An open map of Brazil's courts and prisons: 2,167 municipalities, one CSV, CC BY 4.0
If someone is arrested in a small Brazilian town, three questions come before anything else: which judicial district (comarca) does the town belong to, which courthouse handles the case, and which prison unit receives the person. The answers exist, but they are scattered across the organisation acts of 27 state courts, the provisions of their inspectorates and the unit lists of 27 state prison…
Brazilian lawyer creates open dataset mapping courts and prisons across 2,167 municipalities
A criminal defense lawyer in Minas Gerais has developed an open dataset called "Brazil prison and court district map" (Mapa prisional e de comarcas do Brasil). This dataset contains information for 2,167 of Brazil's 5,570 municipalities, spread across all 27 states.
The dataset provides the following key information for each municipality:
1. Judicial district (comarca)
2. Courthouse serving the municipality
3. Prison units located within the municipality
4. The reference unit prison (if applicable) that receives detainees from that district
The dataset aims to address the challenge of finding scattered information about judicial districts, courthouses, and prison units in Brazil. By compiling this data into a single CSV file, the lawyer hopes to facilitate research, journalism, and cross-checking of prison data.
Current version (as of October 29, 2026) includes:
- 280 municipalities with at least one prison unit within their territory
- 1,036 records stating the municipality has no prison unit, with a source cited
- 851 municipalities where information is currently unavailable or uncertain
The dataset is available for free use and redistribution under the CC BY 4.0 license. This license allows for both commercial and non-commercial use as long as proper attribution is given to the original source.
The dataset was compiled from various public documents, including court organization acts, inspectorate provisions, and prison administration unit lists. Each record includes a source URL and verification date to ensure transparency and traceability.
For those interested in using the dataset, there are multiple data mirror options available, including Zenodo, Kaggle, Harvard Dataverse, Hugging Face, and GitHub. The project page containing the data dictionary is also accessible for further reference.
By making this information openly available, the lawyer aims to support various stakeholders in their work, from legal professionals and researchers to journalists and government agencies involved in prison data management.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.