'Every 132nd US resident in jail'

'The USA remains a country with the largest prison population (according to the US Department of Justice, in 2009 it constituted 2.3 million) and highest per capita prison population in the world (743 per 100 thousand people).

'Every 132 US resident is currently in prison.

Furthermore, over 140 thousand are serving a life sentence, the Report on the Situation With Human Rights in Certain states' issued by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation says.

It adds: the experts believe that the main reason for the overcrowding in the prisons is the steady and general strengthening of the criminal law over the last 40 years. Since the 1960s the focus has progressively shifted from reeducation to extreme isolation of offenders.

About 20 thousand people are permanently held in solitary confinement which often leads to mental diseases. Detainees of the Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison went on another hunger strike in July 2011 in protest at the inhuman conditions of detention.

The international NGOs are raising great alarm about the situation of juvenile offenders in the USA. Today around 90 thousand juvenile offenders are serving various sentences, of which nearly 7 thousand got a life sentence (1.7 thousand - without parole).