FACTS ON POLICY: Incarceration Rate

March 4, 2008

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

The incarceration rate is defined as the number of people in local jails and state and federal prisons per 100,000 people in the population. At the end of 2006, the incarceration rate for the United States was roughly 751 people per 100,000 U.S. residents. This works out to 1 in every 133 people in the United States in prison or jail. During the past ten years, the incarceration rate has grown by 22 percent.

Other countries that had high incarceration rates include Russia and St. Kitts and Nevis, which ranked second and third in incarceration rates, with 628 and 588 people per 100,000 residents, respectively.

At 2.3 million people, the United States also had the highest incarcerated population in the world, followed by China and Russia.

The 2.3 million incarcerated comprise 1.5 million people held in federal or state prisons to serve sentences of longer than one year and some 766,000 people in local jails who are serving time or awaiting either trial or sentencing. The incarcerated population grew 3 percent from the previous year (2005) and has grown almost 40 percent since 1996.

The three largest prison populations were contained in federal prisons, California prisons, and Texas prisons. Together these three jurisdictions housed more than one-third of the prison population. Of the four regions (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West), the South had the largest prison population in 2006, whereas the West saw the largest increase in prisoners between 2005 and 2006.

At 835 people per 100,000 residents, Louisiana had the highest prison incarceration rate, while Maine, with a prison incarceration rate of 141 people per 100,000 residents, had the lowest. (The prison incarceration rate is the number of people in prison per 100,000 people in the population, and does not include jail populations.) In 2006, the U.S. prison incarceration rate was 497 people per 100,000 residents.

Related fact: Prison sentencing (December 18, 2007)

Figure 1
Incarceration rates for top five and select other countries
(number incarcerated per 100,000 residents)

Sources:

• U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006 (June 2007).

• U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 1996 (January 1997).

• U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2005 (November 2006)

• International Centre for Prison Studies, World Prison Brief.

• U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Key Crime and Justice Facts at a Glance.”

Quiz Source Information:

• same as fact.