Vienna (Austria), 11 May 2020 - For years, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been providing reliable global data on drugs and crime. Following today’s launch of its new data portal, dataUNODC, users will not only find the data they are looking for, but will also be given a more user friendly interface to visualize and download all statistical information produced by UNODC.
For example, recently released statistics about prisons and prisoner populations are now also available on data UNODC, showing that overcrowding of prisons is a global phenomenon. Overcrowding of prisons constitutes an infringement of prisoners’ human rights and is also a source of major concern in the current emergency situation linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the latest UNODC figures in 60% of the countries across the world prisoners far outnumber the capacity of prisons. The situation is particularly critical in Africa, where in more than half of the countries there are 50% or more prisoners than the capacity of penitentiaries allows.
Data such as this are now available on data UNODC, which contains reliable data on the following policy areas:
Its data can be a reliable source for anyone looking for credible information and UNODC hopes that researchers, scientists, journalists, decision makers, and students will find it especially useful in their daily work.
Maps and other data visualization options available on the portal will help users in capturing trends and patterns of their field of interest.
Information on data UNODC will be continuously updated. For example, further data on crime and on criminal justice activities will be released in the second half of May 2020, while new data on drug demand and drug supply will be out on 26 June jointly with the launch of the 2020 World Drug Report.
