Prisons - Rate Of Incarceration

The inmate population in the United States is measured by the rate of incarceration—that is, the number of people sent by the courts to prisons and jails per 100,000 people in the general population. As reported by The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group promoting alternatives to incarceration, in U.S. Prison Populations—Trends and Implications (Washington, DC, December 2004), the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world in 2003 with 714 individuals confined in prisons or jails per 100,000 population, higher than Russia (548), South Africa (402), Israel (209), Mexico (169), England (141), China (119), Germany (96), or Japan (58).

The incarceration rate for federal and state prisoners in the United States, excluding those in jail, has risen from a low of seventy-nine in 1925 to 482 in 2003. (See Table 4.3 for data from earlier years.) Beginning in 1925, the rate of incarceration of U.S. prisoners rose steadily for fifteen years to a peak of 137 in 1939. The rate declined somewhat and more or less leveled out to between 100 and 120 for the next thirty-five years. Then, in the early 1970s, the rate began to rise steadily. From 1974 to 2002, the rate increased more than four-fold. The rate for males jumped from about 200 inmates per 100,000 people in the mid-1970s to over 900 per 100,000 at the turn of the century. Female incarceration rates began to rise in the mid-1980s, growing to become 6.9% of the prison population in 2003.

Prison incarceration rates and prison populations vary widely by state and region of the country. In 2003 some smaller states experienced the largest growth in their prison populations. North Dakota led with growth of 11.4%, followed by Minnesota (10.3%), Montana (8.9%), Wyoming (7.8%), and Hawaii (7.5%). Despite leading in percentage of growth in prison population, North Dakota had a total prison population of 1,239 inmates, the smallest in the country. (See Table 4.4.)