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Missouri has an incarceration rate of 735 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 Missouri and why.

Jump to COVID-19 data.

51,000 people from Missouri are behind bars

Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Missouri is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 128,000 different people are booked into local jails in Missouri.

Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years

Also see these Missouri graphs:

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

Today, Missouri’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 and Blacks in Missouri prisons and jails.

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

Data on COVID-19 in Missouri jails and prisons

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

• Missouri 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.
• Missouri 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:

• Our Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic page tracks criminal justice policy responses to the coronavirus all 50 states
• Missouri 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.
• State prison and jail population data for February 2022. (Previous data is available for October 2021, June 2021, February 2021, December 2020, September 2020, August 2020, and May 2020.) Data availability varies by state.
• As of late April 2021, only 27% of corrections staff in Missouri prisons had gotten the COVID-19 vaccine
• How crowded are Missouri prisons, as of December 2020?
• How many COVID-19 cases in Missouri communities can be linked to outbreaks in correctional facilities? (data from our report Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread)
• As of August 2020, Missouri prisons were not even requiring staff to wear masks at work

Our other articles about Missouri

• Missouri is one of just a handful of states that do not charge incarcerated people copays for medical care.
• Fees for sending money to a loved one in a Missouri prison are unreasonably high
• Missouri hurts jury diversity by excluding people with felony records
• Cruel and unusual punishment: When Missouri prisons don't provide air conditioning
• How much do incarcerated people in Missouri earn for their work in prison?
• We graded the parole release systems of all 50 states - Missouri gets an F
• Missouri has some of the highest jail phone rates in the country
• Who's helping the 39,849 women released from Missouri correctional facilities each year?
• The hidden costs in Missouri's "no-cost" prison tablet contract
• How Missouri has reformed its juvenile justice system (from our report Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie)

Prison-based gerrymandering in Missouri

• Prison Populations Create Complications at Redistricting Time, by Peter Wagner, Missouri Municipal Review, January 2012
• Local governments still struggling with Census' prison counts
• One person, two votes in Pacific, Missouri?

Other resources

• Research on Missouri in our Research Library