Seven in 10 Liberian Prisoners Have Never Been Convicted, Government Official Reveals

Published: April 29, 2026

MONROVIA — A senior Justice Ministry official told a gathering of public defenders Wednesday that 70 percent of Liberia’s prison population has never been convicted of a crime, exposing what he described as a systemic breakdown across the country’s entire justice chain.

Assistant Minister for Rehabilitation Gabriel Ndupellar told the 8th Annual Convention of the National Association of Public Defenders of Liberia that of 3,768 inmates currently held in correctional facilities nationwide, 2,650 are pretrial detainees still awaiting trial. Only 1,118 have been convicted.

“This should be alarming for us as a country,” Ndupellar said, noting that in a functioning justice system, convicted prisoners — not pretrial detainees — should constitute the majority of the prison population.

Ndupellar attributed the crisis to compounding failures at every level of the justice system: constitutional rights to speedy trial being routinely violated, severe shortages of judicial staff, the absence of public defenders in lower courts, a lack of city solicitors outside Montserrado County, and the persistent practice of private prosecutors abandoning cases after defendants have already been jailed.

He described magistrate courts operating with as little as a single clerk and said the absence of public defenders at courts of first instance leaves poor defendants without legal representation at the most critical early stages of their cases — a gap he said disproportionately keeps vulnerable citizens behind bars for extended periods without trial.

“These are not isolated issues,” Ndupellar said. “They are entrenched problems that continue to deny justice to ordinary Liberians.”

The remarks were delivered at the Temple of Justice under the convention theme “Enhancing Access to Justice: The Protection of Rights in the Criminal Justice System,” and were attended by court administrators, prosecutors and international partners including the United Nations Development Programme.

Ndupellar pledged the Bureau of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s commitment to working with the Liberian National Bar Association, the Prosecutors Association and other rule-of-law institutions to reverse the trend.

“We can change the narrative,” he said.