In this article, you can find the stats of how many people are locked up in the United States.The Prison Policy Initiative created an in-depth article on mass incarceration statistics for the United States.
In it, they show some incredible statistics. The report says the American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 different state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 942 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails. (1)
With all these prisons, jails and inmates, the report goes further to explain why the inmates are locked up. Check out their pie chart to see the numbers of different crimes committed for state, local, and federal prisons. For example, the biggest criminal activity from state prisons was robbery declared for 185,000 inmates, while murder and assault have numbers of 169,000 and 135,00 respectively for state prisons.
The pie chart shows a comprehensive overview of the system, but doesn’t accommodate the amount of people in and out of the correctional facilities. While most of them haven’t been convicted (some just being arrested and later making bail), others are too poor to make bail and have to remain until their trial. Only a small number of inmates (195,000) have actually been convicted.
Other interesting facts show that 1 in 5 inmates are locked up for a drug offense, and most youth behind bars are locked up for nonviolent offenses.