Incarceration Statistics

Incarceration statistics describe how many people are held in custody, who they are, and what offenses brought them there. This page summarizes federal data published by the U.S. government. The numbers here cover the federal system run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is only one part of American incarceration. Most people behind bars in the United States are held by state prisons and local jails, not the federal government. Federal figures come mainly from three sources. The Bureau of Prisons reports its own population counts. The Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes annual reports, several of them required by the First Step Act. The United States Sentencing Commission publishes offense-level detail on people in federal custody.

Federal Prison Population

The Bureau of Prisons operated 122 institutional facilities at the end of 2023. The Sentencing Commission counted 154,155 individuals in Bureau custody as of March 2025. The Bureau of Prisons updates its own total population figure weekly on its public statistics page.

Federal prisoners are a small share of the national total. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 1,254,200 people were held in state and federal prisons at the end of 2023. Counts of jail populations are reported separately and add several hundred thousand more. The federal system therefore holds roughly one in eight of all prisoners, and a smaller fraction once jails are included.

Most people in federal prison were sentenced recently. The Sentencing Commission found that 88.5 percent had been sentenced within the past ten years. Men make up 93.3 percent of the population. The average age is 42 years.

Offense Categories

Drug offenses are the largest category in federal prison. Drug trafficking accounted for 62,260 individuals in the Sentencing Commission's March 2025 snapshot, far more than any other single offense type. Firearms offenses came next at 19,707. Sexual abuse accounted for 10,180 and robbery for 8,896. Child pornography offenses accounted for 8,047. Immigration offenses accounted for 6,145. Fraud, theft, and embezzlement together accounted for 4,556.

Weapons appear in many cases that are not classified as firearms offenses. The Sentencing Commission reported that 31.8 percent of people in federal prison were serving a sentence for an offense involving a weapon, counting both direct firearms convictions and sentencing enhancements.

Trends

The First Step Act of 2018 changed how federal sentences and time credits are calculated and expanded release and rehabilitation programs. The Bureau of Justice Statistics now reports federal prison data annually under that law. The federal prison population fell about 2 percent from the end of 2022, when it stood at 158,637, to 155,972 at the end of 2023. This continued a longer decline from the peak the federal system reached in the 2010s, though year-to-year changes are small.

Rehabilitation programming is a stated goal of the law. In 2023, 12,598 people took part in the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) and 21,755 took part in the non-residential drug program. Time credits earned through approved programs feed into the Recalculation of Earned and Good Time Credits, which can move a release date forward. Work assignments through UNICOR: Federal Prison Industries also factor into how people serve their sentences. Broader policy debate on these measures is covered under Prison Reform.

See Also

• Federal Prisons
• Prison Reform
• Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP)
• Recalculation of Earned and Good Time Credits
• UNICOR: Federal Prison Industries
• Category:Federal Prisons