Prisons, the crowding emergency in Italy and Europe

Also because, as pointed out by Patrizio Gonnella, president of Antigone, 'an overcrowded prison is a place where even the operators find it harder to work, where the fragility of many detainees cannot be intercepted or followed up as they deserve'. "Where there are situations of serious overcrowding," he adds, "the prisoner is increasingly anonymous, increasingly a number rather than a person".

A map of what is happening on the European scene is provided by data processed by World Prison Brief data. In Italy's file one finds that the prison population is 61,758 thousand inmates, about 10 thousand more than the official capacity of the prison system. A similar trend as in Italy, although with lower numbers, is recorded in Hungary with a 101.5 per cent overcrowding (as of 31 December 2023) and thus 18,270 inmates on an official capacity of 17,998 inmates. In Spain, on the other hand, on a capacity of just over 73,000 places there are almost 57,000 prisoners with a prison occupancy level of 74.1 per cent.

In Lithuania out of a capacity of 6655 places there are 4551 admissions with a percentage of 68.4 per cent. The percentage is higher in the Czech Republic where out of 20391 places there is 96.4 per cent occupancy with just over 19,600 inmates. In Poland, out of a capacity of 83,096,000 places, on 31 August, there were 70,927 inmates and an occupancy level of 85.3%.

For the Italian volunteers, one of the measures to be taken to deal with the emergency 'urgent measures are needed to significantly reduce overcrowding and improve the quality of life in prisons'. In addition, 'an increase in the number of days of special early release; the decriminalisation of certain crimes; the liberalisation of telephone calls; the recruitment of both police and civilian personnel: educators, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, cultural mediators'.

The crisis is not 'only' Italian. The latest published data on the distribution of the prison population in Spain correspond to December 2023 and belong to the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions of the Ministry of Interior. The national total is 56,698 inmates.

Already in 2023, the Council of Europe identified Spain as one of the 48 countries belonging to this organisation with the largest prison population, when it ranked sixth with a total of 55,095 at the beginning of 2022.

However, with regard to prison overcrowding and occupancy, in 2022 Space 21's study on the reality in this area in Council of Europe countries revealed that Spain has an occupancy rate of 73.4 prisoners per 100 places, which puts it 9.1 points below the European average of 82.5.

Within the EU perimeter, there are also examples in the opposite direction. The number of persons detained in Lithuania has steadily decreased over the last five years: on 1 January 2019, the number of detained persons was 6485; on 1 January 2020, 6138; on 1 January 2021, 5,320; on 1 January 2022, 5,086; on 1 January 2023, 4,973; on 1 January 2024, 4,551; and on 1 January 2024-10, 4,501. Five years ago, Lithuania was the EU 'leader' in the number of prisoners, with 220 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. With a significant drop in the number of inmates, Lithuania now has 155 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants, ranking sixth in the EU.

The decrease in the prison population is mainly due to changes in Lithuanian society. These changes include a growing economy, new opportunities in the labour market and cultural changes. These factors, together with the success in the fight against organised crime, are contributing to the overall decline in crime in Lithuania (e.g. according to data from the Department of Informatics and Communication of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania, 51494 potential criminal offences were registered in pre-trial investigation institutions in 2019 and 45256 in 2023). It is worth mentioning that the structure (composition) of crime is also changing, with a decrease in the number of homicides and other serious violent crimes. Colleagues from the Police Department could provide a more precise answer on the quantity of such crimes committed.

At the same time, the Lithuanian legal environment and changes in criminal (alternative sanctions) and penal policies (strengthening the socialisation process) are changing. In recent years, criminal policy in Lithuania has been shaped according to proportionality criteria, with scholars and experts continually pointing out that the broad application of criminal responsibility or long prison sentences for non-threatening crimes are ineffective and inappropriate.

Only a decade ago, alternatives to imprisonment, such as fines, community service, restriction of liberty or probation, were applied to about 65% of convicted persons. Today, about 80% of convicted persons are subject to such measures. Due to the optimisation of the re-socialisation process in places of deprivation of liberty, the number of prisoners released on probation has increased 2-fold.

This change was made possible through the strengthening of the network of halfway houses, the introduction of methods for assessing and managing the risk of criminal behaviour of prisoners, the linking of the mechanism of conditional release from prison to the prisoners' performance in the resocialisation process and the development of other resocialisation measures. Currently, about 53% of all persons released from prison are released on parole, compared to 21% five years ago.

*This article is part of the Pulse project and was written by Davide Madeddu (Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy), Ana Somavilla (El Confidencial, Spain), Ieva Kniukštienė (Delphi, Lithuania).