Uganda prison population and demographics

The Uganda 2018 statistical abstract provides useful insights into the population and demographics of Uganda’s prison system. It indicates, for instance, that as of the time of abstract release, more than half of the prison population were people on remand. This confirms media reports by officials of the Uganda Prisons Service that Uganda has some of the highest rates of prisoners on remand in East Africa.

Our dataset on prison statistics from 2011-2017 provides a detailed insight into the demographics and population of people housed in prisons across the country. In addition to the two broad categories of prisoners – criminal (prisoners on remand and prisoners convicted) and civil (debtors) – it breaks down the numbers by gender and age of prisoners, and district of incarceration.

The data, from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, also indicates incarceration rates, the number of prisoners participating in rehabilitation programmes and the number of babies living with female prisoners.

Analyse and download the data on prisoners in Uganda here.

While the data is primarily about prisoners in 2016 and 2017, it is a good companion piece to our ongoing compilation of statistics from the Uganda Police Force 2018 annual crime report. So far we have curated and cleaned the following crime data:

• Category of crimes in 2018
• Crime statistics by district and region in 2018