Time Served in State Prison, 2018

• NCJ Number: 255662
• Author(s): Danielle Kaeble, BJS Statistician
• Date Published: March 2021
• Publication Type: Publication

Annotation

This report presents findings on the time served by prisoners released from state prison in 2018.

Abstract

This report presents findings on the time served by prisoners released from state prison in 2018. It describes the mean and median length of time served by most serious offense and the percentage of sentence served by offense before initial release from state prison. Findings are based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Corrections Reporting Program, which is an annual voluntary data collection of administrative records on individual prisoners submitted by state departments of corrections.

Highlights

• The average time served by state prisoners released in 2018, from initial admission to initial release, was 2.7 years, and the median time served was 1.3 years.
• Persons released from state prison in 2018 served an average of 44% of their maximum sentence length before their initial release.
• State prisoners serving time for rape and initially released in 2018 served an average of 68% of their sentence, and those serving time for murder served an average of 58% of their sentence.
• Persons serving less than one year in state prison represented 42% of first releases in 2018.