States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2021

by Emily Widra and Tiana Herring

Louisiana once again has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., unseating Oklahoma to return to its long-held position as “the world’s prison capital.” By comparison, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive, but even these states lock people up at higher rates than nearly every other country on earth. Compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime.

See the online version of this report to learn how your state's rate of incarceration compares globally.

The graphic above charts the incarceration rates of every U.S. state alongside those of the other nations of the world. And looking at each state in the global context reveals that, in every region of the country, incarceration is out of step with the rest of the world.

If we imagine every state as an independent nation, as in the graph above, every state appears extreme. 24 states would have the highest incarceration rate in the world — higher even than the United States. Massachusetts, the state with the lowest incarceration rate in the nation, would rank 17th in the world with an incarceration rate higher than Iran, Colombia, and all the founding NATO nations.

In fact, many of the countries that rank alongside the least punitive U.S. states, such as Turkey, Thailand, Rwanda, and Russia, have authoritarian governments or have recently experienced large-scale internal armed conflicts. Others 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., “the land of the free,” tops them all.

But how does the U.S. compare to countries that have stable democratic governments and comparable crime rates? Next to our closest international peers, our use of incarceration is off the charts:

Visit the the online version of this report to see how your state's incarceration rate compares to other countries.

The crime rates seen in the U.S. do not require high incarceration rates.

The incarceration rates in every U.S. state are out of line with the entire world, and we found that this disparity is not explainable by differences in crime or “violent crime.” In fact, there is little correlation between high rates of “violent crime” and the rate at which the U.S. states lock people up in prisons and jails.

When we compare U.S. states and other nations in terms of both “violent crime” and incarceration, we find ourselves more closely aligned with nations with authoritarian governments or recently large-scale internal armed conflicts. Rather than any of the founding NATO member countries traditionally compared to the United States, the only countries that approach the incarceration rate and “violent crime” rates of the 50 states are El Salvador, Panama, Peru, and Turkey. Every U.S. state, and the United States as a nation, is an outlier in the global context. No other country incarcerates as many people, including countries with similar rates of “violent crime:”

We compared the incarceration rates of countries and U.S. states against "violent crime" to show that the crime rate in the U.S. does not require high incarceration rates.

Conclusion

For four decades, the U.S. has been engaged in a globally unprecedented experiment to make every part of its criminal justice system more expansive and more punitive. As a result, incarceration has become the nation’s default response to crime, with, for example, 70 percent of convictions resulting in confinement — far more than other developed nations with comparable crime rates. Our new analysis of incarceration rates and crime rates across the world reveals that the U.S.’s high incarceration rates are not a rational response to high crime rate, but rather a politically expedient response to public fears and perceptions about crime and violence.

Today, there is finally serious talk of change, but little action that would bring the United States to an incarceration rate on par with other stable democracies. The incremental changes made in recent years aren’t enough to counteract the bad policy choices built up in every state over decades. For that, all states will have to aim higher, striving to be not just better than the worst U.S. states, but among the most fair and just in the world.

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For more information, including our state-specific charts, detailed methodology, and footnotes, see the online version of this report.