Kentucky incarcerates women at one of the highest rates in the world, data says
If Kentucky were its own country, the commonwealth would incarcerate women at a higher rate than every nation in the world except El Salvador, according to a new report from the Prison Policy Initiative.
The report, released Tuesday, says Kentucky has an incarceration rate of 238 women per 100,000 residents. The U.S. accounts for 4% of the world’s population of women, but holds one-quarter of the women who are incarcerated worldwide, according to the report.
As of the Sept. 18, Kentucky had 33,976 people in custody throughout state, federal, and county facilities, according to state data.
While El Salvador is the country with the highest incarceration rate of women — 245 per 100,000 — three states have even higher rates.
Kentucky ranks fifth on the global list, trailing behind South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and El Salvador. The commonwealth incarcerates women at a rate higher than the U.S. as a whole.
“Women’s mass incarceration is a global concern — the number of imprisoned women has grown nearly 60% since the year 2000,” said report author Emily Widra. “With this country’s war on drugs, our treatment of mental illness as a problem for police to deal with, and our criminalization of poverty, it is no wonder that the U.S. continues to drive this problem and to account for a quarter of the world’s incarcerated women.”
America had a rate of 898 people per 100,000 in state prisons, local jails and other systems of confinement, according to a July 2024 report. Another report found the United States has the second-highest rates of total incarceration, behind El Salvador.
Kentucky women see almost the same incarceration rate as women in El Salvador — a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state, the report said.
The Prison Policy Initiative is a non-profit, non-partisan group that produces research to show the broader harm of mass criminalization.
Kentucky also ranks as one of the top states in the nation of children with incarcerated parents in the U.S., with an estimated 12% of children affected, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The impact of parental incarceration has long-lasting consequences on children’s health, education and future involvement in the justice system.
Data shows children with an incarcerated parent are more likely to be removed from their home, and have higher risks of poverty, behavioral issues and trouble in school.
Nationally, nearly half of all incarcerated people are parents to minor children. But in Kentucky, 64% of women and 55% of men incarcerated are parents, according to the Kentucky Department of Corrections data from 2019.
