No Country Incarcerates More Women Than The U.S.

The United States has more female prisoners than China, Russia and India combined. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, the U.S. has 201,200 female prisoners, 8.8 percent of its total prison population. China comes a very distant second with 84,600 female prisoners while Russia is in third place with 59,000. 625,000 women and girls are being held in penal institutions worldwide and the female prison population is rising on all five continents.

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This chart shows the top 10 countries with the largest number of female prisoners in 2013.

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Countries with the largest share of female prisoners as of May 2025
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Number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the United States from 1980 to 2019
Countries with the highest number of prisoners as of February 2026 (in 1,000s)
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Number of women incarcerated in the United States in 2015, by offense type
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Number of prisoners under jurisdiction of federal or state correctional authorities from 2005 to 2023, by gender
Countries with the largest number of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population, as of March 2026

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