WASHINGTON – There were 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S. as of the 2010 census. It’s often been remarked that our national incarceration rate of 707 adults per every 100,000 residents is the highest in the world, by a huge margin.
We tend to focus less on where we’re putting all those people. But the 2010 Census tallied the location of every adult and juvenile prisoner in the United States.
Much of the discussion of regional prison population only centers on inmates in our 1,800 state and federal correctional facilities. But at any given time, hundreds of thousands more individuals are locked up in the nation’s 3,200 local and county jails.
To put these figures in context, we have slightly more jails and prisons in the U.S. – 5,000 plus – than we do degree-granting colleges and universities. In many parts of America, particularly the South, there are more people living in prisons than on college campuses. Cumberland County, Pennsylvania – population 235,000 – is home to 41 correctional facilities and seven colleges. Prisons outnumber colleges 15-to-1 in Lexington County, South Carolina.
States differ in the extent to which they spread their correctional populations out geographically. Florida, Arizona and California stand out as states with sizable corrections populations in just about every county. States in the Midwest, on the other hand, tend to have concentrated populations in just a handful of counties.
In recent years, criminal justice reform has risen to prominence in the national conversation, with Democrats and Republicans looking for ways to dial back the incarceration-focused policies of the past. One reason why the issue is gaining traction: Prisoners are literally every where you look in the U.S. Nearly 85 percent of U.S. counties are home to some number of incarcerated individuals. Localities spend tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner each year to house, feed and provide them with medical care.
Most counties would doubtless prefer to spend this money elsewhere.
