Rates of Incarceration in Florida

Florida's incarcerated population has risen by an astonishing 1,000 percent since the 1970s, according to a 2015 study by the Reason Foundation. The state outpaced the nation, which saw overall incarceration rates rise sevenfold during that time.

A national movement to be "tough on crime" is thought to be the driving factor behind increased incarceration rates.

Here are several more things concerning Florida's incarceration rate:

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1. Crime
Florida's high incarceration rate can be partially accounted for by the 2013 statistic that Florida's crime rate is 17 percent higher than the national average. The National Institute of Corrections (NIC) said 87 percent of the state's crimes are property crimes. However, the last 13 percent are violent crimes. The percentage of Florida's violent crime ranks 35 percent larger than the national average.

2. Sentences
Florida's state prison incarceration rates for prisoners who were serving sentences that were at least one year long has more than doubled itself. The NIC again revealed that the rates have dramatically increased from 220 per 100,000 to 520 per 100,000.

3. Race
The 2007 scholarly study performed by Mauer, Marc and Ryan S. King and named, "Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity," gives the ratios of white, black, and Hispanic incarcerations in all 50 states. For every 10,000 people in Florida there were 588 white, 2,615 black, and 382 Hispanic prisoners incarcerated. The ratio of jailed Hispanics to jailed whites was 0.06 Hispanic people for every one white person. The ratio for black-to-white incarceration rates was 4.4 jailed black inmates for every one white inmate. Lastly, the ratio of blacks to Hispanics incarcerated was 6.8 black inmates for every 1 Hispanic person in jail.

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4. Popluation
A census of Florida's incarcerated population on Dec. 31, 2013, found that Florida's prisons contained 103,028 humans. The Reason Foundation reported that for every 100,000 people living in Florida 626 of them were incarcerated whites and 2,555 of them were incarcerated black inmates. These numbers show a heavy bias towards incarcerating blacks. The black population of Florida comprises only 16.3 percent of the total Florida population according to data collected from the 2005 census. In contrast, the white population of Florida is the clear majority at approximately 81.5 percent.

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