Incarceration in California

Incarceration in California spans federal, state, county, and city governance, with approximately 200,000 people in confinement at any given time. An additional 55,000 people are on parole.

The main government agencies and incarceration facilities involved in each jurisdiction are:

• Federal: federal prisons run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and immigrant detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
• State: state prisons, fire camps, and juvenile justice facilities, as well as a variety of community housing programs, all run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)
• County: county jails, usually run by county sheriffs and sometimes run by a county-level department of corrections
• City: city jails run by the city police department

Most people incarcerated in county and city jails are in pre-trial detention and have therefore not been convicted of a crime.