Countries with the Highest Incarceration Rates
Key Findings
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El Salvador leads in Prisoners per 100,000 Population with 1,659.
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Average Prisoners per 100,000 Population: 723 · median: 559.
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Gap: El Salvador is 3.2× larger than Tonga.
About This Dataset
Countries with the Highest Incarceration Rates
The countries and territories that imprison the largest share of their population, measured as the number of prisoners per 100,000 people, according to the World Prison Brief. The rate allows fair comparison between countries of very different sizes.
Analysis
The top three in Prisoners per 100,000 Population are El Salvador (1,659), Cuba (794) and Rwanda (637). The 8 entries cover a range of 1,143, from 1,659 down to 516. Most of that gap is between first and second alone (865 of 1,143); the other 7 are separated by just 278. The other 6 are bunched between 516 and 637.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- World Prison Brief (Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research)
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 8 observations
- Measure
- Prisoners per 100,000 Population
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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How these countries rank across all our charts
Each country's page lists its position in every ranking on ANYSTAT.
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