Nearly one million people are currently imprisoned in Europe, where the median incarceration rate has increased by around 2% since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite this increase, the incarceration rate in Europe in 2022 remains lower than that observed at the beginning of 2020. A constant decline has been observed since 2011, recalls the Council of Europe, in its 2022 report, released on Tuesday June 27.
In 2022, however, only Bulgaria, Estonia and Germany reported a notable drop in their incarceration rates, while sixteen countries recorded a significant increase. France is no exception: in third place, its incarceration rate has increased by 15% between 2021 and 2022.
The highest incarceration rate goes to Turkey, which, with 355 detainees per 100,000 inhabitants, is far ahead of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania, which nevertheless top the list. .
France (107) is just above the median rate (104), while Iceland or Finland are among the lowest.
The density of European prisons has also increased by almost 5% since January 2021, rising from 87.4 to 91.6 prisoners on average per 100 available places. Seven countries share the sad record of the highest prison overcrowding, holding more prisoners than they have cell places: Cyprus, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, Italy… and France, with 115 held for 100 places. France has thus exceeded its sad record for prison overcrowding on several occasions this year. The controller of prisons has also crushed the state’s inertia in this area.
The suicide rate in prison, per 10,000 inmates, varies considerably from country to country, with an average rate of 9.4.
France, with 16 suicides per 10,000 prisoners, has one of the highest rates, behind Germany, Austria, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway and Slovenia .
Drug cases, followed by larceny, account for the largest share of convictions in Council of Europe member states. Russia, excluded from the body since March 2022, does not appear in the statistics.
On average, inmates are 38 years old. 5% are women.
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