Mar 13, 2024 - News
Prison population's growth
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Texas' prison population grew 4.4% between 2021 and 2022, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj report from the latest U.S. Department of Justice data.
- Meanwhile, it fell nearly 20% between the peak year of 2010 and 2022.
Why it matters: Prison numbers are an indicator of how our society approaches criminal justice.
- Plus, in Texas, where prisons are generally in rural areas and incarcerated people are often from urban ones, the number of incarcerated people has implications for census counting and political clout.
By the numbers: 139,631 people were in state or federal prisons in Texas in 2022, per the DOJ's data, compared with 173,649 in the peak year of 2010.
The big picture: The U.S. prison population rose 2.1% from 2021 to 2022, marking "the first increase in the combined state and federal prison population in almost a decade," a recent DOJ report found.