Increasing overcrowding in European prisons: Council of Europe’s 2024 annual penal statistics
Prison overcrowding remains a critical challenge in one-third of European prison administrations, according to the Council of Europe’s 2024 Annual Penal Statistics on Prison Populations (SPACE I), released today.
“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. 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,” said Professor Marcelo Aebi, Head of the SPACE research team from the University of Lausanne.
