by Sara Ryan - May 1, 2025
Criminal justice is an issue which every country struggles to address. The system utilized in the United States has resulted in some of the highest incarceration rates in the world. This system, often referred to as mass incarceration, describes the substantial increase in the number of people imprisoned as a result of punitive criminal justice policies that disproportionately impact marginalized communities. This narrative draws on data from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Prison Policy Institute to show racial and state-level comparisons to illustrate the scale of this crisis.
The decade 2012-2022 represents the largest decrease in prison population size since the practice of mass incarceration became the norm in the United States around the 1980s. Between 1950 and 1980 there were relatively stable prison populations with around 160,000-200,000 people incarcerated in state and federal prisons. By comparison in 1979 this number surpassed 300,000 for the first time and began to skyrocket, already doubling by 1988 and hitting its peak in 2009 with over 1.5 million people held in prison.
Despite moderate declines since 2009, the most significant drop in prison population size was between 2019-2020, specifically as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the sheer number of people in a single prison, overcrowding is a serious issue, and one exacerbated by COVID-19. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, this issue combined with the other unique health challenges of being incarcerated and limited access to quality healthcare, resulted in incarcerated individuals being infected with covid at a rate more than 5x the national rate. In order to attempt to mitigate these effects many inmates were released from prisons across the United States between 2019-2020. This was only a temporary repreive with the prison population in 2022 once again rising in an attempt to return to pre pandemic levels.
The raw number of prisoners held in federal and state prisons, while informative for examining the scale of the issue, lacks the nuance of regional differences in imprisonment practices. To note, the rate of imprisonment in these maps includes minors held in state and federal prisons. Historically Southern States have had higher rates of imprisonment per 100,000 residents, while New England has had some of the lowest rates. In 2012 Louisiana had the highest imprisonment rate of 870/100,000 residents. This decreased significantly over the next decade with the rate of imprisonment being 596/100,000 residents in 2022. In 2022 Mississippi became the state with the largest rate of imprisonment with 661/100,000 residents. Between 2012-2022 the National rate of imprisonment dropped from 480 to 355 prisoners per 100,000 residents.
Not only has Louisiana had a history of being the state with the largest rate of imprisonment, it is also home to the largest prison in the United States, Louisiana State Penitentiary (shown in the images above). Nicknamed Angola for the old plantation on which the prison now sits, the Louisiana State Penitentiary covers 18,000 acres of land and houses more than 6,000 prisoners. Most of the prisoners in Angola are serving life without the possibility of parole. Along with most inmates serving life sentences, over 70% of Angola’s prisoners are Black.
Similar to the discussion of regional differences in imprisonment practices, it is impossible to discuss imprisonment in the United States without addressing the racial differences in the system. People of color–Black, Native American, and Hispanic–are imprisoned at rates significantly higher than other racial groups. In the decade of change between 2012-2022 Black imprisonment went down by over 450 people per 100k residents, representing the largest decrease in racial imprisonment rates.
Black individuals were not the only group to have significant decreases in imprisonment. Native Americans and Hispanics also saw decreases in incarceration, but both still remain above the national average. Ultimately, despite recent changes and decreases in incarceration, the problem is far from resolved and there remains serious work to be done. This narrative merely skims the surface of a massive issue, but I hope it will highlight the issue for more people and inspire change.
This narrative was created as a final for DATA 1500, a Brown University course taught by Professor Reuben Fischer-Baum. I first became interested in examining and addressing the issues of mass incarceration in high school when I wrote my first large research paper on the adverse effects of solitary confinement on inmates in prison. Since then I have taken numerous classes across my years in college expanding on this understanding. This project represents an overview of the issue meant to introduce viewers to the issue of mass incarceration in the United States, in the hopes that they will be motivated to go and explore the issue on a deeper level. When pulling data for this project it came primarily from two sources: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Prison Policy Institute. Within the data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the largest issue I found was that in 2012 Nevada and Illinois did not report their imprisonment rate and as such I needed to gather that information separately from the other states' data.