The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in other developed countries but seven to ten times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain - with a rate among the highest - has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242.
The U.S.'s prison population has quadrupled since 1980. So something has happened in in the past thirty years to push millions of people into prison. That something, of course, is the war on drugs.
