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93% of African Countries Face Prison Overcrowding Crisis, UN Report Reveals
93% of African Countries Face Prison Overcrowding Crisis, UN Report Reveals
NEWS
The Nigerian Record
7/19/20262 min read
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."
The UNODC data shows considerable variation within the African continent itself.
While the overall regional picture is bleak, the report notes that "the regional picture can hide significant differences between subregions," citing Southern Africa and other subregions as examples where conditions differ from the continental average.
By comparison, the report found that only around 25 per cent of countries in Northern America reported overcrowded prison systems, while more than 90 per cent of countries in South America reported operating above capacity.
The report links overcrowding directly to a range of downstream harms, warning that operating significantly above intended capacity "gravely affects the quality of nutrition, sanitation and hygiene, health services, rates of transmission of infectious diseases" and prisoners' access to healthcare and rehabilitation programmes.
It further states that overcrowding "generates conflicts, fuels violence, erodes prison infrastructure and poses immense security and management challenges."
The UN report calls for greater use of non-custodial measures, referencing the United Nations Rules for Non-Custodial Measures (the Tokyo Rules) and the newly adopted Kyoto Model Strategies on Reducing Reoffending, adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2025.
It argues that such alternatives "can be more effective in reducing the risk of reoffending" for many categories of offenders while easing pressure on overstretched prison systems.
The overcrowding data was compiled through the UN Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS) and cross-referenced with figures from the World Prison Brief, maintained by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research.