More than half of prisons in EU are overcrowded

PRISONS are overcrowded in more than half the EU, including Ireland, while a quarter of prisoners are awaiting trial and more than half in some countries are foreign nationals.

Conditions vary so widely between different countries, judges in some are refusing to act on the European Arrest Warrant because it can result in people being locked up in conditions that could violate their human rights.

In a case in the Irish courts last year a Polish man successfully argued he should not be sent back to Poland automatically on foot of a warrant, without the risk of his suffering inhuman and degrading treatment in Polish jails must be taken into account.

Ireland has a much higher rate of juveniles in jail than most other countries, at 2.4% of the overall compared to an average of 1.6% for the EU as a whole. Malta (6%) and the Netherlands and Greece (close to 5%) have the biggest percentage while Finland and Sweden have the least at 0.1%

Those awaiting trial — for up to four years in some instances — averaged a quarter of the prison population generally. They comprised almost half in Luxembourg and Italy and about 37% in Northern Ireland. In the Republic, they account for 15% of prisoners.

Bulgaria and Cyprus have the most over crowded jails with 50% more than they were built for, followed by Spain at a third more. Ireland has the 10th highest at 103% of occupancy.

The country with the highest number of people in jail as a percentage of the population is Latvia, closely followed by its Baltic neighbours, Lithuania and Estonia. Finland has the lowest while Ireland comes in at 20th of the 27 countries.

Meanwhile, 70% of prisoners in Luxembourg are foreign nationals compared to the EU average of 22% and around 11% in Ireland. In Cyprus, Austria, Malta, Greece and Belgium more than 40% of their prisoners are foreign nationals.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said Europeans must be confident they will have similar standards of protection for the European Arrest Warrant to operate properly. She has launched a consultation, inviting all interested stakeholders to give their opinions on how to improve the situation.

“The European Arrest Warrant since introduced in 2004 is an efficient tool for extraditing people suspected of an offence from one EU country to another so that criminals have no hiding place in Europe”, she said. “But the system is impeded if judges refuse to extradite accused persons because detention conditions in the requesting country are substandard.”