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Tennessee has an incarceration rate of 838 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 Tennessee and why.

58,000 people from Tennessee are behind bars

Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Tennesee is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 117,000 different people are booked into local jails in Tennessee.

Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years

More than third of the people held in jails in Tennessee are held for federal or state agencies, primarily the state prison system. To avoid counting them twice, this population is not included in the yellow jails line. For annual counts of people in jails held for federal or state authorizes in Tennessee, see our table "Jail and prison incarcerated populations by state over time."

Also see these Tennessee graphs:

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

This graph excludes people held for state or federal authorities from the total count of people held in Tennessee jails. Because a significant proportion (33%) of the population in Tennessee's jails is held for the state prison system and the U.S. Marshals Service, this graph likely overstates the convicted population and understates the pre-trial population.

Today, Tennessee’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 Tennessee prisons and jails.

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

The high cost of being incarcerated in Tennessee

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

• Jails in Tennessee charge up to $5.55 for a 15-minute phone call, reaping profits for companies, while prisons charge up to $1.65 for a 15-minute phone call.
• Tennessee suspended its $3 medical copays in prisons at the beginning of the pandemic, it should eliminate it completely.
• Tennessee prisons charge families up to a 20% fee to transfer money to an incarcerated loved one.
• Tennessee’s policy on resources for the poorest people in prisons lacks important information.
• People in Tennessee prisons earn as little as 17¢ an hour for their work.

Our other articles about Tennessee

• Tennessee passed a caregiver mitigation and diversion law that allows judges to determine when to divert rather than incarcerate primary caregivers.
• Tennessee hurts jury diversity by excluding people with felony records
• Tennessee prisons release about 14,205 people every year
• How the end of Roe v. Wade will impact the 18,183 women on probation and parole in Tennessee
• We graded the parole release systems of all 50 states — Tennessee gets an F
• Findings from Knox County, Tenn.: Replacing in-person visits with video calling is bad policy

Women's incarceration in Tennessee

• Who's helping the 97,022 women released from Tennessee correctional facilities each year?
• Tennessee grows its prison population solely by incarcerating more women

Prison-based gerrymandering in Tennessee

• Prison-based gerrymandering in Tennessee Counties, by Peter Wagner and Aleks Kajstura, September 26, 2011
• Phantom Constituents in Tennessee’s Boards of County Commissioners, by Peter Wagner and JooHye DellaRocco, February 21, 2008

Data on COVID-19 in Tennessee jails and prisons

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

• Tennessee is one of only 8 states that have failed to reduce their prison population by more than 10% during the pandemic.
• Tennessee 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.
• Tennessee is one of 15 prison systems that does not have a policy making hand sanitizer widely available or providing free hygiene products — like soap — to incarcerated people.

For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources:

• How many COVID-19 cases in Tennessee communities can be linked to outbreaks in correctional facilities? (data from our report Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread)

Other resources

• Research on Tennessee in our Research Library