Different trends across the world

Well over three million people are held in pre-trial detention and other forms of remand imprisonment throughout the world, according to the latest edition of the World Pre-trial/Remand Imprisonment List (WPTRIL), published yesterday (8 December 2025) by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London.

Pre-trial detainees

Prisoners in pre-trial detention or on remand (‘pre-trial detainees’) are those who, in connection with an alleged offence or offences, are deprived of liberty following a judicial or other legal process but have not been definitively sentenced. More than 3 million pre-trial detainees are held in 218 countries. The overall total will be well over three million when accounting for: more than 200,000 such prisoners believed to be held in China; detainees omitted from national totals in some countries because they are held in police facilities at the pre-court stage; and those held in the other seven countries where official information is not available.

The total includes more than 467,000 in the United States, 389,000 in India, 214,000 in Brazil, 117,000 in the Philippines, 112,000 in Russia, 102,000 in Mexico, 74,000 in Pakistan, 67,000 in Thailand, 62,000 in Turkey, and 61,000 in Bangladesh.

In about half of all countries in Africa, more than 40% of the prison population are pre-trial detainees. The countries with the highest pre-trial detention levels (as a percentage of total prisoners), excluding two countries with very small national populations, are:

Lebanon (87%), Haiti (82%), Bangladesh (76%), India (74%), Pakistan (73%), Mali (72%), American Samoa (70%), Gabon (70%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (70%) and Sri Lanka (69%),

Variations

There are considerable differences between the continents and between countries in trends in pre-trial detention levels since 2000:

• The African total has risen by 24%, with numbers trebling in Angola, Benin, Egypt, Gabon, Mali, Mauritius, Namibia, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
• The total in the Americas has increased by 59%, with numbers trebling in Bolivia and Paraguay and more than doubling in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Venezuela and some smaller countries.
• The total in Asia has increased by 74%, with numbers rising six-fold in Cambodia, trebling in Malaysia, Jordan and the Philippines and doubling in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Lebanon. By contrast, the number of pre-trial detainees has fallen by 57% in Kazakhstan.
• The total in Europe has fallen by 28%, mainly due to the substantial fall in the Russian Federation (52%) and large falls also in the Baltic states and in the Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland and Romania in central/eastern Europe. If the Russian figures are omitted, the European total is 7% lower than the total in about 2000.
• The total in Oceania has increased by 313%, driven by more than four-fold increase in pre-trial detainees in Australia and the nearly six-fold increase in New Zealand.

Conclusions

In short, numbers of pre-trial detainees have grown rapidly in the Americas, Asia and Oceania – far outstripping general population growth in these three continents. By contrast, Africa has seen a rise in the number of pre-trial detainees that is less than half that of the growth in the general population.

Since about the year 2000, the number of pre-trial detainees has grown by nearly 40%. This is 5% higher than the growth in the world’s general population since that time. The substantial falls since about 2000 that have been noted in the pre-trial detainees in Rwanda and the Russian Federation have had a large effect on the change in global pre-trial detainee levels. If these countries are omitted from the total, the number of pre-trial detainees in the rest of the world has grown by 57%.

Regular readers will know that the remand population in England and Wales is at its highest ever level with 56,192 remanded in custody by Crown Courts in the 12 month period to 30 June 2025.

Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here