“Overcrowding seriously undermines the living conditions of the prison population and the rehabilitation efforts of the prison administrations. Data on the length of imprisonment show that shorter average detention periods tend to correlate with lower prison population rates”. Professor Marcelo Aebi, Head of the SPACE research team from the University of Lausanne, commented on the findings of the penal statistics published in Strasbourg today. “Although there are exceptions to this pattern, this relationship highlights the importance of sentence duration as a lever to manage prison overcrowding. In addition to promoting alternative sanctions to imprisonment, reducing sentence lengths, especially for non-violent and low-risk offenders, can be a powerful tool for lowering incarceration rates”.
Violent crimes account for roughly one-third (34%) of the prison population, including homicide (11.9%), robbery (6.7%), assault (6.3%), and sexual offences (8.7%). The most common offences people were serving time in prison for were drug-related offences (16.7%) and theft (12.3%). Overall, 2.9% of inmates had been sentenced for driving offences and 2.4% for economic and financial crimes.
26% of all inmates in European prisons were on remand. “Foreign nationals represent a substantial share of the prison population across Europe, but their presence is distributed highly unevenly, shaped by migration flows, legal frameworks, and geopolitical geography. Overall, in Europe, 16% of inmates were foreigners”.
“In European prisons, the inmates’ average age was 37. The youngest prison populations were reported in Lithuania (32), Sweden and Catalonia (34), as well as in Denmark and France (35). Georgia reported the highest average age (44), followed by Italy, Portugal and the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (42)”.
Overall, the proportion of women in the prison population was 4.9% and consistent in all countries. The highest proportions of female inmates were reported in the Czech Republic (8.8%), Hungary (8.4%) and Finland (8%), while the lowest ones were reported in Albania and Georgia (both at 1.4%), as well as in Croatia (2.1%).