Kansas profile
Kansas has an incarceration rate of 698 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 Kansas and why.
21,000 people from Kansas are behind bars
Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Kansas is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 60,000 different people are booked into local jails in Kansas.
Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years
Also see these Kansas graphs:
- total numbers rather than rates.
- Women’s prisons: Incarceration Rates | Total Population
- Men’s prisons: Incarceration Rates | Total Population
Today, Kansas’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, Blacks, and American Indians/Native Americans in Kansas prisons and jails.
Kansas's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails
Our other articles about Kansas
- Jails in Kansas charge much more than necessary for phone calls, reaping profits for companies
- Fees for sending money to a loved one in a Kansas prison are unreasonably high
- Kansas prisons release about 6,007 people every year
- We're tracking Kansas's medical copay policies in prisons during the pandemic
- Kansas hurts jury diversity by excluding people with felony records
- Cruel and unusual punishment: When Kansas prisons don't provide air conditioning
- How much do incarcerated people in Kansas earn for their work in prison?
- We graded the parole release systems of all 50 states - Kansas gets an F-
- Who's helping the 25,652 women released from Kansas correctional facilities each year?
Data on COVID-19 in Kansas jails and prisons
We gave Kansas a failing grade in September 2021 for its response to the coronavirus in prisons, noting that:
- Kansas is one of 13 states that did not implement any policies to accelerate releases, promote medical parole or compassionate release, or hasten releases for people incarcerated on minor offenses.
- Kansas failed to utilize one of the most obvious, and easiest, tools for reducing the prison population — stopping prison admissions for technical violations of probation and parole (which are not crimes).
For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources:
- How many COVID-19 cases in Kansas communities can be linked to outbreaks in correctional facilities? (data from our report Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread)
Other resources
- Research on Kansas in our Research Library
