In the 2018, the Pew Research Center published an article about how the incarceration rate in the United States reached its lowest level in 20 years (Gramlich, 2018). Regardless, the United States still incarcerates the largest share of its population compared to the rest of the world. The Adam Ruins Everything video in class even mentioned that there are ten times more incarcerated people in the United States than there were fifty years ago. Furthermore, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were about 860 prison or jail inmates for every 100,000 adults ages 18 and older in 2016. The incarceration rate reached its peak around 2008 but has declined every year until 2018 when there were about 830 inmates for every 100,000 adults. The article briefly explained possible factors for why the prison rate has declined including changes in prosecution and judicial sentences, as well as criminal laws that have caused a decrease in sentences for drug-related charges. Additionally, the recent decline in the incarceration rate is parallel, and likely related to, the decline in violent crime, as well as arrests. The Pew Research Center also included a sobering map in their report, showing how drastic the incarceration rate is in the United States compared to other countries. It is however important to consider the fact that countries like China have data limitations which can skew the United States’ perception.

Although the incarceration problem in the United States seems like large problem that is difficult to measure, the Vera Institute of Justice released a tool to help put these trends in perspective. For example, my home county is a small suburban county outside of Boston. Although the incarceration rate would seem small compared to a county outside of Detroit or New York City, it’s not necessarily an insignificant number (Henrichson,2018). The three data visualizations in this project use the statistics from the Vera Institute of Justice that portray South Carolina’s incarceration rates per capita, rather than a fixed number.

In class on Monday February 1, we looked at a figure that compared mass incarceration in both state and federal prisons, as well as local jails. Fortunately, the line graph contains data from the Prison Policy Initiative which also portrays its statistics per capita. As a result, the national statistics from the Prison Policy Initiative and the South Carolina data from the Vera Institute of Justice are comparable.

Using the highlight tool on the area chart, both incarceration rates for both jails and prisons are shown by county. Consistently, the total jailed population is higher than prisons, which interestingly contradicts the national statistics. One major trend while looking at the county maps is the urbanicity of each county and its relationship with incarceration rates. In both the prison and jail populations, the five counties with the highest incarceration rates are rural. Using the urbanicity highlight function, the counties with the highest rates are rural while the counties with the lowest rates tend to be suburban.

As the visualizations portray, South Carolina’s incarceration rate by county is very diverse. While the total prison population ranges from 377.3 to 1,269.9 per 100,000 people, the total population in jail ranges from 167.3 to 621.4 for every 100,000 people. Cherokee county in northern South Carolina had the highest prison incarceration rate in 2016 at 1,269.9 prisoners for every 100,000 people. Compared to the national level of prison incarceration of around 420 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2012, Cherokee’s statistics are alarming. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 57,300 people living in Cherokee county in 2019, 16 percent of which are in poverty (Census, 2019). The national poverty rate in 2019 was 10.5 percent, putting Cherokee far below the poverty line. In fact, the median household income in the United States was $68,703 in 2019, while Cherokee’s median income was almost half of the national income at $36,883. Additionally, only 80.3 percent of those over the age of 25 in Cherokee have graduated from high school, while only 14.2 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Furthermore, Allendale county in southwest South Carolina had the highest population in jail in 2016 at 621.4 incarcerated for every 100,000 people. Again, using the most recent data in 2012 from the Prison Policy Initiative, the total population in local jails per 100,000 people was less than 250 in the United States (Wagner, 2014). Unlike Cherokee, Allendale county is much smaller with a population of 8,688 people in 2019 (Census, 2019). However, the county is still far below the poverty level at 30.2 percent of people in poverty and a median household income of $27,185 in 2019. About 80 percent of residents have graduated high school and 9.2 percent have obtained a bachelor’s degree. The data from the Vera Institute of Justice provided statistics that were comparable to the national level, concluding that the total population of jailed and imprisoned people in South Carolina is above average in the United States.