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Year after year, the United States beats out much larger countries -- India, China -- and more totalitarian ones --Russia and the Philippines -- for the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.

According to a 2018 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), nearly 2.2 million adults were held in America's prisons and jails at the end of 2016. That means for every 100,000 people residing in the United States, approximately 655 of them were behind bars.If the US prison population were a city, it would be among the country's 10 largest. More people are behind bars in America than there are living in major cities such as Philadelphia or Dallas.

But after decades of explosive growth, there are signs that the country is turning the corner on mass incarceration.  The prison population decreased in 2016 for the third straight year, and prison reform, in general, is one of the rare issues with bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

On the other hand, approximately $80 billion is still spent each year on corrections facilities alone, according to a Prison Policy Initiative report, dwarfing the $68 billion discretionary budget of the Department of Education.  Clearly, this issue is complicated.

To better understand who the system impacts, it requires looking beyond the big numbers. 

-By Drew Kann, CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/28/us/mass-incarceration-five-key-facts/index.html