The United States still incarcerates 614 people for every 100,000 residents, more than almost any other country in the world. Women in particular are incarcerated in the U.S. at a rate of 112 per 100,000. This may seem relatively minor, but it’s a scale of women’s incarceration that remains higher than that of any other country except El Salvador. Furthermore, women’s incarceration stubbornly remains at near-historic highs in the U.S., while the country’s overall incarceration rate has been falling. 

This report helps make sense of these numbers, providing an updated snapshot of how women in the U.S. fare in the world’s carceral landscape and comparing incarceration rates for women in each U.S. state with the equivalent rates for countries around the world.

25 years of alarming growth in women’s incarceration across the world

Globally, governments incarcerate women at an alarming rate: the number of imprisoned women has grown by almost 60% since 2000, with more than 740,000 women and girls in prison worldwide — including nearly 200,000 women and girls in just the United States alone. Women are particularly vulnerable to laws and practices criminalizing poverty, as well as laws that disproportionately impact them on the basis of their gender or disability, like restrictions on reproductive rights or sexuality, or the policing of mental illness and drug use related to prior experiences of abuse or violence, which are common among incarcerated women.

Read full article on States of Women’s Incarceration: The Global Context 2025