Catalina Espinosa
Research expert covering society, economy, and politics for Europe and the EU
Prison system in the UK - Statistics & Facts
In 2024, the prison population of the United Kingdom stood at approximately 97,800 people, of which 87,900 were in England and Wales, 8,000 in Scotland, and a further 1,900 were in Northern Ireland. According to the Council of Europe, England and Wales had the highest incarceration rate among UK jurisdictions, with a prisoner population of 136.2 per 100,000 people, slightly above Scotland at 133.2, and Northern Ireland at 90.5. As a comparison, the average incarceration rate for the European Union was 117, falling to 107 in France, and just 67 in Germany.
Prison system crisis putting prisoners and staff at risk
Several key indicators suggest the UK prison system is currently facing difficulties in key areas. Prison overcrowding, for example, is an ongoing problem, despite the building of large new prisons such as HMS Berwyn in Wrexham. In recent months, the prison population of England and Wales has been operating close to full-capacity, with just over 1,000 spare prison places available in March 2025. Furthermore, there is evidence that prisons are generally becoming more violent places than in the past. Between 2013 and 2018 there was a surge of assaults at prisons, with both prisoner-on-prisoner violence and staff assaults peaking in 2018, when there were over 32,500 incidents, more than double that which occurred in 2013. The number of deaths at prisons in England and Wales reached a high of 371 in 2021, which when adjusted for prisoner population size, was the highest death rate between 1978 and 2024. A significant number of these deaths were due to prisoner suicides, with 124 taking place in 2016, compared with 58 in 2011. There has also been a worrying increase in the amount of self-harm incidents at prisons, which reached an annual peak of over 79,000 incidents in 2024, compared with 25,800 ten years earlier in 2014.Prisoner demographics
The vast majority of incarcerated adults in the UK are men, with almost 88,000 male prisoners compared to just 3,600 female prisoners in England and Wales in 2024. Similarly, in Scotland, there were around 7,400 men in prison, and just 282 women as of the 2022/23 reporting year. When looking at the age profile of prisoners, most are under the age of 40, with the most common age group in England and Wales those aged 30 to 39, with similar patterns among the prison populations of Scotland and Northern Ireland. As of 2024 White prisoners were the most common ethnicity at prisons in England and Wales, at 63,103, compared with 10,624 Black prisoners, 7,067 Asian prisoners, and a further 4,188 of mixed ethnicity. In the same year, the most common foreign nationality of prisoners in England and Wales was Albanian, at 1,273 prisoners, followed by Polish at 906 prisoners.
