Incarceration Rates by Country 2022

If you’ve been sentenced to jail, you’re now in incarceration. In some form or another, every nation in the world has a prison system, although the specifics of that structure and the number of inmates housed there vary widely.

More than 2 million individuals are jailed in the United States, making it the global leader in this statistic (per data released in October 2021 by World Prison Brief).

This is the highest imprisonment rate in the world, with 629 individuals per 100,000 people, which is 25 percent of the world’s total jail population. Louisiana and Oklahoma have the highest jail populations in the United States.

Since 1972, the jail population in the United States has more than doubled, from 200,000 to more than a million people. However, the present rate is the lowest in the last 20 years.

Ranking of the 10 countries having the most inmates

1. United States — 2,068,800
2. China — 1,690,000
3. Brazil — 811,707
4. India — 478,600
5. Russia — 471,490
6. Thailand — 309,282
7. Turkey — 291,198
8. Indonesia — 266,259
9. Mexico — 220,866
10. Iran — 189,000

The 10 most incarcerating Countries in the World

1. United States — 629
2. Rwanda — 580
3. Turkmenistan — 576
4. El Salvador — 564
5. Cuba — 510
6. Palau — 478
7. British Virgin Islands (U.K. territory) — 477
8. Thailand — 445
9. Panama — 423
10. Saint Kitts and Nevis — 423

High imprisonment rates provide several difficulties.

In the United States, mass imprisonment is a civil rights concern.

In nations where marijuana is outlawed, groups like the Prison Policy Initiative claim that imprisonment harms disadvantaged populations by dehumanizing the poor and minorities and imprisoning them for minor infractions like marijuana possession.

A high imprisonment rate does not truly improve public safety, as shown by data on crime rates by nation, murder rates, rape statistics, and firearm violence per country. Capital punishment, sometimes known as the death penalty, does not fall within this category.

Overcrowding in prisons, which raises health hazards and harms inmates’ psychological well-being, is another problem that may arise due to mass imprisonment.

Many nations across the globe have prison populations that exceed the capacity of their jails. The prison population in Kenya now stands at 284 percent.

In addition, the enormous number of jails and inmates strains state funds to the limit.

Many factors contribute to the expense of running a prison: ensuring the safety of convicts, providing them with a wide range of activities to keep them occupied (including education), maintaining the facility’s infrastructure, and providing healthcare for the inmates.

Also See: Hardest Countries To Immigrate To 2022

Expenditures for state prisons may range widely, reaching as much as $69,355 per year per prisoner (the average cost of an inmate in New York).