By the Numbers

There are

108 prisons in Texas housing

140,808*inmates.

The nine-member Texas Board of Criminal Justice (TBCJ) is appointed by the governor to oversee the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which provides confinement, supervision, rehabilitation, and reintegration of the state’s convicted felons. The board members (http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/tbcj/ brd_members.html), who are appointed for staggered, six-year terms, are responsible for hiring the executive director of the department and setting rules and policies which guide the agency.

Half of the world’s prison population of about nine million is held in the US, China or Russia.

PRISON RATES IN THE US ARE THE WORLD’S HIGHEST ,

at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia the rate is 581. At 145 per 100,000, the imprisonment rate of England and Wales is at about the midpoint worldwide.

While the United States represents about 4.4% of the world’s population, it houses around 22% of the world’s prisoners. California, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania have the largest death row populations. As of December 31, 2013, 2,979 offenders were under sentence of death in the United States. There are five methods of execution in the United States: lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and firing squad.

Prisons and The Death Penalty

Texas , which is the second most populous state of the Union, has executed 558 offenders from the U.S. capital punishment resumption in 1976 (beginning in 1982 with the Brooks execution) to December 11, 2018 (the Alvin Avon Braziel Jr. execution), more than a third of the national total.

Upon Texas statehood (1845), hanging would be the method used for almost all executions until 1924. Hangings were administered by the county where the trial took place. The last hanging in the state was that of Nathan Lee, a man convicted of murder and executed in Angleton, Brazoria County on August 31, 1923.

Oklahoma now has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., unseating Louisiana from its longheld position as “the world’s prison capital.”

TEXAS HAS EXECUTED NINE WOMEN IN ITS HISTORY, the most recent being Lisa Ann Coleman on September 17, 2014.

1982, Texas became the first jurisdiction in the world to carry out an execution by lethal injection , when it put to death Charles Brooks Jr.. It was the first execution in the state since 1964. And Brooks was also the first African-American to be executed in the United States since 1967.