The National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) data collection began in 1926 in response to a congressional mandate to gather information on persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Originally under the auspices of the United States Census Bureau, the collection moved to the Bureau of Prisons in 1950, and then in 1971 to the National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, the precursor to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) which was established in 1979. Since 1979, the Census Bureau has been the NPS data collection agent. The NPS is administered to 51 respondents. Before 2001, the District of Columbia was also a respondent, but responsibility for housing the District of Columbia's sentenced prisoners was transferred to the federal Bureau of Prisons, and by yearend 2001 the District of Columbia no longer operated a prison system. The NPS provides an enumeration of persons in state and federal prisons and collects data on key characteristics of the nation's prison population. NPS has been adapted over time to keep pace with the changing information needs of the public, researchers, and federal, state, and local governments.

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.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics Conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, this survey is part of a series of data gathering efforts undertaken to assist policymakers in assessing and remedying deficiencies in the nation's correctional institutions. Its primary objective is to produce national statistics of the state and sentenced federal prison populations across a variety of domains. The survey gathered information on demographic, socioeconomic, and criminal history characteristics of prisoners. Also obtained were details of prisoner’ military service, current offense and sentence, incident characteristics, and firearm possession and sources. Other information includes age at time of interview, ethnicity, education, lifetime drug use and alcohol use and treatment, mental and physical health and treatment, and pre-arrest employment and income. Data on characteristics of victims, prison programs and services, and rule violations are provided as well. With the 2016 administration, the survey was renamed the Survey of Prison Inmates. NACJD has prepared a resource guide for the Survey of Prison Inmates Series.

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.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics This series of studies contains a descriptive analysis of federal and state-operated adult confinement and correctional facilities nationwide. The census included prisons, penitentiaries, and correctional facilities; boot camps; community corrections; prison farms; reception, diagnostic, and classification centers; road camps; forestry and conservation camps; youthful offender facilities (except in California); vocational training facilities; prison hospitals; and correctional drug and alcohol treatment facilities. Variables include physical security, age of facilities, functions of facilities, programs, inmate work assignments, staff employment, facilities under court order/consent decree for conditions of confinement, capital and operating expenditures, custody level of residents/inmates, one-day and average daily population counts, race/ethnicity of inmates, inmate deaths, special inmate counts, and assaults and incidents by inmates. The institution is the unit of analysis. The Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities is produced every 5 years.

This statistic shows the percentage of prison population in the United States in 2014, by state and the length of time inmates have served. In 2014, 16.52 percent of inmates in Californian prisons had served 5 to 10 years.

Around 1.23 million people were imprisoned in the United States in 2022. This is a slight increase from the previous year, when 1.2 million people were in prison.

This data collection supplies annual data on the size of the prison population and the size of the general population in the United States for the period 1925 to 1986. These yearend counts include tabulations for prisons in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as the federal prisons, and are intended to provide a measure of the overall size of the prison population. The figures were provided from a voluntary reporting program in which each state, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported summary statistics as part of the statistical information on prison populations in the United States.

This statistic shows the share of the United States prison population that was Black in 2014, by state and the length of time inmates have served. In 2014, 58.7 percent of the prison population in Alabama was Black. For those inmates who had served 10 years or more, that figure rose to 67 percent.

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.

To fulfill part of its mission, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) conducted the Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI), a national, wide-ranging survey of prisoners age 18 or older who were incarcerated in state or federal correctional facilities within the United States. SPI provides national statistics on prisoner characteristics across a variety of domains, such as current offense and sentence, incident characteristics, firearm possession and sources, criminal history, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, family background, drug and alcohol use and treatment, mental and physical health and treatment, and facility programs and rules violations. SPI can also be used to track changes in these characteristics over time, describe special populations of prisoners, and identify policy-relevant changes in the state and federal prison populations. Formerly the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities (SISFCF), this survey was renamed SPI with the 2016 iteration.

The dataset contains year- and state-wise compiled data on the total number of inmates (undertrail and convicted prisoners), together with total prison capacity and occupancy ratio in the prisons of India

Decrease the percentage of the total prison population from 28,328 in 2014 to 26,200 by 2018.

The National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) compiles offender-level data on admissions and releases from state and federal prisons and post-confinement community supervision. The data are used to monitor the nation's correctional population and address specific policy questions related to recidivism, prisoner reentry, and trends in demographic characteristics of the incarcerated and community supervision populations. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has administered the NCRP since 1983. Abt Associates has served as the NCRP data collection agent since October 2010.

In 2011, a historic Supreme Court decision mandated that the state of California substantially reduce its prison population to alleviate overcrowding, which was deemed so severe as to preclude the provision of adequate healthcare. To comply, California passed the Public Safety Realignment Act (Assembly Bill [AB] 109), representing the largest ever court-ordered reduction of a prison population in U.S. history. AB109 was successful in reducing the state prison population; however, although the policy was precipitated by inadequate healthcare in state prisons, no studies have examined its effects on prisoner health. As other states grapple with overcrowded prisons and look to California’s experience with this landmark policy, understanding how it may have impacted prisoner health is critical. We sought to evaluate the effects of AB109 on prison mortality and assess the extent to which policy-induced changes in the age distribution of prisoners may have contributed to these effects. To do so, we used prison mortality data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the California Deaths in Custody reporting program and prison population data from the National Corrections Reporting Program to examine changes in overall prison mortality, the age distribution of prisoners, and age-adjusted prison mortality in California relative to other states before and after the implementation of AB109. Following AB109, California prisons experienced an increase in overall mortality relative to other states that attenuated within three years. Over the same period, California experienced a greater upward shift in the age distribution of its prisoners relative to other states, suggesting that the state’s increase in overall mortality may have been driven by this change in age distribution. Indeed, when accounting for this differential change in age distribution, mortality among California prisoners exhibited a greater reduction relative to other states in the third year after implementation. As other states seek to reduce their prison populations to address overcrowding, assessments of California’s experience with AB109 should consider this potential improvement in age-adjusted mortality.

Nationwide, over 1.9 million adults were living in correctional facilities as of the 2020 Decennial Census. Correctional facilities for adults include the following types:Federal detention centers, providing "short term" confinement or custody of adults pending adjudication or sentencing. Includes Immigrations Enforcement (ICE) and Customs inmates and ICE Contract Detention Facilities, among other types of federal detention centers.Federal and state prisons*, where people convicted of crimes serve their sentences. Patients in hospitals operated by or for federal or state correctional authorities are counted in the prison population.Local jails and other municipal confinement facilities*, operated by or for counties, cities, and American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments. Patients in hospitals operated by or for local correctional authorities are counted in the jail population.Correctional residential facilities. Residents may be allowed extensive contact with the community, such as for employment or schooling, but are obligated to occupy the premises at night. Examples are halfway houses, restitution centers, and prerelease, work release, and study centers.Military disciplinary barracks and jails, managed by the military to hold those awaiting trial or convicted of crimes.*This category may include privately operated correctional facilities.Full documentation of definitions available on pages B-11 and B-12 of the technical documentation for 2020 Census State Redistricting Data (Public Law 94-171) Summary File. Data available for state, county, tract, block group, and block from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020 Public Law 94-171 files. State data is symbolized as both a count and a percentage of the adult population. Data for county and below is symbolized to show counts only, as the percentages at lower geography levels are not very meaningful.

There were about 87,784 female prisoners under the jurisdiction of state or federal correctional authorities in the United States as of December 2022. This is an increase from the previous year, when there were 83,651 female prisoners in the country.

CT Department of Correction quarterly average inmate population in State of Connecticut correctional facilities.

The data refers to State/UT-wise and caste-wise details of prison inmates at the end of the reference year. The prison inmates are categorised into male and female population. The age of inmates are grouped into 16-18 yrs, 18-30 yrs, 30-50 yrs and 50 & above yrs. Castes of jail inmates are further categorized as OBCs, SCs, STs & Others.

At the beginning of 2025, the United States had the highest number of incarcerated individuals worldwide, with around 1.8 million people in prison. China followed with around 100,000 fewer prisoners. Brazil followed in third. The incarceration problem in the U.S. The United States has an incredibly high number of incarcerated individuals. Therefore, the incarceration problem has become a widely contested issue, because it impacts disadvantaged people and minorities the most. Additionally, the prison system has become capitalized by outside corporations that fund prisons, but there is still a high cost to taxpayers. Furthermore, there has been an increase in the amount of private prisons that have been created. For-profit prison companies have come under scrutiny because of their lack of satisfactory staff and widespread lobbying. Violent offenses are the most common type of offense among prisoners in the U.S. Incarceration rates worldwide El Salvador had the highest rate of incarceration worldwide, at 1,659 prisoners per 100,000 residents as of February 2025. Cuba followed in second with 794 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. The incarceration rate is a better measure to use when comparing countries than the total prison populations, which will naturally have the most populous countries topping the list.