Sources and methodology

Country

Countries with a population greater than 500,000 people. Five nations have more than 500,000 people but are not included in this report because the World Prison Brief did not have women’s incarceration data for them as of August 1, 2025: Cuba, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Eritrea, and Somalia. For Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were unable to locate separate estimates of the total women’s population for the Federation and the Republika Srpska, so we calculated a combined total number of women incarcerated in the Federation and the Republika Srpska. For more details on the international data, see the methodology.

Women’s incarceration rate

Number of women confined per 100,000 women in each country. The number of women incarcerated in each country was calculated using the “prison population total” and the “female prisoners (percentage of prison population)” published by the World Prison Brief, as of August 1, 2025. The women’s incarceration rates were calculated using national female populations reported by the United Nations (UN) for 2023. The women’s incarceration rate in the United States is calculated based on the data in Appendix Table 2.

Number of incarcerated women

Estimated number of women confined in each country. The number of women incarcerated in each country was calculated using the “prison population total” and the “female prisoners (percentage of prison population)” published by the World Prison Brief, as of August 1, 2025.

Year of data

This is the year for which the most recent prison data is available through the World Prison Brief as of August 1, 2025.