With majority awaiting trial, number of Lagos inmates almost double prison capacity, NBS reveals

With an inmate population of 7,396 against existing prison capacity of 3,927, Lagos State has an alarming case of prison overcrowding.

These figures were part of data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Also, the NBS report revealed Lagos had the highest number of inmates in the country, taking the lion share of a total of 68,686 prisoners in all states of the federation.

According to the data, Bayelsa, with 444 inmates, is the least populated, while Ekiti with its 585 inmates, followed.

Overall, total prison population grew by 5.6%, with majority of inmates awaiting trial.

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The data also showed that the most represented age bracket was the 26-50 years age group followed by the category of those above 51 years.

The number of inmates under 16 years reduced from 446 in 2015 to 309 in 2016, the data revealed.

“Lagos state has the highest number of prison inmates. The state recorded 7,396 prison inmates population as against a prison capacity of 3,927, closely followed by Rivers and Kano states with 4,424 and 4,183 prison inmates population.

“Conversely. Ekiti and Bayelsa states had the least prison inmates population of 444 and 585 as against prison capacity of 200 and 400 respectively”, the report showed.

Additional data showed that in 2016, 67,329 of the prison inmates were males as against 1,357 females, a change from 2015 where 63,668 of the prison inmates were males as against 1,365 females, indicating a slight reduction in the number of female inmates.

 

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