Arkansas finds itself in the upper half of American states when it comes to its rate of incarceration but compared with states sharing borders with it, Arkansas incarcerates fewer residents.
The number of inmates in Arkansas state prisons was 17,235 in 2013, amounting to 578 people behind bars per 100,000 residents in Arkansas,
according to the National Institute of Corrections. The national rate was 395 per 100,000 residents, placing Arkansas' incarceration rate for 2013 at 46 percent higher than the national average.
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Arkansas has the sixth-highest incarceration rate, trailing only Arizona, Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The site also mentions that the state has 18 prison facilities and that the staff of 3,953 is part of a $324 million budget for the 2014 fiscal year. The state's crime rate per 100,000 people is 4,063 per 100,000 people, only trailing Louisiana, South Carolina, and New Mexico.
The state's incarceration rate has been rising. Arkansas had a 2010 incarceration rate of 552 people per 100,000 residents,
according to an interactive chart on Governing magazine's website that takes 2010 data from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. The number was up from 522 in 2009. Arkansas reported 16,204 prisoners for 2010, a small fraction of the 1,395,356 total state prisoners in the nation, according to the chart.
The average for all states that year was 442 incarcerated people per 100,000 residents. While Arkansas' incarceration rate is above the national average, it is below the rates of nearby states. For example, Louisiana led the nation with a rate of 867 in 2010. Texas and Oklahoma, on Arkansas's western border, have rates of 648 and 654, respectively while eastern neighbor Mississippi has a rate of 686.
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