18 Facts You Need to Know About U.S. Prisons

- Over 2.2 million people are currently in U.S. jails or prisons.
- That's more than the entire population of New Mexico.
- It's the highest prison population in the entire world.*
- The U.S. also has the highest prison rate in the world at about 724 people per 100,000.*
- Half of the world's prison population of approximately 9 million people is held in the U.S., Russia, or China.
- Over 2.7 million children in the U.S. have a parent behind bars.
- There are over 5,000 jails and prisons in the U.S.
- There are more jails than colleges in the U.S.
- In many parts of the country, there are more people in jail than living on college campuses.
- The U.S. prison population has more than quadrupled since the early 1980s: when mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drugs when into effect.
- Severe prison overcrowding means that violent criminals are being released early to make room for non-violent drug offenders who are required to serve a minimum amount of time--regardless of what a judge says.
- About half of the inmates in federal prisons are serving time for non-violent drug offenses.
- Federal law currently requires a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for a first-time, non-violent drug offense.
- Approximately 60 percent of federal drug offenders are subject to mandatory minimum sentences.
- The average annual cost to incarcerate one inmate in federal prison is about $29,000.
- Incarceration costs taxpayers almost $70 billion annually.
- State spending on corrections has grown about 300 percent in just the past 20 years.
- The Smarter Sentencing Act would save taxpayers nearly $24 billion over the next 20 years.
(*Excludes countries that cannot be verified, e.g., North Korea)
This article first appeared on the Freedomworks website.