WASHINGTON -- The U.S. prison population grew more than twice as fast last year as in 2001, bringing the total number of people held behind bars in the United States to more than 2.1 million, a new record, according to a government report released Sunday.

The statistics show the United States remains the unchallenged world leader in both the overall number of jailed people and the rate of incarceration.

China, whose population is approaching 1.3 billion people, has slightly more than 1.4 million inmates, according to British government figures. Russia, at the same time, has about 920,000, AFP reported.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics said the overall number of inmates held in U.S. federal and state prisons, county jails and other correctional facilities was up 2.6 percent in 2002, compared to a 1.1-percent increase the previous year.

This means the U.S. prison system was adding an average of 700 inmates every week.

The figure was still significantly lower than the growth rate in 1995, when the number of U.S. inmates grew by a whopping 6.7 percent.

But in a third of the country, the situation has improved only marginally. According to the bureau, 17 states reported prison population increases of at least five percent in 2002, while in Maine and Rhode Island, the number of inmates went up 11.5 percent and 8.6 percent respectively.

The bureau, a branch of the U.S. Justice Department, did not provide any explanation for the spike.

But the Justice Policy Institute, a liberal think tank here, blamed the situation on politicians' reluctance to spend significant money on crime prevention at a time of severe budget shortfalls due to a sluggish national economy.

"As legislators are struggling to fund education, health care, and stave off spending cuts, many are continuing to choose to pay for an expensive justice system that damages communities, and does not produce safe, healthy neighborhoods," commented Jason Ziedenberg, the institute's director of policy and research.

All in all, U.S. correctional facilities held 2,166,260 individuals at the end of last year, according to the report.

These included more than 1.2 million state prison inmates, more than 151,000 in federal facilities and more than 665,000 in local jails.

More than 110,000 individuals were incarcerated in both public and private juvenile facilities, while the immigration and customs service held more 8,700 individuals.

The U.S. rate of incarceration was 701 inmates per 100,000 residents in 2002, up from 601 in 1995, the bureau said. That means that one in every 143 people living in the country was held in state or federal prison or a local jail.

That put the United States far ahead of such "democracies" as Belarus and Turkmenistan, whose incarceration rates stand respectively at 554 and 489 people for each 100,000 residents, the British figures show.

The U.S. report has revealed another trend that is causing public concern.

The average annual rate of growth of the female prison population between 1995 and 2002 was 5.2 percent, which is higher than the average 3.5-percent increase in the number of male inmates.

"By devoting more resources to treatment, preventive education, and community corrections -- which are far more cost-effective than arrest and imprisonment -- we can begin to reverse this trend and its devastating effects on children, families, and communities," said Ann Jacobs, executive director of the Women’s Prisoner Association.