It's no secret that the U.S. has the highest number of prisoners in the world.

In addition, in the United States the greatest level of prisoners per capita - 752 per 100 000 population. In second place - Russia. Moreover, the gap with the first place is huge. On January 1, 2012 in the colonies and prisons in the Russian Federation were seated according to official figures 755.6 thousand people.

Last month, a human rights organization Human Rights Watch published a report on human rights in U.S. prisons. An entire chapter entitled "World Report - 2012" is dedicated to human rights violations, including overcrowding, the shortcomings of the judicial system, child labor, torture of prisoners, etc.

From the report implies that people in the United States are sometimes sentenced to very long prison terms because of racial differences. Every year an increasing number of non-citizens who are in immigration detention centers, although most of them do not represent public danger or risk to the state of evading the immigration procedures. In general, the situation emerges is not the best. The severity of U.S. laws generally apply to most poor and vulnerable segments of the population, and indeed any other country in the world (except, perhaps, only the Nordic countries). According to recent U.S. Census Bureau, last year nearly 46 million people live in poverty, which is the highest for the last 52 years of research. In such a tense social conditions of prisoners in the country continues to grow.

Human Rights Watch has reported on unreasonable pre-trial detention in New York City, thousands of people accused of minor crimes because of their inability to pay even the minimum amount of bail.

Almost 90% of those arrested in 2008 for petty crimes, which appointed a pledge thousand dollars or less than the U.S., were imprisoned in the pretrial order because they could not pay the mortgage.

The U.S. Supreme Court in May 2011 decided that California must reduce the number of people in prison.For decades, California's prisons do not provide proper medical and psychiatric care, and the board of the lower court decided that this resulted in understaffing and extreme overcrowding of staff of correctional institutions.

The judicial panel ordered the state government to significantly reduce the number of prisoners in order to improve the quality of maintenance and care. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with this decision.

In February 2011 the Ministry of Justice released a long delay its draft standards for the implementation of the act on the elimination of prison rape. While some standards are consistent with the recommendations of the Commission on PREA in 2009, some of the proposed measures provide weaker guarantees. For example, the draft standards, the Ministry of Justice does not contain any explicit requirement that the prisons were staffed sufficiently to prevent, detect and respond to sexual violence against prisoners.

If the draft standards will be adopted, the victims of sexual violence will be deprived of remedies for non-compliance with internal procedures for filing complaints. The proposed standards also explicitly excludes from the scope of the law of immigration detention centers. At the time of writing the final version of the PREA standards have not yet been made public.

In 2011, Illinois joined a group of 15 states that have abolished the death penalty. 34 staff are still allowed the death penalty. At the time of writing, 39 people were executed in 2011, confirming the downward trend in the number of executions observed since 2009, when executions were 52 people.

While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that a minor under age 18 convicted of crimes not involving the death of the victims can not be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, about 2 thousand 600 young offenders continue serving a life sentence for crimes resulting in death.

Individual states continue to attempt to reform the system of life imprisonment without possibility of parole when sentencing young offenders. For example, going to California in early 2012 to vote on the bill, which would review the case and change the sentences for young offenders serving life sentences without possibility of parole.

Young people convicted of sex crimes are also subject to abuse. In July 2011 came the deadline for compliance by all states and other jurisdictions Adam Walsh Act provisions on the protection and safety of children. The Act requires jurisdictions to register people under the age of 14 years, convicted of certain sex crimes in the national socio-accessible online registry. In some cases, young people will be featured in the registry for life. U.S. Department of Justice has stated that currently 14 states largely complied with the requirements of the act.

Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. The share of whites and blacks committed crimes related to drugs, about the same, but blacks make up only about 13% of the U.S. population, but in 2009 they accounted for about 33% of all arrests related to drugs.

Not surprisingly, higher rates of arrests lead to higher levels of imprisonment. For example, in 2009 45% of inmates in state prisons for crimes related to drugs, were African Americans, and only 27% - are white.Colorful make up 77% of all young people serving sentences of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Blacks historically have the burden of much more stringent federal penalties for crimes related to crack cocaine. The act of equitable sentencing (Fair Sentencing Act), enacted in August 2010, partially reduced this disparity in sentencing. However, the act did not have a clear reverse action. In June 2011, the Commission on Sentencing United States voted in favor of giving retroactive effect to new rules of sentencing, so now the 12,040 offenders are entitled to commutation of sentences.