As [Rachel](http://palmer1984.livejournal.com/278208.html) highlights, Labour govenrment has massively raised the UK’s prison population:
1997: 61,000
2008: 81,000
It works out at somewhere around 150 people in jail per 100,000 population. That’s higher than China, Burma or Saudi Arabia, although admitttedly only a fifth of the USA.