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 U.S. 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. From 1979 to 2013, the Census Bureau was the NPS data collection agent. In 2014, the collection was competitively bid in conjunction with the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP), since many of the respondents for NPS and NCRP are the same. The contract was awarded to Abt Associates, Inc. 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.

Investigator(s): United States. Bureau of Justice Statistics Produces annual national- and state-level data on the number of prisoners in state and federal prison facilities. Aggregate data are collected on race and sex of prison inmates, inmates held in private facilities and local jails, system capacity, noncitizens, and persons age 17 or younger. Findings are released in the Prisoners series and the Corrections Statistical Analysis Tool (CSAT) - Prisoners. Data are from the 50 states departments of correction, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and until 2001, from the District of Columbia (after 2001, felons sentenced under the District of Columbia criminal code were housed in federal facilities).

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 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.

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.

Collection of statistics on prisons and crime. The data are on an annual basis and relate to the period from 2007 onwards. The following tables are included in the compilation: A. TIME SERIES A1. PRISON POPULATION BY OCCUPATION, NATIONALITY, AGE AND GENDER A2. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS BY AGE AND SEX A3. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS FOR CRIMINAL OFFENCES AGAINST AGE AND SEX A4. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS BY CRIMINAL GROUP A5. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS BY PENALTIES IMPOSED A6. CONTRIBUTIONS BY SEX AND MOTHER OF SORTS, FROM 1980 A7. MONTHLY CONTRIBUTIONS AND EXEMPTIONS FROM 1980 A8. REMOVAL OF DETAINEES DURING THE ACTUAL PERIOD OF STAY IN THE BOOKLET A9. EXEMPTIONS FROM DETAINEES BY ABORTION A10. TEMPLATES A11. TIME SPAN BETWEEN ADMISSION AND PREVIOUS REMOVAL FROM THE BOOKLET, FROM 1980 B. ANNUAL DATA B1. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS BY CRIMINAL GROUP AND NUMBER OF PREVIOUS PRISON SENTENCES B2. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS BY MONTH, AGE AND SEX B3. ADMISSION OF SENTENCED PERSONS FOR CRIMINAL OFFENCES BY ONE MONTH, AGE AND SEX B4. SENTENCED PERSONS WHO HAVE PREVIOUSLY BEEN SENTENCED TO IMPRISONMENT, THIS AND PREVIOUS INDICTMENT B5. REMOVAL OF DETAINEES ON A MONTHLY BASIS AND ACTUAL DURATION OF STAY IN THE BOOKLET B6. REMOVAL OF MONTHLY DETAINEES AND MEANS OF REMOVAL B7. STANDARD-BY MONTH

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.

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.

Introduction

Prison Statistics: Prisons serve as critical institutions within global justice systems, reflecting societal approaches to punishment, deterrence, and rehabilitation. As of 2024, approximately 11.5 million individuals are incarcerated worldwide, with about 10.8 million men and 700,000 women. This represents a 5.5% increase since 2012, indicating a persistent reliance on incarceration.

Incarceration rates vary significantly across regions. North America has the highest rate, with 489 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2022, down from 647 in 2012. In contrast, Southern Asia reported rates below 100 per 100,000 population. El Salvador leads globally with 1,086 prisoners per 100,000 people, followed by Cuba at 794 and Rwanda at 637.

The female prison population has surged by 57% since 2000, outpacing the 22% increase in the male prison population. This rise is often linked to factors such as poverty, discriminatory laws, and limited access to legal resources. Notably, one in three incarcerated individuals globally is held in pre-trial detention, highlighting concerns about legal processes and the presumption of innocence.

Understanding these demographics is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of incarceration as a tool for justice and rehabilitation. It also underscores the need for reforms that address systemic issues contributing to high incarceration rates. Let's explore some intriguing statistics about prisoners in the United States.

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.

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 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) collects and analyzes data on the incidence and effects of sexual violence in prisons and jails. The data, in various datasets, are collected from individuals currently and formerly in federal, state, county, and municipal facilities. The data are collected using a multiple-measure, multiple-mode data collection strategy. Data sets in this series include surveys and other statistical studies, including the National Inmate Survey (NIS), the Former Prisoner Survey (FPS), and the National Survey of Youth in Custody (NSYC).

This data collection includes tabulations of annual adult admissions to federal and state correctional institutions by gender for the years 1926 through 1987. The two data files have identical structures: Part 1 includes information on male admissions, and Part 2 includes information on female admissions. The 3,348 cases in each part include one case for each of the 62 years of the collection for each of the following 54 categories: the 50 states, the District of Columbia, federal institutional totals, state cumulative totals, and United States totals (the sum of the federal and state cumulative totals). The figures were drawn from a voluntary reporting program in which each state, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported summary and detailed statistics, as part of the National Prisoner Statistics reporting series. Each file also includes individual state and United States general population figures.

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.

Adult correctional services, custodial and community supervision, average counts of adults in provincial and territorial programs, five years of data.

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.

Investigator(s): Bureau of Justice Statistics In 1983, the National Prisoners Statistics program, which compiled data on prisoner admissions and releases, and the Uniform Parole Reports were combined into one reporting system, the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP). The NCRP evolved from the need to improve and consolidate data on corrections at the national level. Its objective was to provide a consistent and comprehensive description of prisoners entering and leaving the custody or supervision of state and federal authorities. In addition to the state prisons, the California Youth Authority reported data from 1984 to 2011. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported data to NCRP from 1984 to 1996. Federal data are now collected by BJS under the Federal Justice Statistics Program.NACJD has prepared a resource guide for the NCRP Series.

National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) on inmates under the jurisdiction of both federal and state correctional authorities.

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.

The data contain records of sentenced offenders in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at year-end of fiscal year 2003. The data include commitments of United States District Court, violators of conditions of release (e.g., parole, probation, or supervised release violators), offenders convicted in other courts (e.g., military or District of Columbia courts), and persons admitted to prison as material witnesses or for purposes of treatment, examination, or transfer to another authority. These data include variables that describe the offender, such as age, race, citizenship, as well as variables that describe the sentences and expected prison terms. The data file contains original variables from the Bureau of Prisons' SENTRY database, as well as "SAF" variables that denote subsets of the data. These SAF variables are related to statistics reported in the Compendium of Federal Justice Statistics, Tables 7.9-7.16. Variables containing identifying information (e.g., name, Social Security Number) were replaced with blanks, and the day portions of date fields were also sanitized in order to protect the identities of individuals. These data are part of a series designed by the Urban Institute (Washington, DC) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Data and documentation were prepared by the Urban Institute.