California has an incarceration rate of 549 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 almost any democracy on earth. Read on to learn more about who is incarcerated in California and why.
199,000 people from California are behind bars
Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in California is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 368,000 different people are booked into local jails in California.
Today, California’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 California prisons and jails.
California's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails
The high cost of being incarcerated in California
Prisons and jails in California are increasingly shifting the cost of incarceration to people behind bars and their families, hiding the true economic costs of mass incarceration:
California charges 5¢ for an e-message to or from prison, but gives incarcerated people some free messages every week.
Our other articles about California
California is one of 20 states that locks up some people convicted of sex offenses in shadowy "civil commitment" facilities, long after their sentences are over — and often indefinitely
California passed a caregiver mitigation and diversion law that diverts primary caregivers from incarceration during the pretrial period, and individuals who successfully complete the program avoid not just incarceration, but the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction.
Los Angeles County has a jail-based polling location that enables people detained at the facility to cast ballots in elections
Prison populations have dropped by almost 20% in California, but in June 2021, the state prison system was still holding more people than it was designed for, at 107% of their design capacity (and up from 103% in January 2021).
Over half of all people in California prisons (52%) have tested positive for COVID-19.
For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources: