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Arkansas has an incarceration rate of 942 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities), meaning that it locks up a higher percentage of its people than any democracy on earth. Read on to learn more about who is incarcerated in Arkansas and why.

27,000 people from Arkansas are behind bars

Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Arkansas is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 45,000 different people are booked into local jails in Arkansas.

Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years

More than third of the people held in jails in Arkansas are held for federal or state agencies, primarily the state prison system. To avoid counting them twice, this population is not included in the yellow jails line. For annual counts of people in jails held for federal or state authorizes in Arkansas, see our table "Jail and prison incarcerated populations by state over time."

Also see these Arkansas graphs:

• total numbers rather than rates.
• Women’s prisons: Incarceration Rates | Total Population
• Men’s prisons: Incarceration Rates | Total Population

This graph excludes people held for state or federal authorities from the total count of people held in Arkansas jails. Because a significant proportion (39%) of the population in Arkansas’s jails is held for the state prison system, this graph likely overstates the convicted population and understates the pre-trial population.

Today, Arkansas’s incarceration rates stand out internationally

In the U.S., incarceration extends beyond prisons and local jails to include other systems of confinement. The U.S. and state incarceration rates in this graph include people held by these other parts of the justice system, so they may be slightly higher than the commonly reported incarceration rates that only include prisons and jails. Details on the data are available in States of Incarceration: The Global Context. We also have a version of this graph focusing on the incarceration of women.

People of color are overrepresented in prisons and jails

See also our detailed graphs about Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks in Arkansas prisons and jails.

Arkansas's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails

The high cost of being incarcerated in Arkansas

Prisons and jails in Arkansas are increasingly shifting the cost of incarceration to people behind bars and their families, hiding the true economic costs of mass incarceration:

• Jails in Arkansas charge up to $5.25 for a 15-minute phone call, reaping profits for companies, while prisons charge $2.10 for a 15-minute call.
• Arkansas prisons charge people a $5 medical copay to see a health care provider.
• Arkansas prisons charge families up to a 10% fee to transfer money to an incarcerated loved one.
• If a person in Arkansas prisons has more than $10 in their commissary account, they may not qualify for assistance to purchase essentials like hygiene items and postage.
• People in Arkansas prisons earn nothing for their work.
• Arkansas charges up to 50¢ for an e-message to or from prison, among the highest rates in the nation.

Our other articles about Arkansas

• Arkansas prisons are replacing incarcerated people's personal mail with scans, stifling family contact
• Bail companies in Arkansas have a track record of avoiding accountability, our report All Profit, No Risk and review of state-by-state evidence show
• Arkansas prisons release about 10,259 people every year
• How the end of Roe v. Wade will impact the 13,577 women on probation and parole in Arkansas
• Arkansas hurts jury diversity by excluding people with felony records
• We graded the parole release systems of all 50 states - Arkansas gets an F
• Arkansas is 1 of only 8 states still suspending driver's licenses for drug offenses unrelated to driving
• Who's helping the 31,778 women released from Arkansas correctional facilities each year?

Data on COVID-19 in Arkansas jails and prisons

We gave Arkansas a failing grade in September 2021 for its response to the coronavirus in prisons, noting that:

• Arkansas is one of only 8 states that have failed to reduce their prison population by more than 10% during the pandemic.
• Arkansas is one of only 8 state prison systems that did not offer free phone calls at any point during the pandemic.
• Arkansas is one of 15 prison systems that does not have a policy making hand sanitizer widely available or providing free hygiene products — like soap — to incarcerated people.

For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources:

• How many COVID-19 cases in Arkansas communities can be linked to outbreaks in correctional facilities? (data from our report Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread)
• Arkansas returned as many people to prison for technical violations of probation or parole in 2020 — the first year of the pandemic — as it did in 2019.

Other resources

• Research on Arkansas in our Research Library