The Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports in December 2025 on sexual victimization reported by people in prisons and local jails. In the surveys, done in 2023 and 2024, 4.1% of people in prisons and 4.0% of people in jails said they had been sexually victimized. More than 2% in each setting said the abuse involved staff. The jail rate rose compared with the last national survey, taken more than a decade earlier.
What the surveys measured
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is the research arm of the U.S. Justice Department. Under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, it runs the National Inmate Survey, which asks people in custody about sexual victimization in confidential survey interviews. The fourth round, called NIS-4, covered more than 25,000 people in 177 prisons and more than 20,000 people in 250 jails, according to a later BJS summary.
The prison survey ran from March 2023 to March 2024. The jail survey ran from February 2023 to February 2024. People were asked about the past 12 months, or the time since they arrived if that was shorter.
The main findings
- Prisons: 4.1% of people reported sexual victimization, about the same as the 4.0% reported in 2011–12. BJS estimated about 49,300 people were victimized.
- Prisons: 2.3% reported victimization by another incarcerated person, and 2.2% reported sexual misconduct by staff.
- Jails: 4.0% reported sexual victimization, up from 3.2% in 2011–12, a statistically significant increase.
- Jails: reports of victimization by another incarcerated person rose from 1.6% to 2.2%, and reports of staff sexual misconduct rose from 1.8% to 2.3%.
The reports also list facilities with high and low rates, as PREA requires. In prisons, BJS identified 17 high-rate facilities. In jails, it identified 8 high-rate facilities overall. It also found 37 jails where no one in the sample reported an incident.
Any sexual contact between inmates and staff is illegal because inmates are unable to consent to sexual activity with staff.
What the numbers do and do not show
These figures come from what people in custody told surveyors. BJS notes that the survey does not allow follow-up investigation, so individual reports are not checked. Some incidents may be overstated, and others may go unreported because people fear retaliation or do not want to relive what happened. The facility rankings are estimates with margins of error. A high rate does not prove that a particular facility broke the law.
Even with those limits, the surveys suggest that tens of thousands of people in custody each year say they were sexually victimized, and that staff are involved in a large share of the reports. That is consistent with federal PREA rules, which define staff sexual abuse to include contact “with or without consent.”
Why this matters for civil claims
Survey data cannot prove any single case. But records like these can help show that the risk of sexual abuse in custody is well known. In lawsuits under the federal civil rights laws, a key question is often whether officials knew of a substantial risk of serious harm and failed to act. Our page on correctional facility sexual abuse explains those claims, the PREA standards and the grievance rules that can apply.
What this means for survivors
If you were sexually abused in a jail or prison, you are far from alone, and it was not your fault. Deadlines and grievance rules vary by state and by facility, and some notice rules for government defendants are short. A lawyer can review the specifics and explain your options. You can learn more on our sexual assault and abuse page.
This article is general information about how these cases work. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and no two claims are alike. If something here sounds like your situation, the useful next step is a conversation about the facts.
