It’s 20 years today since the World Prison Brief (WPB) website was launched. For over two decades, Roy Walmsley, founder and Director of the Brief, has been researching and collating prison population information – providing an invaluable and important open-access resource.
At its launch in 2000, the WPB held information on the prison systems of 200 countries; today, it provides details of prison population levels in over 220 independent countries and dependent territories. Eritrea and North Korea are now the only countries on which no official data are currently available. In addition, the data can be sorted by ‘Highest to Lowest’ showing where each country comes in terms of prison population levels and the proportion of pre-trial, women and foreign prisoners and the occupancy level. The WPB is updated monthly with the latest available data.
And as of today, new historic data have been added, showing prison population levels prior to 1950 where these have been traced. The countries for which new data are available are listed below.
The WPB is considered to be the most reliable source of data on prison systems around the world, and has been viewed over a million times per year for the past five years by users from almost every country and territory in the world. Its data are cited daily by the media, academics, prison administrations and governments.
ICPR is very proud to host the World Prison Brief. We congratulate Roy on this huge achievement, and look forward to our continuing collaboration.
Africa
Morocco
South Africa
Tanzania (Tanganyika & Zanzibar)
Uganda
Americas
Brazil (convicted prisoners only)
Canada
USA
Argentina
Panama
Uruguay
Asia
Japan
Thailand
Europe
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Malta
Norway
Poland
Spain
Switzerland
Turkey
UK: England & Wales
UK: Scotland
Oceania
Australia