According to the Council of Europe’s Annual Penal Statistics (SPACE) published on Tuesday 5 April, the downward trend in the prison population observed over the last 10 years in most European States has been reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Several factors have contributed to the decline between January 2020 and January 2021: a decline in certain types of crime due to traffic restrictions introduced during the pandemic, a slowdown in judicial systems, and release programmes introduced...