Over 11 million people are incarcerated around the world; many of these individuals are in pre-trial detention. Every nation has a penal system, though their jails and prisons differ in population density and conditions of confinement.

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• At the end of 2019, an estimated 11.7 million persons were detained in prisons across the world. This is a population comparable in size to entire nations such as Bolivia, Burundi, Belgium, or ... • Most persons detained in prison globally are men (93%) but - over the last 20 years – ...

August 23, 2026 - This is an alphabetical list of ... out the incarceration rate of each. See the individual World Prison Brief (WPB) country and subnational area pages for more info on data, dates, and much more. WPB notes this: "As it is not possible to obtain meaningful comparative data on numbers of children ...

February 9, 2026 - At the beginning of 2026, the United States had the highest number of incarcerated people worldwide, with around 1.8 million people in custody. China followed with roughly 100,000 fewer prisoners.

Approximately 11.5 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, according to the latest edition of the World Prison Population List, compiled by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), at Birkbeck, University ...

September 18, 2024 - There are nearly 11.5 million people in prison around the world, 10.5 million of them are men. Between 2000 – 2022, the male prison population increased by 22% while the number of women incarcerated shot up by 60%.

May 1, 2024 - Some 11.5 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, according to the latest edition of the World Prison Population List (WPPL), researched and compiled by Helen Fair and Roy Walmsley and published on 1 May 2024 by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), ...

More than 10.35 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world according to the latest edition of the World Prison Population List (WPPL), researched and compiled by Roy Walmsley and published on Wednesday 3 February by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, at Birkbeck, ...

March 20, 2026 - A high number of countries with the highest homicide rates are located in Latin America. Prisoners in the United States The United States is home to the largest number of prisoners worldwide. More than 1.8 million people were incarcerated ...

700 persons in the world is being held in a penal institution. The countries · with the highest prison populations are shown in table 1. Figures in table 1, however, may be more a reflection of the size of the · national population of each of the countries than of their practice in terms ...

November 27, 2025 - China has the largest number of prisoners in the world, standing at nearly two million inmates. America ranks in second globally, with incarceration rates of 614 per 100,000 people, the highest among developed economies by far.

Juveniles / minors / young prisoners incl. definition (percentage of prison population)

Number of prisoners, including pre-trial and remand detainees, per 100,000 people.

united nations office on drugs and crime

1 week ago - Separately, local jails held 657,500 people in custody at midyear 2024, similar to 664,200 at midyear 2023; the 2024 figure is preliminary. The United States has the largest known prison population in the world. The country comprises 5% of the world's population while having 20% of the world's incarcerated ...

May 6, 2025 - Two years after the adoption of the Kyoto Declaration and the UN Common Position on Incarceration, with a record 11.5 million people in prison worldwide and 120 countries operating above capacity, the report shows little progress has been made ...

May 22, 2026 - China follows with 1.69 million prisoners (plus unknown numbers in pre-trial detention and other forms of detention), and there are 909,067 prisoners in Brazil, 511,542 in India, and 420,798 in Turkey, according to World Prison Brief from the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on earth, at a rate of 580 per 100,000 residents, PPI reports. Worldwide, only El Salvador, Cuba, and Turkmenistan lock up more people per capita, according to World Prison Brief.

More than 8.75 million people are being held in penal institutions around the world, either as pretrial detainees or as sentenced inmates. Based on world population data for 2002, this means that approximately 1 out of every 700 persons in the world is in a penal institution.