Guess Which ‘Shithole’ Has The World’s Most-Overcrowded Prison System

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. has a prison population of 2.2 million, 481 inmates per 100,000 of the population.

The U.S. prison system has attracted headlines for overcrowding with 18 states reporting they were operating at over 100 percent capacity at the end of 2014. According to the World Prison Brief, the U.S. has an an occupancy level of 103.9 percent and only comes 113th worldwide when it comes to overcrowding in prisons. 

However, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy details, somebody who gets arrested and jailed in Haiti will have to endure far tougher conditions.

You will find more statistics at Statista

The Caribbean nation has the most overcrowded prisons of any country worldwide and its institutions are operating at 454 percent capacity. That has resulted in 80 to 100 men being crammed into a single cell at once, malnutrition and the spread of disease. Many of Haiti’s inmates have not been convicted of a crime and the UN has condemned the situtation, saying inmates are subject to daily violations of their human rights.

The situation in the Philippines is similar and conditions in its prisons have deteriorated steadily since President Rodrigo Duterte launched his war on drugs. That has seen the number of arrests skyrocket with thousands of people thrown into prison. That has seen occupancy rates stretched to 436 percent of capacity and Quezon City Jail is a good example. An ABC News report claims the facility was built to house 262 prisoners and it now hosts over 3,000.

El Salvador comes third for prison overcrowding with its institutions operating at 348.2 percent of their capacity.