Live Free or Not!: US Incarceration Rate Reaches All-Time High

Pew Center on the States reports that more than one in 100 adults in the United States are in jail or prison. This is costing state governments more than $49 billion a year on corrections, up from $11 billion 20 years before. In addition, the Federal government spends more than $5 billion.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars at the start of 2008, the United States leads the world in both the number and the percentage of residents incarcerated, leaving even far more populous China a distant second.

The ballooning prison population is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been hit particularly hard: One in nine black men age 20 to 34 is behind bars.

Men are still roughly 13 times more likely to be incarcerated, but the female population is expanding at a far brisker pace. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate also has hit the one-in-100 mark.

In addition, one in every 53 adults in their 20s is behind bars, including 1 in 30 men; the rate for those over 55 is one in 837.

While studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect is influenced by changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents, and the share of young people in the population.

In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- alternative punishments such as community supervision and mandatory drug counseling that are far less expensive may prove just as or more effective than jail time.

US: Land of the Free--Not As Much As You'd Think

The number of people in US prisons is over 2.2 million--this is more than the populations of Rhode Island and Maine put together (and less than Iowa with a 2006 population of 2.9 million). We also have more prisoners than any other country in the world.

The Justice Department reported on Wednesday that the nation's prison and jail populations increased by more than 62,000 inmates, or 2.8 percent, to about 2,245,000 inmates in the 12-month period that ended on June 30, 2006. It was the biggest jump in numbers and percentage change in six years.

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London, the United States has long had the world's largest prison population, followed by China at 1.5 million and Russia at 885,670.

Criminal justice experts have attributed the record U.S. prison population to tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crimes rates. It failed to mention the incarcerations of people for political reasons here and elsewhere.