Prisons in North Carolina
North Carolina held 30,685 people under its correctional authority at the end of 2023, an imprisonment rate of 275 per 100,000 residents. That is rank 31 of 50.
American Factbook Research
2023
- 30,685
- Prisoners
- 275
- Imprisonment rate
- Per 100,000 residents of all ages, as the Bureau computed it.
- 350
- Rate among adults
- Per 100,000 residents aged 18 or older.
- 28,174
- Men
- 2,511
- Women
- 15,356
- Admissions
- Sentenced prisoners admitted during the year.
2012 to 2023
12 years, from the 11 editions the Bureau publishes as a machine-readable bundle. Each edition carries its own year and the one before, so every year but the first and last is published twice. Where the two disagree, the later edition is shown, because the Bureau revises rather than restates.
Admissions and releases are blank before 2019. The Bureau published them in one table with two blocks until then, each with a column called “Total”, and this pipeline cannot yet tell one from the other. A blank is the honest answer.
2 more columns on a wider screen
| Year | Prisoners | Rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 37,136 | 357 |
| 2013 | 36,922 | 355 |
| 2014 | 37,096 | 358 |
| 2015 | 36,617 | 352 |
| 2016 | 35,697 | 339 |
| 2017 | 36,394 | 342 |
| 2018 | 34,899 | 325 |
| 2019 | 34,079 | 313 |
| 2020 | 29,461 | 275 |
| 2021 | 28,995 | 267 |
| 2022 | 29,627 | 268 |
| 2023 | 30,685 | 275 |
Race and Hispanic origin · 2023
The Bureau’s own categories, under its own labels. This is the composition of the prison population, not a rate: it is not divided by the population of each group, and it should not be read as one. Percentages are of the people whose race the state reported.
| Category | Prisoners | Share |
|---|---|---|
| black | 15,315 | 49.9% |
| white | 12,570 | 41.0% |
| hispanic | 1,909 | 6.2% |
| american indian alaska native | 584 | 1.9% |
| unknown | 215 | 0.7% |
| asian | 92 | 0.3% |
| did not report | 0 | 0.0% |
Related
Sources
- BJS Prisoners — Statistical Tables — U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics · "Information generated by the Department of Justice is in the public domain and may be reproduced, published or otherwise used without the Department's permission." (https://bjs.ojp.gov/reuse-policy) · retrieved September 19, 2026
Data retrieved
North Carolina elsewhere on the Factbook
- Reported crimeCrime and justice
Offenses reported to police by type, the trend, and the reporting coverage.
- Arrests by race, sex and ageCrime and justice
Arrests as the FBI’s participating agencies reported them, with what the figures can and cannot support at the top.
- Hate crimeCrime and justice
Incidents reported to the FBI by bias motivation, as counts — the collection publishes no participation share, so there is no rate to compare states on.
- Federal obligationsFederal spending
What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in the state, per resident and by agency.
- The North Carolina Factbook entryAcross the Factbook
Every measure the Factbook publishes for this state in one place, each with where it ranks among the others and the record it came from.
The immigration hub has no page for a state: CBP publishes by sector and field office, which are its own areas of responsibility rather than a geography, so assigning them to states would be a claim the data does not make. Immigration and the border.