The UNODC data shows considerable variation within the African continent itself.
A new United Nations report has found that prison overcrowding remains a severe and persistent problem across Africa, with roughly 93 per cent of African countries with available data reporting prison systems operating above their intended capacity.
The finding is contained in Prison Matters 2026, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which surveyed prison capacity data from 183 countries worldwide covering the period 2015 to 2024.
"The situation is particularly concerning in Africa and Oceania," the report states, noting that around 93 per cent of African countries and 75 per cent of Oceanian countries with available data reported prison systems operating at more than 100 per cent of planned capacity.
Globally, the report found that roughly two-thirds of the 183 countries surveyed had prison systems exceeding capacity, with more than one in four operating at over 150 per cent of their intended limits, a threshold the report classifies as "severely overcrowded."
