New York: record U.S. jail numbers dwarf rates in Europe.

• Position: KIOSQUE: Global highlights and local sidelights culled from the media - Brief article

The United States is the world leader in "incarceration"--that is the percentage of the population that is in prison. More than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a report tracking what it calls a surging U.S. inmate population.

The U.S. total--2.3 million adults held in prisons or jails--put the country far ahead of more populous China, which says it has 1.5 million people behind bars, and ahead of Russia, with 890,000 inmates. In circulating the statistics, the Washingtonbased Pew Foundation cited figures for January 2008 from the World Prison Brief released by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College, London.

Going beyond the figure of one percent of adults as inmates, the figure usually employed for international comparisons is based on the incarcerated percentage of the entire population. For the U.S., that figure is 750 per 100,000. The comparable...