page_title: Prison
section_title: Prison population
hierarchical_section_title: Prison / Prison population
caption_attribution_description: English: A graph made in excel 2007 showing the incarceration rate per 100,000 population in the United States. It shows the female and male rate, as well as their average. The graph depicts the incarceration rate of sentenced prisoners under jurisdiction of State and Federal correctional authorities from 1925 through 2014. It does not include jail inmates. 2003-2013 data from Bureau of Justice (Prisoners in 2013, p13t03.csv and p13t05.csv)
context_page_description: A prison is a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state. Prisons are most commonly used within a criminal justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. In simplest terms, a prison can also be described as a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed.
  Prisons can also be used as a tool of political repression by authoritarian regimes. Their perceived opponents may be imprisoned for political crimes, often without trial or other legal due process; this use is illegal under most forms of international law governing fair administration of justice. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in military prisons or prisoner of war camps, and large groups of civilians might be imprisoned in internment camps.
  In American English, the terms prison and jail have separate definitions, though this is not always followed in casual speech.
context_section_description: Some jurisdictions refer to the prison population (total or per-prison) as the prison muster.
  In 2010, the International Centre for Prison Studies that at least 10.1 million people were imprisoned worldwide.
  As of 2012 the United States of America had the world's largest prison population, with over 2.3 million people in American prisons or jails—up from 744,000 in 1985—making 1 in every 100 American adults a prisoner. That same year it was also reported that the United States government spent an estimated US$37 billion to maintain prisons. CNBC estimated that the cost of maintaining the US prison system was US$74 billion per year. The United States still has one of, if not the world's largest prison population. This increases government spending on prisons.
  Not all countries have experienced a rise in prison population; Sweden closed four prisons in 2013 due to a significant drop in the number of inmates. The head of Sweden's prison and probation services characterized the decrease in the number of Swedish prisoners as "out-of-the-ordinary", with prison numbers in Sweden falling by around 1% a year since 2004.
caption: A graph showing the incarceration rate per 100,000 population in the United States. The rapid rise in the rate of imprisonment in the United States came in response to the declaration of a War on Drugs: nearly half of those incarcerated in the United States are sentenced to prison for violating drug prohibition laws.
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