I was going to post something else on deprivation, and I will do again soon, but today it's time for something completely different. For one reason or another I've been thinking about prison populations in different countries in the world. Maybe it's because I've been watching Banged up Abroad on National Geographic! Anyway, I got interested in it and started looking at the data and publications on the International Centre for Prison Studies website. It's all very interesting and at times alarming but thanks to the people at ICPS we have a reasonably good idea about all this. The 8th Edition of the World Prison Population List puts the total prison population at about 9.8 million in 2008 - roughly the same as the total population of Sweden! A couple of quick 'top ten' charts now...
The United States, China and Russia account for almost half the total world prison population. The US total in 2008 was 2.3 million, which is more than the entire population of Latvia and more than half the total population of Ireland. The prison population is more than the city population of Houston and not far off the city population of Chicago. The United States also has the highest rate of imprisonment per 1,000 persons, as you can see below...
In 2008, the rate of imprisonment in the US was 7.6 per 1,000. Russia was next at 6.3 and then Rwanda at 6.0. European nations generally have a much lower rate, with the United Kingdom at 1.5, France at 1.0 and Sweden at 0.7.
You can play around with the numbers to discover lots of interesting facts. If the UK had the same imprisonment rate as the US then instead of having a prison population of 90,000 or so, it would have a prison population of 465,000. On the other hand, if the US had the same rate as the UK, they would have 458,000 prisoners and not 2.3 million. Food for thought...
Given the topic, I'll end this rather random post with this...
