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Chart of the Day: U.S. Jails More People than any Other Country - 60% Non-White (not covered in Presidential debate)

From [HERE] The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate, with Department of Justice data showing more than 2.2 million people are behind bars, equal to a city the size of Houston.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows that, with a rate of 730 people per 100,000, the U.S. jails a higher proportion of its citizens than any other country, according to data from the International Centre for Prison Studies, an independent research center associated with England’s University of Essex.

More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color. [MORE] Recently, billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson said the American drug policy is a “war on black people” and results in the jailing of too many African Americans. [MORE

The table below shows that, at a rate of 730 people per 100,000, the United States jails more of its citizens than any other country in the world, according to data from the International Centre for Prison Studies, an independent research center associated with the University of Essex in England. [MORE

Country Per 100,000 citizens Percent female Percent children Number of prisons Occupancy level
U.S. 730 8.7% 0.4% 4575 106%
St. Kitts and Nevis 649 0.9% 2.3% 2 210%
Seychelles 641 5.1% 1.3% 1 81%
Virgin Islands (U.S.) 539 2.7% 0.2% 3 61%
Rwanda 527 15% 0.4% 14 103%
Georgia 514 5.1% 0.7% 17 101%
Cuba 510 N/A N/A N/A N/A
Russia 502 8.2% 0.9% 1029 91%
Anguilla (U.K.) 480 2.8% 0.0% 2 160%
Virgin Islands (U.K.) 460 5.0% 3.0% 1 98%
Belarus 438 6.8% 0.7% 34 97%
El Salvador 425 10% 0.0% 27 254%
Bermuda (U.K.) 417 5.4% 6.1% 4 64%
Azerbaijan 407 1.9% 0.1% 53 133%
Belize 407 2.6% 4.6% 1 67%
Grenada 402 1.7% 2.1% 1 195%
St. Vincent and the Grenadines 389 3.5% 17.2% 2 212%
Antigua and Barbuda 387 4% 3.3% 1 235%
Cayman Islands (U.K.) 385 5.2% 1% 3 108%
Barbados 377 3.5% 1.8% 1 83%
Bahamas 371 1.8% N/A 1 112%
St. Maarten (Netherlands) 369 7.4% 1.1% 1 104%
Panama 366 7.2% 2.3% 22 178%
Dominica 356 2.1% 2.9% 1 81%
Palau 348 5.5% 5.5% 1 N/A

 

“The model is, if you build it they will come,” said Daniel D’Amico, a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans. “Because we have all these prisons and all of these other resources funneled into our criminal justice system, we have this ability to enforce things that would otherwise be unenforceable.”

“That includes the drug war, but it’s also including everything from the Martha Stewart types to immigration policies,” D’Amico said. “The scope of things that are now criminal in corporate law is exponentially higher than it was merely twenty years ago.”

The U.S. also leads the world in the number of prisons in operation at 4,575, more than four times the number of second- place Russia at 1,029. U.S. states spent $52 billion to construct and operate those prisons in 2011, more than quadruple the $12 billion spent in 1987, according to data from the Pew Center on the States.