1% of adults incarcerated in the United States

While researching the numbers on the current recession in America I ran into this disturbing Pew Centre report from earlier in the year putting the number of people incarcerated in the United States at the start of the year to more than 2.3 million – over 1% of the total US adult population.

That’s triple the number in 1987. Divided by population, it’s around 750 per 100k, which (for example) is around eight times Germany’s 93 per 100k – or more than four times New Zealand’s 179 per 100k.