Abstract

Incarceration rates in the United States have been on steady increase since the 1980s. While the U.S. holds about 4% of the world’s population, it holds about 22% of the world’s incarcerated population. Analyzing the races of these incarcerated populations by state has shown that minority individuals are incarcerated at much higher rates than White individuals. Some may argue that race is a determining factor of whether or not an individual has negative interactions with police, is arrested, and convicted. In this study, regression analysis was used to analyse multiple possible predictor variables of the total incarcerated population in the U.S. to see which, if any are significant predictors.