Europe · Western Europe
Operated at Land (state) level. Strong resocialisation mandate; one of the lowest incarceration rates among large EU nations.
Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always verify with primary sources before acting on any figure. See data sources.
Prison population
59,413
Year: 2024
Rate per 100,000
71
Per 100,000 residents
Occupancy
82.2%
At or under capacity
Pre-trial / remand
26.3%
Share not yet sentenced
Female prisoners
5.6%
Foreign nationals
48.8%
Figures from official sources · verified 20 May 2026 · methodology
Average of our computed Conditions Risk Score across the country's facilities. Methodology · Browse highest-risk
Seeded from Amnesty International 2024 categorisation + Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.
The vertical ticks mark the global (grey) and regional (amber) means. Bars are clipped at the high end for readability.
Source: World Prison Brief / unodc / Council of Europe SPACE I
Custodial mortality + prison-health indicators aggregated from national statistics offices, UCLA custodial mortality dataset, and Marshall Project COVID tracking.
Indicators (latest by source)
Mortality Rate
134.47per_100k_pa
2020 · source: who-hiped
Laws, programmes, and pilots changing how Germany incarcerates — plus relevant research.
rehabilitation · active
Since the Federal Constitutional Court's 1973 Lebach decision and subsequent rulings, German prison policy is constitutionally bound to a rehabilitation goal grounded in Article 1 (human dignity). Subsequent court decisions have required the state to make rehabilitation efforts a positive duty, not a privilege.
1,934 facilities in our database — showing the first 24.
Germany
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Germany · Wetter (Ruhr)
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Score based on how many fields are populated. We surface this so you know where the gaps are.
Direct citations for the figures on this page.
Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.
World Prisons. (2026). Germany — prison statistics. Retrieved July 20, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/countries/germany
"Germany — prison statistics." World Prisons. Accessed July 20, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/countries/germany.
@misc{worldprisons-germany,
author = {{World Prisons}},
title = {Germany — prison statistics},
year = {2026},
url = {https://worldprisons.com/countries/germany},
urldate = {2026-07-20}
}