Terms and Definitions
- Average annual change — average (mean) annual change across a specific period.
- Capacity, design — the number of inmates that planners or architects intended for a facility.
- Capacity, highest — the maximum number of beds reported across the three capacity measures: design capacity, operational capacity, and rated capacity.
- Capacity, lowest — the minimum number of beds across three capacity measures: design capacity, operational capacity, and rated capacity.
- Capacity, operational — the number of inmates that can be accommodated based on a facility's staff, existing programs, and services.
- Capacity, rated — the number of beds or inmates assigned by a rating official to institutions within a jurisdiction.
- Conditional release violators — readmission to prison of persons released to discretionary parole, mandatory parole, post-custody probation, and other unspecified conditional releases.
- Conditional releases — includes discretionary parole, mandatory parole, post-custody probation, and other unspecified conditional releases.
- Custody — prisoners held in the physical custody of state or federal prisons or local jails, regardless of sentence length or authority that has jurisdiction.
- Education — the highest academic grade level the offender completed prior to admission to prison.
- Imprisonment rate — the number of prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction sentenced to more than 1 year per 100,000 U.S. residents.
- Inmate — person incarcerated in a local jail, state or federal prison, or private facility under contract to federal, state, or local authorities.
- Jail — confinement facility usually administered by a local law enforcement agency that is intended for adults, but sometimes holds juveniles, for confinement before and after adjudication. Such facilities include jails and city or county correctional centers; special jail facilities, such as medical treatment or release centers; halfway houses; work farms; and temporary holding or lockup facilities that are part of the jail's combined function. Inmates sentenced to jail facilities usually have a sentence of 1 year or less. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Alaska, and Hawaii operate integrated systems, which combine prisons and jails.
- Jurisdiction — the legal authority of state or federal correctional officials over a prisoner, regardless of where the prisoner is held.
- Mandatory release date — the date the offender by law must be conditionally released from prison.
- New court commitments — admissions into prison of offenders convicted and sentenced by a court, usually to a term of more than 1 year, including probation violators and persons with a split sentence to incarceration followed by court-ordered probation or parole.
- Offenses — the crime(s) for which the offender was admitted to prison.
- Parole hearing/eligibility date — the date the offender is eligible for review by an administrative agency, such as a parole board, to determine whether he or she will be released from prison.
- Parole violators — all conditional release violators returned to prison for either violating conditions of release or for new crimes.
- Prison — a long-term confinement facility run by a state or the federal government that typically holds felons and offenders with sentences of more than 1 year. However, sentence length may vary by state. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Alaska, and Hawaii operate integrated systems, which combine prisons and jails.
- Prisoner — an individual confined in a correctional facility under the legal authority (jurisdiction) of state and federal correctional officials.
- Projected release date — the projected date on which the offender will be released from prison.
- Sentenced prisoner — a prisoner sentenced to more than 1 year.
- Supervised mandatory releases — conditional release with post-custody supervision generally occurring in jurisdictions using determinate sentencing statutes.
- Total maximum sentence length — the longest length of time as stated by the court that the offender could be required to serve.
- Type of admission to prison — the reason an offender entered into the physical custody of a correctional facility.
- Type of release from prison — the method of, or reason for, departure from the custody of your prison system on the reported date of release.
- Unconditional release — expirations of sentences, commutations, and other unspecified unconditional releases.