As of February 2025, El Salvador had the highest prisoner rate worldwide, with over 1,600 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Cuba, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and the United States, rounded out the top five countries with the highest rate of incarceration. Homicides in El Salvador Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 20 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. A high number of the countries with the highest homicide rate are located in Latin America. Prisoners in the United StatesThe United States is home to the largest number of prisoners worldwide. More than 1.8 million people were incarcerated in the U.S. at the beginning of 2025. In China, the estimated prison population totaled 1.69 million people that year. Other nations had far fewer prisoners. The largest share of the U.S. prisoners in federal correctional facilities were of African-American origin. As of 2020, there were 345,500 black, non-Hispanic prisoners, compared to 327,300 white, non-Hispanic inmates. The U.S. states with the largest number of prisoners in 2022 were Texas, California, and Florida. Over 160,000 prisoners in state facilities were sentenced for rape or sexual assault, which was the most common cause of imprisonment. The second most common was murder, followed by aggravated or simple assault.

Created for the 2023-2025 State of Black Los Angeles County (SBLA) interactive report. To learn more about this effort, please visit the report home page at https://ceo.lacounty.gov/ardi/sbla/. For more information about the purpose of this data, please contact CEO-ARDI. For more information about the configuration of this data, please contact ISD-Enterprise GIS. table name indicator name Universe source race notes timeframe source url

traffic_stops Traffic stops Traffic violation stops; ORI CA019xxxx (LA County Law Enforcement Agencies) CA DOJ Race is perceived by officer; any one race is alone or in combination with another race 2019 Annual Download from LAC Open Data

perceived_neighborhood_safe_2018 Perceived Their Neighborhood to Be Safe from Crime Estimate (%) Adults (Ages 18 Years and Older) LAC Health Survey

2018 https://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha/LACHSDataTopics2018.htm

jail_pop_per100k_2016jail_pop_per100k_2019jail_pop_per100k_2021 Jail population rate per 100k population Average daily number of people held in jail in a given year; population denominator is ages 15 - 64 Vera Institute

2016 2019 2021 https://github.com/vera-institute/incarceration-trends/blob/master/README.mdhttps://trends.vera.org/state/CA/county/los_angeles_county

prison_pop_per100k_2016 Prison population rate per 100k population Point in time count of people in prison on December 31 of a given year; population denominator is ages 15 - 64 Vera Institute

2016 https://github.com/vera-institute/incarceration-trends/blob/master/README.md

arrests_adult_felony Total Felony Arrests - Adult Los Angeles County Arrests CA DOJ The subjectivity of the classification and labeling process must be considered in the analysis of race/ethnic group data. 2017-2021 https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/data

arrests_adult_misdemeanor Total Misdemeanor Arrests - Adult Los Angeles County Arrests CA DOJ The subjectivity of the classification and labeling process must be considered in the analysis of race/ethnic group data. 2017-2021 https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/data

domestic_violencedv_maledv_female Percent of Adults (Ages 18 Years and Older) Who Reported Ever Experiencing Physical and/or Sexual Violence by an Intimate Partner.
Adults/td> Los Angeles County Health Survey Overall and broken down by gender 2018 https://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha/HA_DATA_TRENDS.htm

Jail incarceration rates are measured by the number of incarcerated individuals in jail per 100,000 population aged 18-69. This Indicator is measured for Alameda County, and the most recently available data is from 2015.

In 1980, the National Institute of Justice awarded a grant to the Cornell University College of Human Ecology for the establishment of the Center for the Study of Race, Crime, and Social Policy in Oakland, California. This center mounted a long-term research project that sought to explain the wide variation in crime statistics by race and ethnicity. Using information from eight ethnic communities in Oakland, California, representing working- and middle-class Black, White, Chinese, and Hispanic groups, as well as additional data from Oakland's justice systems and local organizations, the center conducted empirical research to describe the criminalization process and to explore the relationship between race and crime. The differences in observed patterns and levels of crime were analyzed in terms of: (1) the abilities of local ethnic communities to contribute to, resist, neutralize, or otherwise affect the criminalization of its members, (2) the impacts of criminal justice policies on ethnic communities and their members, and (3) the cumulative impacts of criminal justice agency decisions on the processing of individuals in the system. Administrative records data were gathered from two sources, the Alameda County Criminal Oriented Records Production System (CORPUS) (Part 1) and the Oakland District Attorney Legal Information System (DALITE) (Part 2). In addition to collecting administrative data, the researchers also surveyed residents (Part 3), police officers (Part 4), and public defenders and district attorneys (Part 5). The eight study areas included a middle- and low-income pair of census tracts for each of the four racial/ethnic groups: white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian. Part 1, Criminal Oriented Records Production System (CORPUS) Data, contains information on offenders' most serious felony and misdemeanor arrests, dispositions, offense codes, bail arrangements, fines, jail terms, and pleas for both current and prior arrests in Alameda County. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, and marital status. Variables in Part 2, District Attorney Legal Information System (DALITE) Data, include current and prior charges, days from offense to charge, disposition, and arrest, plea agreement conditions, final results from both municipal court and superior court, sentence outcomes, date and outcome of arraignment, disposition, and sentence, number and type of enhancements, numbers of convictions, mistrials, acquittals, insanity pleas, and dismissals, and factors that determined the prison term. For Part 3, Oakland Community Crime Survey Data, researchers interviewed 1,930 Oakland residents from eight communities. Information was gathered from community residents on the quality of schools, shopping, and transportation in their neighborhoods, the neighborhood's racial composition, neighborhood problems, such as noise, abandoned buildings, and drugs, level of crime in the neighborhood, chances of being victimized, how respondents would describe certain types of criminals in terms of age, race, education, and work history, community involvement, crime prevention measures, the performance of the police, judges, and attorneys, victimization experiences, and fear of certain types of crimes. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, and family status. For Part 4, Oakland Police Department Survey Data, Oakland County police officers were asked about why they joined the police force, how they perceived their role, aspects of a good and a bad police officer, why they believed crime was down, and how they would describe certain beats in terms of drug availability, crime rates, socioeconomic status, number of juveniles, potential for violence, residential versus commercial, and degree of danger. Officers were also asked about problems particular neighborhoods were experiencing, strategies for reducing crime, difficulties in doing police work well, and work conditions. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, marital status, level of education, and years on the force. In Part 5, Public Defender/District Attorney Survey Data, public defenders and district attorneys were queried regarding which offenses were increasing most rapidly in Oakland, and they were asked to rank certain offenses in terms of seriousness. Respondents were also asked about the public's influence on criminal justice agencies and on the performance of certain criminal justice agencies. Respondents were presented with a list of crimes and asked how typical these offenses were and what factors influenced their decisions about such cases (e.g., intent, motive, evidence, behavior, prior history, injury or loss, substance abuse, emotional trauma). Other variables measured how often and under what circumstances the public defender and client and the public defender and the district attorney agreed on the case, defendant characteristics in terms of who should not be put on the stand, the effects of Proposition 8, public defender and district attorney plea guidelines, attorney discretion, and advantageous and disadvantageous characteristics of a defendant. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, marital status, religion, years of experience, and area of responsibility.

The National Jail Census was conducted by the United States Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The census was taken of all locally administered county and municipal jails with the authority to hold prisoners for more than 48 hours.