According to the Council of Europe (CoE) Annual Prison Population Statistics (SPACE I), released on 6 June, and based on data between January 2022 and January 31 2023, Georgia is ranked second among CoE member states in terms of the prison population per person. Turkey topped the list of all countries with 408 prisoners per 100,000 people, while Georgia ranked second with 236.6.
The SPACE surveys, conducted annually by the University of Lausanne for the Council of Europe, are carried out every year. The SPACE I survey includes information from prison administrations of member states of the Council of Europe. Last year, 48 prison administrations responded to the SPACE I survey questionnaire. This is a 94% participation rate. The data does not include territories under government control, such as Georgia, Ukraine Azerbaijan, and Cyprus.
Georgia, which experienced an 8.2% increase in 2022, was one of those countries who saw a significant increase between January 2022 and January 2023. In general, the prison population rate in Eastern Europe and Caucasus was higher than that of Western and Northern Europe.
The report states that a variety of factors influence prison population rates. These factors are interconnected and their influences are multi-layered and complex. Along with socio-economic factors, one of such factors, the report says is that “countries with harsher penalties–such as mandatory minimum sentences, long sentences for certain crimes, or few alternatives to incarceration–should have higher incarceration rates. In systems with more flexibility, judges may choose to give sentences like probation or community work instead of prison.
Georgia has a low percentage of prisoners serving sentences less than six-months – less that 1%. The average prison sentence in Europe is 11.8 months with a median of 10.10 months. Georgia has a prison term of 13.5 month, which is longer than the average.
Georgian inmates are on average 44 years old, while European prisoners average 38. Georgia was ranked second in the survey with a ratio of 2.7 prisoners per staff. The report notes that countries with the highest ratios of inmates to staff, such as Turkey or Georgia, also have high prison populations.
In Georgia, each prisoner is usually convicted of 1.4 crimes. According to the Council of Europe the percentage of female prisoner in Georgia is lower than the European standard of 5.2%. The percentage of foreign prisoners is 6.7%. The percentage of elderly prisoners (65 years and older) is only 2.1%. The prison density per hundred places is 82.1 which is lower than European average of 87.8.
Professor Marcelo Aebi of the SPACE research group at the University of Lausanne commented on the increasing prison population rate in Europe. He said: “For the 2nd consecutive year, the European prison population rate has slightly increased.” This could be a rebound effect from the reductions experienced during the Covid-19 Pandemic years due to the decrease in offline crimes during lockdowns, as well as the release of prisoners in certain countries and a decline in the activity of criminal justice systems. This increase is in stark contrast to the overall downward trend of incarceration rates. It remains to see if the trend changes. The persistence of overcrowding is a major challenge for many prison administrations.”
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