STAT/09/91

19 June 2009

EU crime statistics 2005-2007
Around 600 000 prisoners in the EU27

Between 2005 and 2007, there were on average 607 000 people in prison 1 in the EU27 , equivalent to about 123 prisoners per 100 000 inhabitants.

The political and social sensitivity of issues of crime and criminal justice, together with growing public concern, has made it increasingly important to obtain a view of the situation in the EU. Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities , in partnership with the statistical authorities of the Member States and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security, is developing a more comparable system of crime and criminal justice statistics. However, measuring tendencies in crime in the EU remains a difficult task, due to the differences in the data collection sources 2 . In this News Release, f igures for the number of prisoners have been taken from a recent report 3 from Eurostat , since they are among the most comparable crime indicators between Member States .

Highest prisoner rates in t he Baltic countries, Poland and the Czech Republic

The highest average prisoner rates over the period 2005 to 2007 were recorded in Estonia (302 prisoners per

100 000 inhabitants ), Latvia (293), Lithuania (232), Poland (228) and the Czech Republic (185). The lowest rates were registered in Slovenia (60), Finland (68), Denmark (71), Ireland (75 in 2004-2006) and Sweden (77). This compares with a rate of 758 prisoners per 100 000 inhabitants in the USA over the same period.

P risoners

(actual numbers and average rate per 100 000 inhabitants)

: Data not available

* Average of years 2005-2007, except 2004-2006: Ireland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; 2005-2006: Greece

• Total number of adult and juvenile prisoners (including pre-trial detainees) at 1 September of each year. Including offenders held in Prison Administration facilities, other facilities, juvenile offenders' institutions, drug addicts' institutions and psychiatric or other hospitals. Excluding non-criminal prisoners held for administrative purposes for example, people held pending investigation into their immigration status.

Figures for the prison population may also be affected by many factors, including:

• number of cases dealt with by the courts;

• the percentage receiving a custodial sentence;

• the length of the sentences imposed;

• the size of the population on remand; and

• the date of the survey, especially in those countries where amnesties (or other early or executive release arrangements) apply.

• Any attempt to measure the extent of crime in Europe is complicated by the fact that countries have widely differing methods of recording offences. Most of the data are taken from information recorded or reported by the police. Comparisons of crime levels based on the absolute figures would be misleading, since they are affected by many factors, including:

• different legal and criminal justice systems ;

• rates at which crimes are reported to the police and recorded by them;

• differences in the point at which crime is measured (for example, report to the police, identification of suspect, etc.);

• differences in the rules by which multiple offences are counted; and

• differences in the list of offences that are included in the overall crime figures.

• Eurostat , Statistics in Focus, Population and social conditions, 36/2009 " Crime and criminal justice ", available free of charge in pdf format on the Eurostat web site.

• Figures for the United Kingdom are reported separa tely (as England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) owing to the existence of three separate jurisdictions.