site.btaBulgaria First in Europe for Growth of Incarceration Rate in 2016

Brussels/Strasbourg, March 20 (BTA Correspondent Nikolay Jeliazkov) - Bulgaria is the Council of Europe (CoE) member state where the incarceration rate grew the most in 2016, by 10.8 per cent compared to 2015, show the Council of Europe Annual Penal Statisticsа(SPACE) for 2016, published on Tuesday.

Bulgaria is followed by Turkey (9.5 per cent), the Czech Republic (7.6 per cent), Serbia (6.6 per cent) and Denmark (5.5 per cent).

Bulgaria is among the CoE member states with the highest number of offenders held in custody for theft: 37 offenders per 100,000 persons, compared to an average of 30 offenders per 100,000 persons in Europe. Ahead of Bulgaria in this respect are only Azerbaijan (38.5), Turkey (42.7), Poland (47.8), and Georgia (231.7).

The daily expenditure per inmate in Bulgaria was 57.11 euro (111.36 leva) in 2016, compared to an average of 51 euro in Europe.

As at September 2016, there were 8,347 prisoners in Bulgaria, including pre-trial detainees, each provided with a living space of 4 sq m on average. There were a total of 9,670 places available, of which 8,127 in prisons.

Women represented only 3.1 per cent of the overall prison population. Out of the men, 2.4 per cent were foreign inmates.

A total of 29.7 per cent of the sentenced prisoners were serving sentences of one to three years, and two per cent were serving a life sentence. Only 2.5 per cent of the prison sentences were conditional.

In 2015, 43 prisoners died in Bulgaria, of whom seven committed suicide. One in three suicides were committed while awaiting trial.

According to statistics, 56.7 per 10,000 prisoners die in this country, of whom 9.2 per cent take their own life.