The Prison Population Shrinks, But Massive Disparities Persist

The United States locks up a greater portion of its population than nearly any other country in the world, but the total number of people imprisoned has fallen slowly from its peak in recent years. According to new data from the government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of people incarcerated decreased 1 percent to 1,505,400 people by the end of 2016.

While the discussion of criminal justice policy often takes place at the federal level, the vast majority of people who are locked up in the United States are incarcerated by state authorities. At the end of 2016, states had about 1,316,205 incarcerated, while the federal system had a total of 189,192.

There’s significant differences in incarceration rates across states as well. Maine has the lowest rate with 137 per 100,000 sentenced criminals locked up. Louisiana has the highest rate at 760 people per 100,000.

The Prison Policy Initiative — an advocacy group that studies the criminal justice system— points out that even states like Massachusetts, which has one of the lowest rates in the country, locks up a far larger portion of its populations than the vast majority of nations in the world. Check out the full list of state incarceration rates below.**

So what accounts for the large differences in incarceration rates by state?

“The differences in locations’ prosecution policies matter a lot,” Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy at New York University, told Patch. “Differences in crime rates matter some, too.”

Kleiman explained that legislatures can send a message to local prosecutors by controlling the size of the state’s corrections facilities. If lawmakers decline to build more prisons, prosecutors and judges may adjust their practices to reduce the number of prisoners. If the legislature builds additional prisons, it can encourage a larger prison population.

“Nationally, there’s been pressure to reduce incarceration,” said Kleiman. The Obama administration, which was still in power for the period covered by the latest data, was explicit about its intention to reduce the nation’s incarceration rate.

Women make up only about 8 percent of the incarcerated population. Of the entire population included by the Justice Department in this report, 111,422 women are in prison compared to 1,393,975 men.
While the total national prison population decreased, the number of prisoners identified as Hispanic increased 1 percent between 2015 and 2016.

According to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group that studies racial disparities in criminal justice, black Americans are more than 5 times more likely than whites to be in imprisoned. In Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont and Wisconsin, that figure jumps to more than 10 times. Hispanics are disproportionately represented in prison as well, with an incarceration rate 1.4 times that of non-Hispanic whites.

Kleiman pointed to New York City, which has seen massive reductions in both crime and incarceration in recent decades, as a potential model for the country.

“The notion that you need huge amounts of incarceration to control the crime rate doesn’t seem to be supported,” he said. He argued that the city has been able to substitute good police working for putting people in prison, adding, “They’ve also made policing less intrusive.”

The Prison Policy Initiative also points out that the topline incarceration figures do not count the entire population in custody. The Justice Department’s statistics presented here, for example, do not count people kept in jails without being sentenced. It also does not include other punitive measures such as people on parole or probation.

“Incarceration rates do not always tell the complete story of the criminal justice system in each state,” write Bernadette Rabuy and Peter Wagner for PPI. “Notably, some of the states that are the least likely to send people to prison, such as Rhode Island and Minnesota, are among the most punitive when other methods of correctional control are taken into account.”

Given the recent fall in the crime rate overall, Kleiman was optimistic that the trend toward keeping fewer people in prison nationwide would continue. If crime were rising, though, there may be calls to lock more people up.

“The public is not panicked about crime,” Kleiman said. “The main way to get incarceration down is to get crime down.”

**The Justice Department counts prisoners as “sentenced” if a court has sentenced them to a year or more in prison. Some people, however, sit in jail or prison for less than a year or without being formally sentenced, so these numbers undercount the number of people held by the government. It also doesn’t count people held in immigrant detention centers or awaiting deportation.

The figures do include children. Excluding people age 17 or under, some of the incarceration rates are significantly higher. For example, counting only sentenced adults, Texas’s rate jumps from 563 per 100,000 to 761 per 100,000. Louisiana’s rate jumps from 760 per 100,000 to 997 per 100,000 — nearly 1 percent of the adult population. Read the full report.

State Incarceration Rate of Sentenced Criminals in 2016 (per 100,000)

United States — 450
1. Maine — 137
2. Massachusetts — 156
3. Minnesota — 191
4. Rhode Island — 192
5. Vermont — 197
6. Utah — 197
7. New Hampshire — 211
8. New Jersey — 221
9. North Dakota — 234
10. Hawaii — 254
11. New York — 256
12. Washington — 259
13. Nebraska — 274
14. Alaska — 281
15. Iowa — 286
16. Connecticut — 290
17. Maryland — 329
18. California — 331
19. Kansas — 331
20. New Mexico — 335
21. North Carolina — 339
22. Illinois — 341
23. Colorado —356
24. Montana — 364
25. Oregon — 367
26. Pennsylvania — 383
27. Wisconsin — 383
28. Indiana — 384
29. West Virginia — 393
30. Wyoming — 406
31. South Carolina — 408
32. Michigan — 414
33. Tennessee — 422
34. Delaware — 428
35. Idaho — 435
36. South Dakota — 440
37. Virginia — 448
38. Ohio — 449
39. Nevada — 460
40. Florida — 481
41. Georgia — 512
42. Kentucky — 518
43. Missouri — 532
44. Texas — 563
45. Alabama — 571
46. Arkansas — 583
47. Arizona — 585
48. Mississippi — 624
49. Oklahoma — 673
50. Louisiana — 760

Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images