The end of lockdown measures to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic produced a rebound effect in the incarceration rates in many European countries between January 2021 and January 2022: the average incarceration rate rose by 2.3% in countries exceeding one million inhabitants, according to the Council of Europe’s Annual Penal Statistics on Prison Populations for 2022, released on Tuesday.
The prison administrations of Bulgaria (-8%), Estonia (-6.3%) and Germany (-5.5%) were the only three to report a noteworthy decrease in their incarceration rates in countries exceeding one million inhabitants.
Prisoners
At the same time, 16 countries including Romania experienced a substantial increase where the number of prisoners rose by 6.5%.
In the previous year, from January 2020 to January 2021, the overall European incarceration had fallen due to the decrease in street crime in the context of the movement restrictions during the pandemic, the slowing down of the judicial systems, and the implementation of release schemes in some countries.
“Throughout the last 12 years, the average European incarceration rate has slowly but consistently fallen. That drop was intensified during 2020 as a consequence of the Covid-19 lockdown measures,” said Professor Marcelo Aebi, Head of the SPACE research team from the University of Lausanne. “Therefore, the increase in 2022 reflects a return to relative normality in social life and the functioning of the European criminal justice systems.”
Prison population
On 31 January 2022, there were 981,575 inmates detained in the 48 prison administrations of Council of Europe member states that provided this information representing n average European prison population rate of 104 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants.
The countries with the highest incarceration rates on 31 January 2022 were Turkey (355 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants), Georgia (237), Azerbaijan (217) and Hungary (194).
The lowest incarceration rates were found in Finland (50), the Netherlands (54), Norway (56 and Cyprus (66.
On average, from January 2021 to January 2022, the proportion of prisoners serving sentences for theft fell by 8.8%, whilst those sentenced for drug-trafficking-related offenses increased by 3.5%.
Drug offenses
Drug offenses continued to be the most common main conviction among prisoners; these offenders constituted 19% of the prison population, followed by theft (15%) and homicide or attempted homicide (14%).
As of 31 January 2022, the average age of inmates in European penal institutions was 38 years. Women accounted for 5% of the prisoners.
Prison density-overcrowding
Overall, in Europe, prison density grew by 4.8% from January 2021 to January 2022. Romania was one of seven prison administrations that reported a prison density of more than 105 inmates per 100 places, an indicator of severe overcrowding: Romania had 124 inmates per 100 places, Cyprus 118 and France 115.
Length of imprisonment
As of 31 January 2022, the median average length of imprisonment in European prison administrations was 8 and ½ months. Prison administrations from countries with more than one million inhabitants with the highest average length of imprisonment were Portugal (30.6 months), Ukraine (27.9), Moldova (27.7), Azerbaijan (27.2), the Czech Republic (23.5) and Romania (23.1).
Young American journalist Evan Gershkovich arrested in Russia for supposed espionage
