Prisoners in Portugal exceed 12,000 and reach pre-pandemic numbers
Data from the Directorate-General for Reinsertion and Prison Services (DGRSP) indicate that 12,198 prisoners were trapped in Portuguese prisons at the end of last year, 810 more than in the same period of 2021, when the prisoner population totaled 11,388.
In 2020, the year in which the covid-19 pandemic began, prisons had 11,412 prisoners, while at the end of 2019 there were 12,793 prisoners in Portugal.
More than 1,500 prisoners were released in 2020 due to exceptional public health measures in the context of the covid-19 pandemic.
According to the DGRSP, the occupancy rate of prisons was, at the end of December 2022, 96.3%.
The statistics of this body supervised by the Ministry of Justice also indicate that around 80% of the prisoners were, at the end of last year, serving sentences after having been convicted and the rest were in preventive detention.
Of the 12,198 existing inmates at the end of 2022, 198 were unaccountable and 11,331 were men.
A report released on Thursday by the Human Rights Commission of the Portuguese Bar Association (CDHOA), after carrying out visits to prisons in Lisbon, Porto, Odemira, Ponta Delgada, Faro, Funchal, Caxias and Tires, warned of the ” generalized prison overcrowding”, which reduces, according to that agency, the conditions of imprisonment.