News release: “The U.S. jail inmate population declined for a third consecutive year, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced. From June 2010 to June 2011, the jail inmate population declined 1.8 percent, dropping to 735,601 from 748,728. Local jails, unlike prisons, are confinement facilities mainly operated by a local law enforcement agency. Jails typically hold inmates while they await court action or serve a sentence of one year or less. In midyear 2011, the jail incarceration rate dropped to the lowest level since 2002. Jails confined 236 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents in June 2011, down from 238 inmates per 100,000 in June 2003. The decline in confined population in the largest jails—those with an average daily population of more than 1,000 inmates—accounted for more than half (53 percent) of the total decline of 13,127 inmates that occurred during 2011. An overall decline was also observed in the jail jurisdictions with an average daily population of fewer than 1,000 inmates. Jails were operating at 84 percent of their rated capacity at midyear 2011, the lowest percentage since 1984. The total rated capacity for all jails nationwide reached 877,302 beds at midyear 2011, up from 866,782 beds at midyear 2010, about a 1 percent increase in the number of beds.”