As of February 2025, El Salvador had the highest prisoner rate worldwide, with over 1,600 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population. Cuba, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and the United States, rounded out the top five countries with the highest rate of incarceration. Homicides in El Salvador Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 20 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. A high number of the countries with the highest homicide rate are located in Latin America. Prisoners in the United StatesThe United States is home to the largest number of prisoners worldwide. More than 1.8 million people were incarcerated in the U.S. at the beginning of 2025. In China, the estimated prison population totaled 1.69 million people that year. Other nations had far fewer prisoners. The largest share of the U.S. prisoners in federal correctional facilities were of African-American origin. As of 2020, there were 345,500 black, non-Hispanic prisoners, compared to 327,300 white, non-Hispanic inmates. The U.S. states with the largest number of prisoners in 2022 were Texas, California, and Florida. Over 160,000 prisoners in state facilities were sentenced for rape or sexual assault, which was the most common cause of imprisonment. The second most common was murder, followed by aggravated or simple assault.

At the beginning of 2025, the United States had the highest number of incarcerated individuals worldwide, with around 1.8 million people in prison. China followed with around 100,000 fewer prisoners. Brazil followed in third. The incarceration problem in the U.S. The United States has an incredibly high number of incarcerated individuals. Therefore, the incarceration problem has become a widely contested issue, because it impacts disadvantaged people and minorities the most. Additionally, the prison system has become capitalized by outside corporations that fund prisons, but there is still a high cost to taxpayers. Furthermore, there has been an increase in the amount of private prisons that have been created. For-profit prison companies have come under scrutiny because of their lack of satisfactory staff and widespread lobbying. Violent offenses are the most common type of offense among prisoners in the U.S. Incarceration rates worldwide El Salvador had the highest rate of incarceration worldwide, at 1,659 prisoners per 100,000 residents as of February 2025. Cuba followed in second with 794 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. The incarceration rate is a better measure to use when comparing countries than the total prison populations, which will naturally have the most populous countries topping the list.

Mexico had nearly 236,773 prisoners as of January 2024, around 3,500 prisoners more than the prior year. The volume of imprisoned people in the country followed an increasing trend from 2018 to 2024. Prison population That figure places Mexico among the countries with the largest number of prisoners in the world. However, when taking into account incarceration rates, that is, the number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, Mexico falls out of the ranking and is, actually, one of the Latin American and Caribbean countries with the lowest rates, exceeded by far by countries like El Salvador and Cuba, which register four times the prison population rate of Mexico.People aged 30 to 39 years made up for the largest share of prisoners in Mexico. However, the share of people deprived of liberty whose age ranged from 18 to 29 years was significantly largest in the case of women, with 32.1 percent of female prisoners pertaining to such age group, while in the case of men it fell to 25.1 percent. Regarding female inmates, approximately a tenth have been pregnant while being in jail. Furthermore, theft was the most commonly committed crime by women in Mexican states' penitentiary centers in 2022, followed by kidnapping and homicide. Preventive prison The main reason for the rapid growth of prison population in Mexico in recent years is the 2019 reform of the article 19 of the Constitution, which has led to the spread of pretrial detention. Pretrial detention is a measure that leads to the imprisonment of people automatically while they are still being investigated, without having been sentenced, and can last up to two years. The reform allowed for automatic preventive imprisonment for a wider range of crimes than before, with the new list including fuel theft (huachicoleo) and burglary, among others. This affects particularly vulnerable people from poor backgrounds, with low education and who commit petty crimes. As of December 2020, 78.6 percent of pre-trial detainees for robbery in Mexico had not been sentenced, which means that less than a fourth of people in jail for robbery had been found guilty in court. The country had an even higher share of unsentenced prisoners for drug trafficking, with 87.8 percent of people being in preventive detention without charge.. One of the reasons behind the high share of prisoners awaiting sentence is the large number of simultaneous cases that public defenders have to attend to. Depending on the Mexican state in which someone is being prosecuted, a public defender can have up to an average of 336.9 simultaneous cases to defend.

In 2025, Haiti had a 302 percent level of occupancy in their prison system, being the country with the highest occupancy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean. It was followed by Guatemala, with almost a 300 percent occupancy rate. Among the top 11 countries with the most overcrowded national prison system, El Salvador had the lowest rate, at 162.8 percent. Regarding prison population, El Salvador and Cuba were the Latin American and Caribbean countries that had the largest rates, both with over 500 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.

Most violence in El Salvador has been attributed to gangs. After being one of the most violent societies worldwide, in 2023, the country’s homicide rate reached a low 2.4 per 100,000 population. The decline is the outcome of a security plan by government that has attacked gangs directly under a state of exception. Nearly 80,000 gang members have been incarcerated. For the past 30 years or so, Salvadoran authorities and politicians alike, have participated in negotiations with gangs to reduce violence and gain electoral support in exchange for benefits for their members. This research studies violence as the outcome from the activities by gangs, politicians and governments, their interactions, and communities intervening in the realization of these interactions. As most data required for explaining these processes is either inexistent or difficult to access, a hierarchical Bayesian model was implemented for the spatio-temporal evolution of homicide with random effects that account for omitted variables at the level of local areas and time periods. The results support the view that unobserved covariates related to the district patterns of homicide have evolved over time. Two cycles appear in the evolution of homicide over the period under study, one from 2003 through to 2012, and another starting in 2013 and still going on at the time of writing. This finding reinforces the view that timing of government-gang negotiations drove the behavior of homicide rates in El Salvador during 2002–2021 together with the growth and expansion of gangs as seen from clustering of high-risk districts over time. The incarceration of scores of members and collaborators has both incapacitated gangs as key producers of violence, and deterred other forms of crimes. As a next step, the government should build collective efficacy, in particular among disadvantaged communities, to restrain the formation of gang-like groups in the time to come.

The Latin American and Caribbean nation with the highest prison population rate in 2025 was El Salvador, with 1,659 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, the only country to achieve four digits, followed by Cuba with 794 prisoners. Guatemala and Haiti had the lowest prison population rates, 123 and 63 per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively.

Most violence in El Salvador has been attributed to gangs. After being one of the most violent societies worldwide, in 2023, the country’s homicide rate reached a low 2.4 per 100,000 population. The decline is the outcome of a security plan by government that has attacked gangs directly under a state of exception. Nearly 80,000 gang members have been incarcerated. For the past 30 years or so, Salvadoran authorities and politicians alike, have participated in negotiations with gangs to reduce violence and gain electoral support in exchange for benefits for their members. This research studies violence as the outcome from the activities by gangs, politicians and governments, their interactions, and communities intervening in the realization of these interactions. As most data required for explaining these processes is either inexistent or difficult to access, a hierarchical Bayesian model was implemented for the spatio-temporal evolution of homicide with random effects that account for omitted variables at the level of local areas and time periods. The results support the view that unobserved covariates related to the district patterns of homicide have evolved over time. Two cycles appear in the evolution of homicide over the period under study, one from 2003 through to 2012, and another starting in 2013 and still going on at the time of writing. This finding reinforces the view that timing of government-gang negotiations drove the behavior of homicide rates in El Salvador during 2002–2021 together with the growth and expansion of gangs as seen from clustering of high-risk districts over time. The incarceration of scores of members and collaborators has both incapacitated gangs as key producers of violence, and deterred other forms of crimes. As a next step, the government should build collective efficacy, in particular among disadvantaged communities, to restrain the formation of gang-like groups in the time to come.

The Central American nation with the highest prison occupancy rate, as of April 2025, was Guatemala, when the level stood at almost 300 percent of its official capacity. Nicaragua followed with 177.6 percent of occupancy level. The lowest prison occupancy rate was found in Belize, which, with 67 percent, was the only country whose prison system was not overcrowded. That year, El Salvador had the highest prison population rate in Central America.