The average for 2017 based on 138 countries was 174 prisoners per 100,000 people. The highest value was in El Salvador: 601 prisoners per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in San Marino: 9 prisoners per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 2002 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Following more than 30 years of rising incarceration rates, the United States now imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any country in the world. Building on theories of representation and organized interest group behavior, this article argues that an increasingly punitive public has been a primary reason for this prolific expansion. To test this hypothesis, I generate a new over-time measure of the public’s support for being tough on crime. The analysis suggests that, controlling for the crime rate, illegal drug use, inequality, and the party in power, since 1953 public opinion has been a fundamental determinant of changes in the incarceration rate. If the public’s punitiveness had stopped rising in the mid-1970s, the results imply that there would have been approximately 20% fewer incarcerations. Additionally, an analysis of congressional attention to criminal justice issues supports the argument that the public’s attitudes have led, not followed, political elites.

Overview

The Marshall Project, the nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, has partnered with The Associated Press to compile data on the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in prisons across the country. The Associated Press is sharing this data as the most comprehensive current national source of COVID-19 outbreaks in state and federal prisons.

Lawyers, criminal justice reform advocates and families of the incarcerated have worried about what was happening in prisons across the nation as coronavirus began to take hold in the communities outside. Data collected by The Marshall Project and AP shows that hundreds of thousands of prisoners, workers, correctional officers and staff have caught the illness as prisons became the center of some of the country’s largest outbreaks. And thousands of people — most of them incarcerated — have died.

In December, as COVID-19 cases spiked across the U.S., the news organizations also shared cumulative rates of infection among prison populations, to better gauge the total effects of the pandemic on prison populations. The analysis found that by mid-December, one in five state and federal prisoners in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus -- a rate more than four times higher than the general population.

This data, which is updated weekly, is an effort to track how those people have been affected and where the crisis has hit the hardest.

Methodology and Caveats

The data tracks the number of COVID-19 tests administered to people incarcerated in all state and federal prisons, as well as the staff in those facilities. It is collected on a weekly basis by Marshall Project and AP reporters who contact each prison agency directly and verify published figures with officials.

Each week, the reporters ask every prison agency for the total number of coronavirus tests administered to its staff members and prisoners, the cumulative number who tested positive among staff and prisoners, and the numbers of deaths for each group.

The time series data is aggregated to the system level; there is one record for each prison agency on each date of collection. Not all departments could provide data for the exact date requested, and the data indicates the date for the figures.

To estimate the rate of infection among prisoners, we collected population data for each prison system before the pandemic, roughly in mid-March, in April, June, July, August, September and October. Beginning the week of July 28, we updated all prisoner population numbers, reflecting the number of incarcerated adults in state or federal prisons. Prior to that, population figures may have included additional populations, such as prisoners housed in other facilities, which were not captured in our COVID-19 data. In states with unified prison and jail systems, we include both detainees awaiting trial and sentenced prisoners.

To estimate the rate of infection among prison employees, we collected staffing numbers for each system. Where current data was not publicly available, we acquired other numbers through our reporting, including calling agencies or from state budget documents. In six states, we were unable to find recent staffing figures: Alaska, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Utah.

To calculate the cumulative COVID-19 impact on prisoner and prison worker populations, we aggregated prisoner and staff COVID case and death data up through Dec. 15. Because population snapshots do not account for movement in and out of prisons since March, and because many systems have significantly slowed the number of new people being sent to prison, it’s difficult to estimate the total number of people who have been held in a state system since March. To be conservative, we calculated our rates of infection using the largest prisoner population snapshots we had during this time period.

As with all COVID-19 data, our understanding of the spread and impact of the virus is limited by the availability of testing. Epidemiology and public health experts say that aside from a few states that have recently begun aggressively testing in prisons, it is likely that there are more cases of COVID-19 circulating undetected in facilities. Sixteen prison systems, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, would not release information about how many prisoners they are testing.

Corrections departments in Indiana, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin report coronavirus testing and case data for juvenile facilities; West Virginia reports figures for juvenile facilities and jails. For consistency of comparison with other state prison systems, we removed those facilities from our data that had been included prior to July 28. For these states we have also removed staff data. Similarly, Pennsylvania’s coronavirus data includes testing and cases for those who have been released on parole. We removed these tests and cases for prisoners from the data prior to July 28. The staff cases remain.

About the Data

There are four tables in this data:

• covid_prison_cases.csv contains weekly time series data on tests, infections and deaths in prisons. The first dates in the table are on March 26. Any questions that a prison agency could not or would not answer are left blank.

• prison_populations.csv contains snapshots of the population of people incarcerated in each of these prison systems for whom data on COVID testing and cases are available. This varies by state and may not always be the entire number of people incarcerated in each system. In some states, it may include other populations, such as those on parole or held in state-run jails. This data is primarily for use in calculating rates of testing and infection, and we would not recommend using these numbers to compare the change in how many people are being held in each prison system.

• staff_populations.csv contains a one-time, recent snapshot of the headcount of workers for each prison agency, collected as close to April 15 as possible.

• covid_prison_rates.csv contains the rates of cases and deaths for prisoners. There is one row for every state and federal prison system and an additional row with the National totals.

Queries

The Associated Press and The Marshall Project have created several queries to help you use this data:

Get your state's prison COVID data: Provides each week's data from just your state and calculates a cases-per-100000-prisoners rate, a deaths-per-100000-prisoners rate, a cases-per-100000-workers rate and a deaths-per-100000-workers rate here

Rank all systems' most recent data by cases per 100,000 prisoners here

Find what percentage of your state's total cases and deaths -- as reported by Johns Hopkins University -- occurred within the prison system here

Attribution

In stories, attribute this data to: “According to an analysis of state prison cases by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, and The Associated Press.”

Contributors

Many reporters and editors at The Marshall Project and The Associated Press contributed to this data, including: Katie Park, Tom Meagher, Weihua Li, Gabe Isman, Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger, Jake Bleiberg, Andrew R. Calderón, Maurice Chammah, Andrew DeMillo, Eli Hager, Jamiles Lartey, Claudia Lauer, Nicole Lewis, Humera Lodhi, Colleen Long, Joseph Neff, Michelle Pitcher, Alysia Santo, Beth Schwartzapfel, Damini Sharma, Colleen Slevin, Christie Thompson, Abbie VanSickle, Adria Watson, Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

Questions

If you have questions about the data, please email The Marshall Project at info+covidtracker@themarshallproject.org or file a Github issue.

To learn more about AP's data journalism capabilities for publishers, corporations and financial institutions, go here or email kromano@ap.org.

Scholars and policy analysts alike have long been concerned with the social and economic consequences of the prison boom. However, as state corrections departments have been forced to make cutbacks and state incarceration rates have declined, we are currently in a prison bust. The Prison Bust Dataset is the first comprehensive record of U.S. prison closures from after the end of the prison boom to the present. It provides novel opportunities for understanding the causes and consequences of the prison boom. The dataset contains details of 188 verified state and federal adult correctional facility closures from 2000-2022.

Figures for the prison population in England and Wales published weekly. For more detailed figures on the prison population see the National Statistics publication, Offender Management Statistics Quarterly bulletin.

Data was collected for each of the 50 states from the year 2019. For each state, the following information is given: total population, total White population, total Black population, total Hispanic population, median household income, total prison population, total parole population, total amount of law enforcement employees, the violent crime rate, and the GDP.

This dataset contains de-identified individual data for offenders currently serving in an Iowa institution or correctional facility. Dataset includes information regarding age, sex, race, offense committed, and supervision status.

Egypt: Number of prisoners per 100,000 people: For that indicator, we provide data for Egypt from 2006 to 2016. The average value for Egypt during that period was 86 prisoners per 100,000 people with a minimum of 71 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2013 and a maximum of 111 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2016. The latest value from 2016 is 111 prisoners per 100,000 people. For comparison, the world average in 2016 based on 89 countries is 197 prisoners per 100,000 people.

Data available in Australian Bureau of Statistics dataset 'Prisoners in Australia' (4517.0).

Association between examined potential predictors and incarceration among Black/ African American and Hispanic/Latino mSTUDY participants.

Potential predictorsb'*' of incident incarceration during follow-up among Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino mSTUDY participants (n = 328).

Research Data, State_Prison_Population_and_Rates_1951-2003 for New York’s War on Drugs and the Impact on Female Incarceration Rates by Colleen D. Mair in Feminist Criminology

Germany: Number of prisoners per 100,000 people: For that indicator, we provide data for Germany from 2003 to 2017. The average value for Germany during that period was 88 prisoners per 100,000 people with a minimum of 77 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2017 and a maximum of 99 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2003. The latest value from 2017 is 77 prisoners per 100,000 people. For comparison, the world average in 2017 based on 146 countries is 182 prisoners per 100,000 people.

The release (generally annual) gives the projected monthly prison population in England and Wales for the next six years. Sub-population (such as gender) estimates are presented alongside the effects of legislation, sentencing activity, and so on relevant to the prison population.

Source agency: Justice

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Prison population projections

Changes in the prevalence rates of substance and medicine consumption before and during incarceration.

Analysis of the risk of suicide and drug-related deaths among prisoners, including the number of deaths, standarised mortality ratios and age-standardised rates, England and Wales, 2008 to 2019.

Overview

This dataset is comprised of 4 sociological metrics for 50 US states that have been normalized on a 100-point scale. It showcases the correlations between education, peace, poverty, and religion.

See the Interactive Visualization

• Educational Attainment: The data is based on the responses to the American Community Survey. The percentage represents the number of individuals that have earned a bachelor's degree or higher. Sourced from Wikipedia (2009).

• Peace Index: The US state index is based on an analysis of homicide, violent crime, policing, incarceration rates, and the availability of small arms. The data is inverted and refactored for percentages instead of a numerical score. The higher the percentage, the more peaceful a state is considered. Sourced from Vision of Humanity (2010).

• Above Poverty Rate: The percentages represent the number of households per state that are living above the poverty rate (by household income). Sourced from Wikipedia (2008) and originally from the United States Census Bureau.

• Non-Religious: Religion data is based on the percentage of individuals that do not identify as highly religious in each state. Sourced from the Pew Research Center (2014).

This release replaces the previous annual and quarterly publications Control of Immigration Statistics and the annual British Citizenship, following a public consultation. Each topic now has its own entry, links to these related reports can be found under the "additional links" section. The figures relate to people detained in UK Border Agency Removal Centres and Short Term Holding Facilities solely under Immigration Act powers. Data are not available on those held in police cells and prisons under immigration offences.

Summary Table. Find data on average counts of young persons by province and territory. Average counts include actual-in counts, incarceration rates, probation rates and probation community supervision counts. Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick. STC