Countries With the Lowest Pre-trial Detainee Shares

Every country with a figure for pre-trial detainee share, ranked from lowest to highest. The top three are Algeria (0.3%), Namibia (3.16%) and Gibraltar (3.88%). The middle country of the 182 has 31.3%.

What this measures

Unsentenced detainees as a share of the prison population, in % of prisoners. Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. For this measure, higher is worse.

Prisoners who have not been sentenced, as a share of everyone held. It measures how long justice takes, not how much crime there is. A country can imprison few people and hold most of them for years without trial. The site has no prison population rate, because the only series that compares countries is a private collection, not UN data.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2011–2024. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on pre-trial detainee share

• Countries With the Highest Pre-trial Detainee Shares
• Pre-trial detainee share by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Lowest Corruption Perceptions Index
• Countries With the Lowest Political Rights (FH)
• Countries With the Lowest Civil Liberties (FH)
• Countries With the Lowest Trust in Government
• Countries With the Lowest Refugees Originating
• Countries With the Lowest Electoral Democracy
• Countries With the Lowest Liberal Democracy
• Countries With the Lowest Participatory Democracy

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.