The American prison population, in one chart
John Moore/Getty Images


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:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
While the numbers in each slice of this pie chart represent a snapshot cross section of our correctional system, the enormous churn in and out of our confinement facilities underscores how naive it is to conceive of prisons as separate from the rest of our society. In addition to the 688,000 people released from prisons each year, almost 12 million people cycle through local jails each year. [The Prison Policy Initiative]
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.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.
-
Book reviews: 'America, América: A New History of the New World' and 'Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson'
Feature A historian tells a new story of the Americas and the forgotten story of a pioneering preacher
-
Another messaging app used by the White House is in hot water
The Explainer TeleMessage was seen being used by former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz
-
AI hallucinations are getting worse
In the Spotlight And no one knows why it is happening
-
The Supreme Court case that could forge a new path to sue the FBI
The Explainer The case arose after the FBI admitted to raiding the wrong house in 2017
-
ABC News to pay $15M in Trump defamation suit
Speed Read The lawsuit stemmed from George Stephanopoulos' on-air assertion that Trump was found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll
-
Judge blocks Louisiana 10 Commandments law
Speed Read U.S. District Judge John deGravelles ruled that a law ordering schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms was unconstitutional
-
Swearing in the UK: a colourful history
In The Spotlight Thanet council's bad language ban is the latest chapter in a saga of obscenity
-
ATF finalizes rule to close 'gun show loophole'
Speed Read Biden moves to expand background checks for gun buyers
-
Hong Kong passes tough new security law
Speed Read It will allow the government to further suppress all forms of dissent
-
France enshrines abortion rights in constitution
speed read It became the first country to make abortion a constitutional right
-
Texas executes man despite contested evidence
Speed Read Texas rejected calls for a rehearing of Ivan Cantu's case amid recanted testimony and allegations of suppressed exculpatory evidence