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Italian prisons are the most overcrowded in the European Union, at least according to the findings of the Council of Europe’s ‘Space’ report, which defines the situation of prison systems in the pan-European organisation’s member countries every year. At the end of January 2020 in Italy there were 120 inmates for every 100 places, although our country is not the only one in the European Union with the problem of overcrowded prisons. The negative record is held by Turkey, with 127 prisoners for every 100 places, and where according to the data there are on average 11 prisoners for every cell, while in Italy this average is 1.9.

At EU level, in the same period in Belgium there were 117 inmates for every 100 places, in France and Cyprus 116, in Hungary and Romania 113, in Greece and Slovenia 109.

According to Marcelo Aebi, professor responsible for the Space report, if we look at the trends of the prison population in Italy since 2000, the country seems to have two ways to solve the overcrowding issue. The first is “to reduce the length of sentences”, and the second is “to build more prisons”, also because, says Aebi, “amnesties, like the one in 2006, do not solve the problem”.

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