South Carolina has an incarceration rate of 678 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 South Carolina and why.
32,000 people from South Carolina are behind bars
Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in South Carolina is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 89,000 different people are booked into local jails in South Carolina.
Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years
Today, South Carolina’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 South Carolina prisons and jails.
South Carolina's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails
The high cost of being incarcerated in South Carolina
Prisons and jails in South Carolina are increasingly shifting the cost of incarceration to people behind bars and their families, hiding the true economic costs of mass incarceration:
South Carolina suspended its $5 medical copays in prisons at the beginning of the pandemic for flu related medical visits — but should eliminate them completely.
South Carolina 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
South Carolina released fewer people on parole in 2020 than they had in 2019, and approved a smaller percent of parole applications.
South Carolina is one of 13 states that did not implement any policies to accelerate releases, promote medical parole or compassionate release, prevent incarceration for technical violations of probation and parole, or hasten releases for people incarcerated on minor offenses.
South Carolina is one of 15 prison systems that had not yet vaccinated more than 60% of the incarcerated population.
For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources: