Statistics

Impact and Insights

Even in 2020, Life Abundant, Inc. staff and volunteers reached some of the men and women at the Bucks County Correctional Facility.  We also served several men, women and family members in the community.  We are hopeful that this year we’ll be able to reach even more!

The scale of a penal system is usually measured by the regions incarceration rate.  The American criminal justice system holds more than 2 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 901 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 76 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories.  Learn more at the Prison Policy Initiative website (2017).

On average, there are about 1,200 inmates housed at the three Bucks County Institutions: Bucks County Correctional Facility, Men’s Community Corrections Center and Women’s Community Corrections Center.

Roughly 80% of the 1,200 or so Bucks County inmates will be released and about half will return to Bucks County.  In addition, approximately 20,000 state inmates are released every year and about 7,000 will return to Delaware, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties (2017).

In 2016, taxpayers of 18 states spent more on jails and prisons than they did on colleges and universities: New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Louisiana, Montana, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and California.

Across the nation, individuals with severe mental illness are three times more likely to be in a jail or prison than in a mental health facility and approximately 40% of individuals with a severe mental illness will have spent some time in their lives in either jail, prison or community corrections centers.  See local write-up on Stepping Up Initiative for more detailed statistics and reports.