Corrections populations
Monthly figures from five state departments of correction and New York City’s jails, taken verbatim from each department’s own reports. Louisiana’s series runs unbroken from Jan 1989.
These are not the same measurement. Every department words its headline differently and counts a different set of people. What each number covers is printed under its chart, and nothing here has been rescaled to make the states look alike.
Five state systems
Drawn on a shared timeline and a shared scale, both anchored at zero, so the sizes can be read against each other even though the definitions differ.
Total custody population. Everyone in DPS&C custody, wherever held. Close to half are held in local parish jails, not state facilities.
ADOC jurisdictional population. Everyone sentenced to ADOC, including those held in county jails, other states, federal prisons, community corrections and leased facilities. No monthly report was published between January 2021 and February 2025.
Total felon population (A+B+C). TDOC facilities, TDOC backup held in local jails, and locally sentenced felons.
Inmate total. In custody, community corrections, other custody, at large, and off-grounds medical. MDOC's own headline adds parolees and probationers to this — about 65,000 people. The inmate count is used here instead.
In state institutions (monthly mean of daily counts). Held in a Kentucky state institution, including those out to hospital or court. Kentucky reports every business day; these are monthly averages. It separately holds several thousand state inmates in local jails, counted under community services.
New York City’s jails
A jail system, not a prison system, and it publishes no population series — only admissions, discharges and a single-day census. It is shown on its own terms.
Jail admissions. Admissions to the city jails, including Rikers Island. Overwhelmingly people awaiting trial rather than serving a sentence.
What each source is
| Jurisdiction | System | Measure | Months | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Louisiana Dept of Public Safety and Corrections | prison | Total custody population | 444 | Jan 1989 |
| Alabama Dept of Corrections | prison | ADOC jurisdictional population | 278 | Jan 1999 |
| Tennessee Dept of Correction | prison | Total felon population (A+B+C) | 264 | Jul 2004 |
| Mississippi Dept of Corrections | prison | Inmate total | 301 | Apr 2001 |
| Kentucky Dept of Corrections | prison | In state institutions (monthly mean of daily counts) | 185 | Jul 2007 |
| New York City Dept of Correction | jail | Jail admissions | 151 | Jan 2014 |
Questions
- Can these states be compared with each other?
- Only carefully. Each department publishes a different measure under a similar-sounding name. Alabama's jurisdictional population counts everyone sentenced to ADOC wherever they are held; Louisiana's custody population counts everyone in DPS&C custody, close to half of them in local parish jails; Tennessee's total includes people it holds in local jails and locally sentenced felons; Kentucky's institutional count excludes the thousands of state inmates it houses in local jails. Each chart on this page states what its own number counts, and none of them has been adjusted to match another.
- Why is New York City shown separately?
- Because it is a jail system, not a prison system. New York City's Department of Correction runs Rikers Island and the borough jails, which hold overwhelmingly people awaiting trial rather than serving a sentence, and it publishes no population series at all — only admissions, discharges and a single-day census. New York State's prisons are run by DOCCS, a different agency not covered here. NYC's most recent month recorded 2,005 admissions.
- Is Mississippi's prison population really 65,000?
- No. MDOC's own headline figure counts parolees and probationers alongside inmates, which is why it runs about three times the number actually incarcerated. This page uses the inmate total instead — 21,823 in Aug 2026 — and the fuller figure is available in the underlying data.
- Why does Alabama's line stop and restart?
- Alabama published no monthly statistical report between January 2021 and February 2025. Those months are genuinely absent rather than estimated, so the line breaks rather than drawing a straight segment across four years of missing data. Mississippi has four missing months for the same reason, and they are broken the same way.
- How far back does the data go?
- Louisiana reaches furthest — Jan 1989, in an unbroken monthly run. Alabama begins in 1999, Mississippi in 2001, Tennessee in 2004, Kentucky in 2007 and New York City in 2014. Every figure is taken verbatim from the department's own published reports; nothing is modelled, interpolated or seasonally adjusted.
- Where do these numbers come from?
- From each department's own monthly or daily reports — mostly PDFs, and for New York City the city's open-data API. Each figure is checked against the arithmetic the department itself publishes: components must sum to the totals printed on the same page, and a build that fails those checks does not ship.
Data: the Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana departments of correction, and the New York City Department of Correction via NYC Open Data. Each figure is loaded verbatim from the department's own reports. pumsdata is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these agencies.