With the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth, the U.S. continues to incarcerate more people than any other country, according to the latest data.
Nearly two million people are locked up in the U.S. today, according to Prison Policy Initiative’s 2026 report.
Researchers determined that 1,973,000 people are incarcerated across the country in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,277 juvenile correctional facilities, 220 immigration detention facilities, and 77 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.
The cost to incarcerate nearly two million people across America comes to at least $445 billion each year, the report found. That’s more than five times the $87 billion spent on jails and prisons in 2015.
The U.S. remains the world leader in the number of people incarcerated. China follows with 1.69 million prisoners (plus unknown numbers in pre-trial detention and other forms of detention), and there are 909,067 prisoners in Brazil, 511,542 in India, and 420,798 in Turkey, according to World Prison Brief from the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research.
The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth, at a rate of 580 per 100,000 residents, PPI reports. Worldwide, only El Salvador, Cuba, and Turkmenistan lock up more people per capita, according to World Prison Brief.
Worse still, individual U.S. states incarcerate more people per capita than most nations, PPI reported in 2024. By analyzing each state as an independent nation, PPI found that the incarceration rates of 24 states and three nations (El Salvador, Cuba, and Rwanda) eclipse the U.S. nationwide rate.
El Salvador has the world’s highest incarceration rate, but the next nine highest rates are in U.S. states—all but one of which are in the South.
Compared with the rest of the world, every U.S. state has an extreme incarceration rate. Massachusetts has the lowest incarceration rate of U.S. states—but if it were a country, it would rank 30th in the world, higher than Iran, Colombia, and all the founding NATO nations, PPI found.
Reliance on incarceration in response to societal problems takes a significant toll on American families.
Half of Americans have had an immediate family member incarcerated, researchers found. On any given day in America, 2.7 million children have a parent in prison or jail, according to The Sentencing Project. More than 5.2 million children have had a parent incarcerated during their childhoods.