AMERICANS NOW THE MOST JAILED PEOPLE ON EARTH

THE United States, which already has the largest prison population in
the world, may soon surpass Russia as the nation with the highest rate
of incarceration, a report showed yesterday.

The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group that advocates sentencing
reform, said the United States, with a record 1.8m inmates, was
followed by China at an estimated 1.2m and Russia at one million.

But the United States appeared likely to overtake Russia within the
next year or so for the highest per capita rate of prisoners, Marc
Mauer, the group's assistant director, predicted.

Numbers released on Sunday by the US Justice Department showed the
United States had 668 inmates for every 100,000 residents. The Russian
rate was slightly higher, at 685 inmates for every 100,000 residents,
Mauer said.

He predicted the United States would soon get the top spot because its
prison population continued to expand while Russia planned to grant
amnesty to some 100,000 inmates, about 10pc of prisoners.

"US rates of incarceration are five to eight times those of other
industrialised nations,'' Mauer said, adding that the US prison
population should exceed 2m by the end of next year.

Mauer and other experts have attributed the rising US prison
population since the 1980s to various factors, including tough new
sentencing laws for violent criminals and drug dealers.

The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics said in its
report that the US prison and jail population totalled 1.8m as of June
30, 1998, an increase of 4.4pc or 76,700 inmates from the previous
year.

The nation's incarceration rate had more than doubled over the past 12
years, the report said.

Experts have cited the growing numbers of criminals locked up in the
US prison system as a factor in the recent sharp decline in the US
crime rate.

Many states have adopted laws requiring violent criminals to serve at
least 85pc of their sentences, and imposed long prison terms on those
convicted of their third crimes.