FACTS

The US has thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal criminal justice systems. Together, these systems hold almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. (Prison Policy Initiative, The Whole Pie 2022) rate of 573 per 100,000 residents with over 1 million in state prisons, over 200,00 in federal prisons and jails and over half a million in local jails. In fact, 1 in 5 of incarcerated people in the world are incarcerated in the US. (Prison Policy Initiative, The Whole Pie 2022)

NY incarcerates more people per capita than any founding NATO country except the US. And NY incarcerates more women per capita than any founding NATO country except the US. (Prison Policy Initiative, Correctional Control 2018)

Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented in NY’s incarcerated population with Blacks representing 16% of NY’s population and 53% of its incarcerated population and Latinos representing 18% of NY’s population and 22% of its incarcerated population. Most people in prison are poor, and the poorest are women and people of color. (Prison Policy Initiative, Correctional Control 2018)

Two of three NYS women’s prisons are in Bedford. Bedford Hills Correctional Facility is NY’s only maximum security women’s prison. On Jan 1, 2023, it housed 556 women, transgender, or non-binary individuals. Albion, a medium security facility also in Bedford, housed 368 women, transgender, or non-binary individuals. (NYS DOCCS Incarcerated Profile Report – January 2023) These people are our neighbors.

The US locks up more people per capita than any other nation, at the staggering

A 1999 study at BHCF found that 94% of the women interviewed had experienced physical or sexual violence, and 82% had been physically or sexually abused as children. (International Journal of Law & Psychiatry, Prevalence and Severity of Lifetime Physical and Sexual Victimization Among Incarcerated Women, 1999)

63% of women in NY prisons are diagnosed with mental health conditions by the Office of Mental Health vs. 23% for men. 1/2 of these women are in the highest severity categories (Levels 1, 1S, 2, 2S).

(DOCCS, Under Custody Report 2021)

In 2021, The National Registry of Exonerations recorded 161 exonerations. Exonerees lost an average of 11.5 years to wrongful imprisonment for crimes they did not commit – 1,849 years to wrongful imprisonment for crimes they did not commit. Of these, 3 had been sentenced to death and 30 to Life in Prison without Parole. Official misconduct occurred in at least 102 of those exonerations.

(The National Registry of Exonerations 2021 Annual Report)

The number of incarcerated individuals who were at least 50 and over comprised 24.3% of NYS’s prison population in March 2021, compared to 12.0% in March 2008. In the January 2022 report NYS’s Aging Prison Population, NYS’s Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli urged policymakers to carefully examine opportunities to reduce the population of incarcerated individuals aged 50 and above. DOCCS research indicates that older persons released from State prison are much less likely to be returned to custody for a new commitment or parole violation than younger individuals.

According to the NYS Division of the Budget, the budget for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision for calendar year 2019 was $3.54 billion, amounting to an average annual cost of $79,879 per incarcerated person. (Columbia University Justice Lab: The Enormous Cost of Parole Violations in New York, March 2021)

Estimates are that this number is likely 2 – 3 times greater for persons over 50. And if you think that is high, an analysis by the NYC Department of Correction reveals that the annual cost of incarceration in a NYC jail is $556,539 per person! Furthermore, NYC is spending more and more to incarcerate fewer and fewer and yet the rate of violence and use of force is substantially increasing.