EASTHAMPTON, Mass. — A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative finds that every U.S. state incarcerates women at higher rates than nearly every country in the world, underscoring the nation’s status as a global outlier. According to the findings, “the United States remains a global outlier, with women’s incarceration reaching near-historic highs.”
The report compares women’s incarceration rates across U.S. states with independent nations. It accounts for all types of confinement, including prisons, jails, youth detention centers, tribal jails, and immigration detention facilities. Collectively, the United States represents only 4% of the world’s population of women but holds one-quarter of the women incarcerated globally.
The data shows stark contrasts between states and nations. South Dakota, which has the highest women’s incarceration rate in the U.S., surpasses every country in the world. Montana and Idaho also rank higher than any other nation. Women in Kentucky face incarceration rates nearly equivalent to those in El Salvador, “a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.” Even New Jersey, one of the lowest-ranking U.S. states, still mirrors the United Arab Emirates, where “nonmarital sex can result in a prison sentence of six months for women.”
Charts included in the report highlight the extent of these disparities. One visualization shows that most U.S. states incarcerate women at more than double the rate of peer nations such as Canada and members of NATO. Another chart underscores how even the states with the lowest women’s incarceration rates still far exceed global norms. The report emphasizes that “the global trend of rising women’s incarceration is alarming on its own,” but the U.S. continues to stand apart as a major driver of this growth.
The report also highlights the particular vulnerabilities of incarcerated women. Many are criminalized for poverty-related offenses or targeted by laws that disproportionately affect them on the basis of gender or disability. A large share report past trauma and abuse, and, once incarcerated, they often lose parental rights, lack adequate health care, and face high rates of sexual victimization — especially women who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual. These patterns underscore how women’s incarceration both reflects and compounds preexisting inequities.
“Women’s mass incarceration is a global concern — the number of imprisoned women has grown nearly 60% since the year 2000,” said Emily Widra, one of the report’s authors and senior research analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative. “With this country’s war on drugs, our treatment of mental illness as a problem for police to deal with, and our criminalization of poverty, it is no wonder that the U.S. continues to drive this problem and to account for a quarter of the world’s incarcerated women.”
The Prison Policy Initiative noted that, although women make up a small minority of the incarcerated population, their confinement levels are at near-historic highs. The findings point to a systemic issue across the entire country, as even states that consider themselves progressive still far exceed global averages, underscoring how deeply rooted mass incarceration is in the U.S. approach to social problems.
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