The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ annual report on inmates in the justice system draws from data collected by Abt for the agency’s National Corrections Reporting Program. That data includes counts of prisoners under the jurisdiction of state, federal, and military correctional authorities, as well as findings on releases, imprisonment rates, and demographic and offense characteristics of state and federal prisoners. Among the findings in 2020, the number of persons held in state or federal prisons declined 15 percent, from 1,430,200 at year end 2019 to 1,215,800 at by the end of 2020. COVID-19 was largely responsible for the decline.