County Prison Numbers Rising

There are better places to get busted for felony crimes than Fayette County, such as Travis County, or any other urban area in the state.

America’s prison population has dropped for the first time since the 1970s largely driven by the use of diversion programs in urban areas, according to a recent article in the New York Times. 

This followed on the “lock ‘em up” mentality and prison building frenzy of the 90s. A bipartisan realization of the costs  of this philosophy in financial and human terms led to a gradual change in this approach.

Meanwhile suburban and rural areas have gone in the opposite direction. 

“Just a decade ago, people in rural, suburban and urban areas were all about equally likely to go to prison. But now people in small counties are about 50 percent more likely to go to prison than people in populous counties,” according to the study’s authors.

The article includes a graphic with prison data on nearly every county in the United States.

It shows that Fayette County has a prison admission rate of 37.5 felons per 10,000 inhabitants. That represents a 49 percent increase over the last 10 years.

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