New Jersey profile    Tweet this

Sections
Charts & graphs
The cost of incarceration
Reports & briefings
COVID-19
Other resources

New Jersey has an incarceration rate of 341 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 New Jersey and why.


24,000 people from New Jersey are behind bars

Pie chart showing that 39,000 New Jersey residents are locked up in federal prisons, state prisons, local jails and other types of facilities

Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in New Jersey is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 86,000 different people are booked into local jails in New Jersey.


Using 2020 census data, we looked at where people in New Jersey prisons come from. We found they come from all corners of the state, but disproportionately from the state's largest and smallest communities.


Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years

graph showing the number of people in state prison and local jails per 100,000 residents in New Jersey from 1978 to 2015 Also see these New Jersey graphs:


Graph showing the number of people in New Jersey jails who were convicted and the number who were unconvicted, for the years 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1999, 2005, and 2013.


Today, New Jersey’s incarceration rates stand out internationally

graphic comparing the incarceration rates of the founding NATO members with the incarceration rates of the United States and the state of New Jersey. The incarceration rate of 664 per 100,000 for the United States and 341 for New Jersey is much higher than any of the founding NATO members 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

2010 graph showing incarceration rates per 100,000 people of various racial and ethnic groups in New Jersey

racial and ethnic disparities between the prison/jail and general population in NJ as of 2010

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


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

Pie chart showing that 192,000 New Jersey residents are in various types of correctional facilities or under criminal justice supervision on probation or parole


The high cost of being incarcerated in New Jersey

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


Our other articles about New Jersey


Data on COVID-19 in New Jersey jails and prisons

We gave New Jersey a "C" grade in September 2021 for its response to the coronavirus in prisons, noting that:

  • New Jersey reduced their population the most out of all 50 states, and had the second highest vaccination rate.
  • Nevertheless, New Jersey 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:


Other resources

Stay Informed

Get the latest updates:


And our other newsletters:







Stay Informed


Get the latest updates:



Tweet this page Donate