About this data

Source: Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research, World Prison Brief (2026), via Our World in Data

• The World Prison Brief collects each country's official prison statistics, and counts everyone held in prison, including people awaiting trial or sentence. Countries count some groups differently, such as young people held in separate institutions or people in psychiatric detention, so small differences between countries shouldn't be over-interpreted.
• Figures are for a single date, which varies by country and year. Most countries have a figure every two years or so; the dots show the years with data, and the lines join them.
• England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own prison system. The UK figure is calculated by Our World in Data from the three.

This chart appears in Prisons.