Arkansas currently has more than 17,000 of its just over 3 million people locked up in state prisons around the state, with overcrowding having reached such levels that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently announced plans to build a 3,000-bed state prison in Franklin County to add to the Arkansas Department of Corrections’ capacity of approximately 16,000 inmates.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and advocacy organization, Arkansas’ current rate of incarceration per 100,000 population ranks at No. 3 in the nation.
As of 2022, according to PPI figures, Arkansas had 912 people per 100,000 population sitting behind bars in state and federal prisons, county jails, youth facilities and mental health facilities for a total of nearly 24,000 people serving time for convictions, waiting for prison bed space, sitting in pretrial detention or involuntarily remanded to youth lockups or mental facilities.
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