European prisons are overcrowded, yet violent crime is actually falling. While France builds more facilities and countries like Denmark “rent” cells abroad, experts blame punitive policies and long sentences. Alternative movements now advocate for restorative justice and small, community-based detention houses to prioritise rehabilitation over incarceration.
Léa Marchal
Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network.
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You can find the transcript here if you prefer reading:
The EU has nearly half a million people in prison.
In many European countries, prisons are seriously overcrowded.
Yet over the last decade, violent crime has actually decreased in Europe.
Why are European prisons continue to get filled?
Prison overcrowding is a problem in one-third of European prison systems. That’s the observation made in 2024 by the Council of Europe, the watchdog for democracy and human rights.
Earlier this year, France was criticised over overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions and growing violence in its prisons. The Council of Europe said the facilities risked becoming “human warehouses”.
Prison occupancy in the country has reached an all-time high of almost 137 percent, with more than 6,000 detainees sleeping on mattresses on the floor.
In terms of prison conditions in the EU, France ranks third worst, after Slovenia and Cyprus.
Countries are responding in different ways to this crisis.
Some, like France, are opting to build more prisons. The French Justice Ministry plans to open 3,000 additional places in modular prisons within a year and a half.
Others have chosen to transfer inmates to other countries with spare capacity.
For €200m paid over ten years, Kosovo has agreed to house 300 inmates from Denmark. The first transfer of Danish prisoners is expected in the fall of 2027.
Similarly, Sweden — which has been facing a surge in gang-related violence — signed an agreement last year to transfer between 400 and 600 prisoners to a prison in Estonia, for a monthly fee of €8500 per prisoner.
Belgium tried to follow suit, but was given a clear “no” by Tallinn, which stated that the current government would not discuss any additional prison rental arrangements.
But what about reducing the inmate number?
Actually with the exception of Sweden, Europe’s violent crime rates have shown a downward trend over the last ten years.
Recorded intentional homicides in the EU were down 15 percent in 2023 compared with 2013.
Rather than a rise in crime, overcrowding may paradoxically be linked to an increasingly punitive approach to incarceration.
Longer sentences and the expansion of pre-trial detention are both contributing factors in France, Romania and Greece, according to the Council of Europe.
This is why, across Europe, a growing number of organisations are advocating for more liberal approaches and calling for reforms of the criminal justice system.
In Germany, the Green Party, while in government, pushed to legalise cannabis use and reform penalties for non-payment of public transport fines.
While decriminalising certain behaviours is one way to address the issue, others believe it is time to consider more radical alternatives to prisons.
Norway’s well-known prison reform in the early 1990s focused on restorative justice and rehabilitation — and it delivered results. The country’s recidivism rate dropped from 60–70 percent in the 1990s to around 20 percent today.
Taking this even further, the European movement Rescaled argues that prisons should be replaced by a system of “community-based detention houses”.
Instead of large prisons that cut inmates off from society, the organisation promotes small-scale facilities integrated into local communities. These houses are adapted to meet different needs.
According to the organisation, around 1000 such detention houses already exist in Europe.
The Netherlands alone has 16 of them.
New and substantial ideas are emerging in Europe to reform incarceration — whether by offering alternatives to prison or by addressing the socio-economic roots of crime.
But one challenge remains: prison reform and funding are highly sensitive political issues.
Public opinion often favours tougher approaches, and some politicians find it more convenient to appear tough on crime rather than pursue long-term, more humane solutions.
