Statistics on Prison Population Rates

More descriptive posts on prison populations and prison conditions are here.

Content

1. The effect of incarceration rates on crime
2. Number of people incarcerated
3. Prison occupancy
4. The US
5. Race and incarceration in the US and the UK
6. Crime rates
7. The social effects of incarceration

1. The effect of incarceration rates on crime

The human rights issues created by incarceration are evident, I think: locking people up means taking away a number if not most of their liberties, most obviously their freedom of movement, freedom to work and political freedom in some cases, as well as their physical security and privacy. Other rights violations have to do with the kind of people who are locked up and the often substandard conditions in which many prisoners are kept, even in rich countries such as the U.S.:

• Children are often incarcerated
• Federal prisons in the U.S. hold 60% more prisoners than they were designed for
• Prisoners often have to perform forced and/or unpaid labor
• Prison rape is common
• Incarceration reduces former inmates’ earnings by 40 percent when compared to demographically similar counterparts who have not been imprisoned
• Children of inmates suffer from the absence of a parent
• Incarceration rates often betray racism in criminal justice
• etc.

Some people clearly deserve to be put in jail, and often that is what is required and necessary in order to protect the human rights of their (possible) victims. However, many countries go beyond what is required for public safety and the rights of victims. Before viewing the incarceration statistics below, take a look at the effect of mass incarceration on crime:

the effect on crime of high incarceration rates

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2. Number of people incarcerated

This map shows the number of people per 100.000 citizens who are incarcerated:

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3. Prison occupancy

And this graph shows the under- or over-use of prisons (prison occupancy, or the number of prisoners compared to the number of places in prisons – over 100% indicates overpopulation in prisons, and hence bad prison conditions):

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4. The U.S.

The U.S. leads the world: it has the highest fraction of population in prison, 0.7% vs a world median of roughly 0.1%. With 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. hosts upward of 20 percent of the world’s prisoners. It imprisons more people per capita than any other country on earth. In 1980, there were about 220 people incarcerated for every 100.000 Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to 731. No other country even approaches that. The U.S. incarceration rate has roughly quintupled since the early 1970s. About 2 million Americans currently live behind bars. States like California now spend more on locking people up than on funding higher education.

Here are some data for the U.S.:

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The war on drugs and a tough-on-crime philosophy are partly to blame:

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Like many things in the US, the regional distribution shows large differences:

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Compared to other developed countries (see point 2 above), the US has a very high incarceration rate, and yet its crime rate isn’t lower (it’s even higher for murder and a few other crimes).

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5. Race and incarceration in the US and the UK

The racial distribution of inmates in the U.S. is highly unfavorable for black Americans. Whereas they only make up 12% or so of the total U.S. population, they represent more than 40% of inmates:

U.S. population by race:

U.S. inmates by race:

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Almost 5 out of every 100 male African-Americans are in jail, a rate more than five times that of white Americans.

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Incarceration rates in the United States have risen sharply since 1980, but especially for young black men. More than one in three young black men without a high school diploma is currently behind bars. Young black men who dropped out of high school are more likely to be incarcerated than employed. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives.

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incarceration rates by race, US, 2009

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The same racial bias is present in the U.K.:

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6. Crime rates

Prison population statistics do not always compare directly to crime rate statistics. National authorities can be more or less effective or prejudiced in the prosecution of crime, and this is reflected in prison population statistics. A low percentage of the population that is incarcerated doesn’t imply a low crime rate. It can just as well imply ineffective prosecution. Conversely, low crime rates that correlate with high incarceration rates don’t necessarily imply effective law enforcement: many people in prison can be there for victimless “crimes” such as drug use, or low crimes rates can have other causes besides high incarceration rates. Hence, pointing to low crimes rates may not be a good justification of high incarceration rates.

Regarding crime rate statistics, there are some misunderstandings about so-called “immigrant crime”, especially in the U.S.:

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7. The social effects of incarceration

[T]he effects of [the] change in the imprisonment rate [in the U.S.] … have been concentrated among those most likely to form fragile families: poor and minority men with little schooling. Imprisonment diminishes the earnings of adult men, compromises their health, reduces familial resources, and contributes to family breakup. It also adds to the deficits of poor children, thus ensuring that the effects of imprisonment on inequality are transferred intergenerationally. … Because having a parent go to prison is now so common for poor, minority children and so negatively affects them, the authors argue that mass imprisonment may increase future racial and class inequality — and may even lead to more crime in the long term, thereby undoing any benefits of the prison boom. U.S. crime policy has thus, in the name of public safety, produced more vulnerable families and reduced the life chances of their children. (source, source)

This is an example of a self-defeating human rights policy: in an attempt to improve the protection of security rights and property rights of a population, a policy of increased incarceration rates has an adverse effect on the rights of the incarcerated, their families and children, and possibly even society at large (as increased inequality resulting from high incarceration rates among society’s most vulnerable groups will perhaps lead to more crime – although we can’t assume that increasing poverty and inequality will automatically provoke those who are impoverished because of incarceration to resort to crime).

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