World prison population tops 9 million; US leads incarcerati

International
World prison population reaches 9m

Manchester/London, June 27 (Guardian News Service): England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. Newresearch indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

Despite government attempts to reduce it, England and Wales has a prison population rate of 142 per 100,000, which remains higher than France, Germany, Italy and Greece.

There are 76,000 people in jails in England and Wales, and this does not include immigration detainees. Last week human rights group Amnesty International estimated that 25,000 asylum seekers were locked up last year in the UK.

There are around 1,300 prisoners in Northern Ireland and 6,700 in Scotland.

The analysis, by the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) suggests authorities around the world are sending their citizens to jail at an ever increasing rate.

As before, the United States, China and Russia are responsible for half the world's 9 million prisoners. But whereas in Russia, the prison population is falling from more than 1 million in 1999 to 763,000 now, the total has risen in the US - by far the world's biggest jailer - from 1.86 million in 1999 to more than 2 million. The rate equates to 714 per 100,000 of the population.

There is also an upward trend in China where there are more than 1.5 million in jail, a prison population rate of 118 per 100,000 of the population.

Rob Allen, director of the ICPS, said: ``Given the high cost and disputed efficacy of imprisonment, the data should prompt policymakers in every country to consider what they can do to limit the size of their prison population. Excessive use of prison does nothing to improve public safety.''