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Texas profile
- Sections
- Charts & graphs
- The cost of incarceration
- Prison gerrymandering
- Reports & briefings
- Other resources
- COVID-19
Texas has an incarceration rate of 840 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 Texas and why.
219,000 people from Texas are behind bars
Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Texas is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 505,000 different people are booked into local jails in Texas.
Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years
- total numbers rather than rates.
- Women’s prisons: Incarceration Rates | Total Population
- Men’s prisons: Incarceration Rates | Total Population
Today, Texas’s incarceration rates stand out internationally
People of color are overrepresented in prisons and jails
Texas's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails
The high cost of being incarcerated in Texas
Prisons and jails in Texas are increasingly shifting the cost of incarceration to people behind bars and their families, hiding the true economic costs of mass incarceration:
- Jails in Texas charge up to $11.25 for a 15-minute phone call, reaping profits for companies, while prisons charge 90¢ for a 15-minute phone call.
- Texas suspended medical copays in prisons at the beginning of the pandemic, but now charges incarcerated people $13.55 to access medical care.
- We do not know how much Texas prisons charge for money transfers — one of the only states we don't have data on.
- The poorest people in Texas prisons get some items for free — but they have to pay the state back.
- People in Texas prisons are not paid for their work.
- Texas prisons, we've got some questions about your commissary vendors.
- Texas charges up to 47¢ for an e-message to or from prison; Among the highest rates in the nation.
Prison-based gerrymandering in Texas
- Texas counties favor fairness and common sense over prison gerrymandering
- Avoiding prison gerrymandering is often a matter of common sense: Texas and Louisiana research update
- Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Texas
Our other articles about Texas
- The parole board in South Carolina is releasing 84% fewer people and holding 20% fewer hearings since the pandemic started
- Texas’s choice to criminalize “failure to appear” may be hurting public safety
- The cost of incarcerating older people is incredibly high, and their risk of reincarceration is incredibly low, yet 15% of people in Texas prisons are over the age of 55. Why is the state keeping so many older people locked up?
- Most Texas prisons do not have air conditioning and they charge an exorbitant amount for items that can provide relief from the heat, like fans
- Texas is one of four states that provides privacy protections for incarcerated people communicating with members of the press.
- Texas 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
- What does successful bail reform look like? To start, look to Harris County, Texas.
- Harris County Jail has a jail-based polling location that enables people detained at the facility to cast ballots in elections.
- Bail companies in Texas have a track record of avoiding accountability, our report All Profit, No Risk and review of state-by-state evidence show
- Texas prisons release about 78,119 people every year
- How the end of Roe v. Wade will impact the 110,704 women on probation and parole in Texas
- In some Texas prisons, incarcerated people are forced to drink and breathe contaminants
- Texas hinders jury diversity by excluding people with felony records and some prior misdemeanors
- We graded the parole release systems of all 50 states - Texas gets an F
- Texas is 1 of only 8 states still suspending driver's licenses for drug offenses unrelated to driving
- Who's helping the 157,883 women released from Texas correctional facilities each year?
- How Texas has reformed its juvenile justice system (from our report Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie)
- How bail systems in Texas hurt women
- Explaining Texas' overnight prison boom
Protecting family contact in Texas prisons and jails
- Travis County, Texas: A case study on video visitation
- Victory: In-person visits return to jails in Travis County, Texas!
- In-person family visits will return to Austin, Texas
- Dallas County approves video visitation contract
- Dallas County rejects Securus video visitation contract
Other resources
- Research on Texas in our Research Library
Data on COVID-19 in Texas jails and prisons
We gave Texas a failing grade in September 2021 for its response to the coronavirus in prisons, noting that:
- Texas is one of 13 states that did not explicitly mention incarcerated people in their vaccination rollout plan, and is one of 15 prison systems that has not yet vaccinated more than 60% of the incarcerated population.
- Texas 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.
For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources:
- How many COVID-19 cases in Texas communities can be linked to outbreaks in correctional facilities? (data from our report Mass Incarceration, COVID-19, and Community Spread)
