'Moderate' overcrowding in Irish prisons – report
Figures from the Council of Europe (CoE) show that Ireland had ‘moderate’ overcrowding in its prisons in the most recent period covered by the statistics.
According to the organisation’s , which runs from 31 January 2023 to 31 January 2024, Ireland had 105 prisoners for every 100 spaces available.
This represents a deterioration from last year’s report, which described the Irish figure of 99 as “on the edge” of overcrowding.
Prison population ‘low’
Overcrowding in six countries was categorised as ‘severe’, with Slovenia (134) recording the highest figure.
Overall, Ireland’s prison population is categorised as ‘low’, which means that it was between 5.1% and 25% lower than the median value in the 51 European countries covered.
The CoE said that 13 countries recorded a signficant increase in their prison population in 2024 – including Ireland, with a 5.4% increase. In 24 countries, the prison population was stable, while only six countries recorded substantially lower incarceration rates.
Sentence duration
“Overcrowding seriously undermines the living conditions of the prison population and the rehabilitation efforts of the prison administrations,” said Professor Marcelo Aebi (University of Lausanne), who headed the research team.
"Data on the length of imprisonment show that shorter average detention periods tend to correlate with lower prison population rates.
“Although there are exceptions to this pattern, this relationship highlights the importance of sentence duration as a lever to manage prison overcrowding,” he added.
Figures for Ireland show that the average length of sentence was 7.2 months – ranked ‘low’ compared with the median figure of 8.7 months.
Women made up 4.8% of Ireland’s prison population in the period. This figure was broadly in line with the median of 4.9% in the report.
Foreign inmates accounted for 15.8% of the prison population – again broadly in line with the overall median of 16%.