The population of people incarcerated has shifted dramatically from Downstate to Upstate, a nonprofit report found in 2022.
In 2000, around 66% of New Yorkers incarcerated in state prisons came from the five boroughs. The number decreased to about 50% in 2010 and by 2020, it was 42%.
The shift may have been influenced by changing views around incarceration, sentencing and crime rates.
The crack cocaine that led a young Juma Sampson to a 25-year prison sentence in 2000 weighed about as much as half a bar of soap.
If he had managed to peddle all 70 grams that day ― or even that week, that month ― Sampson said he likely would’ve earned no more than $3,000.
Instead, after the 23-year-old was arrested attempting to sell the drugs to an undercover cop in Rochester, he was prosecuted under two tough-on-crime initiatives: One imposed a harsher penalty for selling crack cocaine compared to its powder alternative. The other, after police found an unregistered firearm in his girlfriend’s apartment, transferred Sampson’s case to federal court, which doled out higher sentences for illegal gun charges oftentimes served out of state. Sampson said the gun was not his.
His first adult felony offense ― a nonviolent crime ― landed Sampson 25 years in a prison cell almost five hours away in Pennsylvania. He was released in early 2019.
The neighborhood on Rochester’s west side where Sampson grew up has one of the highest incarceration rates for communities around the state.
“In the inner city, we’re not taught what it takes to thrive,” Sampson, now 45, said. “We only know what it takes to survive, and that’s never going to be enough.”
People in New York prisons increasingly come from upstate, part of a decades-long reversal of incarcerated New Yorkers coming from the five boroughs of New York City, according to findings from a 2022 analysis of census data by Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit studying prison trends on a national scale.
Among the findings:
Black, Latino and lower-income communities in cities compose much of the state’s prison population that, as of the 2020 census, hovered around 42,000 people, Prison Policy Initiative found in its report.
However, while some New York City neighborhoods see higher rates of incarceration, the highest numbers of people going to prison come from communities such as Albany, Monticello, Newburgh and Rochester.
“It’s no longer something we can brush off as a New York City problem,” said Emily Widra, a senior research analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative and an author of the report. “It’s really affecting the whole state and communities in every county.”
On Wednesday, researchers released a final report looking at incarceration rates in a dozen states, including New York.
Change in NY law informed prison population shift
The Prison Policy Initiative analyzed 2020 census data after New York changed its laws on redistricting to count incarcerated people from their home locations, not the prison where they’re held.
The data scales from counties — including those with the highest incarceration rates such as Schenectady, Albany and Monroe — down to census tract levels.
By contrast, New York City’s boroughs had much lower rates of incarceration.
Certain neighborhoods had higher rates: Brownsville, in Brooklyn, had 722 people per 100,000 in prison, while East Harlem had 649 people per 100,000.
But that was far less than the city of Rochester, which averaged more than 1,050 people per 100,000 residents going to prison ― a figure more than five times the rate for New York City.
All 62 counties had people in prison, though much of the incarcerated population came from neighborhoods that have historically been under-resourced. These neighborhoods also tended to be historically Black, a legacy of mass incarceration.
The population of people incarcerated has shifted dramatically from downstate to upstate, Windra said. In 2000, around 66% of New Yorkers incarcerated in state prisons came from the five boroughs. The number decreased to about 50% in 2010 and by 2020, it was 42%.
