Which are the toughest prisons in the EU?

Key Takeaways

• A prison occupancy rate above 100% means a prison holds more people than it was built to hold. Cyprus runs its prisons at 227.6% of official capacity. It is the highest rate in the EU. Estonia runs at 49.9%, the lowest.
• Croatia holds the EU’s highest share of pre-trial detainees at 43.2%.
• Germany’s occupancy rate of 81.6% sits below the EU average of 96.5%. Its pre-trial share of 27.0% sits above the EU average of 19.8%.
• EU prisoner numbers rose 7.7% between 2021 and 2023. Prison capacity barely moved over that period.

EU Countries by Prison Occupancy and Pre-Trial Detainee Rate

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A cell built for one person in Cyprus’s main prison often holds four. Two sleep on mattresses on the floor for lack of room. Cyprus’s prisons are the most overcrowded in the EU. They run at 227.6% of official capacity.

Croatia’s prisons are far less crowded, at 122.5% of capacity. However, they hold a different kind of problem. 43.2% of the people inside them have not been convicted of anything.

What Prison Occupancy and Pre-Trial Detainee Rates Actually Measure

Prison occupancy rate compares how many people a prison actually holds to how many it was designed to hold. A rate of 100% means a prison is exactly as full as its official design allows. Anything above 100% means more people are packed into the system than it was built for.

Pre-trial detainee share works differently. If a country’s share is 40%, then out of everyone currently locked up there, 40% have not yet been convicted of the crime they are accused of. Under the law, they are still presumed innocent while they wait for trial. This number matters for judging a prison system. It shows how a country treats people before guilt is proven.

• A lower share generally means a country treats detention as a last resort. Judges lean on lighter options first, such as bail, electronic monitoring, or travel restrictions. They only detain someone if those options clearly will not work.
• A higher share generally means a country leans on detention as more of a default. Judges detain people more readily, without always weighing lighter options first.

A lower share is the direction EU policy is pushing toward. It is generally seen as fairer to people who have not yet been convicted. A lower share does not mean detention is always wrong. Some cases genuinely need it, such as a real flight risk or a danger to others. The key difference is whether judges weigh that risk case by case or default to detention out of habit.

EU Prison Capacity Has Not Kept Pace With Rising Prisoner Numbers

The number of people in EU prisons rose 7.7% between 2021 and 2023. That followed a fall during the pandemic. Prison capacity did not grow at the same pace. New prisons take years to plan and build.

Four countries beyond Cyprus run above 120% of capacity:

• Slovenia: 134.2%
• France: 129.3%
• Croatia: 122.5%
• Italy: 122.4%

Three countries have significant room to spare:

• Estonia: 49.9%
• Lithuania: 67.0%
• Luxembourg: 67.4%

Each of these four countries is overcrowded for a different reason. Slovenia’s prison population jumped 25.4% from January 2023 to January 2024. That is the fastest rise anywhere in the EU. Croatia’s population grew too. It rose 8.3% over the same period. France has been trying to fix its overcrowding for years. Back in 2018, the government promised 15,000 new prison places. So far, it has built fewer than a third of them. Italy’s problem goes back even further. In 2013, European judges ruled that Italy’s prison conditions broke basic human rights protections. They called it a long-term, structural problem. It was not a one-time issue.

Pre-Trial Detainee Shares Vary Sharply Across EU Countries

Pre-trial detainees share swings much more from country to country than overcrowding does. Four countries hold more than a third of their prisoners without a final conviction:

• Croatia: 43.2%
• Luxembourg: 40.3%
• Slovenia: 39.8%
• Malta: 38.2%

Three countries hold some of the lowest shares in the EU:

• Czechia: 8.2%
• Bulgaria: 8.8%
• Romania: 9.2%

Malta’s high share comes down to slow courts. Some cases take more than two years to reach trial. In Malta, police inspectors both investigate and prosecute the same case. That dual role can add to the delay. Judges are also often reluctant to grant bail to foreign suspects. They worry the suspect will leave the country before the trial happens.

In 2022, the European Commission recommended that EU countries treat pre-trial detention as a last resort. It urged them to use alternatives whenever possible.

Overcrowding and High Pre-Trial Shares Compound in Croatia and Malta

Croatia and Malta show up near the top of both lists above. Both problems hit these two countries at once. Their prisons are crowded. On top of that, a large share of the people inside have not been convicted of anything.

This matters beyond their own borders. If someone is wanted for a crime in another EU country, that country can normally ask for them to be sent back to face trial. This is called extradition. EU judges have ruled that a country can refuse to send someone back if the prison they would go to is dangerous or inhumane. That ruling came from two cases called Aranyosi and Căldăraru. So when a country’s prisons are in bad shape, it can also make it harder for that country to get suspects sent back from the rest of the EU.

Germany’s Prisons Run Below Capacity While Its Pre-Trial Share Runs Above Average

Germany is the EU’s most populous country. However, its prisons are only 81.6% full. That is well below the EU average of about 96.5%. Germany’s pre-trial share sits at 27.0%. That is above the EU average of 19.8%. Neither number lines up with population size. Germany’s prisons are less crowded than those in much smaller countries like Malta and Croatia. At the same time, Germany holds a higher pre-trial share than larger countries like Poland and Spain.

Germany’s low occupancy comes from decades of falling prisoner numbers. Its imprisonment rate dropped from 96 per 100,000 people in 2004 to 78 in 2019. About 82% of adult sentences are fines rather than prison time. Probation covers most of the rest. Fewer people need a prison bed. That keeps occupancy under capacity.

The same system explains the higher pre-trial share. Fines and probation absorb most minor offenders. This means the people who do end up in prison skew toward more serious cases. Pre-trial detention requires specific grounds, such as flight risk or evidence tampering. Those grounds come up more often in serious cases. A smaller, more serious-case-heavy prison population can still show a higher pre-trial share, even when its actual number of pre-trial detainees per capita is low.

Prison overcrowding and heavy pre-trial detention have two different causes. One is a capacity problem. Prison systems cannot expand as fast as their populations do. That is why systems like Cyprus and Slovenia stay overcrowded year after year. The other is a policy choice. It comes down to how readily a country holds people who have not yet been convicted. Croatia and Malta show what happens when a country runs into both problems at once.