Map Depicts Just How Serious America's Prison Problem Really is Compared to the Rest of the World

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. There are currently around 2.4 million people behind bars in the US which is 0.7% of the population and more than 700 for every 100,000 people. Over the past forty years the number of incarcerated people has increased 350 percent while population increased 33 percent, violent crimes rose 3 percent higher than 1980 while property crimes dropped from 496.1 per 1,000 in 1980 to 134.7 in 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The map was made by Jan Van der Weijst using data from data from the International Centre for Prison Studies. The prision system in the US is currently a billion dollar industry, click here to see how it's been growing and why.