78% of Luxembourg's Prison Inmates Are Foreign Nationals, Report Finds

The Council of Europe recently published its annual penal statistics for 2023; the report compiled by the University of Lausanne includes data from 48 prison administrations across Europe.

The report includes data such as total prison populations, imprisonment rates and levels of overcrowding as well as the profile of prison populations (including by age, gender and nationality) as well as rates of suicide and escape.

Luxembourg notably counted among the countries with the highest suicide rates in 2022, with a rate of 14.2 per 10,000 inmates, preceded by Latvia (21.7), Switzerland (20.2), France (19.1), the United Kingdom: Scotland (18.9), Spain: Catalonia (16.8), Italy (15.0), Belgium (14.3). 

In countries with over 500,000 inhabitants, the prison administrations with the highest percentage of foreign inmates on 31 January 2023 were Luxembourg (78%), Switzerland (71%), Greece (57%), Cyprus (55%), Austria (51%), Malta (49%), Belgium (42%) and Germany (38%).

Furthermore, the Grand Duchy counted among the top three countries with over 500,000 inhabitants whose prison administrations had the highest percentage of inmates not serving a final sentence on 31 January 2023: Albania (55%), Armenia (53%), Luxembourg (49%), followed by Switzerland (46%), the Netherlands (45%) and Montenegro (42%).