Central Europe’s arguably most developed EU member states, the Visegrád Group (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and the Baltic states, have the highest inmate ratios in the European Union, a recent Eurostat survey showed.
Among the Visegrád countries, Hungary leads the list with just about 200 inmates per 100,000 people, followed by Poland with 190, while Czechia and Slovakia are tied for third with 181. The list continues with Lithuania (177), Latvia (171) and Estonia (155).
The lowest rates were in Finland (52 people), the Netherlands (64 people) and Slovenia (65 people). According to Eurostat, the number of prisoners in the EU in general has also increased: In 2022, there were 483,593 prisoners in the EU, which corresponds to 108 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 106 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in 2021.
Prisons are overcrowded in more than a third of EU countries
In 2022, 11 out of 27 EU countries experienced overcrowded prison cells.
The highest overcrowding was in Cyprus (226 places), France (119) and Belgium (118). The lowest occupancy rates were recorded in Malta (59), Estonia (62) and Latvia (67).
The prison occupancy rate is the ratio of the number of prisoners to the official prison capacity (design capacity) multiplied by 100. Overcrowding occurs when the occupancy rate exceeds 100, indicating that there are more prisoners in the prison than it is designed to hold.
