The Impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic on Incarceration Dynamics and Racial Disparities in North Carolina Jails

Disruptions to the US criminal legal system during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic temporarily reduced the numbers of people in prisons while exacerbating racial disparities in their populations, increasing the percentage of incarcerated people who are Black. Less is known about jail populations, including disparate impacts by race. We used web-scraped data from the publicly available rosters of North Carolina (NC) jails to examine their population sizes, admission and release rates, and racial composition during 2020-2022. Data were available from 45 jails (of 93 total in NC) representing 194,230 incarcerations. Relative to pre-pandemic (January-February 2020) sizes, populations decreased to a median of 66% (IQR = 60%-72%) in March-April 2020 as releases outpaced admissions (median 124 releases per 100 admissions per week) and rebounded to a median of 86% (IQR = 81%-97%) by March 2022. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) were over-represented in jail incarcerations (44%) relative to the general population (26%), with the rate of incarceration for BIPOC increasing from 2.4 to 3.0 times the rate for White people in the early pandemic period. Overall, the initial decreases to jail populations resulted from high release rates and were not sustained. Consistent with observations in prison populations, pandemic-related disruptions to the criminal legal system may have worsened racial disparities in jail incarceration rates and the resulting percentage of BIPOC in jail populations.