Prisoners in the United States

1,254,224 people were held under the jurisdiction of a state or federal correctional authority at the end of 2023, an imprisonment rate of 360 per 100,000 residents.

2023

1,254,224
Prisoners: Under state or federal jurisdiction, at December 31.; 360
Imprisonment rate: Per 100,000 U.S. residents of all ages. The Bureau of Justice Statistics computed this rate.; 1,097,597
Under state authority: 156,627
Under federal authority: 472,278
Admissions: Sentenced prisoners admitted during the year.; 453,242
Releases: Sentenced prisoners released during the year.

2012 to 2023

State prisons is 19.4% below its 2013 peak

People under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities, 2012 to 2023. Jurisdiction rather than custody: a state holds jurisdiction over a prisoner it is housing elsewhere, so the two counts are not the same and this is the one the Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes by state.

The state count fell 14.8% in 2020, the steepest single year in the series. That is a fall in the number of people held, not a change in what is counted, so it is noted rather than marked as a break in the record.

Source: The Bureau of Justice Statistics

About this chart

The figures

State prisons is 19.4% below its 2013 peak. People under the jurisdiction of state and federal correctional authorities, 2012 to 2023. Jurisdiction rather than custody: a state holds jurisdiction over a prisoner it is housing elsewhere, so the two counts are not the same and this is the one the Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes by state.
Year	State	Federal
2012	1,352,582	217,815
2013	1,361,084	215,866
2014	1,351,752	210,567
2015	1,330,148	196,455
2016	1,318,937	189,192
2017	1,306,131	183,058
2018	1,284,487	179,898
2019	1,255,049	175,116
2020	1,069,008	152,156
2021	1,047,773	157,314
2022	1,070,834	159,309
2023	1,097,597	156,627

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<figure style="margin:0;max-width:960px">
  <img src="https://americanfactbook.org/embed/chart/crime-prisons-trend.svg" alt="State prisons is 19.4% below its 2013 peak" style="width:100%;height:auto" loading="lazy">
  <figcaption style="font:13px/1.4 system-ui,sans-serif">Chart: <a href="https://americanfactbook.org/crime">State prisons is 19.4% below its 2013 peak</a>, American Factbook, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a></figcaption>
</figure>

By state · 2023

Ranked by imprisonment rate per 100,000 residents, as the Bureau of Justice Statistics published it. This is not the crime rate and the two are not comparable: one counts people held, the other counts offenses reported.

3 more columns on a wider screen

States ranked by imprisonment rate, 2023
Rank	State	Rate per 100,000	Prisoners	Admissions	Releases
1	Mississippi	652	19,526	6,403	6,671
2	Louisiana	617	28,186	14,395	13,075
3	Arkansas	596	18,503	8,485	7,027
4	Oklahoma	545	22,283	6,219	6,431
5	Idaho	490	9,829	4,190	3,526
6	Texas	477	149,264	67,810	58,034
7	Georgia	449	50,425	14,779	11,798
8	Arizona	448	34,473	12,373	11,906
9	Montana	438	4,985	2,173	1,971
10	Kentucky	423	19,175	14,647	14,824
11	South Dakota	405	3,764	3,162	2,848
12	Alabama	394	27,181	9,786	9,937
13	Ohio	394	46,530	18,558	17,340
14	Missouri	385	24,223	10,726	11,420
15	Florida	382	87,207	27,097	25,288
16	Wyoming	378	2,212	803	744
17	Indiana	351	25,088	9,771	9,121
18	Wisconsin	346	22,418	5,727	4,646
19	Tennessee	341	24,408	9,862	10,133
20	Michigan	328	32,986	8,737	8,126
21	West Virginia	328	5,800	2,992	3,065
22	Nevada	327	10,463	4,652	4,528
23	Virginia	314	27,442	not reported	9,503
24	Kansas	305	9,125	3,644	3,216
25	Pennsylvania	300	38,860	12,297	10,791
26	South Carolina	299	16,453	4,612	4,497
27	Nebraska	295	5,931	2,235	1,975
28	Oregon	291	12,316	4,804	7,113
29	Colorado	290	17,459	6,035	5,673
30	Delaware	275	4,867	2,317	2,945
31	North Carolina	275	30,685	15,356	14,168
32	Iowa	274	8,831	3,769	3,832
33	Maryland	261	16,236	5,545	4,944
34	New Mexico	259	5,586	2,568	2,123
35	California	246	95,962	28,307	32,058
36	North Dakota	240	1,899	1,368	1,271
37	Illinois	238	29,828	17,900	17,711
38	Alaska	202	4,478	1,602	1,622
39	Utah	186	6,402	3,599	3,162
40	Connecticut	183	11,099	3,511	3,176
41	Washington	181	14,441	12,337	11,722
42	New York	167	32,583	10,295	8,855
43	Hawaii	165	3,942	1,426	1,444
44	Minnesota	152	8,725	4,640	4,582
45	New Hampshire	151	2,115	819	794
46	New Jersey	125	11,675	5,046	5,505
47	Vermont	124	1,334	930	530
48	Rhode Island	122	2,519	not reported	498
49	Maine	119	1,873	881	889
50	Massachusetts	96	6,002	1,641	1,463

District of Columbia has no row here. People sentenced for a felony in the District of Columbia have been the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Prisons since 2001, so they are counted under federal authority rather than under the District.

How to read this

The imprisonment rate is the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ own, computed against its own resident-population denominators. We publish the rate it published rather than dividing a count by a population of our own.
Imprisonment rates and crime rates measure different things and move for different reasons. Sentencing law, parole practice, court backlogs and prison capacity all bear on one and not the other. Nothing on this page says why a state’s figure is what it is.
Counts are at December 31 of the reference year. Federal figures in some of the underlying tables are at September 30, and those tables say so.
The Bureau revises earlier years in later editions. Where two editions disagree, the later one is shown and the earlier one is kept on file.

Elsewhere in this hub

Sources

Bureau of Justice Statistics — Prisoners — U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics · BJS reuse policy · retrieved September 19, 2026

Compiled automatically from Bureau of Justice Statistics — Prisoners by a checked SQL query · Editor: Kian O'Connor · How this site is built

Data retrieved September 19, 2026