Even though growth in the U.S. prison population has been declining this decade, the total number of people behind bars still is greater than the number of Americans living in almost one quarter of the states. From 2007 to 2008 the prison population grew less than 1%, the smallest rate of expansion since 2000. The total in all federal and state prisons last year reached 1.6 million inmates—which is more than the populations of the following states: