Skip to content
Part of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Graphic representation of female prisoners around the world

20140923_Female_Prisoners_Fo

I just tripped across this interesting piece and infographic published last month via Forbes.  The piece is headlined “Nearly A Third Of All Female Prisoners Worldwide Are Incarcerated In The United States,” and here is the text that goes along with the infographic:

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, nearly a third of all female prisoners worldwide are incarcerated in the United States of America.  There are 201,200 women in US prisons, representing 8.8 percent of the total American prison population.

China comes a very distant second to the United States with 84,600 female prisoners in total or 5.1% of the overall Chinese prison population.  Russia is in third position — 59,000 of its prisoners are women and this comes to 7.8 percent of the total.

Across the world, 625,000 women and children are being held in penal institutions with the female prison population growing on all five continents.