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Prison staff per 100,000 inhabitants

How many people work in adult prisons in each European country, for its population?

35 of 35 shown in the list

prison staff per 100,000 inhabitants

  1. Albania149 2023
  2. Luxembourg130 2024
  3. Hungary104 2024
  4. Slovakia98 2024
  5. Czechia96 2024
  6. Sweden93 2024
  7. Latvia91 2024
  8. Türkiye90 2024
  9. Norway89 2019
  10. Estonia82 2024
  11. Malta79 2024
  12. Montenegro77 2024
  13. Netherlands72 2024
  14. Ireland66 2024
  15. Croatia65 2024
  16. Italy65 2024
  17. Romania65 2024
  18. Lithuania63 2024
  19. Spain62 2024
  20. France61 2024
  21. Serbia60 2024
  22. Switzerland57 2024
  23. Austria50 2024
  24. Portugal48 2024
  25. Bulgaria48 2024

Source: Eurostat, Personnel in the criminal justice system (crim_just_job). Data for 2019 to 2024. What it counts, how to cite it and the data

At a glance

  • 35 countries or territories have a figure.
  • The highest is Albania at 149 (2023) and the lowest is Kosovo at 35 (2020).
  • The middle value (the median) is 63.

What it counts

Personnel in adult prisons (guards, administrators and other staff), per 100,000 inhabitants, in the latest year each country reports (since 2019).

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

Countries differ in who counts as prison staff (some include health and education staff and some do not) and in how many people are held, so a high figure may reflect a large prison population as much as a high staffing level. See the chart of people in prison for the other half of the picture. Eurostat marks Kosovo with an asterisk: this designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

Source

Eurostat: Personnel in the criminal justice system (crim_just_job). 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). Prison staff per 100,000 inhabitants [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/prison-staff-per-100000. Data: Eurostat, Personnel in the criminal justice system (crim_just_job), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/crim_just_job/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-staff-per-100000). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{prisonstaffper1000002026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {Prison staff per 100,000 inhabitants},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/prison-staff-per-100000},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, Personnel in the criminal justice system (crim_just_job), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/crim_just_job/default/table. Retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.}
}

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