Which States Have the Highest Incarceration Rates?

Nationwide, 453 of every 100,000 adult US residents were in prison in 2022. For every 453 prisoners, 397 were held under state jurisdiction and 56 under federal jurisdiction.

States in the Southern US had the highest imprisonment rates, including Mississippi (859 people per 100,000), Louisiana (775), and Arkansas (743). Those rates were, in some cases, five times as high as in some New England states. Massachusetts (116) had the lowest rate of any state, followed by Maine (130), Rhode Island (152), and Vermont (153).