• prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    1970 was during the cultural revolution. In that year, the world population was 3.68 billion, and the population if China was just shy of 830 million - China had 22% of the world’s population, so if they held (only) 20% of the world’s prisoners, they’d have a lower than average incarceration rate.

    The same is not true for the US today, we have less than 5% of the world’s population today.