How many people are imprisoned in Netherlands?

Netherlands's prison population is 11,537 people. This figure aggregates all forms of detention counted by the source: sentenced prisoners, pre-trial detainees, and administrative detentions.

What is the incarceration rate in Netherlands?

Netherlands's incarceration rate is approximately 64 people per 100,000 population.

How many prisons are there in Netherlands?

World Prisons indexes 113 individual facilities in Netherlands. Each entry links to a detail page with contact information, capacity, oversight reports, and known conditions.

All countries

Europe · Western Europe

Netherlands

Q: Does Netherlands have the death penalty?

Netherlands's death-penalty status is: abolitionist. Seeded from Amnesty International 2024 categorisation + Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

High confidence

Verified 20 May 2026 · Data dated 30 Sept 2023

Fresh · 2mo ago

Several facilities closed in the 2010s due to under-utilisation; the Netherlands briefly rented cells to Norway and Belgium.

Compare Netherlands World Prison Brief page

Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date.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

11,537

Year: 2023

Rate per 100,000

Per 100,000 residents

Occupancy

78%

At or under capacity

Pre-trial / remand

29.2%

Share not yet sentenced

Female prisoners

4.7%

Foreign nationals

25.2%

Figures from official sources · verified 20 May 2026 · methodology

Conditions risk — across 113 facilities

Average of our computed Conditions Risk Score across the country's facilities. Methodology · Browse highest-risk

—

national average

113 unknown

abolitionist on capital punishment since 1982. Last known execution: 1952.ICCPR-OP2 (death-penalty abolition protocol): signatory

Seeded from Amnesty International 2024 categorisation + Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

Source: Amnesty International + Cornell Death Penalty Worldwide.

46 documented human-rights cases →

How Netherlands compares

vs Europe (16) & global averages

Rate per 100,000this: 64 · region: 111 · global: 214

Occupancy ratethis: 78% · region: 98% · global: 125%

Pre-trial sharethis: 29% · region: 28% · global: 32%

The vertical ticks mark the global (grey) and regional (amber) means. Bars are clipped at the high end for readability.

Prison population over time

Annual figures, latest survey year

2000: 13,847-28.3% over 25y2025: 9,930

Source: World Prison Brief / eurostat / Council of Europe SPACE I

Health & mortality

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
126.54per_100k_pa
2020 · source: who-hiped
Tb Incidence
16count
2020 · source: who-hiped

What we know — and don't

Transparency about the boundaries of this data. Click sources where linked.

What we don't know

WPB's latest headline figures are from 2023 (last snapshot).

Reform in Netherlands

All reform →

Laws, programmes, and pilots changing how Netherlands incarcerates — plus relevant research.

Closing prisons as crime fell2013–2018
decarceration · completed
Between 2013 and 2018 the Netherlands closed roughly 20 prisons as its prison population fell from ~14,000 to under 9,000. Drivers included falling crime, expanded electronic monitoring, and community-sentence alternatives.

—

Held

—

See all 113 prisons in Netherlands →

Data completeness

100%

Score based on how many fields are populated. We surface this so you know where the gaps are.

National population: 17,910,0002023
Source-verified: 20 May 2026
Source links: 2 cited

Sources

Direct citations for the figures on this page.

Primary reference
World Prison Brief (ICPS, Birkbeck) — Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research
Council of Europe â SPACE statistics — Council of Europe
See /data-sources for our methodology.

ISO 3166-1 alpha-3: NLD

Cite this page

Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.

APA

World Prisons. (2026). Netherlands — prison statistics. Retrieved July 21, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/countries/netherlands

Chicago

"Netherlands — prison statistics." World Prisons. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/countries/netherlands.

BibTeX

@misc{worldprisons-netherlands,
  author = {{World Prisons}},
  title = {Netherlands — prison statistics},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://worldprisons.com/countries/netherlands},
  urldate = {2026-07-21}
}