2. China
Prison population: 1.657.812
Officially, there were around 1.6 million inmates in China in 2014. However, it is possible that the number was much higher. According to Deputy Procurator-General of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, there were more than 650,000 pre-trial detainees in 2009. If this was still the case in 2014, then the total prison population was over 2.3 million, which would put China on the first place of our list.
In the last decade, China has seen a sharp rise of the female prison population. While the number of male prisoners has increased by 10 percent, the number of women behind bars has grown up to 46 percent. One of the reasons behind the growth might be the fact that more women are committing non-violent crimes such as drug trafficking and financial frauds. As in other countries on this list, the prison population is exposed to abuse, torture, and forced labor in Chinese prisons.
