How many people are imprisoned in Ethiopia?

Ethiopia's prison population is 110,000 people. This figure aggregates all forms of detention counted by the source: sentenced prisoners, pre-trial detainees, and administrative detentions.

What is the incarceration rate in Ethiopia?

Ethiopia's incarceration rate is approximately 99 people per 100,000 population.

How many prisons are there in Ethiopia?

World Prisons indexes 10 individual facilities in Ethiopia. Each entry links to a detail page with contact information, capacity, oversight reports, and known conditions.

All countries

Africa · Eastern Africa

Ethiopia

Q: Does Ethiopia have the death penalty?

Ethiopia's death-penalty status is: retentionist. Seeded from Amnesty International 2024 categorisation + Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

High confidence

Verified 20 May 2026 · Data dated 1 Mar 2020

Aging · 5mo ago

No consolidated national release since 2020. Figure includes federal + nine regional administrations.

Compare Ethiopia World Prison Brief page

Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always verify with primary sources before acting on any figure. See data sources.

Prison population

110,000

Year: 2020

Rate per 100,000

Per 100,000 residents

Occupancy

—

At or under capacity

Pre-trial / remand

14.9%

Share not yet sentenced

Female prisoners

4.2%

Foreign nationals

—

Figures from official sources · verified 20 May 2026 · methodology

Conditions risk — across 10 facilities

Average of our computed Conditions Risk Score across the country's facilities. Methodology · Browse highest-risk

—

national average

10 unknown

retentionist on capital punishment. Last known execution: 2007.Methods: firing squadICCPR-OP2 (death-penalty abolition protocol): not a signatory

Seeded from Amnesty International 2024 categorisation + Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

Source: Amnesty International + Cornell Death Penalty Worldwide.

2 documented human-rights cases →

How Ethiopia compares

vs Africa (8) & global averages

Rate per 100,000this: 99 · region: 210 · global: 214

Pre-trial sharethis: 15% · region: 38% · global: 32%

The vertical ticks mark the global (grey) and regional (amber) means. Bars are clipped at the high end for readability.

Prison population over time

Annual figures, latest survey year

2000: 55,209+99.2% over 20y2020: 110,000

Source: World Prison Brief / unodc

What we know — and don't

Transparency about the boundaries of this data. Click sources where linked.

What we don't know

Capacity, occupancy, pre-trial share not published.

—

Held

—

Data completeness

80%

Score based on how many fields are populated. We surface this so you know where the gaps are.

National population: 111,110,0002020
Source-verified: 20 May 2026
Source links: 1 cited

Sources

Direct citations for the figures on this page.

Primary reference
World Prison Brief (ICPS, Birkbeck) — Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research
See /data-sources for our methodology.

ISO 3166-1 alpha-3: ETH

Cite this page

Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.

APA

World Prisons. (2026). Ethiopia — prison statistics. Retrieved October 15, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/countries/ethiopia

Chicago

"Ethiopia — prison statistics." World Prisons. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/countries/ethiopia.

BibTeX

@misc{worldprisons-ethiopia,
  author = {{World Prisons}},
  title = {Ethiopia — prison statistics},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://worldprisons.com/countries/ethiopia},
  urldate = {2026-10-15}
}