Vera Institute of Justice

This document is published every quarter to accompany the report, “New Orleans: Who’s in Jail and Why?” The goal of that report is to present complex data in accessible ways to advance an important public conversation about how we are using our jail and how it affects safety in our city.

This report uses jail data provided by New Orleans Pretrial Services, the sheriff’s office, municipal court, magistrate court, and criminal district court for the first quarter of 2016. The data provide information about people arrested on new charges, a snapshot of the detained population on March 2, all releases during the quarter, and cases that were adjudicated within the three-month period. For additional information about the data used in each figure, technical notes are provided at the end of this document.

Context

• Safety is a concern for everyone in New Orleans: how well is our criminal justice system working? Is it keeping us safe?
• Studying who is in our jail can help us understand the role of detention in keeping our community safe and inform what our needs are, both now and going forward.
• New Orleans has a history of over-incarceration: before Katrina, we jailed people at a rate five times the national average.
• How are we using detention today? 
• This data will help us advance an important public conversation about how we are using our jail and how it affects safety in our community.
• Far from making us the safest city in America, this over-use of detention had widespread consequences for affected people—and their families—who lost their jobs, homes, and support structures.