As of December 2022, there was a total of 139,631 prisoners in the state of Texas, the most out of any state. California, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio rounded out the top five states with the most prisoners in the United States.

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.

Private prisons, also referred to as for-profit prisons, have become a dominant sector of society in the United States and are now implemented in many states around the country. As of 2022, the state of Florida had the highest number of prisoners held in private prisons in the United States, with a total of 11,728 prisoners, followed by Texas, Arizona, and Georgia, and Tennessee. 22 states did not have any prisoners held in private prisoners in that year. Private prisons in the U.S. The United States is home to the highest prison population per capita of all OECD countries, resulting in a consistent overcrowding of prisons which has negatively affected the criminal justice system for decades. The privatization of prison facilities was initially proposed as a solution to a lack of funding and an increasing demand for more jail space, leading to around ten percent of the U.S. prison population currently behind bars in private prisons. In 2021, 75,167 prisoners were held in in-state private prison facilities in the United States, compared to 28,863 prisoners held in out-of-state private prisons. Arguments on private prisons Advocates of private prisons proposed that privatization could lead to cost reductions, suggesting that allowing the private industry to operate prison facilities would save taxpayers money. However, the increasing reliance on private prison facilities has been criticized politically in the U.S. for catering to profit-seeking corporations as well as for the tendency to hold people in immigrant detention in these privately run facilities. In 2021, the highest share of revenue reported by the two largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S. was from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In addition, Republican Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, who is well-known for his positive stance on strengthening border security, was also found to receive the most money from the private prison industry than any other federal politician in the 2022 election cycle.

The purpose of the study was to quantify the effect of the embrace of DNA technology on offender behavior. In particular, researchers examined whether an offender's knowledge that their DNA profile was entered into a database deterred them from offending in the future and if probative effects resulted from DNA sampling. The researchers coded information using criminal history records and data from Florida's DNA database, both of which are maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), and also utilized court docket information acquired through the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) to create a dataset of 156,702 cases involving offenders released from the FDOC in the state of Florida between January 1996 and December 2004. The data contain a total of 50 variables. Major categories of variables include demographic variables regarding the offender, descriptive variables relating to the initial crime committed by the offender, and time-specific variables regarding cases of recidivism.

As of 2021, California had 20,062 non-U.S. citizen prisoners, the highest number out of all states, followed by Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Georgia. The lowest amount was held by Vermont in 2021, reporting nine non-U.S. citizen prisoners.

This project sought to prove that research files could be created through the extraction of personnel management systems data. There were five goals associated with designing and creating the Florida Criminal Justice Workforce Research Information System: (1) to extract data from two transaction management information systems, which could then be used by researchers to describe and analyze the workforce that administers justice in Florida, (2) to pilot test the concept of developing a new research information source from existing data systems, (3) to forge partnerships with diverse criminal justice agencies having a mutual need to understand their respective workforces, (4) to design research files to enable internal and external researchers to utilize the data for analytical purposes, and (5) to describe the methodology used to create the workforce information system in sufficient detail to enable other states to replicate the process and develop their own criminal justice workforce research databases. The project was jointly conceived, designed, and completed by two state-level criminal justice agencies with diverse missions and responsibilities: the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC). Data were extracted from two personnel management systems: the Automated Transaction Management System (ATMS) operated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which contains data on all certified law enforcement, correctional, and correctional probation officers in Florida (Part 1), and the Cooperative Personnel Employment System (COPES) operated by the Department of Management Services, which contains data on all state employees (Part 2). Parts 3-5 consist of data extracted from Parts 1 and 2 regarding certification status (Part 3), education (Part 4), and training (Part 5). Two demographic variables, race and sex, are found in all parts. Parts 1 and 2 also contain variables on employment event type, employer type, position type, salary plan, job class, appointment status, and supervisor indicator. Part 3 variables are certification event type and certificate type. Part 4 variables include degree earned and area of degree. Part 5 includes a variable for passing or failing training certification.

The Washington legislature has established a comprehensive system of corrections for convicted law violators within the state of Washington to accomplish a primary objective of ensuring public safety. The system is designed and managed to provide the maximum feasible safety for the persons and property of the general public, the staff, and the inmates (RCW 72.09.010).

Statistical information regarding inmate population by year and month. Included average daily inmate population, number of meals served, number of admissions, number of releases, immigration detainee average population and U.S. Marshall detainee

In 2022, the state government of California spent 11.09 billion U.S. dollars on corrections. Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania rounded out the top five states who spent the most on corrections in 2022.

This study analyzes shock incarceration (boot camp) programs in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. In each state, offenders who participated in boot camps were compared with demographically similar offenders who were sentenced to prison, probation, or parole. The impact of shock incarceration on offenders was assessed in two major areas: (1) changes in offenders' attitudes, expectations, and outlook during incarceration (self-report/attitude data), and (2) performance during and adjustment to community supervision after incarceration (community supervision data). The self-report/attitude data include variables measuring criminal history, drinking and drug abuse, and attitudes toward the shock incarceration program, as well as demographic variables, such as age, race, employment, income, education, and military experience. The community supervision data contain information on offenders' behaviors during community supervision, such as arrests, absconding incidents, jail time, drug use, education and employment experiences, financial and residential stability, and contacts with community supervision officers, along with demographic variables, such as age and race. In addition to these key areas, more detailed data were collected in Louisiana, including a psychological assessment, a risk and needs assessment, and a community supervision follow-up at two different time periods (Parts 11-18). For most states, the subjects sampled in the self-report/attitude survey were different from those who were surveyed in the community supervision phase of data collection. Data collection practices and sample structures differed by state, and therefore the data files are organized to explore the impact of shock incarceration at the state level. For each state, the unit of analysis is the offender.

In 2020, state and local governments in California spent over 16.48 billion U.S. dollars on corrections. Texas, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania rounded out the top five states for corrections expenditures in the United States in 2020.

In 2019, 2,231 inmates escaped from state or federal prisons in the United States. This is a decrease from the previous year, when 2,351 prisoners escaped from facilities across the United States.

In 2022, Republican Senator Marco Rubio from Florida made the most money from the private prison industry in the United States, accumulating 62,125 U.S. dollars from the industry in the 2022 election cycle.