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What governments spend on prisons, as a share of GDP

What share of national income does government spend each year on prisons?

30 of 30 shown in the list

% of gross domestic product, general government spending

  1. Latvia0.36% 2024
  2. Netherlands0.34% 2024
  3. Sweden0.30% 2024
  4. Hungary0.25% 2024
  5. Poland0.23% 2024
  6. Malta0.22% 2024
  7. Slovakia0.21% 2024
  8. Switzerland0.20% 2024
  9. Denmark0.19% 2024
  10. Italy0.18% 2024
  11. Bulgaria0.17% 2024
  12. France0.17% 2024
  13. Luxembourg0.17% 2025
  14. Lithuania0.16% 2024
  15. Austria0.15% 2024
  16. Belgium0.15% 2024
  17. Czechia0.15% 2024
  18. Spain0.15% 2024
  19. Croatia0.14% 2024
  20. Romania0.14% 2024
  21. Estonia0.13% 2024
  22. Portugal0.13% 2024
  23. Slovenia0.12% 2024
  24. Ireland0.11% 2024
  25. Norway0.11% 2024

Source: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp). 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 Latvia at 0.36% (2024) and the lowest is Greece at 0.07% (2024).
  • The middle value (the median) is 0.15%.

What it counts

General government spending on the function 'prisons' (COFOG 03.4): prisons and other places of detention and rehabilitation, divided by gross domestic product.

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

The figure is general government spending (central, regional and local together) as a share of the country's gross domestic product of the same year. A rich country can spend more per person and less as a share of its income, and the reverse, so read it together with the figure per inhabitant. Countries fund and classify some activities differently. Spending also reflects how many people are held and for how long.

Source

Eurostat: General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp). 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, as a share of GDP [Chart]. Law in Charts. https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-prisons-gdp. Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp), 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-gdp). Data: Eurostat.

BibTeX

@misc{spendingprisonsgdp2026,
  author = {{TheLawToKnow}},
  title = {What governments spend on prisons, as a share of GDP},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Law in Charts},
  url = {https://tools.thelawtoknow.com/law-in-charts/spending-prisons-gdp},
  note = {Data: Eurostat, General government expenditure by function (COFOG) GF0304, divided by gross domestic product at current prices (nama_10_gdp), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/gov_10a_exp/default/table. Retrieved 2026-10-23 to 2026-10-25.}
}

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