 News stories have been focusing on increasing crime rates in Chicago. But prison
admission rates in recent years have been the highest in other, often more rural
regions in Illinois, according to analysis of data from the National Corrections
Reporting Program by the New York Times and Fordham Law Professor John Pfaff.
The five counties with the highest prison admission rates in Illinois in 2013
were all in Central and Southern Illinois:
- Hardin County: 52.9 persons admitted to prison per 10,000 residents
- Macon County: 51.9 persons admitted to prison per 10,000 residents
- Marion County: 48.6 persons admitted to prison per 10,000 residents
- Union County: 46.1 persons admitted to prison per 10,000 residents
- Montgomery County: 40.4 persons admitted to prison per 10,000 residents
Total prison admissions in these counties are much smaller than in other
parts of the state. For example the smallest of these five counties, Hardin,
also the smallest county by population in Illinois, sent 20 people to Illinois
prisons in 2013. Macon County (which includes Decatur, Ill.) is the 19th largest
country by population and sent 455.
By comparison, Cook County, on the other hand, sent 12,351 people to Illinois
prisons in 2013, but its prison admission rate was much lower than the top five
counties’, at 27.4 per 10,000 residents, according to the Illinois Criminal
Justice Information Authority’s felony sentencing data set.
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 Prison admission rates generally give a better picture than raw
admissions figures of which communities may be struggling the most
with crime and the social and fiscal costs of incarceration.
According to the New York Times article:
A bipartisan campaign to reduce mass incarceration has led to
enormous declines in new inmates from big cities, cutting America’s
prison population for the first time since the 1970s. From 2006 to
2014, annual prison admissions dropped 36 percent in Indianapolis;
37 percent in Brooklyn; 69 percent in Los Angeles County; and 93
percent in San Francisco.
But large parts of rural and suburban America — overwhelmed by the
heroin epidemic and concerned about the safety of diverting people
from prison — have gone the opposite direction. Prison admissions in
counties with fewer than 100,000 people have risen even as crime has
fallen, according to a New York Times analysis, which offers a newly
detailed look at the geography of American incarceration.
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.
Some large cities, most notably Chicago, are struggling with crime
increases that defy simple solutions. But it’s also important to be
aware of what’s happening in smaller urban and rural communities
outside of major cities to understand important criminal justice
trends.
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