How many prisons are there in Iceland?

World Prisons indexes 7 individual facilities in Iceland. Each entry links to a detail page with contact information, capacity, oversight reports, and known conditions.

All countries

Iceland

Q: Does Iceland have the death penalty?

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

Stub confidence

Auto-created from Wikidata import (no WPB data yet).

Compare Iceland

Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date.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

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Sentenced + remand

Rate per 100,000

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Per 100,000 residents

Occupancy

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At or under capacity

Pre-trial / remand

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Share not yet sentenced

Female prisoners

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Foreign nationals

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Figures from official sources · methodology

Conditions risk — across 7 facilities

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

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national average

7 unknown

abolitionist on capital punishment since 1928. Last known execution: 1830.ICCPR-OP2 (death-penalty abolition protocol): signatory

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

Source: Amnesty International + Cornell Death Penalty Worldwide.

12 documented human-rights cases →

Prison population over time

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

National population: —
Source-verified: —
Source links: 0 cited

Sources

Direct citations for the figures on this page.

No structured citations yet.
See /data-sources for our methodology.

ISO 3166-1 alpha-3: ISL

Recent reports

Fangelsid Akureyri6 Jul 2026
The Althingi Ombudsman visited a security housing in Akureyri on 25 May 2022. This was the first visit by the Ombudsman to security housing, although in 2018 the Ombudsman visited the forensic psychiatric ward of the National University Hospital at Kleppur, where individuals can also be placed on the basis of a sentence. In the security housing in Akureyri, there are […] persons who have been sentenced to security detention based on Article 62 of the General Penal Code. Because of their situation, the legislation on disabled persons also applies to them. The security housing is operated on the basis of a service contract between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour and the Municipality of Akureyri. The contract is concluded retroactively for one year at a time. For that reason, the Minister of Social Affairs and Labour and the Welfare Department of the Municipality of Akureyri are instructed to make sure that there is a valid service contract in force for the operations at all times. In Iceland, no comprehensive legislation has been enacted on the implementation of security detention. The report points out that the lack of a legal framework has led to various problems that are reflected, among other things, in the fact that it is not fully clear how responsibility is divided between the enforcement authorities and the authorities of health and social affairs when it comes to various decisions on the implementation of sentences for security detention. [...]
NPM-is-ombudsman · source

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). Iceland — prison statistics. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/countries/iceland

Chicago

"Iceland — prison statistics." World Prisons. Accessed August 30, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/countries/iceland.

BibTeX

@misc{worldprisons-iceland,
  author = {{World Prisons}},
  title = {Iceland — prison statistics},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://worldprisons.com/countries/iceland},
  urldate = {2026-08-30}
}

Recent reports

Fangelsid Akureyri6 Jul 2026

The Althingi Ombudsman visited a security housing in Akureyri on 25 May 2022. This was the first visit by the Ombudsman to security housing, although in 2018 the Ombudsman visited the forensic psychiatric ward of the National University Hospital at Kleppur, where individuals can also be placed on the basis of a sentence. In the security housing in Akureyri, there are […] persons who have been sentenced to security detention based on Article 62 of the General Penal Code. Because of their situation, the legislation on disabled persons also applies to them. The security housing is operated on the basis of a service contract between the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour and the Municipality of Akureyri. The contract is concluded retroactively for one year at a time. For that reason, the Minister of Social Affairs and Labour and the Welfare Department of the Municipality of Akureyri are instructed to make sure that there is a valid service contract in force for the operations at all times. In Iceland, no comprehensive legislation has been enacted on the implementation of security detention. The report points out that the lack of a legal framework has led to various problems that are reflected, among other things, in the fact that it is not fully clear how responsibility is divided between the enforcement authorities and the authorities of health and social affairs when it comes to various decisions on the implementation of sentences for security detention. [...]

NPM-is-ombudsman · source