The largest prison in the world is the Silivri Penitentiaries Campus (Silivri Ceza İnfaz Kurumları Kampüsü, better known simply as Silivri Prison), located in the north-western suburbs of Istanbul, Turkey. The prison complex was designed to house around 11,000 inmates when it was opened in 2008, but a Turkish parliamentary investigation in November 2019 found that the population had risen to 22,781.
Other extremely large prisons include Riker's Island Jail in New York, USA, which had a pre-COVID average population of about 10,000 inmates on any given day (down from around 14,000 at its peak) and the Tihar Jail Complex in Delhi, India, which has a population of 12,106 inmates as of Dec 2019. The Delhi prison system as a whole (including the Rohini and Mandoli prison complexes) has a population of 17,534 and a official capacity of 10,026.
Another facility that is often mentioned in discussions of record-breaking prison populations is LA County Jail, which had an average daily population of almost 20,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic. The LA Country Jail figures are for the entire prison system administered by the LA County Sheriff's Department, which comprises seven facilities spread across the city and its outskirts.
The United States is home to the second largest number of prisoners worldwide, only beaten by China. Roughly 1.68 million people were incarcerated in the U.S. in 2023.
Once the largest prison in the world, the Marmara Prison in Turkey won the Guinness World Record for the biggest prison population, with 22,000 people confined inside its walls. The prison, previously known as the Silivri Penitentiaries Campus, is a modern facility built in 2008 but only has a capacity of 11,000.
Texas is the state with the highest prison population with 133,772 prisoners. California is the second state with the highest prison population with 101,441 prisoners. Florida follows closely with 80,417 prisoners, while Georgia has the fourth highest prison population with 47,010 prisoners.
Louisiana State Penitentiary, once known as “America's Bloodiest Prison,” is the largest maximum security prison in the nation. The penitentiary's storied history of instability and reform serve as a reminder of the progress made within corrections and the possibilities of rehabilitation.
The U.S. prison population increased 500 percent in the past 40 years. Crime rates haven't increased proportionately in that same time. Instead, the dramatic increase in prison populations can be directly tied to law and policy changes that are directly tied to the oversized role of race and racism in America.
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