On its 20th anniversary, ICPR’s World Prison Brief adds new historic data for over 30 countries

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