“The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate, with Department of Justice formerly/http://topics.bloomberg.com/department-of-justice/ data showing more than 2.2 million people are behind bars, equal to a city the size of Houston. With a rate of 730 people per 100,000, the U.S. jails a higher proportion of its citizens than any other country. The U.S. also leads the world in the number of prisons in operation at 4,575, more than four times the number of second- place Russia at 1,029. U.S. states spent $52 billion to construct and operate those prisons in 2011, more than quadruple the $12 billion spent in 1987, according to data from the Pew Center on the States.”
