One of the governor’s goals related to public safety is the Department of Corrections will reduce its state correction population by 5% by 2020. DOC overall total population directly drives the Department’s budget. The baseline for the goal is the total population on June 30, 2015. On June 30, 2015, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections overall population was 50,366.

This dataset contains the total number of state corrections population in the Department’s custody at the end of each month, including those in prison, in contracted county jails, in community phases of the State Intermediate Punishment (SIP) program, in Parole Violator Centers (PVCs), and on temporary transfer to other jurisdictions.

DOC publishes a Monthly Population Report to the DOC Website (www.cor.pa.gov). The information published to the website includes the data set and breakdown of populations in each institution.

Three different measures of recidivism (rearrest, reincarceration, and overall recidivism) have been used by the DOC in a recent report to further explore the effects of recidivism on the criminal justice system. The DOC defines rearrest as: “the first instance of arrest after the individual is released from the custody of the DOC.” The DOC defines reincarceration as: “the first instance of returning to the custody of the DOC after the individual is released from the DOC.” The DOC defines overall recidivism as: “the first instance of any type of rearrest or reincarceration after the individual is released from the DOC.”

- The 3-year rearrest rates have been consistently higher than the 3-year reincarceration rates.
- The overall recidivism rates have remained relatively stable.
- From 2000 to 2013, rearrest rates appear to grow consistently before trending downward in recent years (e.g. 3-year rate has been below 50.0% in 4 of the last 5 years).
- The 2013 3-year reincarceration rate was down slightly at 43.7%, still lower than all the 3-year rates prior to 2008.
- The 2013 3-year overall recidivism rate dropped to 60.9%. This was the second lowest overall recidivism rate in the past 13 years (with 2011 being lowest at 59.9%)
- The 2015 1-year rates were all up slightly.

These statistics are based on a cohort of inmates.