HELP US END MASS INCARCERATION The Prison Policy Initiative uses research, advocacy, and organizing to dismantle mass incarceration. We’ve been in this movement for 22 years, thanks to individual donors like you.

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Peter Wagner, Executive Director
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Graph showing the number of people in jails from 1983 to 2014 by whether they have been convicted or not. The number of convicted people stopped growing in 1999, but the number of unconvicted people continues to grow.

Data Source: Compiled from the Bureau of Justice Statistics series Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear and Correctional Populations in the United States. Missing data for 1994 extrapolated from 1993 and 1995 values. (Graph: Peter Wagner, 2015)

This graph originally appeared in Jails matter. But who is listening?.

Virtually all of the growth in the jail population has been in the number of legally innocent people who are detained in jails.

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