NEW RESOURCE: Bureau of Justice Statistics Reports 2021 Showed 21^st Consecutive Year of Death Row Population Decline

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released its lat­est report for the year 2021, con­firm­ing a con­tin­ued decrease in the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows in the United States.

The BJS report, Capital Punishment, 2021 – Statistical Tables, released in November 2023, indi­cates that 2,382 peo­ple were under sen­tence of death in the cus­tody of states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in 2021, a 3% decrease in the nation­al death row pop­u­la­tion from 2020. This total marks the first time few­er than 2,400 peo­ple were under sen­tence of death in the United States since the end of 1990, when BJS report­ed 2,346 peo­ple were impris­oned on the nation’s death rows. The BJS data indi­cate that the size of U.S. death row peaked at 3,601 peo­ple in 2000 and has fall­en every year since. The 1,219 few­er peo­ple impris­oned on death row in 2021 marks a decline of 33.9%.

While the num­ber of peo­ple under sen­tence of death con­tin­ues to drop, the aver­age time spent on death row pri­or to exon­er­a­tion, resen­tenc­ing, nat­ur­al death, or exe­cu­tion con­tin­ues to rise. BJS reports that, on aver­age, death row pris­on­ers incar­cer­at­ed as of December 31, 2021, had spent 20.2 years behind bars. For the 11 pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in 2021, the aver­age time elapsed between impo­si­tion of their most recent death sen­tence and their exe­cu­tion was 233 months, or 19.4 years. This was the fourth longest aver­age time between sen­tence and exe­cu­tions since the resump­tion of exe­cu­tions in the U.S. in 1977. This also rep­re­sents a slight increase of 6 months from the 227-month aver­age record­ed for the 17 indi­vid­u­als exe­cut­ed in 2020.

The report pro­vid­ed con­tin­u­ing evi­dence of an aging death-row pop­u­la­tion. The aver­age age of pris­on­ers on death row at the end of 2021 was 53 years, up slight­ly from 52 at the end of 2020. DPIC data show that the aver­age age is now 54 years old. More than a quar­ter of death row pris­on­ers (631, 26.5%) were 60 years or old­er, up from 24.2% in 2020. In December 2001, the aver­age and medi­an age of death-row pris­on­ers was 39 years and only 2.6% of death row pris­on­ers had reached age 60.