MondeDiplomatique has a diagram in its “Atlas der Globalisierung”, ISBN 3-9806917-6-4, based on the The World Prison Population List ¹. The first page of that list says amongst other things:
The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 700 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Russia (665), the Cayman Islands (600), Belarus (555), the US Virgin Islands (550), Kazakhstan (520), Turkmenistan (490), the Bahamas (480), Belize (460), and Bermuda (445).
However, almost two thirds of countries (63%) have rates of 150 per 100,000 or below.
Reminds me of the movie Bowling For Columbine by Michael More ².
Update 2003-04-06: “U.S. Prison Population Surpasses 2 Million” ³:
The number of people in U.S. prisons and jails has surpassed 2 million for the first time, according to a Justice Department report released on Sunday. Prisons and jails held one out of every 142 U.S. residents. The prison and jail population, long the world’s largest, has almost doubled since 1990. There were 2,019,234 persons in prisons or jails at the end of June 2002, according to the report. About two-thirds of the total were in state and federal prisons, while the rest were in local jails.
Here is a little table from the BBC:
INCARCERATION RATES US: 726 people per 100,000 UK: 142 China: 118 France: 91 Japan: 58 Nigeria: 31
“There are more than 2.1 million US citizens in jail - more than in any other country, the Bureau of Justice Statistics says.” ⁴
Probably this is related to the US’ WarOnDrugs – I’d love to see some numbers on that.