Abstract
Abstract Walmsley's World Prison Population List reveals that imprisonment rates vary greatly across 222 nations and dependent territories: while more than half the countries in the world have imprisonment rates of around 150 per 100,000 residents in their national populations, rates in other countries are several times higher. Scholars who have carried out cross‐national studies find that the use of imprisonment is only weakly related to levels of serious crimes such as homicide, and that other economic, political, and social factors are also associated with the use of imprisonment. In this entry, the cross‐national use of imprisonment is described and the factors that drive the differential use of imprisonment are examined.
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