Americans behind bars

Posted By Davide Berretta Thursday, April 13, 2006 - 9:06 PM Share

Seven tenths of a percent of America is behind bars. That doesn’t sound like much, right? Well, that is actually more than 2 million people. And get this: prisoners in China are only .118 percent of the total population, while Brazil locks up only .183 percent of its citizens. The data comes from the International Centre for Prison Studies via the BBC’s in depth report on prison life. Here is the full chart:

	Total Prison Pop.	% of the total population	Jail occupancy level %	Women Prisoners %
USA	2,135,901	.724	107.6	8.7
China	1,548,498	.118	N/A	4.6
Russia	828,900	.581	79.5	6.4
Brazil	336,358	.183	182.7	3.3
India	322,357	.031*	140.2	3.2
Mexico	201,931	.191	125.6	5.0
South Africa	156,175	.344	164.1	2.2
England/Wales	76,678	.143	108.9	5.8
Japan	76,413	.060*	105.9	5.9

*the zero was missing when we initially posted this

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