An estimated 5.1 billion people, about two-thirds of humanity, cannot get fair and timely solutions to their legal problems, and nearly a third of the world's 11.6 million prisoners in 2024 were still waiting to be tried or sentenced.
Updated October 15, 2026. Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
Of all the people held in prisons worldwide in 2024, how many had not yet been sentenced?
5.1 billion
People without meaningful access to justice
About two-thirds of the world's population. A one-off estimate led by the World Justice Project for the Task Force on Justice, from surveys and other data in over 100 countries; its sub-groups overlap.
Data year 2019. Source: Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies / NYU Center on International Cooperation, via ReliefWeb, 2019
3.6 million
People in prison who have not been sentenced
Nearly a third of the 11.6 million people held in detention worldwide in 2024. The share has stayed at around 30% since 2015.
Data year 2024. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2026
65%
Countries with overcrowded prisons
Share of countries where prisoners outnumber official prison capacity (2024 or latest year). About one in four countries operate at more than 150% of capacity.
Data year 2024. Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2026
UNODC global estimates reported in the UN SDG Extended Report 2025 (indicator 16.3.2). Only the two years reported there are shown. The 2026 edition describes the share as stable at around 30% from 2015 to 2024.
Target 16.3 has no numerical goal for 2030. Its most widely reported indicator, the share of prisoners who have not been sentenced, has stayed around 30% between 2015 and 2024, while the number of people in detention rose from 11.1 million to 11.6 million and prisons in two-thirds of countries hold more people than they were built for.
In lower-income countries, fewer than 10% of legal needs are met, and in most of the lower-income countries studied the share is below 5%.
Source: United Nations, Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, 2023Almost 60% of prisoners in Central and Southern Asia had not been sentenced in 2024, up from about one in two in 2015. In Latin America and the Caribbean the share fell from 41% to 31% over the same period.
Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2026In sub-Saharan Africa, 50% of women in prison were unsentenced in 2023, compared with 41% of men, the largest gender gap of any region.
Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2025The number of people per lawyer ranges from about 260 in Greece to about 125,600 in Burkina Faso, so in many low-income countries a lawyer is out of reach for most people.
Source: United Nations, Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, 2023Instead of one “percent solved” score, DO GOOD rates three separate dimensions. A problem can have mature solutions that still reach too few people. These ratings are an editorial reading of the sources on this page, not a measured index.
Has the situation improved in the real world?
LowThe share of prisoners awaiting trial or sentence has not changed at global level since 2015 and overcrowding affects two-thirds of countries. There is no repeated global measure showing that more people can now resolve their civil and administrative problems.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
ModerateLegal aid, community-based advice and paralegals are established approaches with documented returns in some settings, such as $6 returned for every $1 spent on community advice officers in South Africa. Most evaluations come from a small number of countries, and less is known about what works at national scale in low-income settings.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
LowFewer than one in ten legal needs is met in lower-income countries, lawyers are extremely scarce in some of them, and in 2021 most grassroots justice groups surveyed reported cutting services or closing for lack of funds.
Prison statistics are collected every year but come directly from only about 110 countries, and national definitions differ. The global justice gap rests on a single 2019 estimate with overlapping categories, and the dispute resolution indicator is too new to show trends.
The global share of unsentenced prisoners has stayed around 30% for a decade, with improvement in Latin America and the Caribbean offset by a rise in Central and Southern Asia. Measurement of everyday legal needs is expanding, but there is no evidence yet of a global narrowing of the justice gap.
Access to justice means that people can understand their rights and get a fair, affordable and timely solution when something goes wrong: a dispute with a landlord or employer, a land or family conflict, a debt, a crime against them or a criminal charge against them. When this fails, problems grow into lost jobs, homes, health and income. A 2019 global estimate by the Task Force on Justice put the number of people who lack meaningful access to justice at 5.1 billion, about two-thirds of the world's population. The figure combines overlapping groups: 1.5 billion people who could not resolve an everyday justice problem, 4.5 billion who lack basic legal tools such as identity papers or proof of land rights, and 253 million living in extreme injustice such as modern slavery, statelessness or conflict.
Most legal problems are civil or administrative, and most people never take them to a court or other formal body: only 17% of people surveyed by the World Justice Project said they would turn to a third party to mediate or decide a problem. The World Justice Project estimates that 1.4 billion people have unmet civil and administrative justice needs, and that legal problems cost individuals the equivalent of 1.7% of GDP on average. In criminal justice, about 3.6 million people were held in pre-trial detention in 2024, many of them in overcrowded prisons, and in lower-income countries fewer than one in ten legal needs is met.
SDG target 16.3 asks countries to promote the rule of law and ensure equal access to justice for all. It has three indicators, each covering only part of the problem:
Unsentenced detainees (16.3.2)
People held in prison who have not yet been tried or sentenced, as a share of everyone in prison on a given day. UNODC compiles the data from an annual survey of national criminal justice systems, filling gaps with other sources. A high share can point to slow courts and overuse of pre-trial detention.
Reporting of violence (16.3.1)
The share of victims of physical assault, sexual assault or robbery who reported the incident to the police or other authorities, measured through crime victimisation surveys.
Access to dispute resolution (16.3.3)
The share of people who had a civil or administrative dispute in the past two years and were able to use a formal or informal mechanism to resolve it. It is measured with household legal needs surveys and is the newest of the three indicators.
The justice gap
Broader estimates combine survey and other data to count people with unmet justice needs, including those without legal identity or secure property rights and those in extreme situations such as statelessness. They rest on assumptions and are not repeated every year.
What works
International human rights law requires states to provide free legal assistance to people charged with a crime who cannot pay, and some civil cases also require it. A lawyer early in a case can challenge unlawful detention and speed up proceedings.
Limits
Many legal aid systems are underfunded and there are too few lawyers, especially outside capital cities; in some countries there is roughly one lawyer per 125,000 people.
What works
Trained non-lawyers help people understand the law, gather documents and negotiate or mediate disputes close to home. Sierra Leone's state-funded Legal Aid Board, for example, supports a network of community justice workers.
Limits
Programmes often depend on short-term donor funding; 78% of grassroots justice groups surveyed in 2021 had cut operations or closed for lack of funds. Paralegals cannot represent people in every court.
What works
Independent advice services and legal representation in high-stakes civil cases can resolve problems before they escalate. Community advice officers in South Africa have been estimated to return $6 for every $1 invested, the UK's Citizen Advice service to save £2 in direct costs for every £1 spent, and providing counsel to low-income tenants facing eviction was estimated to save New York City $320 million a year.
Limits
Most of these estimates come from middle- and high-income settings, and the savings fall to other parts of government, so justice ministries rarely see the benefit in their own budgets.
What works
Time limits on detention before trial, regular case reviews, bail and non-custodial measures can reduce the number of people held without a sentence. Latin America and the Caribbean lowered the share of unsentenced prisoners from 41% in 2015 to 31% in 2024.
Limits
Reforms need working courts, prosecutors and defence lawyers to process cases faster. Elsewhere the share has risen, reaching almost 60% in Central and Southern Asia.
What works
Local centres that bring legal information, mediation and referrals under one roof make help easier to find, and Argentina has built a network of such centres aimed at the communities with the greatest need.
Limits
Centres need stable public funding and links to courts and other services to be effective, and their effect on how problems are resolved is less well measured than their number of visitors.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
Household surveys that ask people which legal problems they faced and how they dealt with them shift attention from courts to people's actual needs. The World Justice Project produced the first estimates of indicator 16.3.3 for more than 60 countries in 2023, but most countries do not yet run such surveys regularly.
Researchers have estimated what a basic package of justice services would cost: about $20 per person a year in a low-income country, $64 in a middle-income country and $190 in a high-income country. Using such estimates for national budgets is still at an early stage.
Digital legal information, online filing and online mediation could lower the cost and travel time of resolving small disputes. Evidence on whether they help people with low incomes, low literacy or no internet access, rather than only better-off users, is limited.
Implementation gap
In some low-income countries there is one lawyer for more than 100,000 people, most of them in cities, so legal aid systems cannot reach rural and poor communities.
Implementation gap
An estimated two billion people live in countries that cannot afford even half the cost of a basic package of justice services, and community justice groups often depend on short-term donor funding.
Implementation gap
Prisons in 65% of countries hold more people than their official capacity, and in about one in four countries occupancy exceeds 150%. Case backlogs keep people in pre-trial detention for long periods.
Coordination gap
Courts, police, prosecutors, legal aid bodies, local and customary authorities and social services are run by different institutions, which makes it hard to refer people between them or to plan services around the problems people actually face.
Knowledge gap
In countries with data, the median share of victims who report a sexual assault to the authorities is 15%, compared with 35% for physical assault, so official records miss most of the problem.
Knowledge gap
UNODC's prison survey receives direct national data from about 110 countries, definitions of unsentenced detainees differ, and only some countries collect data on everyday legal problems, which makes global progress hard to track.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
The 5.1 billion estimate combines overlapping groups and has not been updated. How to measure unmet legal needs consistently across countries and over time, and whether the gap is shrinking, are open questions.
Paralegals, advice centres and legal aid show good results in individual programmes. It is less clear how to combine and fund them nationally in low-income countries and what the effects on income, health and security are.
Latin America and the Caribbean lowered its share of unsentenced prisoners while Central and Southern Asia saw an increase. Which reforms, court capacities and policies explain these different paths is not well documented.
Most people resolve problems through negotiation, family, community leaders or customary bodies rather than courts. How to make these routes fairer, especially for women and minorities, without weakening rights protections remains debated.
If you are a lawyer, law student or paralegal, take on pro bono work or volunteer with a legal advice service or clinic in your area.
Donate to or volunteer with established organisations that offer free legal advice, community paralegal programmes or support for people in pre-trial detention, and check what evidence they publish about their work.
If a friend, neighbour or colleague faces an eviction, debt claim, workplace dispute or criminal charge, help them find free advice services early, before the problem escalates or deadlines pass.
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United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (data for 16.3.2 from UNODC), published 2026
Latest UN storyline for target 16.3. Source of the 11.6 million people in detention and 3.6 million unsentenced in 2024, the stable share of around 30% since 2015, regional trends and prison overcrowding in 65% of countries.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (data from UNODC), published 2025
Previous edition, used for the global unsentenced share in 2015 (29%) and 2023 (31%), the gender breakdown in sub-Saharan Africa and the median reporting rates for sexual and physical assault (indicator 16.3.1).
Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies / NYU Center on International Cooperation, via ReliefWeb, published 2019
Source of the 5.1 billion global justice gap estimate and its components, the ODI cost estimates for basic justice, and returns on investment from advice and legal aid programmes. The most recent global estimate of the justice gap found.
World Justice Project, published 2023
Legal needs survey estimates for 104 countries. Source of the 1.4 billion people with unmet civil justice needs, the cost of legal problems (1.7% of GDP on average) and the first 16.3.3 estimates for more than 60 countries.
United Nations, Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, published 2023
Report to the UN General Assembly. Source of the share of legal needs met in lower-income countries, the 17% who would use a third party, lawyer-to-population ratios, the right to free legal aid, Sierra Leone's community justice workers and the 2021 funding survey of grassroots justice groups.
United Nations Statistics Division / UNODC, published 2024
Definition, data collection through the UN-CTS survey, country coverage (about 110 countries reporting directly) and limitations of indicator 16.3.2, which the map shows.