Law in Charts · Courts, police and prisons
What governments spend on police services, per inhabitant
How many euro per inhabitant does government spend each year on police services?
euro per inhabitant per year, general government spending
- Luxembourg933 2025
- Iceland761 2024
- Switzerland668 2024
- Belgium527 2024
- Netherlands512 2024
- Cyprus466 2024
- Norway449 2024
- Sweden429 2024
- France421 2024
- Ireland421 2024
- Austria403 2024
- Germany390 2024
- Italy381 2024
- Latvia370 2024
- Spain361 2024
- Denmark351 2024
- Croatia331 2024
- Romania324 2024
- Finland314 2024
- Malta283 2024
- Estonia282 2024
- Poland281 2024
- Greece266 2024
- Portugal256 2024
- Czechia241 2024
Source: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, divided by the population on 1 January (demo_pjan). Data for 2024 to 2025. What it counts, how to cite it and the data
At a glance
- 30 countries or territories have a figure.
- The highest is Luxembourg at 933 (2025) and the lowest is Lithuania at 183 (2024).
- The middle value (the median) is 356.
What it counts
General government spending on the function 'police services' (COFOG 03.1): regular and auxiliary police forces and their support services, divided by the population on 1 January.
What it leaves out, and how far to trust a comparison
The figure is general government spending (central, regional and local together) in euro at the prices of its year, divided by the population. Prices and wages differ a great deal between countries, so a higher figure does not mean more, or better, justice. Countries also fund and classify some activities differently, and very small countries can show extreme figures.
Source
Eurostat: General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, divided by the population on 1 January (demo_pjan). 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). What governments spend on police services, per inhabitant [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-police. Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, divided by the population on 1 January (demo_pjan), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/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/spending-police). Data: Eurostat.
BibTeX
@misc{spendingpolice2026,
author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
title = {What governments spend on police services, per inhabitant},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Law in Charts},
url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-police},
note = {Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0301, divided by the population on 1 January (demo_pjan), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table. Retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.}
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Learn more
- Course: Law Enforcement
- Tool: Justice by the Numbers
More in Courts, police and prisons
- Professional judges per 100,000 inhabitants
- Police officers per 100,000 inhabitants
- People in prison per 100,000 inhabitants
- How full are the prisons?
- People in prison per 100,000 inhabitants, over time
- Women among professional judges
- Women among police officers
- What governments spend on law courts, per inhabitant
- What governments spend on law courts, as a share of GDP
- What governments spend on police services, as a share of GDP
- What governments spend on prisons, per inhabitant
- What governments spend on prisons, as a share of GDP
- What governments spend on public order and safety, per inhabitant
- What governments spend on public order and safety, as a share of GDP
- Prison staff per 100,000 inhabitants
- Women among prison staff
- Foreign nationals among people in prison
- Women among people in prison
- Juveniles among people in prison
General information, not legal advice. All charts.
