The latest Council of Europe report on overall prison conditions, published on Tuesday, points to a persistent problem of overcrowding, with several countries in a critical situation and others close to maximum capacity.
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Based on data supplied by the prison services of the 46 member states of the Strasbourg-based organisation, the document confirms the trend towards rising prison populations, already highlighted in the latest Eurostat survey (+2%), also made public only a few days ago.
Between 31 January 2024 and 31 January 2025, the number of prisoners per 100 available places rose from 94.7 to 95.2, despite regional discrepancies. In the previous assessment, six countries reported severe overcrowding; there are now nine. Turkey and France are among the states with the most congested prisons, with 131 prisoners for every 100 places. They are followed by Croatia (123), Italy (121), Malta (118), Cyprus (117), Hungary (115), Belgium (114) and Ireland (112).
Five more countries are above capacity and face what is described as moderate overcrowding: Finland (110), Greece (108), the United Kingdom in its Scottish part (106), North Macedonia (104) and Sweden (103).
As for Portugal’s prison system, it is operating very close to capacity (99), in a better position than Romania (100), but with a higher occupancy rate than Azerbaijan (98), England and Wales in the United Kingdom (96), Serbia (96), Czechia (95), the Netherlands (95), Denmark (95) and Switzerland (95). The Council of Europe points out that an occupancy rate of 90% already corresponds to a high‑risk indicator and significant operational pressure.
It is worth noting that the latest information released by the Directorate‑General for Reintegration and Prison Services (DGRSP) shows that Portugal ended 2025 with an occupancy rate of 103.4% and returned to a situation of overcrowding for the first time in six years, after the extraordinary releases during the COVID‑19 pandemic that had prompted a temporary drop in the prison population.
In total, on 31 January 2025, 1,107,921 people were being held in the 46 Council of Europe member states, an increase of 8.5% compared with the previous year. This corresponds to an average incarceration rate of 110 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants.
The proportion of women in prisons rose from 4.8% to 5.2%, with Hungary (8.8%), Czechia (8.6%), Malta (8%) and Sweden (7.9%) recording the largest increases among countries with more than 500,000 inhabitants. The lowest shares are found in Albania (1.6%), Armenia (2.6%), Montenegro (2.8%) and Azerbaijan (3.1%).
Incarceration rates remain higher in Eastern Europe, particularly in Turkey (458 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants), Azerbaijan (271), Moldova (245) and Georgia (232), while Hungary (206), Poland (189), Czechia (178) and Slovakia (151) appear among the European Union (EU) countries that imprison the most people.
The report also reveals a greater presence of foreign nationals in prison systems (17% of prisoners are non‑nationals), as well as a rise in the number of inmates over the age of 65, although Council of Europe experts note that, overall, the proportion at this level remains “modest”.
Portugal, together with Italy, records the highest average age (42), ahead of Montenegro, Estonia and Serbia (41), while Moldova (30), Sweden (34), France, Cyprus and Denmark (35) have the youngest prison populations.
Long sentences and pre-trial detention
In February this year, in an interview with the Lusa news agency, the director‑general of Reintegration and Prison Services, Orlando Carvalho, said there were 13,302 prisoners in the country’s 49 prisons that month. Between January 2025 and February 2026, 850 prisoners entered the prison system.
One of the factors that most directly contributes to this overcrowding is the average length of prison sentences in Portugal, the longest on the continent, according to the international report: 31.4 months compared with a European average of 9.7 months.
On 31 January 2025, of the 9,645 prisoners already convicted, 3,741 were serving sentences of between five and 10 years, 1,423 were in custody for sentences of between 10 and 20 years, and another 1,423 for terms of more than 20 years.
“If our rules were applied as they are in the rest of Europe, we would not have more than 6,500 prisoners,” says Vítor Ilharco, secretary‑general of the Portuguese Association for Prisoner Support (APAR), in an interview with Euronews, criticising how the rules on sentence reduction are applied.
“No one grants temporary release before the halfway point of the sentence,” he notes.
Vítor Ilharco also points to the use of pre‑trial detention instead of non‑custodial measures as another practice that places strain on the prison system. “The solution is simple – you lock people up first and investigate later,” he continues.
In its penal statistics, the Council of Europe notes that in Portugal the average period in custody for prisoners who are subsequently convicted is 57 days, more than double the European average of 21 days.
“It is more popular and it is what the far‑right parties want,” he laments. The Internal Security Annual Report (RASI ), published in March, states that at the end of 2025 there were more than three thousand people in pre‑trial detention out of a total of 13,136 prisoners.
For the APAR secretary‑general, Portugal’s restrictive penal culture is also evident in the disregard for the profile of offenders. “APAR has already proposed that anyone caught driving without a licence should not be imprisoned.”
For such cases, he argues, the most balanced consequence would be community work, including, for example, cleaning streets, beaches, forests or fire engines and police cars, during which time the offender would obtain a driving licence.
“Someone like this will spend one or two years in prison for driving without a licence. The family will be torn apart because, generally, it is the breadwinner who stops receiving a salary. And then they come out again still without a driving licence,” he argues.
“We would remove around two thousand prisoners from jail,” he adds.
For some more serious crimes, such as homicide, the Penal Code only allows prison, but there are others, rarer, that can be punished with a financial penalty. The problem, notes Vítor Ilharco, is that many people responsible for minor offences cannot afford to pay and are forced to go to prison.
“That accounts for another thousand people who remain in prison for three or four months,” he stresses, before drawing attention to the fact that the country has a prisoner aged 80 who has had both legs amputated.
“They could suspend his sentence. People like this are only in prison in Portugal. In Spain they would no longer be behind bars,” he points out.
Lisbon Prison ‘wouldn’t even be fit for a dog shelter’, APAR warns
Vítor Ilharco highlights flaws in the way the prison system is structured in Portugal, which brings together punishment and rehabilitation within the same authority.
This setup has a negative impact on how prisons operate, he argues: 85% of the budget goes on salaries, leaving only 15% for post‑release support and all running costs, including food for inmates, who, according to APAR’s secretary‑general, go “hungry”.
In addition, the head of the association representing prisoners denounces an attempt to turn prison canteens into a business. Current law prohibits families from sending in food.
“In the [prison] canteens the prices are usurious. Everything costs double or triple,” he says, recalling an article published in the magazine of the Portuguese Judges’ Association, which reported that prison canteens in Portugal made a profit of 680,000 euros in 2013.
Budget constraints also help explain the poor material conditions and hygiene in Portuguese prisons. Lisbon Prison is one of the facilities that has prompted complaints, described in an article in Diário de Notícias by a remand prisoner held there. To the dilapidated cells are added a lack of space and privacy.
These problems are confirmed by APAR’s secretary‑general. “Because of overcrowding, they have now put two prisoners in each single cell. As they are locked in for 20 hours a day, they have to relieve themselves in front of each other because there is no partition,” he says.
In the report of the National Preventive Mechanism (MNP) of the Ombudsman’s Office, relating to 2024, more than 50 cases admitted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are listed due to “degrading detention conditions” in Portuguese prisons which, since 2019, have led the Portuguese state to compensate inmates in amounts totalling more than 1.5 million euros.
Portugal may have to pay several thousand euros more, as more than 850 complaints for the same reasons are still pending before the ECtHR.
“No civilised European country would allow Lisbon Prison to be used even as a dog shelter. If it were a kennel, parliament would already have ordered it to close,” emphasises Vítor Ilharco.
“There is not a single healthy prisoner”
On the ageing of the prison population, the Council of Europe warns that, in future, it will be necessary to take into account “frequently complex needs” linked to “health care, chronic illnesses, cognitive decline and reduced mobility”.
However, Vítor Ilharco makes it clear that the dangers associated with the lack of adequate infrastructure and equipment are not limited to older prisoners.
“There is not a single healthy prisoner. I am not even talking about long sentences. It is simply inconceivable for someone to live for six months in those conditions with meals costing 80 cents,” he warns. There is also “access to every kind of drug”.
“The entire structure of the prison is designed to induce inertia among inmates,” he stresses.
In a medical emergency, the APAR representative says, immediate assistance would be compromised.
“There is a 90% chance that prisoners will not be taken to hospital because the guards are always on strike. There are more than 1,500 guards on sick leave,” he notes.
In the larger prisons there are nurses on duty at night, but in Alcoentre, for example, 700 prisoners have been without doctors for four months, he says.
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