Every five to seven years since 1972, the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a comprehensive report that presents data on incarcerated persons in the US. The most recent report, the fifth in the series on correctional populations, has just been released and provides detailed information for 1996, a year in which 3.2 million were on probation, 510,400 were in...

One policy issue that has befuddled some of the best minds in the federal government is how to reduce the growth and cut the cost of the prison system. Amidst much conversation about the so-called "prison-industrial complex," there is much to be said for such a timely report. Authored by Julie Samuels, Nancy G. La Vigne, and Samuel Taxy of the Urban Institute, this November 2013 report takes a...