Azerbaijan leads in number of prisoners per 100,000 people
Prisoners in Azerbaijan
The Council of Europe has released the Prison Population 2022 report prepared by the University of Lausanne.
- “Georgia chooses Russia and its future,” claim pro-government Russian media
- “Negotiations or pressure on Armenia?”: shelling in NK during negotiations in Washington
- Operation “Fury” in Karabakh: four dead and one wounded. What do they say in Baku?
According to the report, at the end of 2022 a total of 981,575 people were serving sentences in European prisons. Most prisoners in Turkey – 303 thousand 945, followed by the UK 79 thousand 092, Poland – 71 thousand 874, France – 69 thousand 964.
As lawyer Khalid Agaliyev commented on the report, in Turkey for every 100,000 people there are 355 people in custody or already sentenced to imprisonment.
“According to this indicator, Turkey is followed by Georgia, where there are 237 prisoners per 100,000 people. Azerbaijan is in third place with 216.8 prisoners per 100,000 people,” Agaliyev continued.
According to him, there are 22,334 prisoners in Azerbaijan, including 21,713 men and 621 women. There are 436 male and 11 female foreign citizens in prisons in Azerbaijan. 12.6% of prisoners were sentenced for a term of 1 to 3 years, 39.6% – from 3 to 5 years, 32.7% – from 5 to 10 years, 13.1% – from 10 to 20 years, 1.7% – for life. There are 25,471 places in the prisons of Azerbaijan and they are filled by 87.7%.
However, data on occupancy in prisons do not agree with the reports of relatives of prisoners who claim that the penitentiaries are overcrowded, and in particular that there are more convicts in the cells than there are places.
“The Azerbaijani authorities, referring to secrecy, do not provide information on the number of employees of the penitentiary service,” said lawyer Agaliyev.
In 2020, there were 208 prisoners per 100,000 people in Azerbaijan, and 215 in 2021.
In 2021, 64.8 million euros were spent on the maintenance of prisoners in Azerbaijan at the rate of 7.97 euros per prisoner daily. This is the lowest indicator among the countries of the Council of Europe after Ukraine.
In Turkey, the daily cost per prisoner is 9.81 €, Georgia – 10.55 €, Moldova – 12.7 €. In Armenia, which has a total of 2,128 prisoners (71.6 prisoners per 100,000 population), each prisoner spends 32 euros per day. The leader in terms of the amount of funds allocated for the maintenance of prisoners is Ireland, where this figure is 1207 € per prisoner per day. This is followed by Norway – 378 €, Luxembourg – 327 €, Liechtenstein – 300 €.
The European average is 81.41.
