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Bethany Dawson and Isobel van Hagen
- Here is a list of seven of the world's biggest prisons, remand jails, and political detention centers.
- It includes confinement facilities in China, Turkey, the Philippines, the US, and India.
- They highlight the global issue of overpopulation and inmate mistreatment linked to criminal detention.
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Detention as a form of punishment dates back to Roman times and beyond. The historical image of the dark, dingy dungeon was supposed to have been replaced by modern ideas of reform and rehabilitation in the 19th century.
However, in many societies today, poor prison conditions, mass incarceration, and the resulting issue of overcrowding have once again become a focal point for human rights and social justice protests.
Many prisons are costly to run, often understaffed, and can have a dangerous impact on the environment. Those who are incarcerated can experience grim conditions, with inadequate access to healthcare, experience deterioration of their mental health, and may face violence and abuse from other prisoners or staff.
While the violence of the American prison system is well-known, overcrowding, inhumane conditions, and punitive political attitudes driven by the fear of crime are increasingly critical prison issues worldwide.
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Many of the world's largest prisons – listed by population – are filled to over capacity, with the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research estimating in 2021 that there are 11.5 million people in prison across the world, includingpre-trial detainees/remand prisoners and those who have been convicted and sentenced.
Globally 140 people per 100,000 are in prison on any given day.
Here is our list of some of the biggest places of confinement in the world. It includes prisons, remand jails, and political detention centers.
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La Esperanza, El Salvador - 33,000 inmates
El Salvador's La Esperanza prison was built for 10,000 inmates but, due to massive overcrowding, now holds more than 33,000 inmates currently – one of the world's largest prison populations.
Human Rights Watch recently criticized the management of El Salvador's prisons after 32 people were found to have died in custody, most of them at La Esperanza.
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Tihar Jail, New Delhi, India - 17,534 inmates
Tihar Jail in New Delhi, India, is the largest prison complex in South Asia.
However, like many prisons across the world, the population of Tihar Jail greatly outstrips its capacity of 10,026, with nearly 20,000 people held there, according to the Delhi government.
The last state-sanctioned killings in India were performed at Tihar Jail in 2020 when four men known as the "Delhi Rape Gang" were hanged.
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Marmara Penitentiaries Campus, Turkey - 22,000 inmates
Once the largest prison in the world, the Marmara Prison in Turkey won the Guinness World Record for the biggest prison population, with 22,000 people confined inside its walls.
The prison, previously known as the Silivri Penitentiaries Campus, is a modern facility built in 2008 but only has a capacity of 11,000.
The high-security prison housed many of the people accused of involvement in the failed coup in 2016, which killed over 300 and injured 2,100.
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Urumqi No. 3 Detention Centre, China - at least 10,000 inmates
China runs a secretive prison system, and the size of many remains unknown.
However, with the country having the highest number of prisoners in the world– 1.7 million – it's believed that China also includes some of the biggest prisons in the world.
AP was given rare and exclusive access Urumqi No. 3 Detention Centre in China in 2021 housing prisoners from the Muslim Uyghur community of northwest China. Although Chinese authorities refused to give an exact number for the capacity of the center, AP estimates it is at least 10,000.
The dystopian detention center in Ürümqi, Xinjiang, holds mainly Uyghur inmates on its 240-acre site.
AP paints the picture of the political prisoners "gazing at a television playing grainy black-and-white images of Chinese Communist Party history."
China refuses to call such centers prisons, opting to refer to them euphemistically as "re-education centers" or "detention centers" from which Ughurs can "graduate."
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Center for the Confinement of Terrorism, El Salvador - capacity for 40,000 prisoners
The "mega-prison" in San Vicente, El Salvador, can hold up to 40,000 inmates and was built to help curb the extreme gang violence and murders in the Central American country.
In February, the prison saw its first intake of 2,000 prisoners, but it's already being criticized.
According to the Financial Times, if the prison reaches capacity, each inmate will only have 0.6 square meters of space in their cell.
Martin Horn, a retired administrator who ran the New York City Department of Correction, including the notorious Rikers Island jail, told the paper: "Forty thousand is too many to manage in one place, period. Under any circ*mstances."
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New Bilibid Prison, Manila, Philippines - 36,000 inmates
New Bilibid Prison in the Philippines — including its maximum security wing — has one of the largest prison populations in the world, currently holding nearly 36,000 inmates.
It was only designed to house 12,000 people.
A University of the Philippines report says that "this population overcrowding translates into multi-occupancy cell arraignments where as many as 80 to 100 inmates are crammed in a cell designed for ten people."
CNN Philipines reported that 16 inmates died every month between January and October 2022.
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Harris County Jail, Houston, Texas - 10,000 inmates
The Harris County Jail complex in Houston, Texas, holds nearly 10,000 people in 2023.
The Texas jail is facing extreme overcrowding, as the prison population has been increasing over the past few years, according to The Appeal. The overcrowding leads to disease outbreaks and a lack of access to adequate healthcare for those who are incarcerated, among many other poor conditions.
Last year, 28 people died while in custody at the jail, and four died in January of this year, according to a local news investigation.
Correction: April 3, 2023 — An earlier version of this story included an image from Rikers Island. It was removed. Rikers is a jail, not a prison.
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