In 2025, every U.S. state outranks most democratic countries in women’s incarceration, new report shows

The number of imprisoned women globally has grown 60% since 2000. The United States remains a major driver of this population, a new report shows.

Every U.S. state incarcerates more women per capita than most independent nations of the world, a new report from the Prison Policy Initiative shows. Collectively, the United States accounts for 4 percent of the world’s women, but holds one-quarter of women who are incarcerated worldwide.

States of Women’s Incarceration: The Global Context 2025 provides a comprehensive women’s incarceration rate for every U.S. state — including prisons and jails, youth confinement facilities, tribal jails, immigrant detention centers, and other types of incarceration — comparing states to each other and to countries of the world. The report offers a crucial lens through which to view the criminalization of women, who are a small minority of all incarcerated people in the U.S., but whose incarceration rates today are at near-historic highs.

The Prison Policy Initiative’s report allows viewers to observe that, for example:

• South Dakota — with the highest incarceration rate in the U.S. — as well as Montana and Idaho have higher women’s incarceration rates than any country in the world.
• Women in Kentucky face almost the same incarceration rate as women in El Salvador, a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.
• New Jersey — which has one of the lowest women’s incarceration rates in the U.S. — is on par with the United Arab Emirates, a nation where nonmarital sex can result in a prison sentence of six months for women.

States of Women’s Incarceration homes in on some of this country’s closest international allies to show just how starkly the U.S. stands out globally. Most states, the report shows, incarcerate women at more than double the rates of these “peer” countries.

“Women’s mass incarceration is a global concern — the number of imprisoned women has grown nearly 60% since the year 2000,” said report author Emily Widra. “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 full report is available at https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/women/2025.html.