Jail Forecasting Preliminaries and a Commentary

on the Price of Closing Rikers

Management Analysis and Planning - OR Unit

Summary
In this document we summarize some key queueing ideas related to jail forecasting
that will also appear in the intake process optimization and that in general should
be part of the jail common sense knowledge from a systems/OR perspective. We
motivate these ideas by explaining how much more resources of the justice/court
system would take to reach a target of 3000 people in custody.

1 Napkin Math for Jail Population Estimation

Life is governed by a set of rules. Like Newton’s rules of motion, queueing systems
(systems where customers/jobs wait for a service completion before exiting) are
governed by a cornerstone law known as Little’s law :

L = λW, (1)

Which translated to plain language says that the average number of people in a
system L is equal to the arrival rate of customers (admissions) λ, times the average
time they are inside the system W .
As an example, say that the average admissions per month is λ = 1700 people
in custody, and the average stay in jail is W = 3.5 months, then, the population
in jail is L = λW = 1700 × 3.5 = 5950 (all these numbers are purely illustrative).
This already tells a story: If the trend of arrivals remains the same at the
current level of around 1700 admissions per month (which is controlled by the rate
of arrests/crime) to reach a population of L = 3000 (the target to start closing
Rikers) the waiting time in jail must be W = 3000/1700 ≈ 1.7, that is, a staggering
50% reduction in the time inside jail (note that this time is controlled by the court
processing speed and bail/arraignment laws). In other words, keeping pace with
closing Rikers would entail either a tremendous speed up of the justice system
processing time, or reducing the arrival rate in a similar proportion by changing

1
bail laws, that is, a profound justice reform (this document is not advocating for
either, it is just stating what it would take to make the 3000 target possible without
building extra facilities).

2 The Price of Closing Rikers

In this section we continue the napkin math to estimate the cost of having a
population of 3000 in Rikers: The key driver of the population formula is W , the
waiting time in the system. Rikers can be seen mostly as an enormous waiting
room while the court and law administration agencies process cases. For the sake
of simplicity, consider that right now that are around x criminal judges so that
we can say there are x parallel servers processing cases (each server is not only a
judge, but a vast amount of resources including the courthouse, law enforcement,
investigators, pro bono criminal defense, and so on and so forth). Suppose a “judge
apparatus” process µ cases per month. By a queueing approximation of W as a
single server, servicing at a rate xµ (x “judge apparatuses” servicing each at a rate
of µ cases per month, for an average of xµ cases processed per month), the waiting
time W is given by 1/(xµ − λ). With this, the number of people in custody L is
given by (replacing W in (1)):

λ
L= , (2)
xµ − λ
To get a feel for the formula, suppose that we want to know the number of “judge
apparatuses” needed to make the people in custody population equal to 3000,
that is, solving the equation 3000 = 1700/(xµ − 1700) for xµ, which is equal to
xµ = 1700(3001/3000). Supposing that the throughput of trials of each “judge”
is µ = 15 per month (one trial every two days per judge), it would take x = 114
“judge apparatuses” to have a population of 3000 people in custody in Rikers.
The current number of appointed criminal judges x is around 981 . Assuming
the judges (and their associated justice apparatus) is working at full capacity, it
would cost the city/state an additional 15% of the justice administration budget to
reduce the Rikers population to 3000 under the current criminal laws (by increas-
ing judges, courthouses, law enforcement, investigators, pro bono defenders, etc).
Again, this is just an illustrative example, but it conveys the point that reducing
Rikers population can only be achieved by a speed up of the justice system with
the current facilities (either by adding resources to speed up processing (money)
1
According to this website. Nonetheless, this is a very coarse approximation of x as city
courts only handle misdemeanors, while felonies are processed by state courts. A more detailed
breakdown would be needed to do this calculation accurately also measuring µ by court type.

2
or changing bail/arraignment laws, which would change both the arrivals λ and
the processing time µ).

3 On Forecasting
Little’s law (1) comes really handy for doing forecasting of the people in custody
population. The population in a given month t is given by the same relation:

Lt = λt Wt , (3)

Here we can consider the following models:

• Constant waiting time Wt : Assuming there are no changes in justice laws

or their allocation of resources, W is just an average and the problem of
forecasting jail population Lt reduces to building a time series model for the
arrivals λt and just estimating W as an average.

• Changing laws µ or amount of resources x in the judicial system: Using the

approximation in (2), consider the case where resources xt or the process-
ing laws µt change over time (for example, during the Covid pandemic the
amount of resources x were greatly reduced in the judicial system, as courts
pretty much closed during spring 2020). In this case, the model becomes:

λt
Lt = , (4)
xt µt − λt
In this case, additionally to a time series model for the arrivals λt , another
model (or a set of scenarios) can be built for either changes in judicial system
resources xt or changes in bail/arraignment laws capturing how µt would
change over time.

4 Forecasting Example
Using historical admissions since January 2019. We estimate the following trend
and seasonal time series model using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS)2 :
p s−1
X X
λt = δ0 + δ1 t + λt−j ϕj + γi di + εt , (5)
j=1 i=1

2
As the problem is convex the solution of OLS is unique.

3
The specification of the model (number of lags) is chosen minimizing the usual
information criteria (AIC, BIC). The seasonality is s = 12 (as the data frequency
is monthly).
After fitting the model, we can use it to predict future admissions j months
into the future as:

L̂t+j = λ̂t+j W, (6)

With confidence intervals for L̂t+j given by (λ̂t+j ± c(α)σ̂t+j )W where c(α) is the
critical value at a confidence level α of a standard normal random variable. For
α = 95%, the value of c(95%) = 1.96.

4.1 Example Forecast

Using admissions up to August 2022, the predicted admission values are presented
in Figure 1. In Table 1 we present preliminary forecasts for the next 2 years jail
population. We use W = 3.12 which is the implied LOS by Little’s law with the
current population level.

Figure 1: Predicted Monthly Admissions λ̂t+j with confidence intervals.

5 Incorporating Scenarios
The time series model proposed in Equation (5) captures the information of the
time series in predicting its future values conditional on present and past infor-
mation. Nonetheless, the ability to incorporate future scenarios can be easily
incorporated using Little’s Law:

4
 Month Average Predicted Population (L̂t+j ) SD CI lower CI upper
2022-09-01 5942 611 4744 7140
2022-10-01 6086 828 4462 7710
2022-11-01 5230 974 3320 7139
2022-12-01 4825 1081 2706 6945
2023-01-01 5477 1163 3197 7758
2023-02-01 5258 1228 2851 7666
2023-03-01 5552 1280 3043 8061
2023-04-01 4873 1321 2282 7464
2023-05-01 5785 1356 3127 8442
2023-06-01 5585 1383 2873 8298
2023-07-01 6129 1406 3371 8886
2023-08-01 6177 1425 3383 8972
2023-09-01 6573 1441 3747 9398
2023-10-01 6739 1454 3888 9591
2023-11-01 5904 1465 3031 8776
2023-12-01 5518 1474 2628 8409
2024-01-01 6188 1482 3283 9093
2024-02-01 5985 1488 3067 8902
2024-03-01 6292 1493 3365 9220
2024-04-01 5628 1498 2691 8564
2024-05-01 6551 1501 3608 9495
2024-06-01 6363 1504 3414 9313
2024-07-01 6917 1507 3962 9872
2024-08-01 6975 1509 4016 9934
2024-09-01 7379 1511 4416 10341

Table 1: Predicted monthly average jail population with 95% confidence intervals.

5
 For example, suppose a scenario where bail laws are reverted to a previous year.
It is estimated that these will change arrivals to a proportion p̃ from the current
baseline (say p̃ = 135% of current arrivals). That is, the view of the scenario is
that arrivals will be 35% higher from their baseline. This affects that population
forecast as (L̃t denotes the new prediction incorporating the scenario):

L̃t = (p̃λ̂t )W = p̃L̂t , (7)

That is, simply multiplying the previous prediction by the factor affecting the
arrival rate. This framework is convenient as it can incorporate different scenarios
at the same time. Say that at the same time, the waiting time W is reduced to
q̃ = 85% (as a product of a reform in justice laws, making the judicial process
faster). The two scenarios affect the forecast as follows:

L̃t = (p̃λ̂t )(q̃W ) = p̃q̃ L̂t , (8)

The same logic applies to the confidence intervals. In summary, incorporating

“multiplicative scenarios” amounts to multiply the previous prediction and confi-
dence intervals timesQthe proposed scenario.
Lastly, say s = p̃ is the factor modifying the predictions. Supposing the
scenarios take a year (or any timeframe) to fully realize, a linear interpolation of
the rates from 1 can be taken to gradually incorporate the scenario. For the next
12 periods (one year) the prediction would be:

L̃t+j = [1wt+j + s(1 − wt+j )]L̂t+j (9)

Where wt+j = min(1 − j−t

12
, 0) is just a linear interpolation phasing in the scenario
factor s.

6
Charge Severity Level Charge Severity Charge Severity Desc 2019 2020 2021 2022 Most Common Charge
5 ZZ Other 2 0 0 0 IMMIGRATION AND NAT.
10 ZT Other 1258 621 626 852 FOR OTHER AUTHORITY
15 YT Other 7 2 3 4 FAMILY COURT WARRANT
20 XT Other 21 4 6 4 CIVIL CASE HOLD
25 VT Other 612 120 74 59 DISORDERLY CONDUCT
45 UZ Other 211 173 112 28 ADMINISTRATIVE CODE
50 UT Other 10 4 10 5 VEHIC AND TRAFFIC
55 UF Other 1 0 0 0 DRINK ALC IN MOTOR VEH
60 UE Other 1 0 0 0 ILL SALE FROZEN DESERT
65 MB Misdemeanor B 311 57 56 52 CRIM TRES 3
70 MA Misdemeanor A 9626 2252 2345 1999 ASSAULT 3
75 FT Felony T 7 0 3 2 AGGRAVATED DWI
80 FE Felony E 3113 1309 1236 1103 CRIM CONTEMPT 1
85 FD Felony D 6115 3034 3365 3324 ASSAULT 2
90 FC Felony C 4202 3369 3894 3479 CRIM POSS WEAPON 2
95 FB Felony B 4632 2736 3034 3031 ROBBERY 1
100 FA Felony A 892 514 792 690 MURDER 2

Table 2: Admissions by Severity of Highest Charge

Charge Severity Level Charge Severity Charge Severity Desc 2019 2020 2021
5 ZZ Other 15 0 0
10 ZT Other 20 40 25
15 YT Other 94 0 9
20 XT Other 27 48 25
25 VT Other 32 37 40
45 UZ Other 48 81 70
50 UT Other 24 9 61
55 UF Other 90 0 0
60 UE Other 19 0 0
65 MB Misdemeanor B 30 42 48
70 MA Misdemeanor A 39 61 58
75 FT Felony T 19 0 27
80 FE Felony E 65 77 70
85 FD Felony D 78 104 84
90 FC Felony C 86 88 65
95 FB Felony B 122 137 97
100 FA Felony A 193 191 99

Table 3: Mean LOS (days) by Severity of Highest Charge