The World Behind Bars

El Salvador’s incarceration rate has skyrocketed in recent years following President Nayib Bukele’s major crackdown on gangs which started in 2022. The Central American country now has the highest prison population rate in the world, with 1,659 people serving jail sentences per 100,000 inhabitants as of 2024, according to data collected in the World Prison Brief by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR). This equates to 109,519 people.

Bukele announced in February that El Salvador would be opening its doors to the transfer of criminals deported from the U.S. at the Terrorism Confinement Center, a so-called mega prison with capacity for up to 40,000 people, in exchange for a fee. On March 16, more than 200 Venezuelans alleged by the White House to be gang members were sent from the U.S. to El Salvador, despite a court ruling blocking the removals. El Salvador’s prison system has been reported to have widespread human rights abuses, including enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions, overcrowding and deaths in state custody.

As the following chart shows, most countries with a high prisoner-to-inhabitant ratio are small and are largely considered developing economies. That is apart from one major exception: the United States. In 2024, the world’s largest economy had a high prison population rate of 542 per 100,000 people. Technically, the U.S. is featured not only once but three times in the top 10, with unincorporated territories American Samoa and Guam appearing in rank six and seven.

When looking at the data from the perspective of the overall prison population, the picture is markedly different. By this indicator, the United States comes first with 1.8 million people reported as incarcerated, followed by China at 1.7 million, Brazil at over 900,000, India at over 500,000 and Russia at over 400,000.

While the ICPR's dataset allows comparisons between countries, the reporting timeframes for the official figures often differ wildly from nation to nation. Given this caveat, the data doesn't support showing the situation at one specific set date.