Imprisonment rate (sentenced prisoners)
Sentenced prisoners (sentence of more than 1 year) under the jurisdiction of state or federal correctional authorities on December 31, per 100,000 residents of all ages. Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Prisoner Statistics, with Census Bureau resident population estimates for January 1 of the following year.
Counts only prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year, so it differs from the prison population rate used for other countries (prison_population_rate), which counts everyone held in prison, pre-trial detainees included. Prisoners are counted by the jurisdiction with legal authority over them, wherever they are held, on December 31. The national figure adds the federal system to the states. Local jails are not included, except in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Vermont, which run one combined prison and jail system. Felons sentenced in the District of Columbia have been the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Prisons since 2001, so the District has values only up to 2000.
Key facts
- Imprisonment rate (sentenced prisoners) in the United States was 360 per 100,000 people in 2023, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- Mississippi had the highest imprisonment rate (sentenced prisoners) of 50 states in 2023, at 652 per 100,000 people, and Massachusetts the lowest, at 96 per 100,000 people. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
- Published for 52 places, with figures from 1978 to 2023.
Rankings
US states by imprisonment rate (sentenced prisoners), 2023
Places with data
Countries
Regions and states
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- New York
- Pennsylvania
- Illinois
- Ohio
- Georgia
- North Carolina
- Michigan
- Nebraska
- Montana
- New Hampshire
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- New Jersey
Use this data in your AI agent
Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:
Which places have the highest imprisonment rate (sentenced prisoners)? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"imprisonment_rate","level":"region","within":"United States"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=imprisonment_rate&level=region&within=United%20States