Just the Facts - Incarceration Rates in the United States

Even "progressive" states incarcerate people more than double the rates of our closest international allies

The United States have the highest incarceration rate in the world. In fact, every single U.S. state incarcerates more people per capita than almost every independent democracy on earth.

That's a hard thing to conceptualize, so let's take a look at some relevant comparisons.

Many of the countries that appear alongside the least punitive U.S. states: Turkey, Thailand, Rwanda, and Russia, have authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning governments or have recently experienced large-scale internal armed conflicts. California, viewed as a progressive state in terms of criminal justice reform, incarcerates its population at a rate higher than those four counties. Table one below compares California's incarceration rate to the founding NATO democracies, including the U.S. as a whole. Massachusetts, the state with the lowest incarceration rate in the United States and another progressive example, ranks 17th in the world with an incarceration rate higher than Iran, Colombia, and all the founding NATO nations.

Other countries struggle with “violent crime” on a scale far beyond that in the U.S.: South Africa, Panama, Costa Rica, and Brazil all have murder rates more than double that of the U.S. Yet the U.S. tops them all. Table two below looks at worldwide incarceration rates of "violent crime" offenders, again, breaking down each state as if it were it's own nation, when compared to the rest of the world.

If you looked at each U.S. state as its own independent entity, every state appears extreme. 24 states would have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and higher even than the United States as a whole.

Land of the free, indeed.

(data from "States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021" from the Prison Policy Initiative