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What governments spend on prisons, per inhabitant

How many euro per inhabitant does government spend each year on prisons?

30 of 30 shown in the list

euro per inhabitant per year, general government spending

  1. Luxembourg232 2025
  2. Netherlands214 2024
  3. Switzerland199 2024
  4. Sweden161 2024
  5. Denmark126 2024
  6. Ireland110 2024
  7. Norway95 2024
  8. Malta92 2024
  9. Austria83 2024
  10. Latvia79 2024
  11. Belgium76 2024
  12. France75 2024
  13. Italy67 2024
  14. Iceland65 2024
  15. Hungary54 2024
  16. Poland54 2024
  17. Slovakia52 2024
  18. Finland51 2024
  19. Germany51 2024
  20. Spain48 2024
  21. Czechia44 2024
  22. Lithuania43 2024
  23. Slovenia39 2024
  24. Estonia38 2024
  25. Portugal34 2024

Source: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, 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 232 (2025) and the lowest is Greece at 17 (2024).
  • The middle value (the median) is 54.

What it counts

General government spending on the function 'prisons' (COFOG 03.4): prisons and other places of detention and rehabilitation, 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. Spending also reflects how many people are held and for how long, not only the cost of each place.

Source

Eurostat: General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, 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 prisons, per inhabitant [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-prisons. Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, 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-prisons). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{spendingprisons2026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {What governments spend on prisons, per inhabitant},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-prisons},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, 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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