The Council of Europe, on Tuesday morning, published its annual report on Annual Penal Statistics on Prison Populations and observed that, in 2025, Malta's prison system was one of nine across Europe that reported "severe overcrowding."

The report said that there are 118 inmates per 100 places available in Maltese prisons, meaning that there are more inmates than available places.

This places the Maltese carceral system as the fifth most overcrowded one in the European continent, only trailing Italy (121 inmates per 100 places available), Croatia (123), France (131), and Turkey (131).

The Council of Europe (CoE) report stated that the number of prison administrations which reported severe overcrowding grew from six to nine between January 2024 and January 2025. Other European countries with severely overcrowded prisons, following Malta, are Cyprus (117), Hungary (115), Belgium (114), and Ireland (112).

Meanwhile, five prison administrations reported moderate overcrowding: Finland (110), Greece (108), Scotland (106), North Macedonia (104) and Sweden (103).

Additionally, nine prison systems reportedly operated at or near full capacity: Romania (100), Portugal (99), Azerbaijan (98), England and Wales (96), Serbia (96), Czechia (95), Netherlands (95), Denmark (95) and Switzerland (95).

The CoE report, referred to as SPACE I, Malta also recorded the third-highest proportion of women among its prison population. While the European average proportion of women in prison stands at 5.2%, female inmates represent 8% of the Maltese prison population.

Just over half of inmates in Malta (51%), in January 2025, were non-citizens. Just seven other countries, with populations exceeding 500,000 inhabitants, were marked as having larger proportions of their prisoners to be foreign nationals. These were Luxembourg (78%), Switzerland (73%), Cyprus (54%), Austria (53%), Slovenia (52%), the Spanish region of Catalonia (52%), and Greece (52%). The lowest proportions in this regard were found in Eastern Europe; Romania recorded the lowest proportion of foreigners representing its inmate population at 1.1%, followed the Republic of Moldova (1.9%), Azerbaijan (2.2%), Ukraine (2.2%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2.8%), and several other Balkan and eastern European nations. In Europe overall, 17% of inmates were non-citizens; European nationals comprised 27% of all foreign inmates within the European continent.

According to this report, most prisoners in Malta (29.3%) are serving sentences between 1-3 years in length. Just over a fifth of inmates (22.6%) are serving sentences between 3-5 years in length, while just under a fifth of all prisoners in Malta (19.4%) are serving sentences of at least five years but no longer than 10 years.

Malta's incarceration rate is reportedly above the European average of 110 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants, at 120 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants.

The CoE report said that, in light of these statistics, "many European countries are failing to address the serious prison overcrowding they face" and that in many others, "prisons are close to full capacity following an increase in their prison populations in recent years." Across the European continent, overall, the number of inmates per 100 places available increased from 94.7 to 95.2, though this varies significantly per country.

Across the 51 prison administrations of Council of Europe member states that participated in this SPACE I 2025 survey, drug offences were found to be the most common crimes for which individuals were serving prison sentences (17.3%), followed by theft (12.1%). Around one in every three prisoners was serving sentences for violent crimes like homicide (10.9%), rape or other sexual offences (8.6%), assault (6.3%) and robbery (6.1%). Overall, 2.7% of inmates were convicted of road-traffic offences; the same proportion of prisoners had been convicted of economic or financial crimes.