Monday Map: The World's Prison Population

by Matt Kelley · 2009-06-22 17:07:00 UTC
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This is nothing new to regular readers, but these numbers bear repeating:

  • There are 9.25 million people in prison in the world, and more than one-quarter of them are incarcerated in the United States.

  • One in 33 Americans is either in prison, in jail or on parole.

  • One in nine black men between 20 and 34 is in prison.

It wasn't always this way. In 1980, the U.S. incarceration rate was under 150 per 100,000. Today it is 760. Drug crimes play the biggest role in this. About 40% of state prisoners and 25% of federal prisoners were convicted of drug crimes.

More criminal justice statistics are here, and a handy chart of world incarceration rates is after the jump.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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