A panel of federal judges Tuesday ordered state officials to lower California's prison population by around 40,500. While no mass prisoner releases are imminent, the order could eventually impact some counties a lot more than others. The Sacramento region, for instance, sends a high proportion of its residents to prison; if the judges' order was applied equally, 3,000 would-be prisoners would either be on the region's streets, under house arrest or sitting in already-crowded jails. (Those offenders, however, would likely be guilty of lower-level felonies.)
This map breaks down the proportion of each county's residents that are currently in California prisons - inmates usually return to their home county when released. Click a county for more details ...
View Californians in Prison, By County in a larger map
Source: Prisoner data from California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; Population data from the California Department of Finance.
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