The Law To Know

Law in Charts · Courts, police and prisons

People in prison per 100,000 inhabitants

How many people are held in prison in each European country, for its population?

37 of 37 shown in the list

persons held in prison per 100,000 inhabitants

  1. Turkey449 2024
  2. Hungary193 2024
  3. Liechtenstein192 2024
  4. Montenegro191 2024
  5. Poland191 2024
  6. Latvia187 2024
  7. Albania182 2023
  8. Czechia178 2024
  9. Serbia173 2024
  10. Lithuania155 2024
  11. Slovakia151 2024
  12. Romania129 2024
  13. Croatia129 2024
  14. Malta124 2024
  15. North Macedonia123 2024
  16. Spain122 2024
  17. Estonia119 2024
  18. Portugal118 2024
  19. France118 2024
  20. Greece111 2024
  21. Italy108 2024
  22. Belgium107 2024
  23. Sweden107 2024
  24. Austria105 2024
  25. Cyprus100 2024

Source: Eurostat, Prison capacity and number of persons held (crim_pris_cap). Data for 2020 to 2024. What it counts, how to cite it and the data

At a glance

  • 37 countries or territories have a figure.
  • The highest is Turkey at 449 (2024) and the lowest is Iceland at 36 (2024).
  • The middle value (the median) is 118.

What it counts

Persons held in prison on a given day, including people waiting for trial, per 100,000 inhabitants, in the European countries that report to Eurostat.

What it leaves out, and how far to trust a comparison

The figure reflects how long sentences are, how often prison is used and how fast trials are, not only how much crime there is. Countries differ in whether people in other forms of detention (for example police custody or immigration detention) are included. For prisons worldwide, see the World Prison Brief.

Source

Eurostat: Prison capacity and number of persons held (crim_pris_cap). Source licence: CC BY 4.0. Data retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.

Cite this chart

Free to use in teaching, articles, reports and slides, with credit. Our compilation is licensed CC BY 4.0; the source publishes the underlying data under its own licence, shown below.

Reference (APA style)

TheLawToKnow. (2026). People in prison per 100,000 inhabitants [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/prison-population-rate. Data: Eurostat, Prison capacity and number of persons held (crim_pris_cap), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/crim_pris_cap/default/table (data retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25).

Short credit for slides and websites

Chart: TheLawToKnow, Law in Charts (https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/prison-population-rate). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{prisonpopulationrate2026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {People in prison per 100,000 inhabitants},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/prison-population-rate},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, Prison capacity and number of persons held (crim_pris_cap), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/crim_pris_cap/default/table. Retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.}
}

Embed this chart on your own page

<iframe src="https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/embed/law-in-charts/prison-population-rate" title="People in prison per 100,000 inhabitants, TheLawToKnow Law in Charts" width="100%" height="620" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>

Download the data (CSV)

Learn more

More in Courts, police and prisons

General information, not legal advice. All charts.