Fresh five-week trend data collected by Haiti’s Office of Citizen Protection reveals a small but measurable uptick in the total number of people held in 13 of the country’s correctional facilities, a shift driven almost entirely by a growing population of detainees awaiting legal processing.
Between the June 8–12 reporting window and the June 15–19 window, the overall prison population grew by 0.5%, climbing 38 people from 7,256 to 7,294. The breakdown of this growth exposes a stark imbalance: the number of people held in pretrial detention rose 0.7%—an addition of 40 people, moving from 5,890 to 5,93—while the population of convicted prisoners actually saw a tiny 0.1% decline, dropping two people from 1,366 to 1,364. Officials attribute the small drop in convicted inmates to scheduled releases completed over the five-day period.
A gender breakdown of the overall population growth shows 63% of the 38 new detainees are men, equal to 24 additional male inmates, while 37% are women, adding 14 more female prisoners. This gender split holds nearly identical for the growth in pretrial detention: 63% of the 40 new pretrial detainees are men (25 additional) and 37% are women (15 additional). The two-person decline in the convicted population was split evenly between men and women.
In a rare positive shift within the data, the total number of minors held in the 13 facilities tracked declined over the same reporting period. The overall juvenile population fell 1.2%, dropping three people from 255 to 252. Breaking this trend down by legal status, the number of minors in pretrial detention fell 0.8% (two people, from 237 to 235), while the number of convicted minors saw a steeper 5.6% drop, falling one person from 18 to 17. Gender analysis of this decline shows the entire reduction came from the male juvenile population: both the two fewer pretrial juvenile detainees and one fewer convicted juvenile are boys, with no change recorded in the number of incarcerated female minors.
The new figures add to ongoing conversations about Haiti’s overburdened justice system, where lengthy pretrial detention has long been documented as a major contributor to prison overcrowding and poor conditions inside correctional facilities.