13.71
% of prisoners, 2024
High trust, 85 of 100 All the counted sources are of one kind (police and justice records), so they share the same blind spots.
Show the data as a table
| Year | UNODC Data Portal, persons held in prisons by citizenship |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 20.28 |
| 2008 | 19.51 |
| 2009 | 18.78 |
| 2010 | 19.08 |
| 2011 | 20.66 |
| 2012 | 19.41 |
| 2013 | 17.8 |
| 2014 | 17.37 |
| 2015 | 17.33 |
| 2016 | 17.29 |
| 2017 | 17.32 |
| 2018 | 17.02 |
| 2019 | 16.5 |
| 2020 | 16.03 |
| 2021 | 15.44 |
| 2022 | 14.85 |
| 2023 | 14.16 |
| 2024 | 13.71 |
All countriesAll of Australia's figuresCompare
Australia among 197 countries
59 have a higher figure and 137 a lower one. Definitions differ between countries, and their years run from 1998 to 2026.
What this number counts
- Counts
- Foreign citizens as a percentage of all people held in prison, sentenced and pre-trial, on the counting day. Citizenship is legal nationality: naturalised citizens count as nationals.
- Where
- Australia
- When
- Latest available: WPB 2025, UNODC 2024 (one year, not an average)
Where the number comes from (2 sources)
| Source | Figure and year | Definition | Quality | Counts for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
World Prison Brief, foreign prisonersInstitute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck, University of London · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-26 | 13.92025 | Foreign prisoners as a percentage of the prison population, as given on the WPB country page (30.6.2025 - prisoners born outside Australia).WPB shows the most recent figure it has found, so the date differs from country to country, and it does not name the source of this row. Row "Foreign prisoners (percentage of prison population)" of the WPB country page (Overview tab), saved in raw/prison-population-rate/wpb/country/; transcribed into scripts/foreign-prisoners-by-country.manual.json. | 3 of 5 checks
| 38% |
UNODC Data Portal, persons held in prisons by citizenshipUnited Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) · Police and justice recordsRetrieved 2026-10-26 · Data (Excel file) | 13.712024 | Foreign citizens held in prisons (6,202) as a percentage of all persons held (45,229), both sexes and all ages, sentenced and unsentenced, on one day in 2024 (typically 31 December, according to UNODC).UNODC asks countries to leave out people held for immigration reasons. Persons whose citizenship is unknown stay in the total. Latest year in the file with both counts. UNODC source code for this series: CTS. Raw file: data_cts_prisons_and_prisoners.xlsx (read from raw/prison-population-rate/unodc/), rows "Persons held", "by citizenship", "Foreign citizens", divided by "Persons held", "Total", same year. | 5 of 5 checks
| 63% |
- WPB38%
- UNODC63%
How the trust score was worked out
- Quality34 / 40
How well the sources are made
- Agreement29.2 / 30
How close the sources are to each other
- Independence12 / 20
How many separate ways the number was measured
- Freshness10 / 10
How recent the newest data is
Who reports it, and since when
No source of these kinds: death and health registers, independent count.
- Blind spot: every counted source is the same kind
figure no figure here, inside its range no later figure recorded change
Why the numbers differ
- Counting day: Eurostat and UNODC ask for the number held on one day of each year, SPACE counts on 31 January, and the World Prison Brief shows the latest figure it has found, which can be from any year.
- Same questionnaire: since 2014 Eurostat and UNODC collect European figures in one joint questionnaire, so where their figures match, the UNODC line is shown but not counted again. WPB names no source for its foreign-prisoner row; where its date and value match another line it is treated as a copy.
- Who is in the total: all sources include pre-trial detainees. Eurostat and UNODC ask countries to leave out people held only under immigration law; SPACE takes each prison administration's total and lists exceptions in its notes.
- Who counts as foreign: each administration uses its own rule. In SPACE 2025, Finland counts 12 inmates of unknown nationality and 5 stateless inmates as foreign, England and Wales include 343 non-criminal prisoners among foreign inmates, and Northern Ireland counts British and Irish citizens as nationals. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
- Unknown citizenship: Eurostat, UNODC and SPACE divide by all prisoners, so prisoners whose citizenship is not recorded lower the foreign share; WPB notes some cases where they are counted as foreign.
- Estonia and Latvia: many residents have undetermined citizenship (Estonia) or are recognised non-citizens (Latvia). Eurostat's population base counts foreign and stateless people together, and the prison sources do not say how these groups are counted, so for these two countries the prison and population shares may not use the same definition, and Eurostat's and SPACE's Estonian prison shares are far apart.
- The population share uses a different base: residents of all ages on 1 January, counted by population registers or census-based estimates, while prisoners are mostly adult men and include people who do not live in the country.
Common mistakes
- Reading the prison share against the population share as a crime rate for foreign residents. Foreign prisoners include non-residents, such as tourists, people in transit and people without a residence permit, who are not in the resident population that the population share is based on. (source, retrieved 2026-10-27)
- Treating all prisoners as convicted. The totals include people held before trial; SPACE Table 12 splits foreign inmates into those without a final sentence and those serving one. (source, retrieved 2026-10-26)
- Assuming no one is held under immigration law. Eurostat and UNODC ask countries to exclude them, but some prison totals still include non-criminal prisoners, as the SPACE notes show. (source, retrieved 2026-10-27)
- Reading citizenship as origin. Naturalised citizens count as nationals, so these figures cannot be compared with figures by country of birth or immigrant background.
- Comparing without age and sex. Prisoners are mostly young adult men, and the foreign population of a country can have a different age and sex mix from the national population; no source here publishes an adjusted figure.
Download, cite and report an error
From the table What share of prisoners in each country are foreign citizens, compared with their share of the population? Updated 2026-10-27.
Download every value in this table (CSV)
Cite as: RealStats, “Foreign citizens' share of prisoners in Australia”, updated 2026-10-27, with the original sources listed on the page.