis Response Training Program funds the implementation of transdisciplinary crisis response training to educate, train, and prepare law enforcement and corrections officers so that they are equipped to appropriately interact with people who have behavioral health conditions (including mental health and substance use) and intellectual and developmental disabilities while completing their job responsibilities. The program supports states and local law enforcement, and correctional entities to plan and implement training, engage in organizational planning to deploy trained officers in times of crisis, and sustain a best practice crisis response program.
The Integrating Adult Learning Theory Practices in Correctional Training course reviews the tenets of Adult Learning Theory and the value of applying these principles to the development of all training curriculum. There is a clear connection between effective training and the enhancement of safety and security practices through employee readiness, satisfaction, and retention.
The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP) supports innovative cross-system collaboration for individuals with mental illnesses or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders who come into contact with the justice system. BJA is seeking applications that demonstrate a collaborative project between criminal justice and mental health partners from eligible applicants to plan, implement, or expand a justice and mental health collaboration program.
Every year since 1980, Bureau of Justice Statistics Corrections Resources has extracted justice expenditure and employment data from the Census Bureau's Annual Government Finance Survey and Annual Survey of Public Employment. This data is published in the Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts series, which presents estimates of government expenditures and employment for the following justice categories: police protection, all judicial and legal functions (including prosecution, courts, and public defense), and corrections. This series includes data for national, federal, state, and large local governments (counties with populations of 500,000 or more and cities with populations of 300,000 or more). The unit of analysis in the Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts series is the government. For example, the corrections employment reported for any particular state represents the total of all correctional personnel employed by that state.
The Child Friendly Family Visiting Spaces in Jails and Prisons Program provides federal funds and training and technical assistance to correctional facilities to construct, renovate, or modify child-friendly family visiting spaces. It also provides funding to review, modify, and implement visiting policies, procedures, staffing, training, and implementation plans to support family strengthening and the best interests of child visitors.
The National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) collects offender-level administrative data annually on prison admissions and releases, and year-end custody populations, and on parole entries and discharges in participating jurisdictions. Demographic information, conviction offenses, sentence length, minimum time to be served, credited jail time, type of admission, type of release, and time served are collected from individual prisoner records. The collection began in 1983 and is conducted annually. Beginning in 1999, jurisdictions also began providing a stock file for all inmates held at year-end. In 2012, jurisdictions began reporting parole entry data. The number of states submitting data to NCRP has varied over the years, but at least 40 states have provided some data since 2000. All 50 states provided at least one type of NCRP record in 2011-2014, with at least 47 states participating from 2015-2022.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics Corrections Resources produces annual national- and state-level data on the number of prisoners in state and federal prison facilities. Aggregate data are collected on race and sex of prison inmates, inmates held in private facilities and local jails, system capacity, noncitizens, and persons age 17 or younger. Findings are released in the Prisoners series and the Corrections Statistical Analysis Tool (CSAT) - Prisoners. Data are from the 50 state departments of correction, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and until 2001, the District of Columbia. After 2001, persons sentenced under the District of Columbia criminal code were housed in federal facilities.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance National Training and Technical Assistance Center (BJA NTTAC) facilitates the delivery of training and technical assistance (TTA) to the criminal justice community. By providing rapid, expert, coordinated, and data-driven TTA, the BJA NTTAC team supports practitioners in their efforts to reduce crime, recidivism, and unnecessary confinement, making communities safer. Utilizing a vast provider network, the BJA NTTAC team connects state, local, and tribal justice agencies with subject-matter experts to address their communities’ specific public safety needs.
OAS Updates and Q&A Session was an opportunity to ask any and all questions related to the PREA Online Audit System.
The Correctional Healthcare RFP Toolkit is designed to assist correctional and detention facilities, along with local governments, in creating effective, outcome-oriented requests for proposals (RFPs) for healthcare services. It provides a step-by-step guide, covering everything from preparing to draft an RFP, using a provided template, issuing the RFP, evaluating vendor responses, to negotiating contracts. The Toolkit emphasizes collaboration among agency leaders, procurement officials, and other stakeholders involved in the vendor contracting process.
The purpose of the Patrick Leahy Bulletproof Vest Partnership (BVP) Program is to reimburse states, counties, federally recognized tribes, cities, and local jurisdictions up to 50% of the cost of body armor vests purchased for law enforcement officers.
The PREA Brochure: Template is intended for essential inmate/resident education on PREA, including definitions of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and how to make a report. The brochure was created to allow facilities to modify it to make it facility-specific. Instructions for how to modify the template and how to print for best results are included.
PREA Poster Templates are intended to provide information on an individual’s right to report, how to report, and access to victim support services. The posters were created in a range of sizes and designed to allow facilities to modify them to make them facility-specific. Instructions for how to modify the template and how to print for best results are included.
Under the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP), the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) certifies that local or state prison industry programs meet all the necessary requirements to be exempt from federal restrictions on prisoner-made goods in interstate commerce. PIECP programs place people who are incarcerated in realistic work environments, pay them prevailing wages, and give them a chance to develop marketable skills that will increase their potential for rehabilitation and meaningful employment on release. BJA provides technical assistance to all active state and county-based certified correctional industry programs that manage business partnerships with private industry.
BJA’s Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Management Office is responsible for supporting PREA implementation nationwide. In addition to administering the PREA Site-based Grant Program, this office also directs the PREA Resource Center, articulates the instrumentation and methodology to be used for PREA audits, trains and certifies PREA auditors, provides oversight for PREA audits, and communicates with governors’ offices about their annual statutory obligations under PREA.
The CDC's correctional health webpage provides essential information and resources on the health and well-being of individuals involved in the justice system. It highlights the increased health risks faced by this population, such as higher rates of infectious diseases, mental health issues, and substance use disorders.
Criminal justice agencies use risk assessments to assist with the allocation of limited resources to manage and rehabilitate people at various stages of the criminal justice system. The Public Safety Risk Assessment Clearinghouse (PSRAC) provides evidence-based information about how to use risk assessments effectively and properly to build safe families and communities.
Improving Institutional Corrections Training Academies: Guiding Principles provides a concise overview of the foundational principles designed to ensure the highest standard of training for all correctional agencies.
The Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) Program is a formula grant program that enhances the capabilities of state, local, and tribal governments to provide residential substance use disorder (SUD) treatment to adult and juvenile populations during detention or incarceration, initiate or continue evidence-based SUD treatment in jails, prepare individuals for reintegration into the community, and assist them and their communities throughout the reentry process by delivering community- based treatment and other recovery aftercare services. It encourages the establishment and maintenance of drug-free prisons and jails and development and implementation of specialized residential SUD treatment for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. The program also encourages the inclusion of medication-assisted treatment as part of any SUD treatment protocol.
The CDC's correctional health recommendations provide guidelines for testing, vaccination, and treatment of HIV, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis (TB), and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for incarcerated or detained individuals. The recommendations emphasize critical public health actions at intake, during incarceration, and at release, including specific considerations for pregnant people. The guidelines also highlight the need for facilities to adapt these recommendations based on their resources and healthcare capacity.
The Survey of Sexual Victimization (SSV) is part of BJS's National Prison Rape Statistics Program, which gathers mandated data on the incidence and prevalence of sexual victimization in adult correctional and juvenile justice facilities, under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA; P.L. 108-79). This is an administrative data collection based on allegations of sexual victimization by other inmates/youth or staff that are reported to authorities. The collection includes an enumeration of allegations and substantiated incidents reported to state prison systems; state juvenile correctional systems; the federal prison system; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); the U.S. military; and a sample of jail jurisdictions, privately operated adult prisons and jails, facilities in Indian country, and local and private juvenile justice facilities. Additional information is collected on substantiated incidents on the victim(s), perpetrator(s), characteristics of the incident, and
The purpose of the Swift, Certain, and Fair (SCF) Supervision Program is to provide state, local, and tribal community supervision agencies with information, resources, and training and technical assistance (TTA) to engage in collaborative problem solving with stakeholders using data and research-informed strategies to assess and improve responses to client behavior in accordance with the principles of swiftness, certainty, and fairness; improve supervision outcomes; prevent recidivism; reduce crime in their jurisdictions; and advance public safety.
The Comprehensive Tribal Justice Systems Strategic Planning Program provides federally recognized tribes and tribal consortia with funding and intensive technical assistance to help them develop a comprehensive and coordinated plan to address public safety and victimization. Through the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) Purpose Area 2, BJA provides funding for tribes to engage in comprehensive justice system strategic planning that will improve tribal justice and safety; develop, support, and enhance adult tribal justice systems to prevent crime related to opioid, alcohol, and other substance abuse; and renovate, expand, and/or replace tribal justice facilities to enhance facility conditions and/or add capacity for recidivism-reduction programming.
The Virtual Academy Model Code Repository gives corrections analysts access to a variety of code templates written in the R statistical programming language to improve data analytic efficiency and accuracy. This repository includes code to help reduce time spent compiling reports, tables, and visualizations. Additionally, all templates encourage reproducibility to prevent data discrepancies and simplify common time-consuming tasks.
Training Directors: A Survey to Develop Guidance on Correctional Training Needs provides facts from a national scan conducted by Improving Institutional Corrections Academy Training consisting of on-site observations, surveys, and curriculum evaluations. TMG examines training academies' focus, content, and quality and develop guidance for building and supporting correctional staff to increase public safety by improving outcomes across the corrections community.
Training Matrix Development Guide for Correctional Training Academies provides a framework for basic correctional training (BCT), along with pre-service and annual/in-service training programs. This guidance was developed after conducting a national scan of state correctional training programs and identifying gaps in curricula. This resource is intended to provide training academy directors, instructors, and staff a guide for building and supporting key skills and knowledge for today’s corrections workforce.
The Tribal Justice Systems Infrastructure Program provides federally recognized tribes and tribal consortia with funding to strengthen tribal justice system capacity by addressing physical infrastructure needs. Through the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) Purpose Area 4, BJA provides site-based funding to federally recognized tribes to renovate or expand existing tribal justice-related facilities or build prefabricated or permanent modular tribal justice-related facilities.
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