Highest to Lowest - Prison Population Total

Donate to WPB

Please use drop down menu 1 to choose the category of data you wish to view, and press 'Go' to load category page. Once the page has reloaded please choose the continent/region from drop down menu 2 and then press 'Apply'.

Data shown in the highest to lowest lists are the most recent available but not necessarily from the same date. Please click on each individual country to see the date to which the data refer. As it is not possible to obtain meaningful comparative data on numbers of children in custody in different countries, we do not include juvenile imprisonment data in the highest to lowest lists.

Ranking Title Prison Population Total
  Vietnam 133986
  Nepal 27550
  Taiwan 55984
  Sri Lanka 27864
  Indonesia 269275
  Macau (China) 1339
  Bangladesh 77203
  Uzbekistan 29000
  Hong Kong (China) 7751
  Kyrgyzstan 7633
  Republic of (South) Korea 52940
  Afghanistan 14000
  Pakistan 87712
  Malaysia 72437
  Cambodia 38050
  Singapore 9536
  Thailand 262319
  Philippines 180826
  India 554034
  Maldives 1700
  Japan 45714
  Kazakhstan 35228
  Tajikistan 14000
  Mongolia 5832
  Laos 11885
  Myanmar (formerly Burma) 100324
  Turkmenistan 35000
  China 1690000
  Brunei Darussalam 841
  Iran 189000
  Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea
  Bhutan 1119