The Top 5 Countries with the Highest Prisoner Rates

1. The US incarcerates at a rate 4 to 7 times higher than other western nations such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany and up to 32 times higher than nations with the lowest rates such as Nepal, Nigeria, and India.
2. Almost three fifths of countries around the world (59%) have rates below 150 per 100,000.
3. More than 9.8 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, mostly as pre-trial detainees (remand prisoners) or as sentenced prisoners. Almost half of these are in the United States (2.29m), Russia (0.89m) or China (1.57m sentenced prisoners). A further 850,000 are held in 'administrative detention' in China; if these are included the overall Chinese total is over 2.4 million and the world total over 10.65 million.
4. The US has 183,400 women in prison - at least 3 times more than any other nation.
5. Some individual US states imprison up to six times as many people as do nations of comparable population.

Top 5 facts sources: World Prison Population List (eighth edition) Roy Walmsley., Research from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency: US Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective, November 2006.