News - Turkey has highest rate of imprisonment, Armenia's rate is lowest in South Caucasus, CoE report says

The SPACE I survey, conducted annually by the University of Lausanne for the Council of Europe (CoE), which contains information from the prison administrations of the CoE member countries, issued a report on the statistics for 2023, reflecting on the indicators of the South Caucasus countries as well, reports Armenpress. According to this annual report, from January 2022 to January 2023, a considerable increase in the number of prisoners was recorded in Turkey (+15%), Azerbaijan (+13%), Armenia (+11%), and Georgia (+8.2%). It is reported that the South Caucasus countries with the highest incarceration rates are Turkey (408 prisoners per 100,000 population), Georgia (256), and Azerbaijan (244). The respective indicator of Armenia is 79. Five prison administrations reported very high prison densities, including Turkey (100). Others reported prison densities below 100, but were on the verge of overcrowding; this includes Azerbaijan (96). Separately, Albania (55%), Armenia (53%), Luxembourg (49%), Switzerland (46%), the Netherlands (45%), Montenegro (42%), and Northern Ireland (41%) had the highest proportion of pretrial detainees.