In the United States of America, the commission of a felony or other offenses results in a form of punishment known as Incarceration. By definition, incarceration means “being in prison or imprisonment”. The United States houses the biggest prison population in the world with the highest incarceration rate.[1]
The incarceration rate represents the number of sentenced inmates currently incarcerated under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 citizens.[2]
Through this project, we aim to visualize various datasets to gain insights into the incarceration trends, causes, and effects in the United States of America.
The chart below shows the crime rate in the United States
For the years 2010 through 2020, data on crime in the United States has been collected. We can see that the rate of crime has fluctuated over time. After 2010, crime rates began to diminish year by year, and have since dropped dramatically. This pattern continued until 2015 when crime rates began to gradually rise. In 2018 and 2019, this trend reversed, however, crime rose dramatically in 2020.
Use the filter to focus on individual years
In the visualization, we can see the incarceration rates in the United States from 2010 to 2016. The disparities in incarceration between states are significant. We can also see that the incarceration rate in the East is higher than in the West and that this differential has been consistent through time.
Texas has the highest incarceration rate in the US, ranging between 271,051 and 281,448 people incarcerated annually.
The following five states have the highest incarceration rates:
Texas
Georgia
Virginia
Missouri
Kentucky
Hit the Replay button to restart the animation on the line graph
Prisons are for criminal sentences of more than a year, whereas jails are for short sentences and temporary imprisonment.
The graph depicts a comparison of incarceration rates in state prisons, local jails, and federal prisons. The incarceration rate in all three categories appears to stay stable until 2019 when all three categories show a significant decline.
Since 2013, the rate of incarceration in state prisons has gradually decreased, from 1,325,305 in 2013 to 1,182,161 in 2020. We can witness a considerable fall in the incarceration rate in local jails from the year 2019 when the values dropped by 14.45%. From the year 2019, we can also see a minor decline in incarceration in Federal prisons.
Choose the year(s) to see a year-wise treemap
Here we can see a consistent pattern throughout the years. Drug abuse, Larceny, DUI, and Property Crime are the biggest contributors to high incarceration rates, whereas Arson, Embezzlement and Gambling show fewer numbers across the time span.
This information in the form of a tree map gives perspective about the large differences in these numbers. It can potentially be very useful in certain administrative decisions regarding crime control.
This section talks about the factors affecting incarceration in the United States. It shows the demographics of the crime rate for each category.
Period-specific characteristics (such as a tendency for punishment and the frequency of offense) certainly matter, but they appear to play out more across the life cycles of those most affected in young adulthood (cohort effects) than across all age groups at one moment in time.[3]
The bar graph shows the likelihood of incarceration for people of a certain age group.
The trend shows consistency of the highest incarceration rate within the age group 20-29 and the incarceration rate amongst the age group 10-19 has rapidly increased over the years.
Another reason for the increasing incarceration rate amongst these age groups is people who hit young adulthood, the prime age of both crime and incarceration when substance use was at its peak.
The racial and ethnic makeup of U.S. prisons continues to look substantially different from the demographics of the country as a whole. In 2017, blacks represented 12% of the U.S. adult population but 33% of the sentenced prison population. Whites accounted for 64% of adults but 30% of prisoners. [4]
The number of Black or African American prisoners increased by 55% (175901 to 273595 ) and a 71% increase in White offenders (157831 to 270229) over the years.
In 2015, about 55% of people imprisoned in federal or state prisons were Black or Latino.
Blacks have long outnumbered whites in U.S. prisons but a significant decline in the number of black prisoners has steadily narrowed the gap over the past decade.
The crime rate by ethnicity is depicted in this graph. When comparing non-Hispanics to Hispanics, we can observe that the numbers are much higher for non-Hispanics.
It can be seen from the graph that across all the years, the number of incarcerated men in more than that of women.
It looks to be a quite stable ratio up until 2020 where we see a little fluctuation.
Graduation rates are generally connected with favorable public safety outcomes and reduced crime rates in communities, according to most studies. Crime rates are lower in states with higher educational attainment than the national average.[5]
It is clear that there is a direct correlation between the level of education and the incarceration rate in both white as well as black males in the US.
Although it still stands true that black males are more likely to be incarcerated across all years and all levels of education, a key factor to note is that the reduction in the probability of imprisonment associated with higher education levels for black males is significantly higher than that for white males.[6]
Even after accounting for income, kids in father-absent households had considerably higher probabilities of incarceration than those in mother-father households. The youths who never had a father in the house had the worst odds.
Adolescents in single-parent families were more likely to engage in status, property, and person delinquencies, particularly boys. Furthermore, students who attend schools with a large proportion of single-parent children are at danger.
More than half of the 13,986 women in prison studied grew up without their fathers. 42% grew raised in a home with a single mother, and 16% had neither parent.[7]
Recidivism is known as the tendency of a convicted criminal to commit a crime again.
This graph shows the statistics for the percentage of prisoners released in 2005 in 30 states who were arrested after release, by year after release. Here, arrests do not necessarily mean incarceration. Out of a total of 401,288 prisoners released in 2005, 43.9% were arrested in the first year and only 1% in the total 9 years span.[8]
It is very clear that there is an inverse relationship between the percentage of re-arrests and the number of years from release.
This could be due to factors such as age, duration of imprisonment, and so on which have not been factored into this visualization.
Incarceration adversely affects an individuals' life after imprisonment.
Employers often ask whether a candidate has a criminal record before considering whether or not to hire them. This effect also trickles down to the hourly wages earned by prior convicts.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the hourly wages of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanic individuals: Those who have never been incarcerated vs those that are currently or have previously been incarcerated. We can see a significant decrease in hourly wages across all ethnicities post-incarceration.[9]
Incarceration not only has tangible effects like wage cuts but also has an adverse effect on mental health, family, and social life. Most of the time, the incarceration of a person ends up affecting that individual's circle as well. Every time a mother is incarcerated, there are around 10 people that her incarceration directly affects. These people may be their families, such as children or grandchildren or it may be a community that they are an integral part of.[10]
Also, it has been proven time and again that the inverse relation of the incarceration rate and crime rate is only so up until a certain point. After that, an increase in incarceration leads to more crime.[11][12]
The Effect of Education on crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports
2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014)
Western, Bruce (August 2002). "The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality".
Golden, Renny (2005). "War on the Family : Mothers in prison and the families they leave behind."
Liedka, Piehl , Useem (2006) "The Crime-Control Effect of Incarceration: Does Scale Matter?"
DeFina, Arvanites (2002). "The Weak Effect of Imprisonment on Crime: 1971-1988."