BJS: Bureau of Justice Statistics

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Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
Home | Corrections | State and federal prisoners and prison facilities | Prison inmate characteristics
Prison inmate characteristics
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Characteristics of prison inmates are collected through administrative data and inmate self-reports from interviews conducted in facilities. See Data Collections for more information. Note - BJS publishes similar characteristics information for jail inmates, as well as tables that detail age, race, and gender estimates of persons in prison and jail. See table names and notes to verify the population of reference.

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Terms & Definitions

Federal prisons Prison facilities run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Prisoners housed in these facilities are under the legal authority of the federal government. This definition excludes the private facilities that are under exclusive contract with BOP.
 
Prisoners Prisoners are inmates confined in long-term facilities run by the state or federal government or private agencies. They are typically felons who have received a sentence of incarceration of 1 year or more. (Sentence length may vary by state because a few states have one integrated prison system in which both prison and jail inmates are confined in the same types of facilities.)
 
Private prisons Prison facilities run by private prison corporations whose services and beds are contracted out by state governments or the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
 
State prisons Prison facilities run by state correctional authorities. Prisoners housed in these facilities are under the legal authority of the state government and generally serving a term of more than 1 year.
 
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