This table compares crime and punishment in Texas and the U.S. by tracking crime rates and incarceration rates in both jurisdictions. Measured as the number of violent and property crimes per 100,000 population, the crime rate in Texas since the early 1980s has consistently run ten percent or more above the national average. At no time during the period 1977-2002 has the crime rate in Texas been below the national average. On the other hand, in Texas the incarceration rate--imprisoned felons per 100,000 population--dipped below the national incarceration rate from 1988-1991.

Specifically, from 1988-1991 just as the crime rate in Texas peaked and just as the last major building boom got underway in the Texas prison system, the state's incarceration rate lagged the national average by a few percentage points. Since then as the crime rate has fallen both nationally and in Texas, incarceration rates have mushroomed. Swelling by more forty percent nationally since 1992, the rate of imprisonment in state prisons alone in Texas has jumped more than one hundred percent.