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.

In 2025, there were around *** prisoners per one hundred thousand of the population in Turkmenistan. In contrast, there were about ** prisoners per one hundred thousand of the population in Japan that year.

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.

Prison incarceration rates are measured by the number of incarcerated individuals in prison per 100,000 population aged 18-69. This Indicator is measured for Alameda County, and the most recently available data is from 2015.

In 2024 Turkey had the highest incarceration rate among European countries, at 356 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Azerbaijan, which had an incarceration of 264. The country with the lowest incarceration rate in this year was Liechtenstein, which had 20 people in prison for every 100,000 inhabitants. Germany had one of the lowest rates of 72 when compared with other major European countries such as France and England & Wales, which had rates of 111 and 145 respectively. The Russian Federation has in previous years been the country with the highest incarceration rate in the Council of Europe's data, however, as the country was removed as a member of the council in 2022 due to their invasion of Ukraine, data for Russia is no longer available.

The statistic above provides information about prisoners convicted of homicide per 100,000 population worldwide in 2012, sorted by region. In 2012, about **** people were imprisoned for homicide for every 100,000 population in the Americas.

The average for 2017 based on 44 countries was 132 prisoners per 100,000 people. The highest value was in Russia: 418 prisoners per 100,000 people and the lowest value was in San Marino: 9 prisoners per 100,000 people. The indicator is available from 2002 to 2017. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

BackgroundIt has been hypothesized that prisons serve as amplifiers of general tuberculosis (TB) epidemics, but there is a paucity of data on this phenomenon and the potential population-level effects of prison-focused interventions. This study (1) quantifies the TB risk for prisoners as they traverse incarceration and release, (2) mathematically models the impact of prison-based interventions on TB burden in the general population, and (3) generalizes this model to a wide range of epidemiological contexts.Methods and findingsWe obtained individual-level incarceration data for all inmates (n = 42,925) and all reported TB cases (n = 5,643) in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul from 2007 through 2013. We matched individuals between prisoner and TB databases and estimated the incidence of TB from the time of incarceration and the time of prison release using Cox proportional hazards models. We identified 130 new TB cases diagnosed during incarceration and 170 among individuals released from prison. During imprisonment, TB rates increased from 111 cases per 100,000 person-years at entry to a maximum of 1,303 per 100,000 person-years at 5.2 years. At release, TB incidence was 229 per 100,000 person-years, which declined to 42 per 100,000 person-years (the average TB incidence in Brazil) after 7 years. We used these data to populate a compartmental model of TB transmission and incarceration to evaluate the effects of various prison-based interventions on the incidence of TB among prisoners and the general population. Annual mass TB screening within Brazilian prisons would reduce TB incidence in prisons by 47.4% (95% Bayesian credible interval [BCI], 44.4%–52.5%) and in the general population by 19.4% (95% BCI 17.9%–24.2%). A generalized model demonstrates that prison-based interventions would have maximum effectiveness in reducing community incidence in populations with a high concentration of TB in prisons and greater degrees of mixing between ex-prisoners and community members. Study limitations include our focus on a single Brazilian state and our retrospective use of administrative databases.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the prison environment, more so than the prison population itself, drives TB incidence, and targeted interventions within prisons could have a substantial effect on the broader TB epidemic.

These data assess the effects of the risk of local jail incarceration and of police aggressiveness in patrol style on rates of violent offending. The collection includes arrest rates for public order offenses, size of county jail populations, and numbers of new prison admissions as they relate to arrest rates for index (serious) crimes. Data were collected from seven sources for each city. CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, 1980 [UNITED STATES]: SUMMARY TAPE FILE 1A (ICPSR 7941), provided county-level data on number of persons by race, age, and age by race, number of persons in households, and types of households within each county. CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, 1980 [UNITED STATES]: SUMMARY TAPE FILE 3A (ICPSR 8071), measured at the city level, provided data on total population, race, age, marital status by sex, persons in household, number of households, housing, children, and families above and below the poverty level by race, employment by race, and income by race within each city. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 1980 data provided variables on total offenses and offense rates per 100,000 persons for homicides, rapes, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle offenses, and arson. Data from the FBI for 1980-1982, averaged per 100,000, provided variables for the above offenses by sex, age, and race, and the Uniform Crime Report arrest rates for index crimes within each city. The NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS for 1978 and 1983 (ICPSR 7737 and ICPSR 8203), aggregated to the county level, provided variables on jail capacity, number of inmates being held by sex, race, and status of inmate's case (awaiting trial, awaiting sentence, serving sentence, and technical violations), average daily jail populations, number of staff by full-time and part-time, number of volunteers, and number of correctional officers. The JUVENILE DETENTION AND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY CENSUS for 1979 and 1982-1983 (ICPSR 7846 and 8205), aggregated to the county level, provided data on the number of individuals being held by type of crime and sex, as well as age of juvenile offenders by sex, average daily prison population, and payroll and other expenditures for the institutions.

BackgroundPsychiatric bed numbers (general, forensic, and residential) and prison populations are considered indicators of institutionalization. The present study aimed to assess trends in institutional mental health care and incarceration, measured through psychiatric bed availability and prison population rates, across the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) from 1990 to 2022.MethodsWe obtained retrospective data on psychiatric bed numbers and prison populations from 22 countries between 1990 and 2022. Prevalence per 100,000 population, the median prevalence and percentage changes between the first and last data points were calculated.FindingsPrimary data were retrieved from 10 out of 22 countries. Data from secondary sources were used for the remaining 12 countries. In Libya and Somalia, primary data were only available for the prison populations. The median prevalence of psychiatric beds decreased from 8.8 to 5.8 per 100,000 population (-35%) between 1990 and 2022. An increase from 0.2 to 0.4 in forensic psychiatric beds was observed. The prevalence of beds in residential facilities was available from seven countries, two of which did not have beds between 1990 and 2022. The median rates increased from 0.1 to 0.2 between 1990 and 2022. The median prison population also increased from 86.9 to 108.0 per 100,000 people (+24%).InterpretationEMR countries showed, on average, a reduction in the prevalence of psychiatric beds from low numbers, while more people were imprisoned over the past three decades. The availability of forensic psychiatric beds and residential facilities has remained limited. These findings suggest a gradual shift in the EMR from institutional psychiatric care toward increased reliance on incarceration, paralleling trends observed in other global regions like Latin America and Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

In 2021, the prison population rate in Thailand was approximately ****** prisoners per 100,000 population. This was a decrease compared to the rate of prison population in the previous year, which amounted to nearly *** prisoners per 100,000 population.

Adult correctional services, custodial and community supervision, average counts of adults in provincial and territorial programs, five years of data.

Due to a hardening of penal sensibilities and more stringent sentencing practices (mainly as a result of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act), a growing number of prisoners are serving extremely long life sentences from an early age. The UK has more life-sentenced prisoners per 100,000 of population than any other country in Europe (including Russia), and a higher proportion of life sentenced prisoners within its total sentenced prison population (10%) than any other European country or the US. The average minimum sentence length for mandatory life sentences has risen significantly in recent years. By the end of December 2018, there were 3,624 prisoners serving life sentences with tariffs of 10-20 years, and 1,862 with tariffs of more than twenty years (Ministry of Justice, 2019).

These prisoners have to endure and adapt to periods inside prison that are often longer than their lives as free citizens, while maturing into adulthood in an environment that does not allow, or is hardly conducive to, normal adult experiences. Following on from an earlier study of long-term imprisonment (grant: ES/J007935/1), undertaken from 2011-2014, this research constituted an unprecedented opportunity to enhance our understanding of the dynamics and effects of long-term confinement. Its primary aims were, first, to meet Kazemian and Travis's (2015) call for longitudinal insight into the experience, dynamics and effects of long-term confinement, including the ways in which the lives, priorities and relationships of people serving life sentences change over time; second, to focus more closely on some of the key themes and findings from our original study, in particular, the ways in which individuals engage reflexively with their sentence, their index offence and their sense of self; and, third, to explore the concept of the 'depth of imprisonment' - put simply, the relationship and polarity between the prison and the outside world - that is of particular relevance for this group of prisoners.

Interviews were undertaken, and surveys re-administered, with as many of our original sample as possible. Overall, this amounted to 120 of 146 initial participants, 100 in prison (out of 110 still in custody when fieldwork began) and 20 (out of 29) who had been released into the community on life licence.

The research offers insight into the nature and impact of long-term imprisonment, at a time when practitioners, pressure groups and policymakers are particularly interested in the custodial and post-custodial experiences of this expanding group. It contributes significantly to a sparse and outdated research literature on the experiences of life-sentenced prisoners, serving extremely long sentences. In doing so, it addresses fundamental questions about identity, coping and humanity under intense duress, and about the lived outcomes of the most extreme form of state punishment.

Due to a hardening of penal sensibilities and more stringent sentencing practices (mainly as a result of the 2003 Criminal Justice Act), a growing number of prisoners are serving extremely long sentences from an early age. The UK has more life-sentenced prisoners per 100,000 of population than any other country in Europe (including Russia), and a higher proportion of life sentenced prisoners within its total sentenced prison population (10%) than any other European country or the US. The average minimum sentence length for mandatory life sentences has risen significantly in recent years. By the end of December 2018, there were 3,624 prisoners serving life sentences with tariffs of 10-20 years, and 1,862 with tariffs of more than twenty years (Ministry of Justice, 2019).

These prisoners have to endure and adapt to periods inside prison that are often longer than their lives as free citizens, while maturing into adulthood in an environment that does not allow, or is hardly conducive to, normal adult experiences. Following on from an earlier study of long-term imprisonment (grant: ES/J007935/1), undertaken from 2011-2014, this research constituted an unprecedented opportunity to very significantly enhance our understanding of the dynamics and effects of long-term confinement. Its primary aims were, first, to meet Kazemian and Travis's (2015) call for longitudinal insight into the experience, dynamics and effects of long-term confinement, including the ways in which the lives, priorities and relationships of people serving life sentences change over time; second, to focus more closely on some of the key themes and findings from our original study, in particular, the ways in which individuals engage reflexively with their sentence, their index offence and their sense of self; and, third, to explore the concept of the 'depth of imprisonment' - put simply, the relationship and polarity between the prison and the outside world - that is of particular relevance for this group of prisoners.

Interviews were undertaken, and surveys re-administered, with as many of our original sample as possible. Overall, this amounted to 120 of 146 initial participants, 100 in prison (out of 110 still in custody when fieldwork began) and 20 (out of 29) who had been released into the community on life licence.

The research offers insight into the nature and impact of long-term imprisonment, at a time when practitioners, pressure groups and policymakers are particularly interested in the custodial and post-custodial experiences of this expanding group. It contributes significantly to a sparse and outdated research literature on the experiences of life-sentenced prisoners, serving extremely long sentences. In doing so, it addresses fundamental questions about identity, coping and humanity under intense duress, and about the lived outcomes of the most extreme form of state punishment.

The United States had the highest rate of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants of the G7 countries between 2010 and 2022. In 2022, there were almost *** prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in the country. By comparison, the Canada, who had the second-highest prisoner rate, had less than ****** prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. Japan had the lowest rate at **.

Context

Criminologists are interested in the effect of punishment regimes on crime rates. This has been studied using aggregate data on 47 states of the USA for 1960. The data set contains the following columns:

Task:

Predict crime rate

Content

Variable - Description M - percentage of males aged 14–24 in total state population So - indicator variable for a southern state Ed - mean years of schooling of the population aged 25 years or over Po1 - per capita expenditure on police protection in 1960 Po2 - per capita expenditure on police protection in 1959 LF - labour force participation rate of civilian urban males in the age group 14-24 M.F - number of males per 100 females Pop - state population in 1960 in hundred thousand NW - percentage of nonwhites in the population U1 - unemployment rate of urban males 14–24 U2 - unemployment rate of urban males 35–39 wealth - median value of transferable assets or family income Ineq - income inequality: percentage of families earning below half the median income Prob - probability of imprisonment: ratio of number of commitments to nunumber of offenses Time - average time in months served by offenders in state prisons before their first release Crime - crime rate: number of offenses per 100,000 population in 1960

Source

Ehrlich, I. (1973) Participation in illegitimate activities: a theoretical and empirical investigation. Journal of Political Economy 81, 521–565. Vandaele, W. (1978) Participation in illegitimate activities: Ehrlich revisited. In Deterrence and Incapacitation, eds A. Blumstein, J. Cohen and D. Nagin, National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, pp. 270–335. Venables, W., and Ripley, B. (1998). Modern Applied Statistics with S-Plus, Second Edition. Springer-Verlag.

The data given here is rounded data taken from Vandaele (1978). The column scales differ somewhat from Venables and Ripley (1998). The data was originally collected by Ehrlich from the Uniform Crime Report of the FBI and other US government sources.

Analysis

Only one of Po1 and Po2, and only one of U1 and U2, remain in the final regression, because of high collinearity. Data gives association not causal relationships. For example, does crime really increase with police expenditure? Crime is negatively associated with the probprobability of imprisonment. Crime is slightly better modeled on a log scale.

Cuba is one of the Caribbean nations with the highest prison population rate as of August 2024. According to the latest data available at that time, there were *** prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants on this island, followed by the Bahamas, with *** prisoners per 100,000 population. In some Caribbean countries, over ** percent of the prison population were foreign nationals.

The statistic above provides information about the total prison population per 100,000 population worldwide in 2012, sorted by region. In 2012, about **** people were imprisoned for every 100,000 population in Asia.

The objective of this survey is to collect baseline information on police personnel and expenditures to enable detection of historical trends as well as permit comparisons at the provincial/territorial and municipal levels. This survey collects data from police services across Canada under the authority of the Statistics Act, Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter S-19. All municipal, provincial and federal police services in Canada are surveyed. Respondents provide the number of police officers employed by the service (full-time equivalents), categorized by rank (senior officers, non-commissioned officers, and constables) and by sex. Information on hirings, departures, and eligibility to retire is provided, as are data on the years of service, age, level of education at time of hire, and Aboriginal and visible minority status of police officers, and the official and non-official languages they speak. Police services also report their number of civilian employees, categorized by job type and by sex. Other questions collect data on operating expenditures broken down into salaries/wages, benefits, and other operating expenditures. Data from this survey provide information on total expenditures on policing and the number of officers in each province and in Canada as a whole, as well as the number of officers per 100,000 population. The data are intended for police services, for officials with responsibility for police budgets, for policy-makers with policing-related responsibilities, and for members of the general public.

Association of various factors with TB disease (N = 13,763; n = 214 (1.555%): Uni- and multi-variable logistic regression results; using robust variance estimates adjusted for clustering by PrisonID.

Characteristics of the study population and TB cases.