The American prison population, in one chart

As is well known, America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with 743 out of 100,000 people imprisoned. But given how prisoners are distributed across thousands of federal, state, and local institutions, it's been hard to get a good sense of how exactly the prison population breaks down.

Until now. The Prison Policy Initiative put together this amazing pie chart that lets you take in all 2.4 million prisoners at a glance.

Here's a small disclaimer:

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I highly recommend reading through the full report (which isn't too long), or clicking around to some of their other work. Very good, urgently necessary stuff.