Who Is Incarcerated?

As policymakers make budgetary decisions and consider various approaches to addressing the critical education needs of inmates, they need basic statistics on the demographic characteristics of inmates. For example, they need to know the inmates' average age and the number who have a documented learning disability and/or little proficiency in English. They also need to know when inmates will be released and how many recidivate. These data could be used to track changes in inmate populations over time and provide policymakers with a better understanding of the characteristics of inmates who will ultimately re-enter society.

While demographic data (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, and age) on the general inmate population are collected annually at the national level, basic statistics on correctional education participants are not. Moreover, having demographic data on both the general inmate and correctional education populations will allow state correctional education administrators to compare the differences in composition between both populations over time.

Demographic data also could be used to answer relevant policy questions such as the following:

• Personal Characteristics of Inmates—individual attributes of each inmate.
  
  
• How large is the nation’s inmate population, and how is it changing over time?
  
• How do the characteristics of the inmate population compare to those of the general population?
  
• What are the characteristics of inmates who participate in correctional education?
  
  
• Incarceration Characteristics of Inmates—administrative detail on inmates’ incarceration status.
  
  
• What is the average length of a sentence?
  
• How many inmates will be released over time, and what are their characteristics?
  
• What percentage of the inmate population recidivates, and what are their characteristics?
  
  

Variables

To answer policymakers’ questions about inmates’ personal and incarceration characteristics, state data administrators will need to standardize reporting around the following variables:

Standardizing State Reporting

Most states can report detailed statistics on the personal and incarceration characteristics of inmates under state custody or supervision. To aggregate data at the national level, however, inconsistencies among the states’ collection and reporting procedures will need to be addressed. Specifically:

1. States should consider aligning their race and ethnicity categories with federal standards.
   
   States classify inmates’ racial-ethnic background using various standards. For example, for security reasons, some states do not collect ethnicity data, while others combine racial and ethnic subpopulations into a limited number of categories. To increase comparability, states should consider aligning their race and ethnicity categories with the federal standards used for maintaining, collecting, and presenting data on race and ethnicity for all federal reporting purposes. These standards have five categories for data on race: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White. There are two categories for data on ethnicity: “Hispanic or Latino,” and “Not Hispanic or Latino.”
   
   
2. States should consider standardizing data collection procedures for recidivism. 
   
   Standardizing state data collection procedures to track recidivism will require that states address the following issues:
   

• States are unable to identify repeat offenders previously incarcerated outside the state system.
  
  While state data administrators generally can identify inmates previously incarcerated within their state, they typically cannot determine if an inmate in their custody was at one time incarcerated in another state. To improve their ability to track recidivism rates, state administrators should consider negotiating data-sharing agreements that will allow them to identify and obtain correctional program records on incoming inmates to see if they have been previously incarcerated in another state.  While this most likely would require additional resources and federal support to establish a process to share and match data (e.g., assigning a common identifier to each inmate that could be used across states, building the technical capacity of states to conduct matches, and addressing state privacy laws), it would significantly improve states’ ability to track and evaluate recidivism rates. 
   
• States use different criteria to classify inmates as recidivists.
  
  States differ on whom they consider recidivists; some may consider inmates to be recidivists if they are re-arrested, others may require the inmate to be resentenced, and others use the reincarceration standard. To improve reporting accuracy, states will need to develop common strategies for determining whether or not an inmate is a first-time offender or a recidivist. For this guidebook, the reincarceration standard is used. The following is the definition for recidivism used in the codebook:
  
  An inmate previously sentenced and incarcerated in a state or federal correctional facility who has committed a new criminal act resulting in his/her return to a correctional facility with a new sentence following previous release date. Exclude jail and juvenile convictions and parole violators returning to a correctional facility under their original sentence.
  
  As states build their capacity to collect data on recidivism, however, they should consider expanding the definition of a recidivist to include jail and juvenile convictions.