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Incarceration Rate facts

While investigating facts about Incarceration Rates By Race and Incarceration Rates By Country, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Even if all non-violent drug offenders were released from federal and state prisons the United States would still have the highest incarceration rate in the world

how did the war on drugs affect the rate of incarceration?

As of 2015, Iceland is the most peaceful nation in the world. Additionally, the literacy rate is 99% among all Icelanders and the incarceration rate is 47 prisoners per 100,000 people.

What country has the highest incarceration rate?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what state has the highest incarceration rate. Here are 33 of the best facts about Incarceration Rates and Incarceration Rates By Race 2018 I managed to collect.

what incarceration rates?

  1. If Louisiana was its own country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

  2. Liechtenstein has an incarceration rate of 19 per 100,000. With a population of just 37,000 this means there are approximately 7 people in prison.

  3. At its peak in 2008 the U.S. incarcerated 1 in 100 adults, exceeding the average incarceration rate in the Soviet Union during the Gulag system.

  4. Louisiana is the prison capital of the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran's, 13 times China's, 20 times Germany's and is the only US state with an annual average murder rate over twice the national average.

  5. US incarceration rates exceeds the average incarceration levels in the Soviet Union during the existence of the infamous Stalin's Gulag system

  6. Australia has the highest rate of private incarceration per capita of any country in the world.

  7. U.S. has the highest incarceration rate second only to Seychelles (an African city-state).

  8. The country with the highest incarceration rate in the world is the island nation of Seychelles, which overtook the US in 2012 with 799 prisoners per 100,000 people.

  9. Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate in the world

  10. The going rate of compensation for wrongful incarceration in California is a mere $100 per day spent behind bars.

incarceration rate facts
What race has the highest incarceration rate?

Incarceration Rate data charts

For your convenience take a look at Incarceration Rate figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

incarceration rate fact data chart about World Incarceration Rates, if each state were its own countr
World Incarceration Rates, if each state were its own country

incarceration rate fact data chart about The correlation between high incarceration rates and the per
The correlation between high incarceration rates and the percentage of adults who believe in Hell

Why incarceration rates?

You can easily fact check why are aboriginal incarceration rates so high by examining the linked well-known sources.

Seychelles, a country of 90,000, has the highest incarceration rate (868/100,000) in the world, beating out the US.

Canadian Indigenous incarceration rates are 10 times higher than the non-Indigenous population. Higher than South Africa at the height of apartheid. In Saskatchewan, if you’re Indigenous, you’re 33 times more likely to be incarcerated than than the non-Indigenous. - source

Louisiana, has the highest prison incarceration rate in the world. - source

At the time Nixon declared war on drugs the US incarceration rate was less than 0.2% of the population. Today it is over 0.8%. One in five black Americans will spend time behind bars due to drug laws

In 2008 the US incarceration rate exceeded the average incarceration levels in the Soviet Union during the existence of the Gulag system - source

When the incarceration rate is adjusted for the violent crime rate?

A series of law enforcement and sentencing policy changes of the “tough on crime” era resulted in dramatic growth in mass incarceration. Since the official beginning of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses in the U.S. skyrocketed from 40,900 in 1980 to 452,964 in 2017. Today, there are more people behind bars for a drug offense than the number of people who were in prison or jail for any crime in 1980. The number of people sentenced to prison for property and violent crimes has also increased even during periods when crime rates have declined.

How to reduce incarceration rates?

The US only has the second highest incarceration rate in the world. The highest belongs to the Seychelles, with 868 per 100,000 people to the US' 707.

The United States is the world’s leader in mass incarceration.

There are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails - a 500% increase over the last 40 years. Changes in law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. The results are overcrowding in prisons and fiscal burdens on states, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety.

The United States has the highest prison population of any country in the world with an incarceration rate of 1/99 American citizens being jailed.

Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate in the world. (1,079 per 100,00 people in Oklahoma are in prison.)

Incarceration rate infographics

Beautiful visual representation of Incarceration Rate numbers and stats to get perspecive of the whole story.

incarceration rate fact infographic about World Incarceration Rates, if each state were its own countr

World Incarceration Rates, if each state were its own country [Updated based on comments]


incarceration rate fact infographic about U.S. incarceration rate compare to that of other founding NA

U.S. incarceration rate compare to that of other founding NATO members(source: prisonpoilcy.org)


When did incarceration rates rise?

The United States has less than 5% of the world's population and 24% of the world's prison population. It has the highest incarceration rate in the world, at 1 in 110 of adults, and 1 in 35 adults under correctional supervision.

A Harvard study estimated that legalizing recreational drugs would save the US government over $41 billion each year in incarceration costs, and that taxing recreational drugs at rates similar to those of alcohol or tobacco would generate additional revenue of almost $48 billion annually.

Based on a US human rights committee's own data that North Korea quite possibly has a lower incarceration rate than the US. (US:693/100k, North Korea:600-800/100k)

Even if everyone behind bars in the U.S.A. for drug offenses were freed, the incarceration rate would be 573 per 100,000, which would still put them third highest in the world.

How the war on drugs affected incarceration rates?

In October 2013, the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. Imprisonment of America's 2.3 million prisoners, consumes $60.3 billion in budget expenditures.

The American prison system is so massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. Also, the rate of incarceration has increased by 700% over the last four decades.

The adult incarceration rate (prisoners per 100,000) in Louisiana is ~4X the rate in Maine.

United States incarceration rate compared to other countries

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