So, the Bahamas have more prisoners per capita than the Maldives, eh? That’s not so interesting. But what really is interesting is that the USA has the highest rate of prisoner population in the world at 686 prisoners per 100,000 people. Russia comes up a close second with 638 prisoners per 100k, and Belarus a distant third with a paltry 554 per 100k.

Like me, I’m sure the first thoughts that popped in your mind were “What’s the deal? Am I at risk of going to jail too? I’m a law abiding citizen! Do I have to worry about living in a country with the highest prisoner population rate in the world?”

Apparently, you do. You see, there is one thing that no amount of restraint from copying DVDs and staying below 55mph can save you from: statistics.

The average increase in prisoner population is 3.2% per year. Now, that might not sound like too much – but what it means is that whether you like it or not, if you live long enough and are a US citizen, you’ll eventually be in prison too. The current estimated US population (CIA factbook) is 298,444,215; the US Census Bureau estimates the population topping 400,000,000 by the year 2050. If we take this linear increase in population and increase in yearly prisoner population, the magic year of 2191 is the one you’ll wish you were on vacation for. In that year, 100% of the US population will be in prison! And since we all know graphs like the one I made on the left don’t lie, we should take this very seriously.

So a long-term thinker could probably capitalize on this by investing in privately owned prisons, or who knows: plastic lunch trays for the 716,744,215 inmates need to be made and produced somewhere, right? As long as you keep your investments outside the country, you can at least be sure to make the annual stockholders meetings.