{"id":17793,"date":"2025-09-23T08:33:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T12:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=17793"},"modified":"2025-09-23T08:33:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T12:33:19","slug":"womens-global","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2025\/09\/23\/womens-global\/","title":{"rendered":"In 2025, every U.S. state outranks most democratic countries in women\u2019s incarceration, new report shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;s women, but holds one-quarter of women who are incarcerated worldwide.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/global\/women\/2025.html\"><i>States of Women&#8217;s Incarceration: The Global Context 2025<\/i><\/a> provides a comprehensive women&#8217;s incarceration rate for every U.S. state &mdash; including prisons and jails, youth confinement facilities, tribal jails, immigrant detention centers, and other types of incarceration &mdash; 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"featureimage tightfeature\"><a href=\"\/global\/women\/2025.html#bargraph\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/womensglobal_2025_graphicpreview.webp 1x, \/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/womensglobal_2025_graphicpreview-2X.webp 2x\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/womensglobal_2025_graphicpreview.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1245\" height=\"714\">\n<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"prelist\">The Prison Policy Initiative&#8217;s report allows viewers to observe that, for example:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list\">\n<li><b>South Dakota<\/b> &mdash; with the highest incarceration rate in the U.S. &mdash; as well as <b>Montana<\/b> and <b>Idaho<\/b> have higher women&#8217;s incarceration rates than any country in the world.<\/li>\n<li>Women in <b>Kentucky<\/b> face almost the same incarceration rate as women in El Salvador, a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.<\/li>\n<li><b>New Jersey<\/b> &mdash; which has one of the lowest women&#8217;s incarceration rates in the U.S. &mdash; is on par with the United Arab Emirates, a nation where nonmarital sex can result in a prison sentence of six months for women.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i>States of Women&#8217;s Incarceration<\/i> homes in on some of this country&#8217;s closest international allies to show just how starkly the U.S. stands out globally. Most states, the report shows, incarcerate women at <i>more than double<\/i> the rates of these &#8220;peer&#8221; countries. <\/p>\n<p class=\"tightfeature\"><picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/\/NATO2025\/US_women.webp 1x, \/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/\/NATO2025\/US_women-2X.webp 2x\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/\/NATO2025\/US_women.png\" alt=\"Graph showing rates of women's incarceration in the U.S. compared to other founding NATO countries.\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\">\n<\/picture><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Women&#8217;s mass incarceration is a global concern &mdash; the number of imprisoned women has grown nearly 60% since the year 2000,&#8221; said report author Emily Widra. &#8220;With this country&#8217;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&#8217;s incarcerated women.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The full report is available at <a href=\"\/global\/women\/2025.html\">https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/global\/women\/2025.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[46],"class_list":["post-17793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17793"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17821,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17793\/revisions\/17821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17793"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}