Land of the Free?

Link to larger view of this chart

A couple of titles the United States can lay claim to that I'm sure the average citizen of the United States is unaware of:
Largest inmate population in the world.
Largest percentage of population in prison.

From Wikipedia:

In absolute terms, the United States currently has the largest inmate population in the world, with more than 2½ million^[14] or more than one in a hundred adults^[15] in prison and jails. Although the United States represents less than 5% of the world's population, over 25% of the people incarcerated around the world are housed in the American prison system. Pulitzer Prize winning author Joseph T. Hallinan wrote in his book Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, "so common is the prison experience that the federal government predicts one in eleven men will be incarcerated in his lifetime, one in four if he is black." In 2002, both Russia and China^[16] By October 2006, the Russian prison population declined to 869,814 which translated into 611 prisoners per 100,000 population. also had prison populations in excess of 1 million.

As a percentage of total population, the United States also has the largest imprisoned population, with 739 people per 100,000 serving time, awaiting trial or otherwise detained.^[17]

The US rate of 700-739 (depending on the source) per 100,000 people is in rare company. From The Straight Dope (dated Feb 2004, so perhaps the discrepency between Wikipedia and Snopes is that an additional 500,000 people have entered the US prison system in the last four years):

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London, the U.S. currently has the largest documented prison population in the world, both in absolute and proportional terms. We've got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars, or 701 per 100,000 population. China has the second-largest number of prisoners (1.51 million, for a rate of 117 per 100,000), and Russia has the second-highest rate (606 per 100,000, for a total of 865,000). Russia had the highest rate for years, but has released hundreds of thousands of prisoners since 1998; meanwhile the U.S. prison population has grown by even more. Rounding out the top ten, with rates from 554 to 437, are Belarus, Bermuda (UK), Kazakhstan, the Virgin Islands (U.S.), the Cayman Islands (UK), Turkmenistan, Belize, and Suriname, which you'll have to agree puts America in interesting company. South Africa, a longtime star performer on the list, has dropped to 15th place (402) since the dismantling of apartheid.

Cecil at The Strait Dope ads that maybe, or even probably China and North Korea are vastly under reporting the number of prisoners in the dock, which would maybe knock the USA down from the gold medal to the bronze, but regardless, hardly a podium Americans can be proud to be on.

Link to Wikipedia Article
Link to The Strait Dope Article