Lebanon’s prison bill, in numbers

Lebanon’s approved 2026 budget allocates at least LBP 1.6342 trillion to spending explicitly identifiable as prison-specific.

The largest component is food. The budget sets aside LBP 890 billion for prisoner nutrition, alongside LBP 240 billion for medicines, LBP 7.2 billion for laboratory materials and LBP 250 billion specifically for prison hospitalisation. A further LBP 204.8 billion appears under equipment and maintenance for the prison-related “disciplinary administration” function.

That LBP 1.63 trillion is not the total cost of Lebanon’s prison system. Salaries, security, transport and other shared Internal Security Forces costs can sit elsewhere in the budget. It is therefore better read as a minimum.

Against that budget sits a prison population that stood at 6,268 inmates on March 30, according to the Justice Ministry’s Directorate of Prisons. The temptation is to divide one number by the other and produce a daily or annual “cost per prisoner.” The records show why that would be misleading.

LBP 1.63 trillion that can be identified

The prison-specific current spending in the 2026 budget sits under a function labelled “disciplinary administration” within the Interior Ministry chapter for the Internal Security Forces and prisons.

Its current expenditure totals LBP 1.1794 trillion. Food accounts for LBP 890 billion, medicines LBP 240 billion and laboratory materials LBP 7.2 billion. Hospital care appears separately, with another LBP 250 billion specifically marked for prisons.

Capital spending adds LBP 204.8 billion, including LBP 106.3 billion for equipment and LBP 98.5 billion for maintenance. Together, those identifiable components produce the LBP 1.6342 trillion minimum. Food alone represents more than half of it.

LBP 890 billion budgeted for food

The Public Procurement Authority shows how part of that allocation turns into contracts.

For 2026, it lists nine signed contracts for basic food supplies covering the Roumieh and Baabda prison group, Tripoli and the women’s and men’s prisons in Zahle. Their listed values total LBP 657 billion, with contracts running through the end of the year.

That is not the whole food system. Prepared meals are procured separately for other prisons and detention facilities, while fruit and vegetables have their own procurement process. The LBP 890 billion budget line therefore does not translate into one national food contract. Many contracts are supplied “on demand,” so contract value is not necessarily the same as final expenditure.

6,146 at year-end, 6,268 by March 30

The denominator is moving too. ISF figures cited by the National Human Rights Commission recorded 6,146 inmates at the end of 2025. By March 10, the figure had risen to 6,212. The Justice Ministry’s prison dashboard then recorded 6,268 inmates on March 30.

The two published figures differ by 122 inmates over roughly three months. Counts can also vary according to whether they include only prisons or broader detention sites such as courthouse cells and police holding facilities. Dividing a national budget by one inmate total would therefore produce false precision.

82% or 65% in pretrial detention

Even the proportion of people held before their cases are concluded depends on the definition.

The National Human Rights Commission has cited a pretrial detention rate of around 82 per cent using the Justice Ministry’s approach. Under that definition, a person facing several cases remains classified as a pretrial detainee until final judgments have been issued across them.

The ISF uses a narrower definition. Once a verdict has been issued in one case, the person can cease to be classified as pretrial even if other charges remain unresolved. Under that method, the Commission reported a rate of about 65 per cent.

The difference is 17 percentage points, but either measure shows that pretrial detainees make up a large share of the prison population. The Commission has linked prolonged pretrial detention to overcrowding and launched an emergency programme in 2026 to prepare applications for release pending trial. It also reported that wartime transfers from southern Lebanon and Baalbek pushed overcrowding in affected facilities from around 200 per cent to almost 300 per cent.

The financial effect cannot be reduced to one clean figure, but every additional person held while proceedings continue still requires food, medical care, space and administration.

LBP 497.2 billion for health

Healthcare makes up another large identifiable part of the prison budget. The disciplinary-administration budget provides LBP 240 billion for medicines and LBP 7.2 billion for laboratory materials. A separate hospitalisation allocation adds LBP 250 billion.

Together, those lines amount to LBP 497.2 billion, about 30 per cent of the identifiable prison-specific total. Medicines and laboratory supplies sit within prison operating expenditure, while hospital treatment appears elsewhere in the budget.

LBP 204.8 billion for equipment and maintenance

The 2026 budget also provides LBP 106.3 billion for prison equipment and LBP 98.5 billion for maintenance, producing a total of LBP 204.8 billion.

Building maintenance accounts for most of the maintenance allocation, with smaller amounts for water infrastructure and technical equipment. As with food, an appropriation is not the same as final spending.

The amnesty could change the population, not the 2026 budget

On August 12, Parliament approved a general amnesty intended in part to reduce prison overcrowding. It was promulgated as Law No. 70 on September 4 and entered into force upon publication.

The law applies to covered offences committed before March 1, 2026, subject to exclusions and conditions. It also allows the release of some people who had completed their sentences but remained imprisoned because they could not pay fines and fees.

As of early September, however, the latest publicly displayed Justice Ministry prison total still dates from March 30. There is therefore no official post-amnesty figure showing how far the law has reduced the prison population.

A smaller inmate population would not automatically erase the LBP 1.63 trillion already appropriated for 2026. Equipment and maintenance do not fall one-for-one with inmate numbers, healthcare needs vary, and many food contracts have already been signed through December. On-demand purchasing could still adjust quantities, but the size of any saving cannot yet be calculated from the published records.

What can be calculated is what the state planned to fund before those releases began.

At least LBP 1.63 trillion can be identified in the 2026 budget as prison-specific spending, including LBP 890 billion for food, LBP 497.2 billion for medicines, laboratory materials and hospitalization, and LBP 204.8 billion for equipment and maintenance.