Trends of Imprisonment in USA in past few decades are horrible. Every nation has a correctional program of its own. Statistics of crime in every country is different from that in other countries. But the records that USA had touched can not be surpassed. There are great fluctuations in the number of imprisoned inmates. Number of prisoners multiplied twenty times in USA from 1920 to 2006 while the increment in population was far less. When we compare the prison population of USA with the rest of the world, we find that the percentage has always remained higher. The ratio of prisoners at per 1000 population is highest in USA. As per the data available, more than 0.75% of the total population was imprisoned in USA in Jan. 2008.
In 2008 the population of USA was less than 5% of the world’s population but the prison population in USA was nearly 1/4th of the world prison population.
While in 2009 more than 0.74% adults of the total population of USA were imprisoned. Data shows that the number of imprisoned adult inmates in USA in 2009 was 72, 25,800.
When we ponder over the sexual ratio of prisoners the female prison population is roughly 1/15 of the total imprisoned males. In 2009, 7.1% of prisoners were female.
There is a great difference in the ratio of imprisoned inmates in the states of USA. Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire are the states where the incarceration rate is lowest while Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma are the states with highest incarceration rate. As per 2009 data, the state with lowest imprisonment rate was Maine where the number of prisoners was 150 per 100,000 populations. Similarly Louisiana was the state with highest incarceration rate @ 881 per 100,000 populations.
To correct the imprisonment rate of native prison inmates, it is said that they were 73% in the federal prisons while the rest 27% were noncitizens in 2009.
The ratio of prisoners as per the type of crime committed by them is also available. Facts show that the ratio of the criminals incarcerated due to drug offences has increased in last two decades. In the last two decades of twentieth century, the largest number of criminals was incarcerated due to violent offences on their part. Although the percentage of violent criminals has also increased during the same period the drug crimes are rapidly increasing.
