Compiling data from dozens of archival sources, I compile the most extensive series to date of the long-run imprisonment rate for five English-speaking nations: Australia, Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand and the United States. These series are constructed as a share of adults rather than...

Constructing a new series of incarceration rates from 1860 to 2018, I find that Australia now incarcerates a greater share of the adult population than at any point since the late nineteenth century. Much of this increase has occurred since the mid-1980s. Since 1985, the Australian incarceration...