• Over 2.3 million Americans (about 1% of the population) are currently incarcerated. That is the highest percentage in the world, ahead of Russia, St. Kitts and Nevis, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Turkmenistan.

• It costs taxpayers about $23,000 a year to house and feed each prisoner.

• About seven percent of U.S. federal prisoners are female.

• Over 75% of women incarcerated in the U.S. are single mothers.

• Over half of all federal prisoners are being incarcerated for drug offenses.

• About 73% of American federal prison inmates are U.S. citizens and 16% are Mexican.

• Whites make up 56% of all federal prisoners; 40% are black, 2% are Native American and 2% are Asian.

• According to one study, African-American men are twice as likely to spend time in jail during their lifetime as they are to earn a bachelor’s degree.

• Between 1930-2007, 4,958 prisoners were executed in the U.S.

• In Florida, the oldest male state prisoner is Frank Rowland, 89, who is serving a life sentence for sexual molestation. The oldest female is Marie Otero, also 89, who is serving a 31-year murder sentence.

• In 1981, an Alabama judge gave Dudley Wayne Kyzer what is believed to be the longest sentence ever dispensed in American history--10,000 years for killing his wife. He also received life sentences for murdering his mother-in-law and a college student.

• Rikers Island in New York is considered the world’s largest penal colony. As many as 130,000 inmates reside there each year (although only about 15,000 at any one time).

• William Heirens has been serving in an Illinois state prison since September, 1946. The 79-year-old killed three women. His 61 years behind bars is probably the longest sentence currently being served.

• California has the most populous prison system in the nation, with about 175,000 inmates.

• North Dakota has about 1,300 inmates, making its prison population the smallest in the U.S.