If Alabama were a country, it would have the world’s highest incarceration rate

quote:

---

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice think tank, 861 out of every 100,000 Alabamians are in jail. The U.S. as a whole incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 residents, far ahead of second-place country, Cuba, which incarcerates 510 out of every 100,000 residents.

Alabama is actually one of 13 states in the U.S. that has an incarceration rate higher than any country. But it’s not only the state’s total prison population that has proved costly and problematic, it’s the fact that Alabama also has the most serious prison overcrowding problem in the U.S. It’s so bad that the state could be running the risk of federal courts stepping in and ordering the haphazard release of thousands of prisoners.

California serves as an example of what can happen when the federal government is forced to intervene.

In the 2011 Supreme Court case Brown v. Plata, the Court required the State of California to remove 46,000 criminals from its prisons by forcing The Golden State to cut its prison population to 137.5 percent of “design capacity.”

The Public Policy Institute of California found that property crime increased by 7.6 percent the year after the mass releases. Car thefts rose almost 15 percent. In short, 24,000 more people had their car stolen in California in 2012 as a result of the state not being able to get its prison overcrowding problem under control.

Alabama’s prisons are at roughly 190 percent capacity, 50 percent higher than the level the Court mandated for California. The Yellowhammer State currently houses over 25,000 inmates in facilities designed to hold approximately 13,000.

---