prisondirectory.org

About prisondirectory.org

What the directory is, who it helps and how it is built

What prisondirectory.org is

Prison Directory (prisondirectory.org) is a free, independent guide that brings together 6,115 profiles of prisons, penitentiaries, local jails, juvenile centers and detention centers in 25 countries. It is organised by country, region or state and municipality so that anyone can locate an establishment and find its public contact details in one place.

Who it helps

It is designed for families and friends of people deprived of liberty, lawyers and legal professionals, journalists, students, researchers and social organisations. Each country is published in its own language so the information is accessible to those who need it.

How it is built

The data comes from OpenStreetMap, an open collaborative project, and is retrieved through its public services (Overpass API and Nominatim). It is then cleaned, classified by type of facility and assigned to its region and municipality. No data is invented or estimated: if a data point is not in the source, it is not shown and the profile says so. Facilities without a name in the source are left out, as are establishments recorded as historic or closed.

What each profile contains

Each profile gathers, when available, the name, type of facility, responsible organisation, address, phone, email and official website, capacity and hours. It is completed with the nearest facilities, with their distance, and a practical guide for visiting or making contact. Coordinates are shown as text: the directory does not include maps.

Coverage

The directory currently covers 25 countries and 6,115 profiles:

Coverage depends on what the OpenStreetMap community has mapped, so some countries are more complete than others.

Independence and what we do not publish

Prison Directory is a private, independent project with no link to governments or prison administrations. It publishes only institutional information about establishments: we do not publish names, photographs or data about inmates, staff or victims, and we do not offer search tools for incarcerated people.

Corrections and updates

The data may contain errors or become outdated. Authorities, facility managers and anyone with a legitimate interest can request, free of charge, a correction or the removal of a profile from the contact page. A lasting fix to the source data is also achieved by editing OpenStreetMap.

Who publishes the site

Prison Directory is published and operated by VORTICEPACIFICO ENGENHARIA LDA (NIF/NIPC PT518972895), based in Viana do Castelo, Portugal (European Union). See the legal notice, the privacy policy and the contact page.