Louisiana has an incarceration rate of 1,067 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 independent democratic country on earth. Read on to learn more about who is incarcerated in Louisiana and why.
50,000 people from Louisiana are behind bars
Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Louisiana 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 Louisiana.
Using a unique dataset, we looked at where people in Louisiana prisons come from. We found they come from all corners of the state, but disproportionately from certain communities.
Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years
More than half of the people held in jails in Louisiana 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 authorities in Louisiana, see our table "Jail and prison incarcerated populations by state over time."
This graph excludes people held for state or federal authorities from the total count of people held in Louisiana jails. Because a majority (66%) of the population in Louisiana jails is held for the state prison system, this graph likely overstates the convicted population and understates the pre-trial population.
Today, Louisiana’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
Louisiana's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails
The cost of incarcerating older people is incredibly high, and their risk of reincarceration is incredibly low, yet 15% of people in Louisiana prisons are over the age of 55. Why is the state keeping so many older people locked up?
Louisiana has one of nation’s highest rates of HIV in prison as well as some of the most significant racial disparities in the nation, supporting the correlation between HIV and the incarceration of Black people.