On any given day nearly seven million adult Americans are under the supervision of the nation’s criminal justice system: in prison, on probation, or on parole.1

That is more than 2% of the entire population and nearly 3% of the adult population. If the prison system were a state, it would be the 14th largest, just behind Washington and well ahead of Massachusetts. It would make an average-sized country, much bigger than Libya but slightly smaller than Serbia. The United States imprisonment rate is more twice that of any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), more than four times that of any country in western Europe, and more than five times the rich-country average. It is 12 times the rate in Japan. Simply put, the United States imprisons a larger proportion of its population than any other country in the world. It also has the highest total number of prisoners of any country in the world, except perhaps China (where prison statistics are not fully transparent). Over 20% of all the world’s prisoners are locked up in American prisons. In short, the land of the free is the home of the jailed.

Drill down and the numbers get even worse, particularly for men (though the number of women prisoners is rising fast). More than 5% of all adult American men are currently under the supervision of the criminal justice system. Men make up over 90% of all prisoners, nearly 90% of people on parole, and about 75% of people on probation. Put these figures together and it turns out that about 1.3% of all American men are hidden behind bars at any given time. Among African-American men age 25-39 this figure rises to more than 6% in jail at any one time. The proportion of African-American men who spend at least some part of their lives in jail is presumably much higher, probably around one quarter, though this is difficult to calculate accurately and widely cited figures may be suspect.

Once you’ve been arrested or sent to jail, life gets much harder in many ways, whether or not you were actually convicted of a crime. Obviously, most employers prefer not to employ ex-convicts, most landlords prefer not to rent to ex-convicts, and most people prefer not to marry ex-convicts.