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Imprisonment Rate
About This Indicator
What Is the Imprisonment Rate?
Sentenced prisoners in state and federal prisons per 100,000 people at each year's end, counting those serving more than a year, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Local jails are left out. The line starts in 1978, the first year the Bureau counted prisoners this way.
Why Does It Matter?
It measures how heavily the country relies on prison, which sentencing and parole laws set as much as crime does. Each prisoner is someone missing from a household and a paycheck, often a parent, and taxpayers cover the cost of every cell.
Can Politics Influence It?
Directly, through sentencing and drug laws, parole, and prosecution, set mainly by the states, which hold most prisoners; Washington reaches it through federal cases and grants.
Key Idea
A higher rate can mean more crime, tougher sentencing, or both, so the line is charted and not scored. From 1978 to 2007 the rate nearly quadrupled, and it kept rising for more than a decade after crime began falling in the early 1990s. Prison terms outlast terms of office: a sentence handed down under one president is often served under the next.
Not Scored
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Prisoner Statistics: Prisoners in 2020, Appendix Table 1, for 1978-2009, and from 2010 the newest edition of Prisoners that prints each year.
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