Incarceration Nation The US is the World’s Leading Jailer

When historians look back at the end of the 20th century they’ll write about "the era of incarceration." Prisons, like consumerism and suburban sprawl, have emerged as defining features of the American cultural landscape. Building and running prisons is one of the fastest growing industries in America, supported by a subservient judiciary eager to keep them filled.

We are suffering through a bizarre but tragic social epidemic. Since 1970 our state and federal prison population has grown nearly seven-fold from just under 200,000 to close to 1.4 million people. Add to that an additional 606,000 or so people locked up in county and city prisons, and we have approximately 2 million people in American jails. In New York State we’ve seen the number of our neighbors locked up increase from 12,500 to over 70,000 during the same time period.

In 1998 the US surpassed the former Soviet Union and won the crown as the globe’s foremost jailer with an incarceration rate of approximately 690 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. By comparison, that is almost 6 times Canada’s incarceration rate (115), over 12 times Greece’s rate (55), 19 times Japan’s rate (37) and 29 times India’s rate of 24 prisoners per 100,000 citizens.