The Council of Europe today published two reports reflecting, firstly, the trends in European prisons from 2005 to 2015 and, secondly, the evolution of foreign offenders in prison and under probation from 2009 to 2015.
The report “Prisons in Europe 2005-2015” shows that from 2005 to 2015 the geographic distribution of prison population rates (number of inmates per 100,000 inhabitants) remained stable across Europe. In 2005, these rates tended to decrease from east to west with some exceptions: England and Wales, Scotland, Spain and Portugal had relatively high prison population rates, whilst Croatia, Greece, Slovenia and Turkey had low rates.
From 2005 to 2015 the countries where prison population rates increased the most were Albania (109.3 to 207.2), Georgia (200.6 to 274.6), Lithuania (233.4 to 277.7), “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (104.8 to 168.9), Montenegro (134.5 to 176.8) and Turkey (75.8 to 220.4). On the other hand, Germany (95.7 to 77.4) and the Netherlands (94 to 53) joined the countries with the lowest rates, and Estonia (327.4 to 210.3) and Latvia (313.4 to 223.4) significantly reduced theirs.
