Philadelphia officials last week celebrated a milestone a decade in the making: the city has reduced its jail population by nearly 58% through its participation in the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, one of the nation’s largest criminal justice reform initiatives.
At the Implementation Team’s final meeting, the Office of Public Safety’s Division of Criminal Justice announced that Philadelphia’s jail population dropped from 8,082 people in July 2015 to 3,436 in July 2025 — reaching its long-term goal and hitting a 30-year low.
Fair use of detention
Founded in 2015, the Safety and Justice Challenge brings together a network of cities, counties, and states to prove it is possible to rethink local justice systems from the ground up, organizers say, adding that safely reducing local jail populations is the key goal of the initiative.
When Philadelphia joined the SJC in 2015, more than 2,000 people were in jail solely on pretrial status, and 13% were detained on cash bail of $50,000 or less. A decade later, the pretrial population has been cut in half, with fewer than 5% held on cash bail of that amount — a shift officials say reflects a more targeted and fair use of detention…