Appearing here is a report on the U.S. prison population with interactive map features that are helpful for determining state-by-state comparisons, as well as some county-level data. It's well known that, per capita, our country incarcerates more of its population than any other country in the world (with one weird known exception). Racial disparities with respect to people of color are wide, especially for African Americans.
Note: Also read "States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021" by Emily Widra and Tiana Herring in the Prison Policy Initiative (Sept. 2021) whose report positions Texas next to other industrialized countries in the world. We here in Texas are literally off the charts!
For me, the most striking aspect of this report was that despite declining prison populations and jail incarceration since the early 2000s, this trend is dramatically offset by increases in our nation's smaller cities and rural areas that further manifest high rates of females of color incarceration. These inequities, as we know, are not only due to structural racism and implicit bias involving all the players in the school-to-prison industrial complex, but also by the profit in prisons and the jobs they create that help sustain rural areas and smaller cities.
-Angela Valenzuela
In Spring 2021, 1.8 million
people were incarcerated in the United States.
People are sent to jails and prisons more than 11 million times each year.
Updated: December 16, 2021 2:41 AM UTC
After decades of growth in incarceration across the United States, the number of people in jail and prison decreased in recent years. However, these national declines mask significant differences in jail and prison trends across counties, states, and regions. Use the map below to explore how your county compares to others along five key incarceration metrics.
Jail Incarceration by Geography
Although jail populations in the nation’s biggest cities began to decline in the early 2000s, jail incarceration has risen dramatically in smaller cities and rural areas. Today, roughly half of all people incarcerated in local jails are in smaller cities and rural communities. The smaller city and rural jail boom has been fueled, in part, by federal- and state-level policies. But mass incarceration is also a local problem, driven by the policies and operations of over 3,000 local jails and justice systems.
Go to VERA Interactive website
State-level Incarceration Trends
Despite substantial decreases in incarceration in a small number of states over the last two decades―and unprecedented reductions in 2020―the story of U.S. incarceration has been one of remarkable growth. Use the charts below to see which states have seen the biggest increases in overall jail and prison incarceration.
Go to VERA Interactive website
Racial Disparities in Incarceration
People of color―and Black people in particular―are incarcerated at strikingly higher rates than white people in jails and prisons across the country. These racial disparities reflect a system that treats Black people more harshly than white people at every stage of the criminal legal process. Racial disparities in incarceration cause disproportionate economic, health, and social harms to communities of color. Use the charts below to compare incarceration rates for each racial group.
Black people are incarcerated at higher rates than white people across the rural-urban spectrum. Although urban areas still have the biggest racial disparities, they have made larger strides in reducing racial disparities over the past three decades than have rural counties and smaller cities, where total incarceration rates today are the highest.
`Go to VERA Interactive website
County Comparisons
Mass incarceration is a local problem that requires local solutions. Use the table below to see how key incarceration metrics compare for different U.S. counties. For each state, the table shows the county with the highest jail incarceration rate and the highest resident population.
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