Sources and methodology

State

All 50 U.S. states and the U.S. territories and commonwealths of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

State prisons and local jails

The combined number of women in state prisons and local jails based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Prisoners in 2023, Preliminary Data Release (Table 2) and the Vera Institute of Justice’s Incarceration Trends 2024 jail data. For details on how we calculated this number, please see the methodology.

Youth

The number of young women and girls under 21 years of age detained or committed to juvenile residential placement because of justice system involvement in 2023, as reported in Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement: Sex of Residents by State, 2023. The totals reported for states do not match the U.S. total because there were at least 246 girls in placement with no state reported.

Indian Country jails

The confined population of women and girls held in jails in Indian Country in June 2023, as reported in the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Annual Survey of Jails in Indian Country, 2023. Five operational facilities did not report a population in 2023, so we substituted older data for three facilities and excluded the remaining three facilities that have not reported populations to the Bureau of Justice Statistics since 2019. The national total includes 50 girls classified as juveniles.

Civil commitment

Women convicted of sexual offenses who are detained or committed in “civil commitment centers” (typically prison-like facilities) under civil commitment laws after their sentences are complete. This national estimate of three women comes from a 2024 annual survey conducted by the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network (SOCCPN) and shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper.

Forensic psychiatric

In 2024, there were approximately 19,000 people nationally in state psychiatric hospitals who were committed by courts after being found “not guilty by reason of insanity” (NGRI) or, in some states, “guilty but mentally ill” (GBMI) and others held for pretrial evaluation or for treatment as “incompetent to stand trial” (IST). There are no known estimates of how many of these people are women.

Federal

The estimated number of women under the authority of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (10,220 on July 24, 2025) or U.S. Marshals Service (as reported in response to our FOIA request No. 2025-USMS-001575). The combined population of 14,671 was reallocated to the states using a ratio of the state of legal residence for the Federal Bureau of Prisons population as of March 2025, based on the results of FOIA request 2025-05434. Unlike other categories, this population is based on state of residence rather than jurisdictional authority. In addition, approximately 1,229 women in federal custody are identified as “foreign.” We did not reallocate these women to any state population, but we did include them in the U.S. total.

Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported an average daily population (ADP) of 5,556 women in FY 2025 in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations Data, FY 2025. In addition, there were at least 626 unaccompanied girls in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), an operational division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as of July 31, 2025. We could not reallocate the ICE or ORR population to states of residence as we did with other federal detainees, but included the population in the U.S. total incarceration rate.

Military

There were approximately 1,105 people under military correctional authority at the end of 2022, but there are no data by sex or gender, so we are unable to include military prisons in our calculations.

Number of incarcerated women and girls

The combined total of all confined women and girls reported in other columns.

Statewide population of women and girls

Total population of women and girls in each U.S. state, territory, and commonwealth. For all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico, the populations were reported in Table S0101 of the American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates Subject Tables. Reported populations for Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands are from the 2020 Census.

Incarceration rate of women and girls

Number of women and girls confined per 100,000 women in each state (the national rate is based on the total population of all U.S. states and territories).