U.S. prison population largest in world

With a record-setting 2 million people now locked up in American jails and prisons, the United States has overtaken Russia and has a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country.

Those are the latest dreary milestones resulting from a two-decade imprisonment boom that experts say has probably helped reduce crime but also has created ballooning costs and stark racial inequities.

"Why, in the land of the free, should 2 million men, women and children be locked up?" asks Andrew Coyle, director of the International Centre for Prison Studies at the University of London and a leading authority on incarceration.
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  thanks to Eschaton