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The graphs on this page are from our 50 State Incarceration Profiles.

Over time

You can also see the same graph expressed as numbers rather than as rates per 100,000.

Racial disparities

See also our detailed graphs about Whites, Hispanics, and Blacks in West Virginia prisons and jails.

These graphs use U.S. Census data for all people incarcerated in the state, including people in federal and state prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc. While state and local facilities contain people processed by the West Virginia judicial systems, the federal prisons contain people sent to those facilities by courts all over the country.

For our purposes, the fact that federal prison populations are included in the Census Bureau's data as residents of West Virginia would be an unimportant statistical quirk except for that fact that there are so many federal prisons in West Virginia. In fact, slightly more than half of the incarcerated people that the Census counted in West Virginia were in a federal prison. This has a dramatic impact of the demographics of the incarcerated population. If the Census Bureau's federal prison counts were removed from this analysis, the incarceration rates would be 396 for Whites, 370 for Hispanics, 1911 for Blacks, and 726 for American Indian and Alaska Natives.

The big picture

This graph excludes people held for state or federal authorities from the total count of people held in West Virginia jails. Because a significant proportion (31%) of the population in West Virginia’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.

Other research and materials on West Virginia

• Why is West Virginia the federal prison capital of the country? by Peter Wagner, June 10, 2014
• New graphic shows that states with harshest disenfranchisement laws will likely pick the next president by Leah Sakala, October 30, 2012
• Fixing prison-based gerrymandering after the 2010 Census: West Virginia, Prison Policy Initiative, March 2010
• How does the West Virginia incarceration rate measure up in the global context?
• Prison Policy Initiative Research Clearinghouse reports about West Virginia