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.