Too many

Boy is my face red... The latest estimate by the International Centre for Prison Studies out of King's College in London is 9 million people held in penal institutions throughout the world. Here is a link to their pdf titled World Prison Population List. It's only 6 pages and is actually pretty interesting. It offers per capita stats which shed an unexpected light on this situation to say the least. The link below will put you at it's home page. Click on your flag at the bottom. From here, choose the menu item "What's New" (menu is vertical and on your left). On this page you will find the link to the pdf mentioned above. http://www.prisonstudies.org/ Interesting to note: The US has the highest prison population per capita in the world; 714/100,000. Compared to India's 39/100,000.

At least 9 million. United States of America 2,085,620, China 1,548,498 Russian Federation 763,054 have the highest numbers.There are also juvenile detention centers, military prisons, political prisons and places of lock up for the criminally insane. There's no data for places like Korea so the number of 9 million might even be conservative. According to most reports, the United States of America has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world — although several nations do not release incarceration statistics. The number could, in theory, be exceeded by countries, which have prisoners who are incarcerated, but not under the authority of the prison administration. The country's large prison population is thought to result primarily from high crime rates, long sentences, and the "War on Drugs". It has been stated that a major reason for the high numbers in prison in the United States is the drug laws that result in imprisonment of non-violent drug offenders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States Execution of children, sub-human prison conditions, sexual abuse of women prisoners, the economic exploitation of prisoners, brutal incarceration of refugees-these are some of the human rights violations for which the US regularly takes the moral high ground and condemns other countries. But since the 1990s, much to Uncle Sam's discomfort, critics have charged that the self-proclaimed arbiter of the world's moral standards has no business criticizing other countries about the abysmal state of their prison systems while its own laws and criminal justice practices remain out of line with recognized international humans rights standards. The numbers continue to rise globally, but no where more quickly than in the US. Human Rights Watch (HRW) puts the world inmate population at between eight and 10 million; the US is responsible for up to 25 percent of the total. When compared to the global community, in fact, the US figures are starkly disproportionate to its population. Europe, for example, has a population of 330 million, but only about 300,000 prisoners; India, with a population four times that of the US, has about 500,000 prisoners. So, what accounts for the US's huge prison population? Unlike in many other countries, most prisoners in the US are nonviolent offenders, meaning they're in jail for offenses involving neither harm nor the threat of harm toward a victim. "Credit" the war on drugs for that state of affairs, because most of those in jail are there for possession, not sale, of narcotics. In fact, 77 percent of the growth in the number of inmates from 1978 to 2000 involved nonviolent offenses. In all, only about 27.6 percent of male and 14.4 percent of female inmates are violent offenders. And the US? It executes children, yet another reason the country finds itself in an extremely lonely position. Since 1997, it's the only country known to have executed inmates who committed crimes while under age 18. Five states-Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia-gave up killing children more than a decade ago. Today, the US and Somalia hold the dubious distinction of being the only countries not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Children. And look at the company the US is keeping on this issue! Uncle Sam is the world's fourth ranked executioner, behind only China, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, it's the only Western democracy that still puts prisoners to death. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System/Bad_Company.html HUMAN rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors." http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/octubre/juev13/42carceles.html